Technological fixes are only part of the solution

Articles like this drive me nuts. I don't disagree with the idea of green vehicles, but the rosy outcomes offered by the "magic pill" of new technologies is typical of short sighted, quick fix, too often American perspective. One excerpt shows the error:

Switching from a car that gets 20 mpg to one that gets 50 mpg will save the
average American nearly $1,100/year in gas costs at $3/gallon (given the average
distance Americans drive per year – about 12,000 miles; savings rise
considerably as gas prices and miles driven go up). That savings is nearly two
times the cash provided to us by our 2008 stimulus checks! Multiply that by the
112 million households in the U.S. alone, and that’s $123.2 billion/year that
American households are now spending on gas that with a mandate for more
efficient vehicles, they would have to spend on…everything else.

And what kind of products are we going to spend that extra cash on? We could buy a bigger house that requires more heat and air conditioning. How about a second energy hogging plasma screen TV. Or how about a bigger car, so instead of 50mpg, it is just 35?

I think the effect(s) I am pointing out here are negative feedbacks...unanticipated negatives from a positive change.

What we need to do is a combination of technological fixes and some behaviorial change. Personally, I don't think appeals ot ethics and what not are likely to be very effective. I think we need a serious carbon tax...I think there needs to be a cap and trade and dividend on business and a good tax on households with that tax money spent on sustainability models, climate change mitigation, and adaptation efforts, and a push to move us away from petroleum based fuel (or crude alternatives like ethanol) for our transportation needs.

Men and Women view Caroline Kennedy Differently...no kidding

News reports about a poll that show men and women view Caroline Kennedy (Schlosberg)'s quaqlifications differently. Women more likely to see her qualified while men do not. Ho hum. What a surprise. I wonder how many polls were taken with the appointment of the following: Jean Carnahan, Lisa Murkowski, Muriel Humphrey?

How much controversy was there around Muriel Humphrey being appointed to serve until a special election was held to elect a new senator to Sen. Humphrey's Minnesota seat after he died. Heck, Jean Carnahan's husband died before actually being elected yet he still beat John Ashcroft.

Frank Murkowski appointed his own daughter to succeed him when he left the Senate to become governor of Alaska.

Is the controversy a signal of women's growing equality? Hmm.

I think Ms. (Kennedy) Schlosberg (when did she drop her married name anyway?) is qualified but I wonder about her motivations. She claims that Barack Obama inspired her (yeah, and milions of others). If she is inspired to public service, then why not City Council, or a state legislative seat. Senate?

If Jean Carnahan, Lisa Murkowski, Muriel Humphrey, Rose Long, Dixie Bibb Graves, Vera Bushfield, Eva Bowring, Elaine Edwards, Maryon Allen, and Jocelyn Burdick (Rebublicans in italics) can be appointed, with apparent little controversy, is it only because Caroline (Kennedy) Schlossberg is who she is?

My prediction: Patterson appoints Cuomo in order to eliminate him as competition for the governor's race that Patterson will enter. He'll bet that Kennedy (Schlosberg's) inspiration doesn't include such lowly seats as governor of New York.

Can we sustain our dependence on personal cars?

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 12/28/2008



I’ve owned 12 cars. I expect to have a couple more before I’m finished. Whether people are willing to admit it or not, cars are more than just a means of transportation. Were cars just transportation, then we would not have so many colors, so many types, so many brands, and so many options. Cars are an extension of our living rooms, a status symbol, and part of our identity.

Are personal cars as the primary means of transportation for Americans, “sustainable?” I admit, up front, that I hope the answer is yes.

“Sustainability” is not such a new idea, though it is getting increased attention these days. The most widely used definition of sustainability is the one used by the UN, adopted in 1983: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

It is easy to show the “irrationality” of relying on personal cars as the primary mode of transportation in the US or anywhere else. The current system is not sustainable as the recent flirtation with $5 gasoline showed us. Two key American values, convenience and freedom, are likely to make any radical change very difficult. Cars embody both of these values, perhaps more than any other product does (cell phones an exception). Cars give us the convenience and freedom to move about when and where we want. Never mind the incredible expense, both personally and socially, of this method of transportation. Automobile accidents kill about 40,000 to 50,000 Americans every year. Personal cars led to dependence on foreign oil and warps foreign policy in a way that nothing else does. All this and more in the name of convenience and the freedom to go 0-60mph in under ten seconds.

It doesn’t seem possible that we are going to sustain personal cars without some changes. Dependence on foreign (expensive) oil is what has our attention this time. We didn’t learn much from the 1973 oil embargo. Less than 10 years after that we were buying SUVs (stupid useless vehicles). The real threat to sustaining our love affair with cars is global warming. About half of carbon emissions come from our tailpipes.

According to figures compiled by the Sightline Institute (http://www.sightline.org/maps/charts/climate-CO2byMode), a single rider in an SUV is the worst contributor to tailpipe born greenhouse gases, 1.6lbs of CO2 per passenger mile. Carpooling with one other person reduces that figure almost in half (the extra passenger is not carbon free but the increase is very small). The two person SUV contributes about the same amount as a local transit bus ¼ full. A solo rider in a passenger car contributes about 1.2lbs of CO2 per passenger mile. Adding one car pooler brings the contribution down to about that of a Prius (Toyota’s electric-gas hybrid vehicle) with a solo driver.

Based on this, the solution is to reduce greenhouse emissions from our cars by just switching to hybrid vehicles. We could get even more reduction with the next generation of hybrid vehicle, the plug-in hybrid. This vehicle stores enough energy to run the car without the gas motor for between 20 to 50 miles. An oft cited statistic from a 1990 US Dept of Transportation study, is that 70% of Americans drive less than 33 miles per day. I wonder if that statistic is still true today, but even if the daily drive has increased to 50 miles, that is still a lot of miles covered without emitting carbon from our tailpipes.

The plug-in hybrid has a “long tailpipe,” however. The energy to run it is coming from electric generating plants. As we move toward more and more wind and solar energy, that long tailpipe becomes less of a concern. How fast are we moving?

Electric cars are not as convenient as our current cars. Think of how many times you forget to charge up your cell phone. A day without your cell phone is different than a day without your car or the amount of gas used due to forgetting to plug the car in.

Based on my and my wife’s daily drives, a plug-in hybrid would work for us. Based on the life cycle of our cars, assuming a suitable model is available, we could buy one in the next two years and the second one in four to five years. If that is average, is that fast enough to reduce carbon emissions to a sustainable level? Across the world? Unfortunately, I doubt it.

Walk like an Iranian, throw a shoe

I admit it, I am just wasting time. I should be writing a lit review for a grant application, but alas, I just can't seem to stay focused on the work.

I am surprised by how much the shoe throwing journalist has generated buzz. No not by our snarky media in the US,,,,I figured it would be a big deal here. Lots of jokes as has happened. But how Arabs and others in the middle east are responding to it, surprises me. I'm not sure this incident needs Jay Leno to keep it going.

I heard on the BBC this morning, that in Iran, street vendors are setting up targets of Pres Bush and people take out their frustrations by throwing their shoes at him. So, here is my little Iranian street vendor,....

According to Time,

And one major issue will undoubtedly be case of shoe-tossing journalist Muntader al-Zaidi, who became a hero on
the streets of Iraq and much of the Arab world after his failed attempt to bean
President Bush at a press conference. Zaidi is to stand trial on New Year's Eve,
Abdul Satar Birqadr, the spokesman for Iraq's High Judicial Council said Monday,
on charges of "assaulting a foreign head of state visiting Iraq." Even if
putting Zaidi on trial appears to risk igniting public hostility, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
may yet seek to make the case work to his a political advantage ahead of next
month's poll, for which some 17.5 million are registered to vote.

The former speaker of the Iraqi Parliament praised Muntader the shoe thrower as "brave."

The newly resigned Iraqi parliament speaker on Wednesday praised the
journalist who threw shoes at President George W. Bush and said the legislature
should have supported him.

Is this a sign of a maturing democracy where "Muntader the shoe thrower" becomes a celebrity and hero of the political opposition aka Joe the Plumber? Such political characters have a long history in the US, so why not in Iraq?

But the effects of Muntader the shoe thrower go beyond just Iraqi politics. It has become a basis for pride and self esteem for Iraqi outside the borders of Iraq. For instance,

“

The Iraqi people are courageous people,” a taxi driver in Amman, Jordan, told me
a few days ago. It was strange to hear this praise after hearing years of verbal
abuse from Arabs in Jordan and Syria. When my uncle was shopping in the market
in Amman recently he heard a voice yell: “Are you Iraqi?” In the past this would
be followed by a speech about the war and the Americans. Instead the man yelled
to my uncle: “You made us proud.”

If this raises Iraqi's pride, egads, what would something more, erhm, lethal have done? Makes me kind of wonder. Political violence is one thing, but makes me feel good violence is another.

I don't really get it. But then, I didn't really get the outrage at the Danish cartoons. Ha, ha. And we should all be able to laugh a bit at ourselves. Now, I can laugh at Muntader the shoe thrower, but I don't get 'brave' (perhaps misguided, impetuous, maybe even dumb). I think it goes to show how different our respective perspectives are. And how much folks in that part of the world dislike us. I don't think it is just Pres. Bush (I really wish it were), but he is a stand-in for the rest of us.

Merry Christmas and here is your daily downer

30 years ago, President Jimmy Carter (remember him, he was a barrel of laughs), gave us this in a speech from 7/15/79:

“Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. It's a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation.
The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.”

But Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election. Almost a year to the day of Pres. Carter's speech, Ronald Reagan accepted his party's nomination for the Presidency. An excerpt from that speech shows you the path taken that has lead us to our mess today:

Those who preside over the worst energy shortage in our history tell us to
use less, so that we will run out of oil, gasoline, and natural gas a little
more slowly. Conservation is desirable, of course, for we must not waste energy.
But conservation is not the sole answer to our energy needs.

America must get to work producing more energy. The Republican program
for solving economic problems is based on growth and productivity.

Large amounts of oil and natural gas lay beneath our land and off our
shores, untouched because the present administration seems to believe the
American people would rather see more regulation, taxes and controls than more
energy.

Coal offers great potential. So does nuclear energy produced under
rigorous safety standards. It could supply electricity for thousands of
industries and millions of jobs and homes. It must not be thwarted by a tiny
minority opposed to economic growth which often finds friendly ears in
regulatory agencies for its obstructionist campaigns.

Make no mistake. We will not permit the safety of our people or our
environment heritage to be jeopardized, but we are going to reaffirm that the
economic prosperity of our people is a fundamental part of our
environment.

Shouldn't the goal be: energy without poisoning our future? Nuclear produces incredibly toxic waste; coal is not clean...lots o greenhouse gas, ... and when hasn't economic growth come with development of new technologies? Well, the threat to other industries is what stops the development of new technologies mnore than its real feasibility. Hell, the Saudis work on thwarting non petroleum energy sources.

...on a completely different track....I see blue sky. Seems like a week since I saw that. A clear blue Christmas is what I prefer today.

Update (later on Christmas Day). This is from a Sept 11, 2008 article in The Economist.

Does Obama like Spam?

I feel for our President while he vacations in Hawaii. Tough duty, but hey, I love Hawaii.

The reporters that follow our President-elect around though are getting ridiculous. As reported over at Politico (sorry, no link to this one...I almost feel embarassed), a reporter got a look at the snacks Pres-e Obama ordered and on the ticket was Spam musobi. Here is a pic, don't know if the Spam can is real or not, but what is pictured is apparently the spam delight.

Okay, here is the deal. I will admit it. I like Spam. Yup. Grew up eating the stuff. And not as a regular food,,,no, this was a treat mind you. My dad and I did a lot of fishing when I was a kid, both salt and freshwater....all day, all weekend trips. Always, for lunch, we packed a can of Spam (the old stuff was packed in a gelatinous goo that we typically washed off in river, lake or gulf), and very salty. Spam sandwiches...."Hillbilly" bread (that was a brand in those days), Spam, mustard, and onions (and my dad always, always added salt...he salted bacon. a great Christmas gift for him was a salt lick). The spam always had to be cut thin as did the onions. We usually ate two apiece. I was taught how to filet fish and make spam sandwiches about at the same time. (with the same knife as I recall...yup, we used the fish cleaning knife to cut our spam and onions)

Come on my few readers....leave me a comment....tell me your Spam stories. Everyone has one. Spam is ubiquitous, else why would Spam not have come to refer to unwanted mass junk email? Share your stories here. If we get some good ones, we'll send them to President Obama. Or, if we begin a cult from this exercise, we'll change President Obama's name to President Ospama.

\

President Ospama conjures up all kinds of possibilities doesn't it.?.

There is no pornography here

Mona Charen has a column on pornography. Read it here

While she tries to create a divide between the right and left on this topic, pornography is the one topic that I think the right and left actually can find some agreement. Charen's agrument sounds like a pretty conventional feminist argument to me:

Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, author of "The Brain That Changes
Itself," noted that pornography use actually changes the brains of consumers.
Like other addictions, pornography use breeds tolerance and the need for more
intensity to get the desired result. He quoted Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte
Simmons," in which a college kid asks casually, "Anybody got porn?" He is told
that there are magazines on the third floor. He responds, "I've built up a
tolerance to magazines … I need videos." Tolerance is the medically correct
term, Doidge notes, which is why pornography becomes more and more graphic.

Pornography seems to desensitize its consumers to real sex. Now, she goes on to make an argument that I wish she quoted credible research on. I really wonder if there is anything but anecdotal evidence for this:

The men (and they are overwhelmingly men) who become hooked on this bilge
are often miserable about it. They know that it affects their capacity to love
and be loved by real women. As Doidge explained, "Pornographers promise healthy
pleasure and a release from sexual tension, but what they often deliver is an
addiction, tolerance, and an eventual decrease in pleasure. Paradoxically, the
male patients I worked with often craved pornography but didn't like it." Hugh
Hefner, the godfather of mainstream porn, apparently does not have normal sex
with his many girlfriends. Despite the presence of up to seven comely young
women in his bed at a time, he uses porn for sexual satisfaction. Think about
that.

Internet pornography truly is, as one researcher put it, "a hidden
public health hazard." It isn't cute or funny. Relationships are crashing, women
are suffering in silence, and men and boys are becoming entrapped by it. The
Witherspoon Institute has done a valuable thing by starting a more public
conversation about this cultural poison.

I'd have no problem, assuming credible evidence, if pornography were declared a public health problem. Of course, it has taken, what, 35 years and more to see alcoholism and binge drinking as a public health problem. And obesity and diabetes are beginning to be viewed that way. But pornography is protected as free speech so it will be much harder to deal with. It cannot effectively be banned and I don't think we are far from porn becoming completely mainstream. Charen's observations about Victoria's Secret and the racy ads for pajamagrams are exactly right.

I wonder, however, if a saturation might eventually occur. Porn is new for the US. Yeah, it has always been around, but the seeming privacy and anonymity of the internet has let it explode. What about societies where porn has been more readily available like the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries? I don't know if relationships are ruined, but I do have to admit, their birth rates are very low...porn instead of real sex?

I'm not sure there is any way to stop porn. Sexuality education (as opposed to sex education) in our schools might help, but I don;t see that happening anytime soon.