Summing up a Green position on SSPS

> I respect you too much to intentionally misrepresent your point and
> I don't think I've done it inadvertently either. In a previous post
> I detailed the infrastructure that would be required to carry a
> house through the Winter season and you thought it was too extensive
> and that it was overkill for the rest of the year so your conclusion
> was that a family could conserve during the Winter. As for the issue
> of supplementing with propane, that is a cop-out to the
> decentralization schema for it once again makes you dependent on a
> central authority.

How is it a "cop-out"? I am suggesting that right now (especially using
micro-cogeneration) we can have cost-effective home energy systems that
produce locally 80-90% of their annual power needs and use the remaining
10-20% of their power (mainly in the winter) from liquid fuel
supplements delivered semi-annually. The total amount of fossil fuels
used by such a home (if the supplement is not derived renewably) may be
10% or less of the conventional house (assuming energy efficient
construction and appliances). That is a big improvement over what we
have now. I have pointed to a house which does this,
http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/imquaf/hehosu/hehosu_001.cfm
and to companies that make related off-the-shelf equipment (see
especially PolarPower or the ECO-Nomad system).
http://www.polarpowerinc.com/products/generators/cogenset.htm
http://www.economad.com/
Essentially, if the US would update its housing stock to use such
approaches (and similar ones for transportation and manufacturing) this
would solves the need to import fossil fuels and then some. Plus it
could greatly (90%) reduces CO2 etc. production. And I am suggesting
that remaining 10% or less of current fossil fuel levels of liquid fuels
could then eventually be met with locally produced liquid fuels from
biomass or other local renewables which do carbon sequestration. That is
a complete solution as far as using renewable resources. Yes, there is
some dependency for luxury power on a neighborhood energy supplier --
but it is minimal and closer at hand for observation and understanding.
And in any case -- it is "luxury" not "necessity" if it is lost in time
of adversity (from war or bad weather). This is an example of a solution
that has elements of both "meshwork and hierarchy".
http://www.mediamatic.net/cwolk/view/8492
And, as PV and storage get more efficient, the level of supplementation
needed will go down over time. So it is an incremental solution people
can invest in right now, at much lower risk than SSPS. I'll give you
that the manufacturing processes for these systems (like PV) still
produce pollution, but with some handwaving :-) I'll agree with your
earlier point that, as history shows, as our society becomes wealthier
or smarter over the next few decades this amount of pollution will be
reduced by more innovative manufacturing techniques (and I have already
pointed to companies claiming a related breakthroughs). It's not a cop
out -- it is here, it is happening, it is economical to a better and
better extent every day -- even given unpaid external costs of present
day energy systems which tilt the playing field against such solutions.

> If I'm still characterizing your reasoning accurately, you then
> argued that the MTBF was greater with propane. I don't accept that
> argument as being accurate, for the grid has a very good reliabilty
> record.

I have to agree that based on past history the grid has been reliable in
general, but current trends in decreased investments (e.g. the recent
grid failure potentially due to less tree trimming), security issues,
and the economics of home power generation point to a precipitous
potential decrease in grid reliability. In general the issue is that
when the grid fails, everyone in an area is affected at once, whereas
when a home power system fails, the owner can relay on neighbors who
have power.

>>whereas in the vision you suggest with SSPS and reliance on the
>>Grid millions of people are in mortal danger when the centralized
>>systems fail.
>
> As I and others have repeatedly pointed out, you are basing this
> vision as a solution to a problem that has a very low chance of
> occurance. In other words, this insurance policy has a bankrupting
> premium.

We obviously disagree on the risk of this. But, as I have pointed out,
there is essentially no premium for decentralizing, because the
conversion ends up paying for itself by reducing energy cost payments.
I'll agree the payback could be faster, and that given the current state
of technology and people's skill levels this approach is more feasible
in some places than others, but long term, this sort of switchover will
be the trend. It would be an even faster trend if the government leveled
the playing field by ending subsidies for fossil fuels and centralized
nukes and started totaling up external costs and asking people to pay
for them. So, turning this around, in my perspective people are actually
now paying a bankrupting premium (defense spending plus energy spending
leading to massive debts which really will bankrupt the country and
individuals and also causing related ecological damage) for no real
security at all. Then why do people do such crazy things? Culture?
Propaganda? Corruption? It sounded like a good idea at the time? Lack of
investment capital? Political Power? Habit? Poor education? All of the
above?

>>The more dependent people are on centralized or monopolized
>>systems, the more attractive a target those systems are for
>>terrorism or military action,
>
> Unfortunately that is a factor of modern living.

Well, I guess then I'm interested in "post-modern" living with a higher
degree of energy security. :-) Either in space or on Earth. :-)

> That is why we can
> have the density of people and the sheer number of people alive on
> the Earth.

Well, it is true that many of the ills of the move to agriculture from
hunter and gather lifestyle may have been due to increased population
pressures (although it's hard to disentangle this factor completely from
the rise of militaristic bureaucracies and the nation-state, since
higher population density provided the substrate for the emergence of
such Powers). Still, it seems to me India and China have historically
had high populations without quite the level of centralization or
dependency in terms of energy supply the US has. There are other ways of
living which can support lots of people on Earth without such
vulnerabilities -- either voluntary simplicity or advanced technology
(or using both).

> Water systems are also centralized. So is the food
> distribution system. So is the pharmaceutical distribution system.

And as a matter of civil defense, the USA is woefully unprepared for the
next "Hunger Winter" from whatever cause. (Well, maybe the US
population's high level of obesity will prove good for something.)
Still, the degree of centralization and second-by-second dependency for
these systems is much lower than the electric grid. For example, water
systems are more bioregional than power systems. And water is often
stored and can function for hours without power. Many aspects of Green
initiatives have to do with decentralizing these systems as well. One is
getting people to eat better, exercise more, be better educated, relate
better to their community and environment, and thus be more healthy and
less stressed and less dependent on drugs. Another is helping people
grow more of their own food (one reason my wife and I wrote our free
educational garden simulator).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/
And world food self sufficiency is one reason we support the Heifer project:
http://www.heiferfoundation.org/

> If you need insulin during a snowstorm or time of war, you may run
> into trouble. Should we then advocate that to mitigate against this
> risk, every diabetic should have an insulin producing facility in
> their home? The probability doesn't warrant taking this course of
> action.

Diabetics can typically have six months of insulin in the refrigerator.
(I know someone who is diabetic.) And frankly, most people do have
insulin producing apparatus close to home -- they are called pancreases.
And a major topic of medical research is how to get the diabetically
sick person (i.e. excessively dependent on external remote life support
infrastructure on an hour to hour basis) able to take care of themselves
again without such support. So again, you are making my point on
decentralization. Excessive dependency is a form of illness. (We are all
interdependent to some extent, and drawing the line between
interdependence and excessive dependence isn't always easy, admittedly.)
Essentially, most homes in the US could be thought of as diabetic in
terms of energy supply. They depend on regular large injections of the
insulin of oil or related fossil fuels. Amory Lovins and others are
attempting to cure this disease -- all the while well meaning people
(such as yourself) are in denial about the disease, or propose solutions
like SSPS (equivalent to an insulin pump?) which don't address root
causes related to obesity and lack of exercise and genetic
predisposition. And guess what -- most people when diagnosed with
diabetes also go into denial and don't want to acknowledge it -- because
no one wants daily shots if they can avoid them. Eventually the lack of
physical energy (or other health problems) gets many of them to confront
the problem and do something about it.

> Should each home have a water generating system and a hydroponic
> facility?

Yes! :-) And many people have wells and gardens. Hydroponics is catching
on big time in Canada.
http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/publications/en/rh-pr/tech/01-141-e.html

The New Alchemy Institute created examples of this with their "Ark" home
idea. This group continues some of that work:
http://www.oceanarks.org/

>
>>As I said, either either we solve the recycling problem on Earth
>>and have (near) zero emissions manufacturing for everything or we
>>don't. If we do invent such technology, PV production will not
>>pollute at all, so your arguments agaisnt using it will be
>>invalidated.
>
> One of the reasons policians hate answering hypothetical questions
> is because the situation is no-win. You're basing your rebuttal on
> magic technology. That's not a good and solid basis for rebuttal.

The technology I cite is no more magic than SSPS, for which you can't
even point to a complete working SSPS system active in space with any
track record of production over years. The technologies I cite are in
many ways much less magic than SSPS, because examples of them are here
now, producing energy economically in many situations, over periods of
years, with pronouncements for more and cheaper PV, fuel cells,
micro-cogeneration, insulation, etc. to come made by legitimate
companies and government labs.

But in any case, I have confronted you with a logical contradiction in
your own analysis and you are trying to spin this now, rather than
accept it. I've show you how your environmental claims for an investment
in SSPS being a preferential one are flawed when looking at the whole
investment and industry world picture given alternative approaches and
long term consequences (admittedly, by assuming energy production causes
a small percentage of pollution overall, and not quite having the
analysis and numbers to completely back that up yet). It is true there
is some technological uncertainty in predicting the future possibilities
for technological change, but given that SSPS has its uncertainties as
well, I think this argument for a contradiction on a argument for SSPS
as a purely enviromental investment is fairly strong.

>
>>If we don't invent such technology, leaving 90% of the pollution
>>around every year instead of 100% just prolongs ecological and
>>human health disaster a bit, so SSPS doesn't really get us much
>>considering the scope of the investment which otherwise could be
>>applied to improving manufacturing to pollute less (10% gains
>>should be easy to achieve for a trillion dollars).
>
> I don't want to put words in your mouth but I have to reach some
> type of conclusion on what you just wrote above and that conclusion
> is that saving 10% on pollution is not worth the effort. Your
> bandying about the dollars and research gains is akin to handwaving.

What I have said is essentially that if we are talking about investing a
trillion (or whatever) dollars to reduce pollution, we need to consider
various alternatives and which ones reduce more pollution. So, I am
saying it is not worth investing X to reduce Y pollution if we can
invest X and reduce Y*2 pollution. I am suggesting that any amount of
money spent now on R&D for lower pollution manufacturing or on greater
energy efficiency will reduce more pollution than the same amount spent
on SSPS. Granted, there may be a law of diminishing returns at some
point, but I'd guess (more handwaving :-) we haven't got anywhere near
that overall yet. When we do, then we will be in a position to
reevaluate whether the improved PV manufacturing processes cause enough
pollution to warrant something like SSPS (ignoring other social issues
etc.). I'd suggest though that if we really tried we could get to a
point in twenty years or so through R&D where most production and
recycling could be done with far fewer emissions (but admittedly that is
more inspired guess backed by trends and science and imagination than
concrete engineering analysis for specific processes). Still, even in
the case of PV, now that demand for PV is so strong, and PV
manufacturers have outstripped the supply of excess or spoiled IC chip
wafers, they are finding they can use other substrates including silicon
which is of less purity than for ICs, thus reducing manufacturing costs
including the amount of energy needed. So more recent PV manufacturing
processes now have more like 1-2 year paybacks for embodied energy and
require less other materials and related pollution.

> To address the central conclusion, if saving 10% on pollution by
> building SPS is not worth the effort, then why is delaying
> pollution by 6 years worth the same level of investment for Kyoto
> implementation?

I'm arguing here more for continued R&D in energy efficiency and zero
emissions manufacturing and recycling, as well as actively retrofitting
existing homes and raising efficiency standards for automobiles (easily
met even for SUVs if they are hybrids). Whether these approaches meet
Kyoto levels might be a question, but I think they would pretty easily.
Turns out many people have found that the cost estimates of compliance
promoted by energy and industry trade groups resistant to change or not
wanting to commit to change out of fear are grossly inflated (same as
when car companies said it was physically impossible to get more than
like 10mpg (or whatever) for a car); in practice, saving on waste like
through energy efficiency often pays for itself or is profitable.

>
>>So on a dollar for dollar basis, I'm saying investment in less
>>polluting manufacturing and recycling technology is a better
>>investment overall to reduce pollution on Earth than SSPS
>
> Prove it!

What I am pointing out is some part of the status quo. People are
continually investing in improved R&D on manufacturing and pollution
control for various reasons. Efficiency is going up and pollution per
unit is going down (number of units may be a different story). In that
regard, I don't have to prove anything. The burden of proof should be on
the one arguing for a huge investment in SSPS which will take money away
from this part of the status quo of incremental improvements.

>
>>For example, one of the strongest supports for my position is
>>that I cite an off grid house in Toronto built economically (which
>>you claimed was impossible).
>
> I never claimed it was impossible and I gave a very thorough
> criticism of the increased energy costs required to build the home,
> the very specific siting requirements, and the archetectural
> restrictions such a home requires. You never wrote anything to
> acknowledge these criticisms and I let them slide because there was
> always so much else to write about, but if you claim I'm ignoring
> your example, then please address the criticisms first. All in all,
> this design philosophy is shoving limitations down people's throats
> that they may not want, all in order for a philosophical agenda to
> be met.

OK. In looking back at what you wrote in "Re: Fuel Cell Performance" on
12/05/03 23:11 I can see you did make some comments in the direction you
outline. So I will apologize for overstating that you completely ignored
this example (although you address it indirectly). I should have said
you *mostly* ignored it. The impossibility is more about your ignoring
the liquid fuel alternative with inflated estimates of fuel tank size.

Your argument there is essentially that concrete uses more embodied
energy then wood and implies that concrete homes are touted as the
greener solution. You wrote: "The difference in energy used between a
concrete and wood home is 164 GJ. This amounts to 45,555 kWh more
energy required to get the *Greener* solution."

But this isn't much of an argument, as far as I can see. For example,
the passive house I live in has a concrete slab, but is mainly wood
(post and beam construction for much of the passive solar add on, on a
more conventional older core). See for example:
http://www.aaepassivesolar.com/low-energy.html
The main extra thermal mass for day to day heat averaging is a sand pit
below one added-on room with metal airducts running through the sand.
(Although the concrete slab does provide some extra thermal mass.) The
insulation is (I think) primarily a cellulose derivative. How is your
point about concrete a rebuttal of the value of any greener house?

It is true that CMHC's Healthy House uses some concrete:
http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/popup/hhtoronto/suppl.htm
particularly: "Durisol wallforms for poured-in-place reinforced
concrete walls". So I'll give you that they probably do use more of it
than the house I live in. But note that concrete walls may last 100
years, and thus dividing ~45000 / 100 leaves about 450 kWh / year or
about 1kWh per day extra for concrete in your analysis over the lifetime
of the house. But note that extra thermal mass can be achieved with wood
or water or gravel or rock, so there are many options on this. It's not
clear to me how necessary concrete walls are to the design of that
house. Even if it was, note that energy embodied in concrete (presumably
from heat at some point) even if derived from fossil fuels is (given
50%-66% transmission losses for the grid and 66% loss of heat during
power generation) is going to be 10X as efficient than the energy
delivered by the electric grid. So, even though you are converting to
kWh, really the fossil fuel amount is more like 1/10 that in grid
delivered kWh. So the extra concrete embodied energy required the
equivalent of about 4555 kWh (grid delivered). This is about equal to
189 days of delivered energy (24 kWh / day) needed by the average
wasteful house (not including heating). So, there is more to this sort
of analysis than you include. Essentially, even a concrete Green house
is paying for itself in reduced fossil fuels for generating electricity
in half a year or so. So yes, wood plus sand like I have might be a
slightly better choice, but it really doesn't make much of a difference
in this context, does it? We are talking 100X energy decrease over the
life of the house. So a tiny bit more energy saved at the start isn't
the biggest issue.

You (or someone else?) also bring up the siting issue -- that not all
homes can be easily passive solar because they don't have a long
southern exposure. This is somewhat true, but almost all homes can be
superinsulated and have better windows. This means that some windows for
a poorly aligned house may let out more heat than they bring in, which
means those houses may require some more supplemental heat -- but
(handwaving) the total reduction from the average may still likely be
80% or so of energy use (instead of more like 90%).

Techniques for mold reduction are known:
http://www.builderonline.com/article-builder.asp?channelID=55§ionID=31&articleID917
http://www.builderonline.com/article-builder.asp?channelID=59§ionID=62&articletype=1&articleID00024063

Green Building is (pardon the pun) a growing industry.
http://www.energybuilder.com/greenbld.htm

Now, let's turn this around and look at the housing stock of the USA.
The average cost to build a typical US house in a reasonably expensive
labor area is around $100K - $150K (excluding the price of the lot etc.
which might cost several times that in an in demand neighborhood). That
means pretty much all houses in the US are worth less than that.
(Obviously maybe 10% of the housing stock is upscale and might not fit
this model.) We bought a previously owned and expanded house, but in
general right now people recommend new homes as better bargains than
older homes, all factors considered, because building techniques have
improved and there is less initial maintenance and near term renovation
required. New and old houses may go for more than that $100-$150K figure
(above land costs) for various reasons (including convenience of it
being right there and needing it right now), but just to back up this
figure, delivered modular housing is also in the lower end of this ball
park ($50K-$100K+). It costs something to demolish a house, but let's
assume assume a service that does it for free if they can preserve the
timber etc. of the old house for recycling. At what point does it make
sense for the average US citizen to demolish the house and replace it
entirely with a new house which is Green? Well, if the average home is
spending (guesstimating from my past experience) $2000 in the heating
months for heating oil (or airconditiioning if southern), and about
$1000 per year for electricity, and another $1000 per year for water and
sewer, this means the Green house can potentially save about $4000 in
annual costs (inlcudign appliance replacements). A risk free 3% dividend
on capital which tracks the housing market (upward trend expected) is a
pretty good deal for most long-term investors, especially if they get a
new house out of it and so personal value. So, just financially it would
be worth investing about $133000 to get this kind of return (ignoring
the positive value of a new home). So guess what -- ignoring demolition
costs, it's probably just about worth it right now for every homeowner
in the US to throw away their house and get a new Green one which is
energy and water self-reliant, based on the CMHC's healthy home concept.
And with continued innovation and cost reductions in new materials, this
equation will only get better. Demolishing and replacing a house with
superior modular construction should, if done expediently, might ideally
only take a week or so if this become routine, so no need to pay for
much for a hotel or storing possessions for a long time while the house
is replaced. Although this site:
http://www.modularhomes.net/save_time.phtml
suggests "Total construction time, from initial site development is
usually 10 to 12 weeks" so for now, there is a longer period of
inconvenience. As I said the US housing stock is obsolete. What is very
sad is that building codes in the US don't reflect this better Green
possibility as the standard (and people treat the minimum in the code as
if it were desireable). It is also a shame (and likely a financial
catastrophe) that mortgae comapniies on;t require Green construction,
One of the factors Bucky Fuller suggests caused the Great
Deperessioninthe 1930s is that banks wold lend to farmers thinking farms
were a sure investment, but it turns out the housing stock on farms was
obsolete (no indoor plumbing) and so it was a bad banking investment
(especially as people were moving to the city too). The same crisis
might happen for today's mortgage companies when most people realize old
houses are not Green enough to be good investments because of
maintenance costs and utility dependency risks. Home buyers are being
let down by a government that should be protecting them in this sense.
(Of course, current homeowners are benefiting, as long as no one
realizes their current investment (the house part, not the land) is
worthless...)

Part of the problem is that contractors usually build for a speculative
market. About fifteen years ago I attended a sustainable housing design
meeting (run by Karl Kehde)
http://www.landuse.org/
http://www.bookmasters.com/marktplc/00857.htm
which had builders, zoning board, neighbors, and some others collected
together to discuss designing a more sustainable and attractive
development concept (a little like "SeaSide" in ideals).
http://www.theseasideinstitute.org/
The big problem I saw (I liked most everything else) is that none of the
potential future residents were represented! It was all to be built on
spec. That's how most such developments go. That is one reason most
homes in America are so obsolete. The people who will live in them don't
get any participation in their design or construction (and even if they
did, frankly, they lack the specific education as citizens or consumers
from poor practical schooling to know what they should be asking for.)
Their future operatign costs are easily discounted. And of course, do
neighbors want to approve better developments nearby that make their
property values go down because the new facilities are so much cheaper
and pleasant to live in no one wants their houses or their communities?

>
>>That one example proves much of my case for the feasibility of
>>distributed power generation coupled with energy efficiency, and
>>you conveniently just continue to ignore it.
>
> I haven't. I don't understand how ignoring my critique allows you to
> claim that the example proves your case?
>
>>How do you rebut that house? You can't. So you continue to ignore
>>it.
>
> I already have. I did. I haven't.
>

Well, let's see you rebut the above now. :-)

>>And I have shown announcements of forthcoming PV and thermionic
>>technology in that price range (even with today's current economic
>>landscape tilted in favor of fossil fuels and centralized nukes by
>>a preponderance of government subsidies and tax preferences and
>>lack of external cost accounting). Even if such announcements
>>turn out to be vaporware, there is no physical reason they cannot
>>work -- same as the approach for arguments you use to justify SPSs
>>being possible and economical.
>
> Let's not forget the subsidies that go to renewable sources. How
> wind farms turn a profit based on the subsidies and thereafter
> underperform their design criteria. If they were truly free-market
> they wouldn't be nearly as attractive. Also look to the
> externalities of wind and solar that I detailed in an earlier post
> before you claim that the tax-credits are just trying to level the
> amount of external costs that are picked up for oil and nuclear.

Those subsidies are minimal compared to trillions over the years for
fossil fuels and centralized nukes.

> Just a point of clarification - I've never argued that SPS is
> economical. My issue with your argument is centered on massive
> decentralization. SPS is a proxy for other forms of centralized
> power, except when the pollution issue comes into the argument and
> that is when I'm specifically referring to SPS.

As I have tried to show, as an investment strictly to reduce pollution,
SSPS is likely not as good an investment as improved R&D on reducing
pollution in manufacturing and recycling.

So that leaves your argument on difficulty of storing fuel locally
(answered by liquid fuels and micro-cogeneration) and maintenance
(trickier, but answered by using service providers like Sears and
handwaving about more reliable equipment -- well not entirely handwaving
as the only maintenance on PV+Batteries is typically topping up the
water in the batteries once a year -- assuming snow on the panels is
dealt with somehow or otherwise not a problem).

>
>>Anyway, I'm waiting to see a rebuttal on the Toronto house.
>
> Considering that between us we've probably already written a book, I
> can understand how you've forgotten that I already wrote the
> rebuttal. :) Just go back and look for it.

Well, if it's a book, on my side it's mainly just a restatement of
Brittle Power and Soft Energy Paths, or other RMI publications, although
applied to SSPS issues. Probably not much of a market in that. :-)

Anyway, I found what I think you are referring to. Do you mean something
else?

You also reference PV energy payback there (and perhaps citing my
commetns perhaps when I earlier mentioned studies with longer payback
times for older types of cells). As I have pointed out above, newer PV
production processes currently in use are claimed to have closer to 1-2
year energy payback (depends on how you calculate... and what you
include, like promotional and sales costs). Note that life expectancy
of PV may be longer than 30 years -- they diminish in power output over
time and thirty years is the guarantee for near full power. After that
they still make power. Note that there is no real energy payback for a
coal plant (which is claimed in a month). Energy payback of a month for
a coal plant just means in a month the coal plant can burn enough coal
to produce enough energy for its construction. It still is burning
fossil fuels. Even energy payback for SSPS might be in the years per
unit (depends a lot on conversion efficiency issues, mining efficiency,
mass driver construction costs, etc.).

>>(even many wealthy people who, given the law of diminshing returns
>>of ever more wealth, might actually be happier overall if there
>>was less wealth disparity but they had less to fear from
>>contagious pandemic disease, social collapse, nuclear war, crime,
>>personal depression, making poor investment choices, etc. instead
>>of living in one gold hut in a village of 99 mud huts.)
>
> This is the societal redesign I'm talking about. This is pie in the
> sky, and doesn't take account of human behavior. Your offering us
> salvation on many fronts and all we have to do is adopt the Green
> Economic System. Of course none of your assertions are provable, we
> just have to march headlong into the Green future to find our
> promised rewards.

It does take in account human behavior. Societies such as in Europe (e.g
the Netherlands, the UK, France, Germany, etc.) have already made some
of these decisions. And for example if there was a sudden outbreak of
bioweapons-related plague it is much more likely a country with
universal public health supported by the government could deal with it,
whereas in the USA with 40+ million uninsured, the plague will likely be
much harder to stop. I have in the past known some well off people (in
the folly of my youth I went to Princeton :-), and frankly, many of them
are very unhappy. Depression is predicted to be the number one health
risk in the USA in the next decade or so. It is rapidly taking the USA's
young, and that depression is in part from looking around and seeing a
society that does not make much sense and appears heading for nuclear
etc. apocalypse (obviously there are other factors as well, including
diet and exercise and genetics). To see the truth of these assertions,
you can look at other countries with different systems and see they are
doing better than the US on many indicators. Canadians live longer. The
Dutch have less drug abuse. The UK has less people locked up in prison.
And so on. (Actually all those countries beat the US on all those
scores.) Yes, there are other issues affecting some of these scores, but
the bottom line has more to do with the overall US society and world
view -- essentially the US Mythology (put in perspective by people like
Howard Zinn and James Loewen).
http://www.geocities.com/howardzinnfans/
http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/
And yes, people in the US have bigger houses and more stuff on average
-- the point is,it is failing to bring happiness. Much of human behavior
is learned and comes from culture -- which includes extensive heavy
advertising by media conglomerates in the USA. If you look at the movie
"Bowling for Columbine" and those three Canadian kids standing around
being interviewed, you can just see the difference in culture when they
respond that access to free health care should be a basic human right
(in their opinion). But it is exactly this kind of thinking:
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/millionairewannabes.htm
that keeps many in the US (even the poor) locked into a world view which
is heading for a crash with reality. SSPS as a vision is not going to
prevent that crash. In fact, it just feeds into more of the same mindset
-- more power, more consumption, more centralization, more monopolies,
more dependency, more Power, etc.

>
>>So how about reading stuff like:
>> http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/littleredhen.html
>> http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/millionairewannabes.htm
>> http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/rightresponds.html
>> http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/mythologyofwealth.htm
>
> I like to read a variety of viewpoints to challenge my thinking.
> This site is pretty far-out and runs coutner to a lot of theory I
> picked up in school and fails the reality test of my everyday life.
> It definitely offers a nice vision of what could be if they had
> their way.

Gee, maybe there is something to it then :-) because our current system
sure isn't working yet for most of humanity in this reality like
billions of people in hunger or disease (and often not even in the US,
like for millions in prison or all those citizens who don't like their
jobs or live with a lot of anxiety about the future.) If the USA had
decentralized in energy production, food production, manufacturing,
leadership, and so on, then 911 wouldn't seem so frightening, because it
would be obvious those sorts of terrorist acts could not affect much of
the population in any significant way.

> Also this site is pretty keen on Dennis Kucinich. Look here for my
> previous post on his efforts to introduce a Bill in Congress to Ban
> Mind Control Weapons in Outer Space.
>
> http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2002/01/011002.html
>
> "Among the weapons that it would proscribe the new measure
> includes "psychotronic" devices that are "directed at individual
> persons or targeted populations for the purpose of ... mood
> management, or mind control."
>
> "The Kucinich bill was hailed by Citizens Against Human Rights
> Abuse, one of a number of organizations of people who say they are
> victims of government experimentation involving electromagnetic and
> other psychotronic weapons."

Aren't one of the arguments against SSPS microwaves that they can cause
irritability (a form of psychotronic mind control)? :-)

>
>>http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/socialcredit/socialcredit.htm
>>(Still learning about this myself...)
>
> As I've stated previously, I've studied from many of the schools of
> economic thought, not just neoclassical. It took some doing on my
> part to find the resources to do this because of the sheer scale of
> the orthodoxy of neoclassical thought. As you would guess I fully
> support the post-autistic economic reform movement but even with
> that said, I fear that social credit theory doesn't have many
> serious adherents. I too don't have a high opinion of it. If you
> want to look at some economic thought that has a little more
> substance and yet is not mainstream, you could look at the work of
> Thorstein Veblen and the Institutional School.
>
> http://de.geocities.com/veblenite/institutionalism.htm

Thanks for the link.

As Jane Jacobs says (maybe in _Cities and the Wealth of Nations_),
physicists get to play with billion dollar toys, whereas economists get
to play with trillion dollar toys (and a lot more peoples' lives).

Nice to see we both agree that:
http://www.prosperityuk.com/prosperity/articles/pae.html
"the subject of economics has lost touch with reality".

Now I am *really* concerned about the short term economy. :-)

> Nevertheless, the Green agenda of changing the economic system is a
> massive undertaking. Even getting economists to move away from a
> math-centric approach is going to be a difficult task for it is a
> career killer. Economists are famous for trying to get their work
> looked upon as one that is as rigorous as science and not just a
> fluffy social-science. By what means will the Greens achieve their
> ends?

As I am fond of pointing out, the academic PhD system is a pyramid
scheme which is collapsing (whether in economics or other disciplines),
so we can't hope for too much help from there:
http://www.house.gov/science/goodstein_04-01.htm
Essentially, academia is little different than llama breeding in that
respect (that scheme crashed in the late 1980s IIRC).
http://home.att.net/~lostcreekllamas/straightscoop.html

>
>>I am suggesting we take a deep look at how things are made in our
>>society and how energy is used and produced, to come up more
>>quickly with good local solutions whih everyone can use.
>
> Would I be overstating your position by characterizing it as a
> revolution of society? Our philosophies, economics, motivations,
> desires and goals must all change to achieve your end-state.

I'd characterize it more as I am trying to give people more options.
When people obviously have more options and know about them, a lot of
daily practice will seem a bad idea and will be revised (more bottom up
than top down).
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

>
>>You appear to be still supporting a SSPS that is at best twenty
>>years off and only solves at best 10% of the pollution problem
>>(and introduces a host of new problems related to centralized
>>politcal and financial power and the militarization of space).
>
> Don't get too caught up in your conjectures. You pulled the 10%
> pollution savings out of thin air. I didn't object because actually
> determining that number would be a daunting task. So it's not fair
> to marginalize the achievement to "10% at best." For all we know it
> could turn out to be 70%.

Yes, OK. So this remains an open question. It's a hard problem, because
we end up comparing apples and oranges (e.g. CO2 from fossil fuels vs.
mercury from paint).

> To summarize my postion, which is exactly what I stated at the
> beginning of this whole process, wind/solar/hydrogen are not robust
> enough to form the backbone of a national energy strategy.

Let's see why....

> Wind and
> solar farms can be implemented and serve a useful energy and
> conservation purpose, but only up to 20%-40% of total generation
> requirements because of issues dealing with intermittancy and energy
> storage.

So, if we can cut energy use by 50%-75% (which I've show can be done in
housing as in the Toronto house, and it can also by done with hypercars
http://www.hypercar.com/) then we can get enough power from these
sources. So, we agree: PV plus wind is enough power if used efficiently.
:-) The only issue we continue to disagree on is whether the energy can
be stored. I argue it is solvable with creating liquid fuels like
propane or sugar water or ethanol through carbon sequestration from
hydrogen as one approach.(I admit to some handwaving here on the actual
conversion process...) A hydrogen infrastructure is another alternative.
http://www.rmi.org/images/other/E-20HydrogenMyths.pdf
So is compressed air or batteries. So is just using some fossil fuels in
much smaller amounts (10% of present amounts) until other storage ideas
emerge. The economics of various storage approaches will improve as they
come into widespread use.

> The wholesale change of housing stock to the very specific
> limitations required of solar passive design is not a workable
> solution for a national energy strategy.

As I have shown above, demolishing your house and rebuilding it as
something Greener may even make economic sense right now (or as soon as
the mortgage companies get behind it). :-)

When I lived in Des Moines, I saw old buildings being knocked down to be
replaced. Look at the trend of people buying older homes for the lot and
rebuilding them with something else. (well usually bigger, but it could
be Greener too).

Clearly if you watch "this old house" it's usually much easier and
cheaper to build new than to renovate. (Although rennovation can be done
incrementally so each stage in energy conservation can help pay for the
next.)

> The probability of attack
> on a SPS does not warrant incurring the costs and inefficiencies
> associated with implementing massive decentralization.

Hard to say for sure. But it has also been said warnings about 911 were
ignored too..
http://democrats.com/elandslide/petition.cfm?campaign1

> Therefore,
> central sources of energy delivered through the grid will continue
> long into the future.

Green houses are a slow motion phenomena that may transform the world by
the time any SPS is operational....

> Whether SPS can ever be made to be cost-
> effective and thus play a part in this energy infrastructure, I
> don't know.

Ah, some economic uncertainty here. :-) So, I'll just keep my money in
my piggy bank or use it to go Green if it is a surer ROI.

So if you won't argue for its cost effectiveness, isn't it a dead issue,
and shouldn't SSI abandon promoting it?

> If it can, then there will be substantial further gains
> from reduced pollution on Earth.

But as compared to what alternate investments?

> The pollution caused by expanding
> the grid for higher power levels will be many orders of magnitude
> less than that required for manufacturing and deploying the millions
> of wind turbines and solar arrays.

Let's see some numbers on that. :-) Grids have a lot of poles, wires,
herbicides used on right of ways, cause visual pollution, increase soil
run off from lost ground cover, etc. It's not an easy comparison, maybe
it's been worked through before?

--Paul Fernhout