Category: Economics

Matters of money

Snake oil in science magazines

Climbing wall

One odd tendency I have noticed is the frequency with which popular science magazines contain ads for very dubious products and services: often, precisely the sort you would expect the scientifically knowledgeable to shun. Looking through this month’s Scientific American there are ads for ‘stress erasing’ gizmos, a machine that supposedly makes you fit and muscled on the basis of four minutes of exercise a day, and dubious dietary supplements. I recall that Popular Science regularly featured ads for hypnosis machines and virtual reality helmets supposedly capable of teaching you a new language in hours.

Why do companies selling such things consider the readers of science magazines to be a good target audience? One element is probably that actual scientists don’t read these magazines. The articles they publish are not peer-reviewed and can sometimes be quite low-brow (Scientific American, in particular, seems to have made a big shift towards the Popular Mechanics end of the intellectual spectrum). While the readers are unlikely to be scientists, they are likely to have an acute interest in scientific things, novel ideas, and new technologies. Probably, advertisers are taking advantage of the way in which seeing an ad in a trusted publication already full of novel claims provides it with more legitimacy than it might accrue on its own.

In the broader picture, this is just one reflection of the fundamental problems of authenticity and verification that exist in our society. People can’t decide if climate change is happening, whether taking vitamins is helpful and worth the cost, or whether radiation from cell phones is dangerous. Perhaps more than ever before, people are in a world that is incomprehensible due to the abundance, rather than the absence, of information. Those looking to bring in a few dollars from gullible armchair scientists are taking advantage of that confusion.

Air travel and carbon capture

If carbon capture and storage technology does prove effective and economically viable, it might finally offer a decent answer to the problem of air travel emissions – at least for relatively affluent travelers willing to pay. The trouble with standard offsets is whether emitting X tonnes of carbon and then paying someone who would otherwise have emitted the same amount not to do so really represents equivalence.

CCS offers a more bulletproof answer: grow biomass, burn it in a power plant, bury the carbon dioxide in a saline aquifer or salt dome, and use the energy. Air travelers could pay to have X tonnes worth of carbon literally removed from the air by plants, and for that carbon to subsequently be stored indefinitely.

Other emitting activities – whatever their nature – could be similarly offset given sufficient infrastructure and funding.

Monbiot on British carbon capture plans

Bricks and vines

Of all the comprehensive plans I have seen to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from developed states, the one in George Monbiot’s Heat is the most ambitious. Whereas most people aim at stabilizing atmospheric GHG concentrations by 2100 or so, he thinks it must happen before 2030 is we are to avoid a mean temperature increase of more than 2°C and the very serious (potentially catastrophic) consequences such an increase would have. Part of Monbiot’s plan does involve continued use of fossil fuels, specifically the use of natural gas coupled with carbon capture and storage (CCS) for electricity generation.

While Monbiot stands behind the belief that CCS can work and can contribute to climate change mitigation efforts, he is increasingly critical of how the British government is planning to use the technology:

In principle, carbon capture and storage (CCS) could reduce emissions from power stations by 80% to 90%. While the whole process has not yet been demonstrated, the individual steps are all deployed commercially today: it looks feasible. The government has launched a competition for companies to build the first demonstration plant, which should be burying CO2 by 2014.

Unfortunately, despite Hutton’s repeated assurances, this has nothing to do with Kingsnorth or the other new coal plants he wants to approve. If Kingsnorth goes ahead, it will be operating by 2012, two years before the CCS experiment has even begun. The government says that the demonstration project will take “at least 15 years” to assess. It will take many more years for the technology to be retro-fitted to existing power stations, by which time it’s all over. On this schedule, carbon capture and storage, if it is deployed at all, will come too late to prevent runaway climate change.

He also suggests that using CO2 from power plants for enhanced oil recovery risks actually increasing emissions. On the one hand, that is because it will allow extra oil to be extracted from declining fields, which will subsequently emit CO2 when burned. On the other, he touches upon concerns that CCS using depleted oil and gas fields will not be safe or permanent enough to effectively and indefinitely sequester carbon.

As with nuclear power, the issue of timelines is critical. Even good technology, when installed at a plodding rate, could propel us into very serious danger. Even if it does prove possible to start slow and late and still make the transition to a low-carbon economy, it seems highly likely that the total costs of adjustment will be much higher: a crash-building program akin to the one undertaken by Russia after Germany turned against it during WWII, rather than an economically optimal trajectory towards a low-carbon global economy.

Cooperation tipping points?

Bike wheel in snow

All regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the idea that there are physical tipping points in the climate system: places where one additional unit of warming produces much more harm to people and natural ecosystems than the previous units did. Politically, it is worth considering the possibility that another kind of tipping point exists, namely one beyond which the willingness of various actors to cooperate on climate change alters dramatically on the basis of some critical increment of climate change effects.

It’s possible that the effect could be one of rallying – the world suddenly realizing the seriousness of the issue and thus taking immediate action. States previously obsessed with exactly who should pay how much and exactly what timeline should be followed might just buckle down and do what needs to be done. A fair number of people seem to think that only a pretty substantial disaster will make the threat of climate change sufficiently concrete for enough people for the hard work of stabilization to begin.

The other possibility (mentioned here) is that the world will pass from hesitation and avoidance of the issue directly into conflict, accusation, and counter-productive action. Severe climatic impacts could drive states and individuals to focus on their own short term internal and external security, rather than making serious efforts to address the root of the problem. This is a classical prisoner’s dilemma scenario and, unless it flips to a state of desperate cooperation once things got really bad, it could push the world across the physical thresholds that are so worrisome.

In any case, it is as necessary to be aware of the existence of hidden feedbacks within public sentiment and government planning as within ecosystems or patterns in air and water currents. Of course, that just adds additional uncertainty to a very threatening brew.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Sunset and power lines

In many ways, Lady Chatterley’s Lover reminds me of Anna Karenina. Each uses a relatively straightforward narrative as a means of conveying philosophical positions about the changing nature of the world – often through nakedly analytic passages. Chatterley seems largely concerned with the question of how to endure in an unnatural world: how to persist in humanity despite the challenges brought by capitalism, industry, and global interconnections. The major conclusion seems to be that the best one can hope to do is opt out, rejecting societal expectations and returning to some kind of natural intimacy with a fellow refugee.

At the heart of the book are contrasts between situations and personalities: between coal mines, the literary world, high society, and a simple pastoralism. Also, between Constance’s crippled husband and her intentionally unsophisticated lover; between Constance herself and her sister; between Constance and Mellors’ relationship and that between her husband Clifford and his nurse and confidant. By setting these things against each other, Lawrence gains both an opportunity to share insight and a platform from which to issue condemnation. Usually, the crime a person or situation stands accused of is being compromised in nature and inauthentic. Constance’s return to authenticity is thus a triumph, even if it does little to alter any of the societal forces that led her initially to a hollowed-out life.

The book also has a certain ecological concern, though more in the spirit of a lamentation for the passing of pastoral life than in the form of an argument for social reform and improved behaviours and conditions. The coal mines are condemned – and the kind of lives that the miners have built around them – but the situation is treated as one almost fated. Similarly on the issue of class separation, some negative aspects are identified, but the book never really rallies for reform. It is all about individual resurrection despite society, not any hope that society might change so as to better foster and accommodate authentic individuals. Connie chooses to withdraw from her place in society, though never considers sacrificing the automatic income that makes her an aristocrat to start with: an income as tied to the stratification and industrialization of society as Clifford’s coal wealth.

No short review can cover all the insightful flourishes that pepper the book, arising, as they do, from a slightly odd omniscient point of view that happily flits through characters both major and minor. The books is intriguing, convincing, and clearly written. To a greater degree than I would have expected, it also speaks directly to some of the major tensions in the modern world. Though a venerable classic of literature, it is in no sense dated.

Tomorrow Today report

A group of Canadian environmental NGOs has put out a 28 page list of suggested areas of action and recommendations for Canadian policy. Tomorrow Today (PDF) is divided into sections on energy, wild species and places, oceans, water, food and agriculture, human health, and economic signals. The report reflects the work and positions of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, David Suzuki Foundation, Ecojustice, Environmental Defence, Equiterre, Greenpeace Canada, Nature Canada, the Pembina Institute, Pollution Probe, Sierra Club Canada, and WWF Canada.

Some of the more interesting recommendations include:

  1. Carbon prices of “$30/tonne CO2e in 2009 and increasing to $50/tonne by 2015, and to $75 a tonne by 2020,” with revenus from taxes or auctions to be “directed mainly towards investments in further actions to reduce GHG emissions.” (i.e. not revenue neutral like the new B.C. carbon tax)
  2. Reduce total GHG emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% below by 2050.
  3. “A Nuclear Accountability Plan that includes legislation requiring full-cost accounting of nuclear energy; fully shifts the liability and cost of insurance for nuclear power and long-term waste disposal facilities onto electricity rates; moves oversight of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission from Natural Resources Canada (where the department is in a conflict of interest overseeing sales and safety of reactors) to Environment Canada; and eliminates all direct and indirect taxpayer subsidies to nuclear energy.”
  4. “In 2008, announce a federal initiative to reconnect children with nature by providing outdoor natural experiences for all children in grades 4 to 6.”
  5. “Immediately prohibit bottom trawling and other harmful forms of fishing in sensitive areas, prohibit expansion of bottom trawling into previously untrawled areas, and restrict its use to areas that have already been heavily fished for decades.”
  6. “By 2010, implement mandatory labelling policies that include comprehensive nutritional information, country of origin, fair-trade, organic standards and genetic modification content. And amend Canada’s Food Guide to provide information about the climate impacts of food choices.”
  7. “By 2012, implement a comprehensive program to encourage organic agriculture, the production and consumption of locally produced foods, and to educate Canadians on the health advantages of low-meat diets.”
  8. “Immediately implement the precautionary principle by regulating toxic chemicals in the federal Chemicals Management Plan. In particular, implement bans or phaseouts for all non-essential uses of substances known to be harmful where safe alternatives exist and maintain such restrictions until credible evidence is presented that the chemical can be safely used or released.”
  9. Reducing existing subsidies for the mining and oil-and-gas industries and committing to a ban on any new subsidies or financial incentives for mining or oil-and-gas projects, such as for the Mackenzie Gas Project.

Clearly, some of the suggestions are more feasible and realistic than others. It is interesting to see what priorities and approaches NGOs agree on when they collaborate.

Given how slick the report overall is, the PDF is of rather poor quality. It has a bunch of layout calibration marks all over it, and selecting text doesn’t work properly because of large, irregularly shaped invisible elements.

Oyster cards cracked

A while ago, I posted on how the Mifare RFID system had been reverse-engineered. Now, it seems that the Oyster Cards used in the London Underground have been cracked. Painstaking microscope work and a weakness in the encryption algorithm employed were enough to compromise the system – allowing cards to be cloned and arbitrarily modified. Given how fares for one-way trips run from £4.80 (C$9.58) for Zone 1 and 2, off peak, to £11.30 (C$22.55) for Zones 2 – 8 + Watford Junction at peak time, you can be sure that there will soon be a lucrative underground market in cloned cards and passes.

It goes to show how when you are deploying such an expensive and extensive system, you cannot trust the vendor to simply provide secure products. Robust external evaluation is necessary. Furthermore, you had better be sure to design the system such that a problem that does emerge can be contained and acceptable cost. Hopefully, that will prove true of the London system.

Natural gas flaring

Drum kit

Gas flaring is probably the most wasteful use of hydrocarbon fuels on earth. Natural gas is often found in the same deposits as oil and, in many oil exporting states, the gas released during oil extraction is simply burned, rather than shipped off for use. In Iraq, enough gas is flared each year to double electrical output if used in turbines instead. Worldwide, oil and gas refining and processing produces about 6% of global emissions. In Canada, flaring produces 5.5 megatonnes of emissions annually. Flaring is also common in some West African states, where poor access to electricity is already hampering development.

This is the sort of area where international cooperation could make a big difference. It might not be worthwhile for firms in oil exporting states to install equipment for transporting and using natural gas, but doing so may be cheaper than reducing emissions from other kinds of firms elsewhere. Rather than shutting down production, a cement plant in Canada might pay the up-front costs of a natural gas capture and transport project in Russia. Rather than being burned uselessly, the gas could be used in place of dirtier forms of power: whether replacing dirty coal plants with efficient gas turbines or being used to fuel vehicles. The result would be less waste, and the more efficient use of an increasingly scarce non-renewable resource.

The popularity of trains

According to the American Public Transit Association (APTA), ridership in 2007 was the highest for 50 years. Use rose 2.1% above 2006 levels and 32% above 1995 levels – a rate of increase twice that of the population as a whole. It also reflects a higher rate of increase than there was for vehicle miles travelled on highways.

The biggest gains were in rail ridership, with significantly lower increases in bus use, except in relatively small communities. This might reflect the transit choices made by planners, or the preference many people have for trains rather than buses.

Lots of statistics can be accessed through the APTA webpage. Some Canadian data is also available. Calgary and Edmonton both saw use of all kinds of transit increase by more than 10% between 2006 and 2007.