Oil: A Bleak Vision

The critiques of my position on the current oil crisis at pandagon - positing that we have trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure dedicated to an oil-fueled civilization and so imagining essentially immediate and drastic change in our oil consumption patterns is both imprudent and unthinkable - while possibly correct, a point I would love to be able to concede (I desperately want my daughter to grow up in a world that is not a nightmare of privation and desperation), depend significantly on a basic assumption. I find that assumption inconsistent with a detailed understanding of the fundamental principles governing the systems we are discussing. First, I'll give you my punch line and then make the argument, so that if you decide you'd rather go get rickrolled on another website you don't have to continue reading this:

The mathematics of exponential functions are ruthless.

The assumption that the critiques make is that there are some capacities in our system that will allow us to undergo a slow transformation (slow being one or two generations) from the unsustainable oil-fueled culture we have built. For example, some of the capacities that have been referred to include rapid spin-up of alternative oil equivalent fuel sources, corporate self interest that controls oil supplies in a prudent fashion, and what I would characterize as moderate conservation efforts. And perhaps the more important point is that these capacities are very likely an inescapable requirement for a slow transformation. Evidence strongly suggests that the situation we are currently encountering is consistent with the peak oil model - the infamous Hubbert's peak. In this analysis an exponentially increasing demand for a limited resource produces an exponential decay - a crash - in the availability of the resource. Notably, this crash depends simply on an interaction between supply and demand - it doesn't for instance take into account potentially disastrous external events, for instance, conventional - or, God forbid - nuclear military conflagration in the Middle East. The only way to cushion the ruthless mathematics of such a crash is through capacities external to the resource such as those identified above.

Since slow transformation may ultimately depend on the external capacities, these should be critically examined.

1. There are currently no obvious technologies that can be used to produce alternative oil equivalent fuel sources. The unforgiving and unassailable principles of physics strongly suggest that developing them at a level sufficient for a slow transformation is unlikely, at best. We have a long history of imagining that pressing problems will yield to relatively quick technological fixes, only to be repeatedly disappointed: unmetered electrical power from nuclear plants? fusion? corn ethanol? Energy principles are extraordinarily well understood in the scientific and engineering communities and there just isn't a lot of low hanging fruit waiting to be picked.

2. Imagining that corporate self interest will play a significant role ignores that corporations are probably singularly incapable of addressing issues such as these. Our free-market model rewards corporations based on criteria that almost without exception do not include thoughtful long-term stewardship of resources. Is there any more evidence necessary than the fuel-efficiency obstructionist history of U.S. domestic automakers, now facing bankruptcy? The sub-prime mortgage debacle? Corporations are at least as likely as individuals to act in fundamentally irrational ways that prove their own destruction.

3. Conservation. Aye, that's the rub. Assuming my analyses above are correct (obviously, debatable), can conservation play a key role in a slow transformation? That becomes simply a question of whether the conservation rate is sufficient to offset the exponential crash associated with Hubbert's peak, and that is the heart of my argument. From what I understand about the mathematics of these principles the rate of conservation suggested by slow transformation (people being more careful about when and how they use their cars, people replacing 25 mpg vehicles with 50 mpg vehicles over the next decade, redesigning and rebuilding a less oil-dependent infrastructure) is insufficient to offset the rate of collapse predicted by Hubbert's peak.

The critics of my argument point out that because of deep infrastructure investments we cannot expect a drastic and immediate change from our current oil-dependence, that we need to approach this in a gentle and orderly fashion . The problem with this critique is that those prehistoric forests that produced the oil fields we are currently sucking dry just don't care that you live in a suburb 50 miles from your workplace, that your food supplies need to travel an average of 1500 miles to reach your plate. The solar constant of 1340 W/m^2 just doesn't care that our agriculture, our food supply, depends on climate conditions in the mid-west grain belt and the Asian rice belt, that much of agriculture depends on fresh water supplied by a slowly melting summer snow-pack. The second law of thermodynamics just doesn't care that you have to pay 5 dollars for a gallon of gas or 10 dollars, or 100 dollars, that you are wishing or praying as hard as you can for a miraculous new source of energy. And guess what? Those players win by default: they are inescapable principles and they JUST DON'T CARE.

I understand my vision is a very bleak one. I hope against hope that it is deeply flawed. But it is insufficient to argue against it simply because it would prove problematic for those who are now ensconced in an oil-dependent infrastructure. The models and principles underlying the vision are orthogonal to those considerations. The black plague that killed perhaps 75 million people simply didn't care that the civilizations of the 14th century were built on an infrastructure that fed the devastation, and oil simply doesn't care that our civilization is built on an infrastructure that has some potential to surpass that horrific history. The mathematics of exponential functions are ruthless.

Boumediene v Bush

The Boumediene v. Bush decision has been denounced for a variety of reasons, but perhaps most viscerally through maintaining, as Justice Scalia put it, “It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” I understand that for a variety of practical and political reasons, and because of the utter irrationality of the electorate on matters of life and death as well as its mathematical/statistical ineptitude (ala the lottery is a tax on people who don’t understand statistics), no-one in a position of public responsibility can afford to become Vice President Cheney’s alter ego on this matter, thus I have decided to speak the unspeakable: “So?”

Americans currently die at a rate of somewhere in the neigborhood of 3 million per year and among those are a whole range of preventable causes: traffic related deaths ~50,000; gun-related homicides ~20,000; smoking related deaths ~500,000; alcohol related deaths (though, admittedly, it would seem to a casual observer that this category has significant overlap with the preceding categories) ~ 250,000; obesity; medical errors; industrial accidents; and on and on. The terrible events of September 11, 2001 – knock on wood, to date, the ne plus ultra of terrorist acts - caused around 3,000 deaths. Our military response to it has cost well over 4,000 deaths of American soldiers and a toll so staggering to Iraqis that some Panglossian supporters of the Iraq policy stake out their position with sunny low end estimates of “only” 100,000.

Now, lets briefly consider that extraordinarily straightforward policies could immediately be implemented that would save many times the number of lives lost in the terrorist incidents on September 11, 2001: for instance, impose a national speed limit of 35 miles per hour. The statistics on this are unequivocal, unassailable. But, of course, that would be considered an utterly absurd proposition. What is it about our out-of-whack psyches that makes those thousands of bloody, violent and needless traffic deaths and the many more crippling injuries something less than terrorizing? I’m serious: really, what is it?

My point, if somehow you’ve missed it, is this: yes, perhaps – perhaps - some Americans will die because of Boumediene v. Bush, but we always accept tradeoffs between safety and other considerations, like getting to Wal-Mart five minutes sooner. Notwithstanding the intractable corner into which the Bush administration insisted on painting the country in its determination to go to the dark side in its treatment of prisoners in the Global War on Terror and that ultimately led to this Supreme Court decision, and notwithstanding the hypocrisy of neoconservatives expounding on the the hale and brave character and willingness to sacrifice of the American public while simultaneously advocating for cowardly anti-democratic policies that, in the end, cannot assure their fetishized absolute “safety” from the carefully cirumscribed forms of terrorism that involve melanin bearing perpetrators, doesn’t preserving one of the most fundamental rights in the historical development of the rule of law warrant some tradeoffs? Come on Americans – lets reach down deep and show a little of that “home of the brave” for a change. Just a little.

Coping With High Gas Prices

So, NPR , you want to know how I’m coping with high gasoline prices. When there was a frenzy to buy into the suburban fantasy of the country micro-estate that coincidentally requires commuters to drive 25 or 50 or sometimes, insanely, 200 miles a day, I quietly declined and settled for a house that was less “perfect” but that is very convenient to my workplace and shopping. When so many of those in my community seemed to be Hummering-up in some sort of ritual of purification by gasoline consumption, I made an effort to get in the habit of walking or bicycling for as many of my errands and trips as possible. When I understood the enormity of our trade and federal budget deficits and the economic risks inherent in those, I wrote to my representatives and legislators asking them to address the issues (clearly, the least effective of my coping strategies). When RV’s and four-wheelers and snowmobiles and speed-boats were all the rage, I cultivated interests and recreational activities that didn’t require the combustion of fossil fuels. I taught myself to be satisfied with the slightly unkempt look of a lawn after it is cut with a push mower and I thought of the chore of lawnmowing as part of my exercise regimen. When I needed a new car, I made sure the one I selected had at least reasonable fuel efficiency. I steadfastly supported and voted in favor of public transit, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure in my community and region. My coping was over years ago.

As much as it sounds as though I am gloating, in fact I am not and, indeed, I am by turns, dispirited, more than a little scared, and contrite. I understand that our fates -mine and the Hummer driver's- are entwined and, you see, it was obvious to me many years ago that the day of reckoning with our oil consumption was coming very quickly. I think we are in for a long and perhaps very painful readjustment to this new reality and that we have been terribly betrayed - betrayed by the selfish indifference of our policy makers, captains of industry and agriculture, national leaders, media, including you, NPR , and, finally, by people like me who were troubled by what they saw but just not quite sure enough of themselves to genuinely sound the alarm. That betrayal lost us the opportunity to really do something about the situation - to do something when there was time and it might have softened the blow. And I have no illusions but that now we will all of us pay a very dear price for our gluttony and our silence.

Bailouts and Myths

Following the Bear-Stearns bailout by the Fed this week, never again, never again, can I possibly hear the arguments of America’s free-market corporatocracy (AFMC) without the deepest sense of their utter hypocrisy and lack of anything even remotely approaching a reflective outlook, or for that matter, a conscience.

During the last 14 years Bear-Stearns CEO, James E. Cayne, led that company to the brink of disaster. The precipice is so deep that a panicky federal reserve board determined that a Bear-Stearns plunge could drag much more than just that one assemblage of greedy bastards over the edge with it, and warranted what is, at its root, a multibillion dollar publicly funded bailout.

Forbes reported in 2007 that the 5 year compensation for James E. Cayne was more than 150 million dollars. It is not unreasonable to estimate that during his tenure as CEO, a tenure in which his leadership set the groundwork for the ruin that prompted the Fed response, Mr. Cayne was compensated to the tune of about 300 million dollars: $300,000,000; 3x10^8 greenbacks! The standard argument of the AFMC for CEO compensation like this at a level of about 500 times the median household income, is the “extraordinary value” they create for their companies and the economy in general.

Where is that “extraordinary value” now? Where’s the perfection of the free market that “punishes” economic inefficiency? Where are the demands that business operate free of government intervention? I’ll tell you where: greedily reaching into the public pocket for a post hoc endorsement of business decisions that were ruinous and that, not incidentally, ballooned the obscene fortunes of executives who pursued policies that not only threatened their companies, but the entire economy.

I understand why the Fed had to do what it did – desperately scrambling to avert, or at least moderate the looming economic disaster, and that failure to act threatens the economic well-being of so many more than the 14,000 Bear-Stearns employees – but PLEASE, PLEASE, can’t we finally stop this stupid charade that recklessly unregulated American business practices, that obscene executive compensation, is in everyone’s interest. Can’t we please see that business, far from wanting no government intervention, desperately seeks government intervention on behalf of the rich and powerful. Can’t we please finally dispense with the myths of American business and on the way work toward something that does actually operate in the public interest?

Whence Oil

So now Karl Rove opines that the policies of his political opponents may push oil to $200/barrel specifically because of their possible Iraq policies:

Rove:

"If we were to give up Iraq with the third largest oil reserves in the world to the control of an Al Qaida regime or to the control of Iran, don’t you think $200 a barrel oil would have a cost to the American economy?"

But it's important to recognize that oil did NOT cross the $100/barrel threshold simply because of the Iraq disaster. A range of reasons, including the inevitable peaking of the logistic function and the blind eye that has been turned to that issue by government, industry and consumers alike, and a deficit-crippled, reeling US economy coupled with exploding competition for oil resources from other economies while the dollar is deeply sagging are contributing to send oil in the $200/barrel direction NO MATTER what happens in Iraq.

At EVERY juncture the willfully ignorant policies of this administration and its enablers in the legislature and the electorate have relentlessly pulled us into this death spiral with our addiction to oil. Rove and his desperate band must know this and must understand at some level their abject complicity in, if not active pursuit of so many aspects of this situation. I suspect and as always, they are trying to lay the ground so that when the worst inevitably happens and the associated suffering ensues, he and his fellow hacks can blame their political enemies. Sic semper propagandists.

Sand Dunes and Science

Part of what has angered me so much about the “Intelligent Design” (nee Creationism) movement, is their willful and ruthless exploitation of the general public’s weak or non-existent scientific literacy. There is plenty of blame to go around why this strategy can be effective, not least the somewhat careless and historically established jargon scientists use (a common thread revolving around the meaning of the term “theory”, which is baldly misrepresented by IDers, but also not as clean as some of the scientist rebuttals suggest), but that is not the purpose of this comment. Rather, it has occurred to me that the idea of scientific principles (laws, theories) and their relationships with data, experiments, and observations desperately needs an analogy that frames for the scientifically illiterate the nature of the critiques that that are mounted by the IDers against the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.

The analogy of the type of scientific theory represented by TENS that occurs to me is a sand dune. Just as a sand dune is composed of many grains of sand, so TENS is a broad structure composed of a vast array of data, experiments, applications, observations, confirmed predictions, and dependent relationships with other well established branches of science. Just as moving, or removing a few grains of sand among the million billion that compose a sand dune does not change its fundamental nature, so changing our understanding or interpretations of some of the data (a fossil here, a species there) or, pointing out one circumstance (a flagellum, for instance) that is not yet contained in the framework of TENS does not even remotely suggest the imminent collapse of the entire structure.

If I might, the analogy goes further: Scientific theories of the form represented by TENS can shift their shape over long periods of time as very large amounts of data are amassed, just as sand dunes can grow or shrink as wind adds and steals sand. And over long periods of time, grain by grain, dunes can merge to become larger structures just as theories can be subsumed by those that are more fundamental (A real sore point with me is the gross misrepresentation of the Relativity/Quantum Mechanics revolution at the beginning of the 20th century – these new scientific theories emphatically did not cause the abandonment of the physical theories of Newton, Maxwell and Boltzmann. Rather, those older theories were subsumed as special cases of the new more fundamental theories, as they had to be because they had been so well established with an array of data, experiments, applications, observations, and confirmed predictions) . But such a massive structure is persistent in the landscape, just as TENS must persist because of its extraordinary ability to organize our understanding of living systems.

Taking a teaspoon of sand from the side of a sand dune and flinging it into the wind doesn’t change the fundamental nature of a sand dune, and pointing out the biochemical complexity of the flagellum in a small class of organisms does not change the fundamental structure that organizes a profound understanding of living systems. It’s important to point out the scale of the critique ID has mounted to TENS and the sand dune analogy does that: they are picking out one or two grains of sand and ignoring the sand dune looming on their horizon. That’s not science.

Faith and Reason

As a nearly lifelong devout agnostic I have watched with much interest (and occasionally even participated in) the increasingly rancorous argument between the New Atheists and the many stripes of Faith Apologists who, often bitterly, disagree with them. In the interest of full disclosure, my sympathies usually lie with the NA’s, not least because of their underdog status in these battles. I expect that it is not at all an uncommon experience for those of us living explicitly and purposely outside the FA communities in this country to feel extraordinarily intimidated and marginalized, and there is some vicarious salve of these wounds to be had through the irreverent arguments and anger expressed by the NA’s.

But, much as I’d like it to be for simplicity’s sake, my consideration of the matter is not exhausted at the foot of the NA arguments. I believe in ends as much as means, and I cannot deny that those operating in the name of faith often achieve good ends. Make no mistake: I find utterly repugnant and malign many or even most FA dogma, doctrine, and acts. But I also find that I simply cannot ignore the profoundly good and beautiful and humane acts of some individuals who claim their inspiration or motivation was based in their faith.

I have been wracked for many years about how to resolve this dissonance in my thinking about the FA’s – the dissonance between what I find repugnant in religion and the utter humanity of some of its practitioners. I have recently stumbled across some multiple threads that offer me a glimmer of hope that perhaps the gulf between these can be bridged. The first thread is the neurological/physiological investigation of spirituality, primarily through functional magnetic resonance imaging. Those investigations strongly suggest that spiritual experience is associated with a particular N/P process. A second thread is the nebulous and shifting nature of what many of the FA’s seem to be arguing for in the current skirmishes: variously, faith, doctrine and dogma, ends (as opposed to means), God, spirituality, a specific Messiah, religion or some combination thereof. The clear lack of a universal rallying point for the FA’s (and in many of the FA arguments this shifts inside the space of a sentence) also suggests to me that their experience of faith phenomena is both highly provisional and individual. So far, these threads are consistent with and support significant aspects of the NA critique of faith.

The final thread though, which I recently found through reading and thinking about the tidy little book “Born on a Blue Day” gives me a sense that though faith may simply be a provisional and individual N/P process, yet it might also have value. BBD is the autobiography of an individual with Asperger’s and savant syndromes. (If you are not familiar with these, think high functioning “Rain Man”.) In the context of this essay, the important features of these syndromes is that, though they are not well understood, they almost certainly have N/P origins and the savant syndrome manifests in a range of abilities that are completely and profoundly inaccessible to linear rational mental processes - those championed by the NA’s.

I have several “take aways” from this. First, I strongly suspect the spectrum of experiences and behaviors that we call faith are associated with particular N/P processes and further, that some individuals have intrinsically better or easier access to these processes. This would explain the spectrum of individuals between those who profess the tangible and indisputable nature of their faith experiences and those for whom the evidence and the experience is nonexistent. Second, I strongly suspect that just as the N/P processes of savant syndrome manifest in particular mental capacities, so the N/P processes of faith may give some individuals some valuable capacities that are not easily accessible by linear rational thought. This would explain how, for some individuals, faith can play an important role in their humanity and how it can provide comfort and purpose.

Finally – and this is the resolution I have sought for so long - should my conjectures prove true, this understanding of faith provides a basis for considering its role and the limits of its role in society. If faith is an intrinsic human N/P process then the NA program of eliminating its influence is moot. But it must be recognized that any faith claim is just the product of an individual human mind. Faith N/P processes may produce valuable understanding that is not readily accessible by linear rational thought, but that understanding must be subject to the same skepticism that informs every other assessment of human ideas. When a savant rattles off ten thousand digits of pi, the mathematicians run their computer programs to check them. And when my deeply religious catholic neighbor stands silent vigil in protest of the Iraq War because of her faith, I must also evaluate her understanding.