Is Centrino brand all that strong?

[Robert Redelmeier]

Since we are in the company of technologists and technophiles, it
may not be completely superfluous to spend a few words agreeing
emphatically that, to the extent we are in a confrontation with
another culture, ideas and not resources are at the core of the
matter. Ideas, even very bad ideas, can be incredibly powerful.

Ah, but whose ideas are the bad ones? I think Neal Stephenson hit
the nail on the head with "In the Beginning was the Command Line"
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
especially this excerpt:


Orlando used to have a military installation called McCoy Air Force
Base, with long runways from which B-52s could take off and reach Cuba,
or just about anywhere else, with loads of nukes. But now McCoy has been
scrapped and repurposed. It has been absorbed into Orlando's civilian
airport. The long runways are being used to land 747-loads of tourists
from Brazil, Italy, Russia and Japan, so that they can come to Disney
World and steep in our media for a while.

To traditional cultures, especially word-based ones such as Islam, this
is infinitely more threatening than the B-52s ever were. It is obvious,
to everyone outside of the United States, that our arch-buzzwords,
multiculturalism and diversity, are false fronts that are being used (in
many cases unwittingly) to conceal a global trend to eradicate cultural
differences. The basic tenet of multiculturalism (or "honoring diversity"
or whatever you want to call it) is that people need to stop judging
each other-to stop asserting (and, eventually, to stop believing)
that this is right and that is wrong, this true and that false, one
thing ugly and another thing beautiful, that God exists and has this
or that set of qualities.

The lesson most people are taking home from the Twentieth Century is
that, in order for a large number of different cultures to coexist
peacefully on the globe (or even in a neighborhood) it is necessary
for people to suspend judgment in this way. Hence (I would argue) our
suspicion of, and hostility towards, all authority figures in modern
culture. As David Foster Wallace has explained in his essay "E Unibus
Pluram," this is the fundamental message of television; it is the message
that people take home, anyway, after they have steeped in our media long
enough. It's not expressed in these highfalutin terms, of course. It
comes through as the presumption that all authority figures--teachers,
generals, cops, ministers, politicians--are hypocritical buffoons,
and that hip jaded coolness is the only way to be.

The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make
judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there's no real
culture left. All that remains is clog dancing and macrame. The ability
to make judgments, to believe things, is the entire it point of having
a culture. I think this is why guys with machine guns sometimes pop up
in places like Luxor, and begin pumping bullets into Westerners. They
perfectly understand the lesson of McCoy Air Force Base. When their sons
come home wearing Chicago Bulls caps with the bills turned sideways,
the dads go out of their minds.


-- Robert

 

[Robert Myers]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 15:10:08 GMT, Robert Redelmeier

The lesson most people are taking home from the Twentieth Century is
that, in order for a large number of different cultures to coexist
peacefully on the globe (or even in a neighborhood) it is necessary
for people to suspend judgment in this way. Hence (I would argue) our
suspicion of, and hostility towards, all authority figures in modern
culture. As David Foster Wallace has explained in his essay "E Unibus
Pluram," this is the fundamental message of television; it is the message
that people take home, anyway, after they have steeped in our media long
enough. It's not expressed in these highfalutin terms, of course. It
comes through as the presumption that all authority figures--teachers,
generals, cops, ministers, politicians--are hypocritical buffoons,
and that hip jaded coolness is the only way to be.

The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make
judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there's no real
culture left. All that remains is clog dancing and macrame. The ability
to make judgments, to believe things, is the entire it point of having
a culture. I think this is why guys with machine guns sometimes pop up
in places like Luxor, and begin pumping bullets into Westerners. They
perfectly understand the lesson of McCoy Air Force Base. When their sons
come home wearing Chicago Bulls caps with the bills turned sideways,
the dads go out of their minds.

I suppose I asked for this.

Human beings never go without values, and they never go without belief
systems, and I'm skeptical that the world is any more or less confused
about values and beliefs than it has been at any other time or place.
Humans have hacked, shot, and blown one another to pieces over belief
systems and values at all times and in all places and with whatever
instruments of destruction they could lay their hands on.

What I almost posted in the first place was that, in the face of the
challenge to Western civilization presented by radical Islam, we will
either become much more clear about what it is we wish to defend or we
won't defend it successfully. We _do_ have a culture. It has values.
There is a dominant belief system in our culture. Whether we are
clear enough about what those values and beliefs are and sufficiently
committed to them to stand up to the challenge of radical Islam, I
suppose that either we or our children or our children's children will
discover.

RM

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

face of the challenge to Western civilization presented
by radical Islam, we will either become much more clear
about what it is we wish to defend or we won't defend
it successfully. We _do_ have a culture. It has values.

Yes. I interpret Stephenson as saying those values are
relativist, with over-riding tolerance for differences.
A metaculture, if you will.

Nothing unclear about it, but perhaps a bit more difficult
to grasp than an absolutist culture (X is bad).

There is a dominant belief system in our culture.

I presume you mean Christianity, particularly Protestantism.

Whether we are clear enough about what those values and
beliefs are and sufficiently committed to them to stand up
to the challenge of radical Islam, I suppose that either
we or our children or our children's children will discover.

I believe radical Islam has no problem with Christianity,
particularly not the more fundamental varieties. It doesn't
value heathens any more than they do. What grieves them is the
relativist metaculture, and it's requirement to respect heathens.

-- Robert

 

[George Macdonald]

Are you kidding? Do you know how much octane that'd cost?
CA is 10%v max olefins, 4% average but negotiable under formulae.

Thought I'd read that - maybe I was having a psychic moment. We've
"lost" a lot of octane from aromatic reductions and got it back... and
AvGas used to get it with straight-cut... admittedly with large amounts of
Pb. Certainly the gasoline we get here in the NE, stores much longer now
than it used to.

Fuel has a lot of heat capacity and doesn't swing much
except in small tanks.

And it gets sloshed around a lot and does end up in small tanks. When it
goes from one "environment" to another there are temp changes.

If you look at the weather, there's very little change in
absolute humidity (lb water/lb dry air) over a day unless
it rains. The temperature and rel.humidity vary. Nighttime
usually hits dew.

You live in TX - no? We get a wide range of humidity in NJ and I'm sure
other places.

You used easily first, my definition is many people will
need to cut back personal transportation. High prices
are supported in Europe & Japan because of denser housing
and developed public transportation infrastructure.
Also at a cost in time & arguably quality of life.

No, first they'll just have to buy, and the mfrs will have to supply, more
economical vehicles. If we lose the SUV I'll be happy. Europe does not
suffer horribly from its prices and people still drive as *needed* there -
people have adapted. I dunno what the states will do that have "automobile
welfare" programs but they don't have that in Europe, unless it's for some
medical reason.

50% is closer than 10%, but still isn't close enough to
cover without real pain.

Still a big loss on the books... which would have been easier to maintain
than regain.

No. It is selling the farm. Running the battery down.
More is not being made at any appreciable rate. We're living
off borrowed time. Oil won't run out, but will get expensive,
with serious consequences. Our major hope is to use the fossil
fuel legacy to springboard development beyond needing it.

Yes we *are* selling the farm right now, when we have gas guzzlers being
effectively subsidized by economy vehicle drivers but I see no way out for
the politicians - gas tax here is apparently unacceptable. We could start
though, by realigning the fuel economy rules for "trucks" (effectively
SUVs) so that they don't have an advantage over cars.

 

[George Macdonald]

Yes I know it's being used fairly widely in some small %age currently and
mainly to satisfy oxygenate content regulations - possibly you are not
aware of all the resulting problems: the mix can not go in a pipeline; it
can't be stored for any length of time, mixing generally being done into
the final delivery vehicle and the broken engines *are* real - even small
amounts of water and you lose octane *big* time. As already mentioned the
mid-west FFT boondoggle is just Daschle's pork barrel.

I've already mentioned scale and I hardly think the auto business in Brazil
can be compared with that of the U.S. There are a lot of inconsistent
studies/numbers floating around on the energy balance of fermentation fuels
- hard to know whom to believe but there are some fundamentals which can't
be ignored, like acreage required vs. car-population density, ultimate
efficiency (even an optimistic 50% loss seems on the high side for
viability to me) and what you do when you have a low yield of
corn/bio-mass, for whatever reason.

From "Facing Some of the Hard Truths about Energy" by Lee R Raymond,
Chairman of Exxon-Mobil, Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, June 7, 2004:

"Currently ethanol from corn is neither an economic nor
energy-efficient choice, as it can require more energy to produce than
it generates in the end, land that would otherwise go to food crops or
forest cover."

"To give you some perspective, if we tried to replace just 10 percent
of the gasoline the US will use in 2020 with corn-based ethanol, we
would need to plant an area equivalent to Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio
[about one-sixth the land currently used in the US to grow crops]
solely to grow the grain needed as feedstock."

Your position is remarkably similar to the position of the Chairman of
Exxon Mobil. .

To repeat: he's right about the scale; *possibly* wrong about the energy
balance but you have to believe people with bio-interests to get there.

The oil equivalents of ethanol from cellulosic feedstock can be three
to seven times higher for the same acreage than ethanol from corn.
The land used for crops like switchgrass can be land that is
agriculturally marginal. The US only imports ten percent of its oil
from the Middle East. The net balance in available transportation
fuel, not energy, is the figure of merit that matters, and even the
energy balance claim by the chairman of Exxon-Mobil is disputed.

The same comments are available at

I'm not even going to read that one - the above extract(?) is enough and
the previous one was so bad... but first, to suggest that the net balance
in energy does not matter is heresy... apparently acquired by ignoring that
crude oil *is* stored energy. Second, the fact that the US only imports
10% of its oil from the Middle East is irrelevant... showing a parochial
and utter ignorance of how the oil industry works and assigns production to
refining facilities... not to mention how amazingly efficient the petroleum
industry is.

What's needed now is for the bio-ethanol and bio-diesel guys to fight out
which is the more efficient of the two. Here's a page which has some
msgs from a guy working on a method (to be patented) to produce bio-diesel
from algae ponds:
http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1841&whichpage=1 and
here's a snippet from him:

"On a net energy yield per acre they're similar, but the energy balance (or
preferably Energy Return on Investment) is just as important. With corn,
there is a greater energy input to get that net output than with soy.
Still, neither of them is really suitable for a wide-scale energy crop. The
yield from both is just too low. They are nice crops to use as a
dual-purpose crop, provided there is a market for the meal product, but
they should never be grown specifically for fuel production."

http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=624


The Sierra Club website mentions a problem with hydrogen I had not
heard before, which is that, once liberated from water, a significant
fraction will escape unburned into the atomsphere and thence into
space. We have the same problem with helium, a problem that is mostly
of concern to scientists who work at low temperatures.

IMO the Sierra Club are just a band of dilettantes/penguins, choose either
or both. "into space" they say... oh my GAWD! Helium - a problem?... what
the hell is it going to do? When I worked in labs many moons ago, helium
was the principal carrier for gas chromatography and may still be for all I
know, so it may be of interest to more than cryogenics. We used to just
vent the stuff at the outlets, though that practice may have changed.

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

... and AvGas used to get it with straight-cut...

*CHOKE* AvGas is made from Alkylate, mostly iso-octane
(223trimethylpentane) and other isomers. It's _damned_
expensive stuff and very limited in quantity (10%). AvTur is
made from straight-run, but jets don't need octate. In fact
it hurts them bigtime.

And it gets sloshed around a lot and does end up in small
tanks. When it goes from one "environment" to another
there are temp changes.

There are, and vapor space control is important on transfers.

You live in TX - no? We get a wide range of humidity in
NJ and I'm sure other places.

Yes, I'm in TX. I know NJ and you should check some time.
Absolute humidity doesnt vary daily as much as relative humidity.

No, first they'll just have to buy, and the mfrs will have
to supply, more economical vehicles. If we lose the SUV
I'll be happy.

So would I be. But I'm not sure it will happen without
something like the "gas guzzler" social pressure of the 1970s.
Even if the gas cost is double--$0.20/mi vs $0.10/mi, people
will pay. Many people already pay $0.30/mi in depreciation
rather than half that if they kept their vehicles longer.

I can understand Europeans getting very upset with the US
for wasting oil. There is only one global pool, and if
the US uses faster, it will run short earlier. I don't
have a good answer, particularly since SUVs (etc) aren't
actually any safer.

Europe does not suffer horribly from its prices and people
still drive as *needed* there - people have adapted.

Yes, and don't notice the higher stress from denser housing
and extra time public transport often costs. Sort of like NYC:
The denizens like it, and it appears attractive to tourists.

We could start though, by realigning the fuel economy
rules for "trucks" (effectively SUVs) so that they don't
have an advantage over cars.

You are in favor of CAFE?

-- Robert

 

[Robert Myers]

Yes. I interpret Stephenson as saying those values are
relativist, with over-riding tolerance for differences.
A metaculture, if you will.

Nothing unclear about it, but perhaps a bit more difficult
to grasp than an absolutist culture (X is bad).


I presume you mean Christianity, particularly Protestantism.

None of the ready made labels I can think of would work to describe
the dominant belief system of our culture. I don't think we have much
clarity as to what that belief sytem is, and I'm not ready to attempt
to clarify it here, but we do have a dominant belief system, and we do
have values.

I believe radical Islam has no problem with Christianity,
particularly not the more fundamental varieties. It doesn't
value heathens any more than they do. What grieves them is the
relativist metaculture, and it's requirement to respect heathens.

We need to focus on our own beliefs and let Islam focus on its own
beliefs. We have a hard enough time understanding what we believe in
as it is, without trying to see it through the distorting lens of
another culture.

RM

 

[Robert Myers]

To repeat: he's right about the scale; *possibly* wrong about the energy
balance but you have to believe people with bio-interests to get there.

Here's an aggressive effort (from the NRDC) to make it all look
reasonable:

http://www.bio.org/ind/GrowingEnergy.pdf

They get the required land down to about 100 million acres of
switchgrass (as opposed to 30 million acres currently under
cultivation as switchgrass in the Conservation Resource Program out of
700 million acres of U.S. cropland and rangeland).

The assumptions are aggressive, and it is not a near-term solution.
Figure 1 of the Executive Summary shows a ten-percentish contribution
to gasoline demand only by about 2020.

... to suggest that the net balance
in energy does not matter is heresy... apparently acquired by ignoring that
crude oil *is* stored energy.

But so what? You can't hook your car up to a nuclear reactor or a
coal-fired plant or run it on waste heat from biomass, but you can use
that energy in making ethanol if you have to.

Second, the fact that the US only imports
10% of its oil from the Middle East is irrelevant... showing a parochial
and utter ignorance of how the oil industry works and assigns production to
refining facilities... not to mention how amazingly efficient the petroleum
industry is.

I'm well aware that the U.S. has a commitment to sharing resources in
case of a shortage. If you don't think that actually shutting Middle
Eastern oil out of the U.S. market would change world politics
considerably, I'll politely ask you to reconsider your opinion. .

What's needed now is for the bio-ethanol and bio-diesel guys to fight out
which is the more efficient of the two. Here's a page which has some
msgs from a guy working on a method (to be patented) to produce bio-diesel
from algae ponds:
http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1841&whichpage=1 and
here's a snippet from him:

"On a net energy yield per acre they're similar, but the energy balance (or
preferably Energy Return on Investment) is just as important. With corn,
there is a greater energy input to get that net output than with soy.
Still, neither of them is really suitable for a wide-scale energy crop. The
yield from both is just too low. They are nice crops to use as a
dual-purpose crop, provided there is a market for the meal product, but
they should never be grown specifically for fuel production."

On a net energy basis, ethanol from seed (corn or beans) is a
non-starter--too much energy content is just thrown away. Bio-diesel
from seed also throws a large part of the energy content away.
Ethanol from cellulose has to be made to work.

IMO the Sierra Club are just a band of dilettantes/penguins, choose either
or both. "into space" they say... oh my GAWD! Helium - a problem?... what
the hell is it going to do? When I worked in labs many moons ago, helium
was the principal carrier for gas chromatography and may still be for all I
know, so it may be of interest to more than cryogenics. We used to just
vent the stuff at the outlets, though that practice may have changed.

Significant quantities of helium are available only as a byproduct of
natural gas production. A naive calculation shows that a signficant
fraction of a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of helium and hydrogen
reach earth escape velocity at modest temperatures.

That's something to worry about for a hydrogen economy? I have no
idea. I'm sure there are bigger conerns.

RM

 

[George Macdonald]

The problem has been that people are unwilling to invest in renewables
without knowing what the market price for product is going to be.
Letting the price of petroleum float upward on its own means we will
be in serious trouble by the time it is reliably high enough.

I dunno what you want to do about that - whingeing doesn't help
anything.;-) Maybe the petro/energy companies should be involved more in
"renewables" but I think they'll bite when there's evidence. You don't
think they're going to sit on their thumbs and watch somebody else claim
the market.

You're still living in that phony "energy" crisis. We don't have an
energy crisis, we have a transporation fuel crisis. Greenhouse gases
may be a concern, but they are not the most immediate concern.

ME? I'm not worried about any energy crisis and we do *not* currently have
a transportation fuel crisis - wave your arms if you like.

There's a little more to Peak Oil than that, like the swaggering ghost
of M. King Hubbert. Makes really good copy and sells books.

Peak oil will of course happen - it'll be a while yet.

Well, of course. Corn-based ethanol is either a boondoggle (your
view) or a starter program that gets part of the infrastructure in
place (my view, I think). Ethanol from cellulose and lignin is
essential.

I guess that'll be good for chemical engineers... and somebody better
get the nuclear program jump started again to supply the energy-in to make
ethanol... so we'll need to look at producing civil engineers again too.

Washington Public Power System. All those nuclear power plants that
were going to be needed to meet demand that never materialized? And
the bonds that were never paid off.

I don't know about the division of labor between the economists and
the technical people.

http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/Skeptic's_Guide.pdf

is critical of PIES (Project Independence Energy Something-or-Other)
and of its overly optimistic predictions.

A more detailed memoir is

Hogan, William W. "Energy Modeling for Policy Studies." Operations
Research 50, no. 1 (January / February 2002): 89-95.

They spent more than a million dollars for computer time on work that
could, I am sure, now easily be done on a PC. A PDF of the Hogan
paper can be found on line.

So!! That was the price of computer time back then - corps spent a helluva
lot more on their in-house modelling and uhh, they didn't have modern PCs
30years ago either. As for Hogan there were people inside who were
critical of his goals too - I won't comment on that here.

Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin, eds. Energy Future New York: Random
House 1979, Sergio Koreisha and Robert Stobaugh Appendix: Limits to
Models list what they refer to as red flags in the models (pp.
237-240) :

1.Exclusion [e.g. leaving out effect on investment needs of the energy
sector on the rest of the economy]
2.Aggregation. [e.g., lumping different sources of energy:
nuclear<->oil]
3.Range [unwarrented extrapolation]
4.Reversibility [price elasticities are the same going up as coming
down]
5.Time Lag [price and demand adjustments are instantaneous]

The model was limited by size constraints and complexity capabilities of
the day. Economists just do not like systems which model operations - they
much prefer graphs where the curve bears no relation to the scale of the
axes... neither do accountants like it when modellers refuse to use their
data. Tough shit!

Most of these are now fixed in PIES, but the model is so complicated
that it is hard to imagine a reasonable person claiming to understand
how it works.

Since I know you've been in the business, :->, I'll suggest that the
"Energy Crisis" should really be called a system modelling crisis,
brought on in no small part by the work of Jay Forrester, who gave a
fairly recent talk entitled, "All computer models are wrong."
Forrester and the Club of Rome predicted the end of resources, the oil
embargo (only one of about a dozen supply interruptions in the last
half century) gave the idea a push, and the government hired its own
system modellers to fight back.

One model, for which I cannot locate the reference, assumed the price
of oil would rise to something like $12/barrel, at which point it
would effectively be capped by energy available at that equivalent
price from some other energy source (presumably nuclear power).

It's easy to dig up critiques by people who didn't get their "share".
Saying "all computer models are wrong" is facile and trite - every good
modeller knows the limitations of his models and that they are not perfect.
What did Forrester use for his "predicted" outcomes?... tea leaves?

Terrorism is one concern, but not the only concern. Oil supplies have
been disrupted about a dozen times since 1951, only three or four of
the incidents could be characterized as terrorism:

The U.S. was at one time in the fortunate position of being self-sufficient
in just about every natural resource known. That day has passed as it has,
for a long while, for every other developed nation - get used to it. We'll
be mining the garbage dumps before much longer.

As for muslim extremists, they just hate us and have managed to whip up an
emotional frenzy against us - they do that against every non-Muslim
culture, since their ultimate aim is to take over the world - the bigger
the threat to their goals, the more they pile it on... and our success is
dangerous to their program. Terrorism is just a (tragic) side effect.

www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/security/distable.html

Even a very aggressive biomass program could only affect the problem
at the margins, but consider how cooperative Saudi Arabia became when
they considered the prospect of a U.S. market that didn't need them
anymore, no matter how distant the actual prospect was. I'd like to
meet the man in the Pentagon that doesn't work directly out of the
Office of the Secretary of Defense and who thinks this problem can be
worked militarily. I don't.

Christ the Saudis knew we could never be serious about self-sufficiency in
energy - I've no idea where you pulled that from. I've already told you
they have scientists too... many of them trained in the US. They used our
models... more likely the reason they became "cooperative".

This is getting repetitious - it's way OT here and I'm fed-up with it. I
wonder where the next extrapolation is going to lead us.

 

[George Macdonald]

Ah, but whose ideas are the bad ones?

Read Berman's article - it opened my eyes. The crux of the hate is founded
on the fact that Islam disallows the separation of the secular and sacred
life... which most other religions at least tolerate. According to
fundamental laws of Isam it is the duty of every Muslim to establish Sharia
as the rule of the land. There's no scope for rationalization or
accomodation of other beliefs here - you can conform or die.

 

[George Macdonald]

*CHOKE* AvGas is made from Alkylate, mostly iso-octane
(223trimethylpentane) and other isomers. It's _damned_
expensive stuff and very limited in quantity (10%). AvTur is
made from straight-run, but jets don't need octate. In fact
it hurts them bigtime.

You mean 2,2,4-trimethyl pentane. Yes Avgas was expensive and
iso-paraffins are obviously what you need - I was referring to the old
115/145, (even 10/130) which was a straight-cut stream heavily loaded with
Pb; the stuff I "saw" didn't really need any oxidation inhibitor. AvTur
was basically kerosene. We've come a long way since the old days with
processes to produce octane and though we don't have lead, I'd think "we"
could do better. Hell they're hydrocracking lubes now and calling it
"synthetic".

There are, and vapor space control is important on transfers.

Does that include the gas pump guy who leaves your cap out in the pissing
rain... and/or blizzard? Have you not also noticed that truck drivers
are err, difficult to discipline? All I've been trying to get across is
that any controls on water contamination have had to be tightened up
because of gasohol.

Yes, I'm in TX. I know NJ and you should check some time.
Absolute humidity doesnt vary daily as much as relative humidity.

I see the effects and I'm sure they can be seen in S.Texas - it doesn't
matter what ambient temp is if the "object" is at a lower temp.

So would I be. But I'm not sure it will happen without
something like the "gas guzzler" social pressure of the 1970s.
Even if the gas cost is double--$0.20/mi vs $0.10/mi, people
will pay. Many people already pay $0.30/mi in depreciation
rather than half that if they kept their vehicles longer.

I can understand Europeans getting very upset with the US
for wasting oil. There is only one global pool, and if
the US uses faster, it will run short earlier. I don't
have a good answer, particularly since SUVs (etc) aren't
actually any safer.


Yes, and don't notice the higher stress from denser housing
and extra time public transport often costs. Sort of like NYC:
The denizens like it, and it appears attractive to tourists.


You are in favor of CAFE?

If we pay the real cost of our gasoline in other Federal taxes to support
our "world police force", we need something to curb usage. If we're going
to have it, it should be applied fairly and across the board, with possible
exceptions for real necessary commercial usage. The other
angle/alternative on this I detest: the "CO2 pollution" taxes in Europe and
recently introduced in Calif.

 

[Robert Myers]

I dunno what you want to do about that - whingeing doesn't help
anything.;-) Maybe the petro/energy companies should be involved more in
"renewables" but I think they'll bite when there's evidence. You don't
think they're going to sit on their thumbs and watch somebody else claim
the market.

I don't know what the energy companies are going to do. My take is
that they are going to use every scrap of influence they've got to
keep their guaranteed franchise as long as they can. Corporations can
be as short-sighted as any institution or person, and they are not
immortal. Because Exxon-Mobil is completely dismissive of any
solution other than the solution it currently sells doesn't mean the
solution should be dismissed.

I'm sorry if it seems like whingeing to you. It's a complicated
debate, it's been going on for a long time, and the rules keep
changing. I have my own take. The only thing I am clear about is
that the need to secure supplies of imported oil has an unacceptable
impact on U.S. foreign policy and security arrangements.

ME? I'm not worried about any energy crisis and we do *not* currently have
a transportation fuel crisis - wave your arms if you like.

No intention of doing any arm-waving. Crisis<->Not crisis is just a
matter of words. Our vulnerability to a disruption in the supply of
imported oil is a crisis, as far as I'm concerned. Call it what you
like. Our military is stretched thin, and the best future sources of
oil and natural gas outside North America look like a CIA factbook of
trouble spots. Even GM thinks that vehicles that can be fueled with
ethanol or e85 in a pinch are a good idea.

I guess that'll be good for chemical engineers... and somebody better
get the nuclear program jump started again to supply the energy-in to make
ethanol... so we'll need to look at producing civil engineers again too.

Sounds like a plan to me.

It's easy to dig up critiques by people who didn't get their "share".
Saying "all computer models are wrong" is facile and trite - every good
modeller knows the limitations of his models and that they are not perfect.
What did Forrester use for his "predicted" outcomes?... tea leaves?

But Forrester did get his share of the action. He is a certified
systems modelling wizard. Bitterness cannot be his motivation.

Before the mid-60's, people did not use systems models to formulate
policy. It seems almost unimaginable now to address some complex
policy question without a computer model. Forrester is almost an icon
of that development. The models often conceal tremendous ignorance
and uncertainty, and he has acknowledged that.

As to Forrester, I have no idea what he tells himself when he wakes up
in the middle of the night. Everything's okay now because he's got
GAMS (Generalized Algebraic Modeling System)?

Christ the Saudis knew we could never be serious about self-sufficiency in
energy - I've no idea where you pulled that from. I've already told you
they have scientists too... many of them trained in the US. They used our
models... more likely the reason they became "cooperative".

We'll have to disagree about this. Terrorism is a sideshow. Money
and power are the center ring. Some analysts think the terrorism is
just another line of business made possible by the amount of money
sloshing around. You can believe what you like. I believe that part
of the swagger is the feeling that the oil exporters have the U.S.
over a barrel.

Even so, the current administration--probably no U.S.
administration--is going to shut off the flow of middle eastern oil,
even if alternative sources of supply were available. If they did,
how would they defend deployments of American forces to defend oil for
Europe, China, and Japan?

This is getting repetitious - it's way OT here and I'm fed-up with it. I
wonder where the next extrapolation is going to lead us.

Sorry it feels that way to you. I've found your comments very
informative, even if I often disagree with them.

RM

 

[George Macdonald]

Here's an aggressive effort (from the NRDC) to make it all look
reasonable:

http://www.bio.org/ind/GrowingEnergy.pdf

They get the required land down to about 100 million acres of
switchgrass (as opposed to 30 million acres currently under
cultivation as switchgrass in the Conservation Resource Program out of
700 million acres of U.S. cropland and rangeland).

The assumptions are aggressive, and it is not a near-term solution.
Figure 1 of the Executive Summary shows a ten-percentish contribution
to gasoline demand only by about 2020.

So when the weather doesn't cooperate, we have floods and the switch grass
harvest fails, is that an "interruption" in supplies?

But so what? You can't hook your car up to a nuclear reactor or a
coal-fired plant or run it on waste heat from biomass, but you can use
that energy in making ethanol if you have to.

But at a gain/loss which is barely self-sustaining even by the best
estimates... and what about the rest of the world? There are huge
political hurdles to get over here too. There's going to be oil for
decades - worry is the interest paid on trouble before it's due.

Oh and has anybody looked at where our petro-chemicals products will come
from without the petro-infrastructure? How to make plastics, rubbers,
solvents, detergents, etc. etc.? As you sit at your computer desk just
look around you.

I'm well aware that the U.S. has a commitment to sharing resources in
case of a shortage. If you don't think that actually shutting Middle
Eastern oil out of the U.S. market would change world politics
considerably, I'll politely ask you to reconsider your opinion. .

Sharing? That's not how it works - those are huge multi-nationals with as
much of a foot in other nations.

On a net energy basis, ethanol from seed (corn or beans) is a
non-starter--too much energy content is just thrown away. Bio-diesel
from seed also throws a large part of the energy content away.
Ethanol from cellulose has to be made to work.

I don't see how you can play celluslose as a game winner - without even
looking at the details I'd estimate that the EROI is going to be even worse
than corn-ethanol. IOW your going to be throwing away at least as much of
the energy content.

 

[Robert Myers]

So when the weather doesn't cooperate, we have floods and the switch grass
harvest fails, is that an "interruption" in supplies?

As it stands right now, a major crop failure in the U.S. could be
catastrophic for the world food supply under the right circumstances.

And I'm sure we can come up with some kind of farm subsidy purchase
and storage program to hedge against that sort of situation. Have to
take care of those farmers, you know. .

You *do* realize that switchgrass grown on rangeland would probably be
in *red* states?

But at a gain/loss which is barely self-sustaining even by the best
estimates... and what about the rest of the world?

Table 20 of the NRDC document I cited shows *net* oil displacement of
between 1 and 2 barrels of oil per dry ton of biomass.

...and what about the rest of the world?

Switchgrass can be grown on beaten up, marginal land that is
unsuitable for much of anything else except possibly grazing. I
suspect substantial worldwide acreage is available for something like
switchgrass. Maybe even the Russians can figure out how to grow it.

There are huge
political hurdles to get over here too.

There is a *huge* pile of rice straw in Gridley, California, where
they figured to solve their rice straw problem (can't burn it anymore)
by turning it into ethanol. Big NIMBY problems. And all they
*really* wanted to do was to find a way to get rid of all that damn
rice straw. They would have done better to get all the problems
worked out before ordering up that big pile of rice straw. We have to
work those problems sometime.

There's going to be oil for
decades - worry is the interest paid on trouble before it's due.

Apres moi, le deluge, eh, George? .

There's been alot of silliness since the 1974 Arab Oil Embargo. A
program to explore production and distribution of biofuel is one of
the more sensible steps we can take. Sure beats the hell out of
hydrogen with fuel cells and a fuel cell menbrane that doesn't even
exist. Even GM thinks dual-fuel vehicles are a good idea as a hedge
against disruption--at least they're willing to say it, whether they
believe it or not.

Oh and has anybody looked at where our petro-chemicals products will come
from without the petro-infrastructure? How to make plastics, rubbers,
solvents, detergents, etc. etc.? As you sit at your computer desk just
look around you.

Well, actually, they have. Using biomass as feedstock for the
chemicals industry is a better use for, say, soybeans than turning
them into biodiesel. Just as with petroleum, you'll see processers
fractionating to maximize profit. It's not as if vegetable oils
weren't already used extensively for industrial products. And there
will *always* be oil for those circumstances where it just can't be
done without.

I don't see how you can play celluslose as a game winner - without even
looking at the details I'd estimate that the EROI is going to be even worse
than corn-ethanol. IOW your going to be throwing away at least as much of
the energy content.

How this will really work awaits actual demonstration. As I said, the
NRDC document (which, just as I have been arguing to do, looks at
displaced oil, not displaced energy) claims net effective oil yield on
any number of scenarios.

RM

 

[George Macdonald]

I don't know what the energy companies are going to do. My take is
that they are going to use every scrap of influence they've got to
keep their guaranteed franchise as long as they can. Corporations can
be as short-sighted as any institution or person, and they are not
immortal. Because Exxon-Mobil is completely dismissive of any
solution other than the solution it currently sells doesn't mean the
solution should be dismissed.

The fact that they are not rabidly anti-anything counts for a lot. They
have the pool of scientists and engineers to evaluate "problems" and
options for solutions. They are no more self-serving than the greens and
the bio-mass interests trying to hack a new industry out of a dubious
technology. They're more likely to come up with viable alternatives than
anybody else IMO.

I'm sorry if it seems like whingeing to you. It's a complicated
debate, it's been going on for a long time, and the rules keep
changing. I have my own take. The only thing I am clear about is
that the need to secure supplies of imported oil has an unacceptable
impact on U.S. foreign policy and security arrangements.

Everything is interruptible - you just can't have 100% guaranteed anything
and this is a global problem. It occurs to me that the greens in Europe,
who have managed to railroad through the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy)
initiatives that return farmland to nature, are going to be really pissed
about reusing it to "grow" fuel... not sure they have enough land
anyway.

No intention of doing any arm-waving. Crisis<->Not crisis is just a
matter of words. Our vulnerability to a disruption in the supply of
imported oil is a crisis, as far as I'm concerned. Call it what you
like. Our military is stretched thin, and the best future sources of
oil and natural gas outside North America look like a CIA factbook of
trouble spots. Even GM thinks that vehicles that can be fueled with
ethanol or e85 in a pinch are a good idea.

Like I said, disruptions are going to happen no matter what we have as a
fuel. You're also always going to have "foreign policy" issues even
without petroleum supply as a trigger. Hell, if China decides to go
belligerent again, where will your PC come from?

But Forrester did get his share of the action. He is a certified
systems modelling wizard. Bitterness cannot be his motivation.

I'm not sure he had much to do with the models we've talked about till now.

Before the mid-60's, people did not use systems models to formulate
policy. It seems almost unimaginable now to address some complex
policy question without a computer model. Forrester is almost an icon
of that development. The models often conceal tremendous ignorance
and uncertainty, and he has acknowledged that.

There are models and err, models - a quantitative mathematical model of
energy related operations bears little resemblence to a model which
simulates socio-economic systems, with qualitative inputs.

As to Forrester, I have no idea what he tells himself when he wakes up
in the middle of the night. Everything's okay now because he's got
GAMS (Generalized Algebraic Modeling System)?

Does he? I've no idea if he's involved in current efforts with that
particular model which uses GAMS but it doesn't sound like his err, cup of
tea to me. If that was a stab at GAMS it has nothing to do with me and
sounds like a cheap shot... unless I'm misreading your angle here. I
respect the guy who developed GAMS though I think some of its system design
stinks.

As for "that model" (I think you know its name ?) it's easy to take pot
shots at somebody else's efforts, especially when he/they've never actually
used the model or even seen how it can be used. There's so much rubbish
been written -- much of the writing apparently based on ignorance and
naivety -- about it by people who have a different view of how to tackle
the problem: there are people who want to "simulate" and people who want to
"optimize" - it's an old argument.

We'll have to disagree about this. Terrorism is a sideshow. Money
and power are the center ring. Some analysts think the terrorism is
just another line of business made possible by the amount of money
sloshing around. You can believe what you like. I believe that part
of the swagger is the feeling that the oil exporters have the U.S.
over a barrel.

I believe that the relationship is more symbiotic than that... and the OPEC
countries didn't take long to realize where they stood/stand.

 

[Robert Myers]

The fact that they are not rabidly anti-anything counts for a lot. They
have the pool of scientists and engineers to evaluate "problems" and
options for solutions. They are no more self-serving than the greens and
the bio-mass interests trying to hack a new industry out of a dubious
technology. They're more likely to come up with viable alternatives than
anybody else IMO.

The oil companies are not an honest broker. The deal is: you protect
the supply lines and we'll deliver the oil (and take the profit). I
don't know that, as a citizen, I care for that arrangement. Oil
distorts our security posture and foreign policy. You'll never catch
Lee R. Raymond signing up to that.

Everything is interruptible - you just can't have 100% guaranteed anything
and this is a global problem. It occurs to me that the greens in Europe,
who have managed to railroad through the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy)
initiatives that return farmland to nature, are going to be really pissed
about reusing it to "grow" fuel... not sure they have enough land
anyway.

No, I don't think they do. However, if the movement really took off,
I'm sure we'd wind up with a big environmental battle over converting
grasslands to energy production. There's alot of marginal arible land
in the world.

Nobody said anything about 100% guaranteed anything. If there is a
crop failure in South Dakota, we're not going to send an expeditionary
force up the Mississippi to deal with it. I want to take oil off the
table as much as possible as a military concern. I suspect there are
many rational military planners who would say the same, were it
politically feasible to do so.

Like I said, disruptions are going to happen no matter what we have as a
fuel. You're also always going to have "foreign policy" issues even
without petroleum supply as a trigger. Hell, if China decides to go
belligerent again, where will your PC come from?

Oh, I think we can survive a PC crunch. The world has already clearly
fought one World War over oil. Can we avoid another major conflict by
making bioethanol? I doubt it very much, but I'd rather do something
than nothing, and all the other proposed strategies look like losers
to me.

There are models and err, models - a quantitative mathematical model of
energy related operations bears little resemblence to a model which
simulates socio-economic systems, with qualitative inputs.

I think I understand the difference between doing economics and doing
process engineering. A process engineering model allows you to keep
books. You know what your assumptions are, and, if something comes
out wrong, you can dicover what assumption was broken and either
adjust the model or change the process. Economic models try to do the
same thing, but they inevitably wind up curve fitting the past.

Does he? I've no idea if he's involved in current efforts with that
particular model which uses GAMS but it doesn't sound like his err, cup of
tea to me. If that was a stab at GAMS it has nothing to do with me and
sounds like a cheap shot... unless I'm misreading your angle here. I
respect the guy who developed GAMS though I think some of its system design
stinks.

It's Hogan who implies things would have been much easier (better?) if
he'd had GAMS available. Not a swipe at GAMS. Maybe a swipe at
Forrester (this business stinks, but it's sure been good to me). In a
broader sense, a swipe at modelling, the business that got me into
computers.

As for "that model" (I think you know its name ?) it's easy to take pot
shots at somebody else's efforts, especially when he/they've never actually
used the model or even seen how it can be used. There's so much rubbish
been written -- much of the writing apparently based on ignorance and
naivety -- about it by people who have a different view of how to tackle
the problem: there are people who want to "simulate" and people who want to
"optimize" - it's an old argument.

Weelll, I've tested your patience here because you do know a little
bit. My conclusion about computer models is that the one that gives
the answer the policymakers want to hear is the one that's correct.
It would all be kind of comical if people didn't make such expensive
decisions based on the models. If Forrester's characterization is
correct, "All computer models are wrong," we should all take a big
step back.

To the extent that the DoD wants an honest answer, they hire multiple
vendors. That's why I'm skeptical of an official model like the, er,
National Energy Modeling System.

One of the reaons Keith here can be so smug about computers as servers
is that, if you do the arithmetic correctly, back everything up, and
receive and deliver data correctly, you've done your job. With a
model, with decision support analysis, even with "data mining," you've
done something, and chances are it will wind up as "product," e.g. a
briefing chart, but whether you've done anything useful or not is
another matter. If some guy at the Harvard Business Review decides he
wants to write an article called "IT Doesn't Matter," managers can
slash the IT budget and not really ever know whether it matters or
not.

RM

 

[George Macdonald]

The oil companies are not an honest broker. The deal is: you protect
the supply lines and we'll deliver the oil (and take the profit). I
don't know that, as a citizen, I care for that arrangement. Oil
distorts our security posture and foreign policy. You'll never catch
Lee R. Raymond signing up to that.

Which closet have you been living in? You really think the greens and
bio-interests are err, altruists?... honest brokers?... WHY? If they get
the slightest chance they'll implement some Rube scheme which pisses more
energy away than it generates as long as they get the dough. Hell the
academics are falling over themselves to get patents in the submarines as
the ship is coming into the cross-hairs... often as not financed by public
funds anyway... scandalous!

No, I don't think they do. However, if the movement really took off,
I'm sure we'd wind up with a big environmental battle over converting
grasslands to energy production. There's alot of marginal arible land
in the world.

In Europe they're "returning to nature" some of the best, most productive
farmland on the planet - it's nuts... what happens when you have what
amounts to a Politburo of elite bureaucrats in charge I guess. I can't
believe people are sitting still for what's going on there.

Nobody said anything about 100% guaranteed anything. If there is a
crop failure in South Dakota, we're not going to send an expeditionary
force up the Mississippi to deal with it. I want to take oil off the
table as much as possible as a military concern. I suspect there are
many rational military planners who would say the same, were it
politically feasible to do so.

You're going to have to draw a line and fight at some point anyway -
there's always going to be some psycho megalomaniac to deal with, like
Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il. If we weren't pre-empting them, those
people would run the world.

If there was a crop failure, which we have no control over, we'd have a
serious interruption... economic and social collapse - remember how it was
with just gas lines in '77(?). I'd rather hear arguments about the
technology than some socio-political reason for switching fuel sources.

I think I understand the difference between doing economics and doing
process engineering. A process engineering model allows you to keep
books. You know what your assumptions are, and, if something comes
out wrong, you can dicover what assumption was broken and either
adjust the model or change the process. Economic models try to do the
same thing, but they inevitably wind up curve fitting the past.

Theres a fuzzy area in between though and you *do* want to know whether a
scenario is actually feasible in practice.

It's Hogan who implies things would have been much easier (better?) if
he'd had GAMS available. Not a swipe at GAMS. Maybe a swipe at
Forrester (this business stinks, but it's sure been good to me). In a
broader sense, a swipe at modelling, the business that got me into
computers.

Blame the tools is more like it; he'd also have needed 25years or so of
developments in optimization methods and software. People write papers for
whatever reason - the other model, from BNL, got much wider
recognition?<shrug> BTW he still wore a uniform at the start of the
project and there were several very knowledgeable, experienced people who
told him he was on the wrong track.. but then again, for all I know,
someone was pulling *his* strings. I dropped out of INFORMS a few years
ago -- still dunno what to do with the dead trees I've got littering the
place -- and Hogan doesn't have the paper on his Web site. I guess I
could hunt it down at the office if I got motivated.

Weelll, I've tested your patience here because you do know a little
bit. My conclusion about computer models is that the one that gives
the answer the policymakers want to hear is the one that's correct.
It would all be kind of comical if people didn't make such expensive
decisions based on the models. If Forrester's characterization is
correct, "All computer models are wrong," we should all take a big
step back.

Probably some truth in what you say about the "answer" which fits but
models can always/usually be manipulated to get the "right result". OTOH,
the oil companies have done rather well with the use of planning models,
both tactical and strategic; LP is a good fit for their problems of course
but it does err, "work".

No model is going to make everybody happy but IME, even if not 100%
correct, the benefits of most good models come from studying and
understanding the behavior of the system being modeled under various
different conditions; at that point flaws can often be ferreted out and
enhancement tweaks added.

To the extent that the DoD wants an honest answer, they hire multiple
vendors. That's why I'm skeptical of an official model like the, er,
National Energy Modeling System.

One of the reaons Keith here can be so smug about computers as servers
is that, if you do the arithmetic correctly, back everything up, and
receive and deliver data correctly, you've done your job. With a
model, with decision support analysis, even with "data mining," you've
done something, and chances are it will wind up as "product," e.g. a
briefing chart, but whether you've done anything useful or not is
another matter. If some guy at the Harvard Business Review decides he
wants to write an article called "IT Doesn't Matter," managers can
slash the IT budget and not really ever know whether it matters or
not.

PIES was awfully ambitious for its day - both hardware and software was
*stretched*. I'm not sure if anybody ever compared its "results" with
Markal but both helped keep CDC in business for a few extra years. The
oil/energy companies were very unhappy about much of both models - they
regarded their data as private, were understandably stingy with it and the
"bad data" was then used to discredit the model. Even good models have
enemies on all fronts though, when the model doesn't support their agenda.

Ya know I'm just waiting for an OT rant from somebody. I think we've
covered just about all that we should here... and more. It's been
interesting but it's turning into a blog.

 

[Robert Myers]

PIES was awfully ambitious for its day - both hardware and software was
*stretched*. I'm not sure if anybody ever compared its "results" with
Markal but both helped keep CDC in business for a few extra years. The
oil/energy companies were very unhappy about much of both models - they
regarded their data as private, were understandably stingy with it and the
"bad data" was then used to discredit the model. Even good models have
enemies on all fronts though, when the model doesn't support their agenda.

I don't know quite the right tone to strike in talking about models.
They are often so grotesquely misused, but then so are actual data.
Systems models just happened to come of age at the dawn of the "Energy
Crisis." The models helped to shape the language of the debate as
well as the predictions and conclusions.

Ya know I'm just waiting for an OT rant from somebody. I think we've
covered just about all that we should here... and more.

Let me leave you with a link:

http://www.energycommission.org/

There, you can download their December, 2004 report "Ending the Energy
Stalemate."

The presence of Ralph Cavanagh of the NRDC and James Woolsey probably
guaranteed that the scenario I have been talking about, biofuels as a
way to reduce dependence on insecure sources of imported oil, would be
put forward. I wasn't aware of Woolsey's position until just
recently, but he has been saying similar things about the security
implications of imported oil since a 1999 article in Commentary, and
he has proposed biofuels as a plausible alternative fuel. The NRDC,
of course, put forward a detailed scenario for biofuels that I
referred to earlier in the thread.

The Economist the conclusions as to whether they would make the
environmentalists or industry happy. I suspect the report as a whole
will make no one happy.

RM