Turning Water Into Vinegar  

New Scientist's cover story this week is on the acidification of the world's oceans courtesy of our fossil fuel addiction - Paradise Lost (with an accompanying interview - mp3).

As the oceans soak up ever more carbon dioxide, coral reefs could perish along with innumerable other sea creatures. New Scientist reports on a disaster in the making...

A few years ago, Victoria Fabry saw the future of the world's oceans in a plastic jar. She was aboard a research vessel in the frigid waters of the North Pacific, carrying out experiments on a species of pteropod called Clio pyramidata - frisky little molluscs with shells up to a centimetre long and flaps on their bodies that they use to swim in a way that resembles butterfly flight.

Something strange was happening in Fabry's jars. "The pteropods were still swimming like billy-o, but their shells were visibly dissolving," says Fabry, a biologist from California State University San Marcos. "I could see it with the naked eye."

She realised that the animals' respiration had increased the carbon dioxide concentration in the jars, which had been sealed for 48 hours, changing the water's chemistry to a point where the calcium carbonate in the pteropod's shells has started to dissolve. Fabry and her colleagues were aware that at some point in the future the massive influx of carbon dioxide from human activity might reduce the alkilinity of the oceans. "But this was way before anybody thought such a trend would affect organisms like these". What Pabry had stumbled was a hint of "the other CO2 problem".

More evidence that our molluscs are suffering is this report that the krill are disappearin too.

Researchers are worried about the dearth of krill, tiny, pinkish, shrimp-like crustaceans that help give an area off the Marin coast the moniker "the lunch bucket of the North Pacific."

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration crews have just returned from a 10-day research cruise in the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank marine sanctuaries off the coast of Marin. The purpose of the trip was to get a pulse on how the marine areas are doing...

The absence of krill affects the entire food web, researchers said.

"Some bird species are not breeding this year because there is not enough krill," Roletto said, noting the Cassin's auklet, rhinoceros auklet and common murre have been affected. "The humpback whale was easily seen because they eat fish and krill. But we saw only two blue whales, which only eat krill."

Because krill is not as abundant, reproduction is affected.

"Species spend more energy finding food, so they are conserving energy by not reproducing," Roletto said. "It is a domino effect. It becomes a worry when you place human influence on top of it. Overfishing, gill netting, oil spills, if you have major human impacts like these, then you really could see a big decline in populations."

The LA Times has a series on Altered Oceans: the crisis in the seas, with the last episode looking at the acidifcation of the oceans (via Energy Bulletin - which also has a good roundup of news about water shortages around the world).

Part 1: A Primeval Tide of Toxins
Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.

Part 2: Sentinels Under Attack
Toxic algae that poison the brain have caused strandings and mass die-offs of marine mammals - barometers of the sea's health.

Part 3: Dark Tides, Ill Winds
With sickening regularity, toxic algae blooms are invading coastal waters. They kill sea life and send poisons ashore on the breeze, forcing residents to flee.

Part 4: Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas
On Midway Atoll, 40% of albatross chicks die, their bellies full of trash. Swirling masses of drifting debris pollute remote beaches and snare wildlife.

Part 5: A Chemical Imbalance
Growing seawater acidity threatens to wipe out coral, fish and other crucial species worldwide.

Long but very readable articles. In the first, scientist Jeremy Jackson says "We're pushing the oceans back to the dawn of evolution, a half-billion years ago when the oceans were ruled by jellyfish and bacteria." They authors note that "dead zones aren't really dead. They are teeming with life — most of it bacteria and other ancient creatures that evolved in an ocean without oxygen and that need little to survive."
-AF

From Part 5:

As industrial activity pumps massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the environment, more of the gas is being absorbed by the oceans. As a result, seawater is becoming more acidic, and a variety of sea creatures await the same dismal fate as Fabry's pteropods.

The greenhouse gas, best known for accumulating in the atmosphere and heating the planet, is entering the ocean at a rate of nearly 1 million tons per hour — 10 times the natural rate.

Scientists report that the seas are more acidic today than they have been in at least 650,000 years. At the current rate of increase, ocean acidity is expected, by the end of this century, to be 2 1/2 times what it was before the Industrial Revolution began 200 years ago. Such a change would devastate many species of fish and other animals that have thrived in chemically stable seawater for millions of years.

Less likely to be harmed are algae, bacteria and other primitive forms of life that are already proliferating at the expense of fish, marine mammals and corals.

In a matter of decades, the world's remaining coral reefs could be too brittle to withstand pounding waves. Shells could become too fragile to protect their occupants. By the end of the century, much of the polar ocean is expected to be as acidified as the water that did such damage to the pteropods aboard the Discoverer.

Some marine biologists predict that altered acid levels will disrupt fisheries by melting away the bottom rungs of the food chain — tiny planktonic plants and animals that provide the basic nutrition for all living things in the sea.

Fabry, who recently testified on the issue before the U.S. Senate, told policymakers that the effects on marine life could be "direct and profound."

Yet another aquatic victim of global warming is the alligator population around the gulf of mexico, with last year's bout of large hurricanes (noticeably absent so far this year) devastating breeding areas. Its shameful that the poor critters have to deal with being hunted as well - maybe they should take off to Rio for hunting season where they might receive more sympathetic treatment.

Every autumn, hunters string up baited lines in Louisiana's swamps and marshes and carry out a custom that has been practiced for generations - the alligator hunt.

But this year's hunt for gator skins will be smaller because last year's two monster hurricanes stripped and chewed up much of the Louisiana coast where alligators nest.

"From the air you're looking at miles of mud flats with just a few patches of green," said Philip Bowman, a Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries administrator who oversees the alligator harvest. It is a sight usually seen only in the winter.

The barren landscape has been detrimental to alligators, which like thick vegetation to nest in. Instead, the animals have moved further inland.

Recent surveys have found the alligator population under stress. In some places the number of nests was down by 90 per cent, Bowman said.

TreeHugger has a good post on why carbon sequestration won't save us - which looks at the drawbacks to the one of our many "sweep the problem under the carpet" approachs to dealing with our fossil fuel addicition and draws heavily from Tim Flannery's "The Weather Makers".

All this talk of carbon sequestration can basically be seen as a delaying tactic, as a way to get government support and to keep the operation and construction of coal power plants more socially acceptable. It's the equivalent of saying: "Don't bother us, we're working on it!"

But even if we suppose that big coal starts to build the expensive gasification plants soon and that they can solve most of the technical problems with geosequestration, they are not saying that they want to replace old, extremely dirty plants with the new ones; they want to build new ones and keep the old ones. They almost certainly won't bear the liability of CO2 leaks from underground storage, so that's an extra cost for taxpayers, not to mention that the electricity coming from coal gasification plants that do carbon sequestration will be more expensive because a lot of energy is lost in the process of running the plants, in the actual sequestration operating, and the huge costs of building the pipelines, the plants, drilling the holes, maintenance & monitoring, etc, will be passed on to the customers (or they'll ask for subsidies - same difference).

So it'll take decades which we don't have, be extremely expensive, probably won't work that well, and we'll run out of good burying sites before long. Meanwhile, the clean energy industry (solar, wind, wave, geothermal) will keep growing very fast at exponential rates, their costs will keep going down and the efficiency of their production units (wind turbines, solar panels, hydrokinetic buoys, Gorlov helical turbines, geothermal heat pumps) will keep going up.

The fastest and cheapest way to close down coal plants soon is probably investments in efficiency. Remember, it's a lot cheaper to save a watt of electricity than to produce one.

As a society civilization species, we must back the right horse and stop being misled by the coal industry's delaying tactics. There's a big opportunity cost in time and resources to going down the wrong path. Each new power plant big coal builds means decades of fat profit for it, but for the rest of us here on Earth, it's just bad, bad news.

Tim Flannery himself had a pro-nuclear piece in the weekend paper and has come in for some criticism for his recommended approach to global warming mitigation (consumer led adoption of green power and energy efficiency technology, combined with nuclear power), like this column from Clive Hamilton.

"It is my firm belief that all the efforts of government and industry will come to naught unless the good citizen and consumer takes the initiative, and in tackling climate change the consumer is in a most fortunate position."

He then lists 11 things concerned citizens can do to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, urging each of us to "do the right thing" in the belief that these noble appeals will transform the market: "If enough of us buy green power, solar panels, solar hot water systems and hybrid vehicles, the cost of these items will plummet."

This is music to the Government's ears. The assignment of individual responsibility is consistent with the economic rationalist view of the world, which wants everything left to the market, even when the market manifestly fails.

Yet it is at best a naive, and at worst a reckless, approach to the looming catastrophe of climate change. The world did not eliminate the production of ozone-depleting substances by relying on the good sense of consumers in buying CFC-free fridges. We insisted governments negotiate an international treaty that banned CFCs. We did not invite car buyers to pay more to install catalytic converters, the greatest factor in reducing urban air pollution. We called on government to legislate to require all car makers to include them.

When pressed, Flannery will call on government to act, too, but his consistent headline message is an appeal to consumers. Thus, when accepting a prize for his book recently, he gave a four-word acceptance speech: "Install a solar panel."

Green consumerism such as that advocated by Flannery privatises responsibility for environmental decline, shifting blame from elected governments and industry onto the shoulders of individual citizens. The cause of climate change becomes the responsibility of "all of us", which, in effect, means nobody. It is obvious why a government that wants to do nothing finds such an approach appealing: it can pretend to be concerned while protecting powerful business interests.

Flannery's "firm belief" that we can be saved only if consumers take the initiative is one he shares with the ideologues of the right-wing think tanks who argue that environmental problems should be left to the unfettered market. If consumers don't make green choices then it is obvious they don't care much about the environment.

But it is not just his advocacy of do-nothing green consumerism that endears Flannery to the Government. Alone among Australian environmental advocates, he has declared his support for the development of a nuclear industry. The Prime Minister, John Howard, now regularly buttresses his nuclear push by saying that even some environmentalists "like Tim Flannery" support nuclear power.

Even Howard knows it would be folly to build nuclear power plants in Australia, a fact that his nuclear inquiry will conveniently affirm. The Prime Minister's game is to provide cover for his plan to expand uranium mining and get an enrichment industry established.

I partly agree with Tim - its important for consumers to help drive the move towards clean technology - however only the wealthiest consumers will pay for green power when it costs twice as much as coal fired power - and even fewer businesses will (I'll put solar panels on my house, and will get a hybrid next time I'm in the market for a new car, but at $15k to do this I don't see most of the population following my lead). So there needs to be a clear price signal sent to the market by the government that its time to phase out fossil fuels. And given the many drawbacks to nuclear power, its unlikely to be competitive with renewables and energy efficiency once this price signal is in place.

Past Peak points to an article in The Atlantic Monthly about the success previous regulatory measures have had in dealing with other problems caused by industrial pollution, and sees this as cause for hope in the fight against global warming - because We've Done It Before.

Greenhouse gas reduction seems like a problem that's too big, too expensive, requiring too much sacrifice and international cooperation, to ever get done. Pretty much every political figure, from Bush on down, says that limiting greenhouse gas emissions would cripple the economy, so nobody wants to get out in front on the issue. The problem seems hopeless, so nobody's really tackled it with the seriousness it deserves.

But is it hopeless? Gregg Easterbrook, in the current Atlantic Monthly (article not available online), points out something I haven't heard emphasized elsewhere. It's actually pretty inspiring:

Greenhouse gases are an air-pollution problem — and all previous air-pollution problems have been reduced faster and more cheaply than predicted, without economic harm. Some of these problems once seemed scary and intractable, just as greenhouse gases seem today. About forty years ago urban smog was increasing so fast that President Lyndon Johnson warned, "Either we stop poisoning our air or we become a nation [in] gas masks groping our way through dying cities." During Ronald Reagan's presidency, emissions of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, threatened to deplete the stratospheric ozone layer. As recently as George H. W. Bush's administration, acid rain was said to threaten a "new silent spring" of dead Appalachian forests.

But in each case, strong regulations were enacted, and what happened? Since 1970, smog-forming air-pollution has declined by a third to a half. Emissions of CFCs have been nearly eliminated, and studies suggest that ozone-layer replenishment is beginning. Acid rain, meanwhile, has declined by a third since 1990, while Appalachian forest health has improved sharply.

Most progress against air pollution has been cheaper than expected. Smog controls on automobiles, for example, were predicted to cost thousands of dollars for each vehicle. Today's new cars emit less than 2 percent as much smog-forming pollution as the cars of 1970, and the cars are still as affordable today as they were then. Acid-rain control has cost about 10 percent of what was predicted in 1990, when Congress enacted new rules. At that time, opponents said the regulations would cause a "clean-air recession"; instead, the economy boomed.

Greenhouse gases, being global, are the biggest air-pollution problem ever faced...Still, the basic pattern observed in all other forms of air-pollution control — rapid progress at low cost — whould repeat for greenhouse controls.

Yet a paralyzing negativism dominates global-warming politics. [...]

One reason the global-warming problems seem so daunting is that the success of previous antipollution efforts remains something of a secret. Polls show that Americans thing the air is getting dirtier, not cleaner, perhaps because media coverage of the environment rarely if ever mentions improvements. [...]

Americans love challenges, and preventing artificial climate change is just the sort of technological and economic challenge at which this nation excels. It only remains for the right politician to recast the challenge in practical, optimistic tones...But cheap and fast improvement is not a pipe dream; it is the pattern of previous efforts against air pollution. The only reason runaway global warming seems unstoppable is that we have not yet tried to stop it.

We're heading into an election down here next year, and speculation is mounting that the Rodent - promisor of "record low interest rates" forevermore, may be on a slippery slope courtesy of high petrol prices and rising interest rates (courtesy of the inflation that comes with ever rising prices for everything fueled by those petrol prices).

There has been much muttering about ethanol of late - Alan Jones (sort of a thinner Rsuh Limbaugh with a liking for other men rather than prescription drugs, according to the town gossips) devoted his 2 minute hate session on TV this morning to catsigating government advisors for not convincing the Rodent's crew of clowns not to wholeheartedly embrace the cane spirit from the north. Why he thought the advisors should be sacked rather than Johnny or some ministers is only a mystery to those who don't consider him to be Johnny's media representative. Anyway - he's not even spruiking modern cellulosic ethanol, just the old fashioned sugar cane brewed variety, so he clearly hasn't been keeping up with the onward march of world sugar prices, nor the long term effects of turning food into fuel.

Malcolm Turnbull has taken a slightly wiser tack, taking some cheap (and deserved) shots at the state Labor government over the state of Sydney public transport and talking big about coalition plans to invest heavily in this more efficient way of moving people around town. I'm sure Malcolm would like to take over once Johnny is dragged off to the crazy old coots' home, and he is lucky enough to get to focus on 2 key issues - water and energy - in his current role as roving parliamentary secretary.

There is nowhere in Australia that contributes more to this nation, per square metre, than this City of Sydney. It contributes 25% of our GDP; it is our greatest global city.

And yet it is choking.

Sydney's transport network has many tasks and in a great city like ours, which is not just home to four million people but is also a gateway to the world, the freight task, the job of moving goods around both within the city and in and out of its ports, is enormous.

The Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics forecasts that by 2020 the total freight task, including shipping, will almost double. Domestic non bulk road freight will double and the passenger task will grow by 40%. Urban road tonnages are likely to double and, this is the most troubling point, traffic in the major capitals like Sydney will grow by more than 45%.

Whatever the aim of the City's transport policy may have been, the consequence has been perverse.

At a time of rising oil prices, professed concern about global warming, rising levels of congestion, not to speak of obesity and isolation, what has been achieved?

The State has sped up the cars and slowed down the trains. It has promoted automobile dependency when it should have been offering alternatives to it. It has made public transport less attractive, not more.

...

It is State Governments which make the key urban transport choices. NSW has chosen to prioritise cars over public transport. Western Australia has chosen substantially to expand their public transport network. They are aiming to reduce automobile dependency and certainly they are the only Australian city where the rail share of the passenger transport task is rising.

But there is no substitute for leadership. There is no substitute for making choices.

The Iemma Government's metropolitan transport strategy, while reciting many of the depressing statistics evidencing an increase in car dependency and a decline in public transport patronage, nowhere states, as it should as the central objective of that strategy, a goal of increasing the public transport share of our urban passenger task. Nowhere does it say, as we know it must: we have to reduce our dependency on the private automobile and the way to do that, the only way to do that, is to make public transport more available, more reliable and as a consequence more attractive.

...

There is more to this congestion than pure economics. The shift in reliance for our transport task onto private automobiles as opposed to public transport works real injustice and those who suffer are the young, the poor, the sick and the old. Lack of access to mobility is a significant contributor to poverty, social division, and isolation. Higher income groups are more likely to be located in well-serviced affluent inner city suburbs, whereas lower income groups are more likely to be located in poorly-serviced areas, often on the fringes of cities with the worst public transport

Nothing is more essential to the concept of a city than the ability to move around it.

We can speak on the telephone or email a friend in Hong Kong or New York as easily as we can one in another suburb, but we do not imagine we live in a suburb of New York.

The connectedness that makes a city must have a physical character. The citizens of a city expect to be able to move from one part of that city to another, and in particular to travel to its centre or centres and to meet there.

...

The simple fact of urban life is that if we want to enable people to really remain citizens of their city we need to reduce our dependency on the automobile. Now I am not sure how many pennies have to drop before we get started on this task.

Let's consider that some of the pennies which have dropped:

- as we have seen congestion and automobile dependency are getting worse not better

- the price of oil continues to rise, and nobody realistically forecasts a reversal of that trend over time,

- obesity and diabetes are so prevalent they are described as health crises - sitting in a car doesn't get your heart going. Walking to the bus, let alone riding a bike to work or school certainly does.

- Isolation and depression are also growing health problems - public transport has a social dimension, the private automobile does not. Not so long ago, to my great delight, I shared a train with a young man on his way to a job interview. He had had a haircut and a new suit...and a tie he couldn't tie up. He asked me if I could do it up for him, and of course I did. Those moments don't occur as you sit in your car in traffic.

And yet, but one would have thought that in 2006 with congestion getting worse, not better, and with oil prices going up with no realistic prospect of a long term trend reversal, it would be a key priority of all our cities to aim to reduce automobile dependency by investing heavily in public transport and prioritising active and public transport wherever possible.

If we want to do something about congestion, if we want to retain the liveability of our cities, if we want to strike a blow for those disadvantaged by lack of access to transport we have to make a serious commitment to renewing our public transport infrastructure.

Last year I was a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee for Environment when it produced a report entitled "Sustainable Cities". It addressed many issues including water, energy, the built environment and transport.

Many people argued to the Committee that the Federal Government should become more involved in urban public transport.

Just to put this into perspective for you northern hemisphere readers - thats a prospective leader of the right wing party down here (admittedly a genuine liberal, rather than one of the creepy conservatives that currently dominate the party - none of whom is electable once the Rodent disappears).

Tom Whipple's latest peak oil column takes a look at peak oil preparedness efforts in Portland, Oregon.

The Middle East , home to a third of the world's oil production, is coming unglued in so many ways and in so many places that it is nearly impossible to track. One would have to be a complete fool, however, not to recognize one of the manifold costs of all this chaos is going to show up on that big sign over your neighborhood gas station— shortly.

The roots of these conflicts go back two thousand years. They are not going to be settled in our lifetime or many lifetimes. There is very little any of us can do except to prepare for the consequences. As yet, with exception of Sweden , none of the major world governments have officially recognized that a decline in world oil production with potentially devastating consequences is imminent.

In the US , it is politically unthinkable for a government confronted by Iraq , Hezbollah , Iran , global warming, and numerous other woes to openly acknowledge peak oil and all that it implies. From time to time, they have dropped hints — "Energy Independence," "Advanced Energy Initiative," need to drill more, "addicted to oil" — but the administration has yet to openly acknowledge that one of the greatest crises the country has ever known is just over the horizon.

This total abrogation of responsibility by the federal government has led to a handful of local governments to start considering action on their own to prepare for what is sure to come.

The latest Peak Oil Passnotes column has a bit of a swipe at doomerism along with an update on depletion in the West.

So let’s look at these figures from this week. Real nice figures. No swearing, no trainee lawyers, no smug academic grins.

In May U.S. production fell 459,000 barrels a day year on year. In May U.K. production fell 292,000 barrels a day. Mexican data saw a 150,000 barrels a day slide and statistics from Norway saw a 226,000 barrel a day fall.

For 2006 as a whole production is down by 196,000 barrels a day in the U.K. and 503,000 barrels a day in the U.S., 229,000 barrels a day in Norway and by 24,000 barrels a day in Mexico.

French company Total saw production – which may well rise again it is true – fall 9% year on year. BP said it will struggle to meet its targets for 2006, 4.2 million barrels a day despite 1 million barrels a day from its venture with TNK in Russia. Shell produced more in 2003 than it does now and the only companies who have put on big production outside of Eni in Italy have done it by buying other companies, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and so on.

Everyone believes in peak oil. But maybe they could just stick to the figures.

Heading back to Past Peak, Jonathan has an interesting post on the link between Peak Oil, Lebanon, and Iran.

I have always thought that Peak Oil is the Rosetta Stone of Bush/Cheney foreign policy. As I wrote a year and a half ago:

They believe Peak Oil's coming, and they mean to control the world's oil-producing regions before oil shortages get underway in earnest. Examine it from a Peak Oil perspective, and suddenly everything they're doing looks like part of a coherent (if misguided) overall game plan.

Juan Cole has a long post up today making the case (or at least examining its plausibility) that Israel's destruction of Lebanon is part of that Peak Oil game plan. Having occupied Iraq, the big prize that remains is Iran. Excerpts:

The wholesale destruction of all of Lebanon by Israel and the US Pentagon does not make any sense. Why bomb roads, roads, bridges, ports, fuel depots in Sunni and Christian areas that have nothing to do with Shiite Hizbullah in the deep south? And, why was Hizbullah's rocket capability so crucial that it provoked Israel to this orgy of destruction? [...]

Moreover, the Lebanese government elected last year was pro-American! Why risk causing it to fall by hitting the whole country so hard?

And, why was Condi Rice's reaction to the capture of two Israeli soldiers and Israel's wholesale destruction of little Lebanon that these were the "birth pangs" of the "New Middle East"?

Cole quotes a European reader of his who wrote:

When I was in Portugal I also watched a presentation by a guy who works for the ministry of energy in that country, a certain [JFR].

He started his presentation with the growing need for oil in China and India. He stressed that China wants to become the 'workshop' of the world and India the 'office' of the world. both economies contributed combined some 44% to world economy growth during 2001-2004. He compared the USA, Japan, India and China to giant whales constantly eating fish. They had no fish near them so they started to move. He explained that the Persian Gulf is the 'fish ground', the 'gas station' of the world. [...]

JFR explained to the astonished audience that Iran was the most valuable country on the planet. They have one of the biggest holdings of gas and oil reserves in the world. second in gas, second in oil. On top of that they have direct access to the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Caspian Sea what makes them a potential platform for the distribution of oil and gas to South Asia, Europe and East Asia. JRF called Iran 'the prize'...

The disaster in Lebanon actually was also part of JFR's presentation. He explained that the US government is 100% convinced, fanatically and completely convinced, that both, Hamas and Hizballah are creatures of Iran and that Iran uses them to undermine US goals in the region...

The presentation got kind of freaky then. He said the US government wanted to stop state-controlled Iranian or Chinese (or Indian) companies from controlling the oil. JFR says the US Government is convinced that this battle will decide the future of the world. It sounded like he was talking about 'the one ring' in lord of the rings. he who controls Iran controls them all.'

Past Peak also points to a post by Elon Musk of tesla motors about his long term strategy for the company (Mark Morford also has a rant about the Tesla vehicle in the San Francisco Gate).

As you know, the initial product of Tesla Motors is a high performance electric sports car called the Tesla Roadster. However, some readers may not be aware of the fact that our long term plan is to build a wide range of models, including affordably priced family cars. This is because the overarching purpose of Tesla Motors (and the reason I am funding the company) is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution.

Critical to making that happen is an electric car without compromises, which is why the Tesla Roadster is designed to beat a gasoline sports car like a Porsche or Ferrari in a head to head showdown. Then, over and above that fact, it has twice the energy efficiency of a Prius. Even so, some may question whether this actually does any good for the world. Are we really in need of another high performance sports car? Will it actually make a difference to global carbon emissions?

Well, the answers are no and not much. However, that misses the point, unless you understand the secret master plan alluded to above. Almost any new technology initially has high unit cost before it can be optimized and this is no less true for electric cars. The strategy of Tesla is to enter at the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model.

Without giving away too much, I can say that the second model will be a sporty four door family car at roughly half the $89k price point of the Tesla Roadster and the third model will be even more affordable. In keeping with a fast growing technology company, all free cash flow is plowed back into R&D to drive down the costs and bring the follow on products to market as fast as possible. When someone buys the Tesla Roadster sports car, they are actually helping pay for development of the low cost family car. [...]

I wouldn’t recommend them as a dessert topping, but the Tesla Motors Lithium-Ion cells are not classified as hazardous and are landfill safe. However, dumping them in the trash would be throwing money away, since the battery pack can be sold to recycling companies (unsubsidized) at the end of its greater than 100,000-mile design life. Moreover, the battery isn’t dead at that point, it just has less range. [...]

Note the term hybrid as applied to cars currently on the road is a misnomer. They are really just gasoline powered cars with a little battery assistance and, unless you are one of the handful who have an aftermarket hack, the little battery has to be charged from the gasoline engine. Therefore, they can be considered simply as slightly more efficient gasoline powered cars. If the EPA certified mileage is 55 mpg, then it is indistinguishable from a non-hybrid that achieves 55 mpg. As a friend of mine says, a world 100% full of Prius drivers is still 100% addicted to oil. [...]

I should mention that Tesla Motors will be co-marketing sustainable energy products from other companies along with the car. For example, among other choices, we will be offering a modestly sized and priced solar panel from SolarCity, a photovoltaics company (where I am also the principal financier). This system can be installed on your roof in an out of the way location, because of its small size, or set up as a carport and will generate about 50 miles per day of electricity.

If you travel less than 350 miles per week, you will therefore be "energy positive" with respect to your personal transportation. [...]

So, in short, the master plan is:

# Build sports car
# Use that money to build an affordable car
# Use that money to build an even more affordable car
# While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options

Don’t tell anyone.

Billmon has been blogging about the Lebanon situation full time for weeks now it seems - I won't summarise here as I'm way behind the news curve anyway (see here for more developments of his flight forward theory).



Billmon also had an interesting post recently on an earlier culture war gone bad - the Spanish civil war, which he characterises as one between traditionalists and modernists.

This division somewhat distorts the actual political loyalties of the country, since some areas, such as western Andalusia, that were generally pro-republic were overrun by the nationalists at the start of the war. But otherwise the geographic analogy is rather strong -- in Spain then, as in America now, the central heartland (particularly Castile and Navarra) was staunchly conservative, while the coasts, north and east, were liberal or even socialist and anarchist. The army and the Catholic hierarchy were largely drawn from the "red states," while the professions, the urban middle class and the industrial working class were heavily concentrated in the "blue states." The largest and most developed urban centers -- Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia -- were in the Republican zone, while the Nationalists controlled the historic cities of Old Spain: Toledo, Burgos and Valladolid.

What makes the comparison most apt, though, is not geography but culture. Spain in the '30s, like America in the '00s, was deeply torn between the modern and the traditional. The big cities, Madrid and Barcelona in particular, were being "Europeanized" -- drawn into a cosmopolitan culture in which fashions, ideas and lifestyles were imported from Paris and London, not the Spanish countryside. Secular and anti-clerical attitudes were spreading. The lifting of censorship under the republic had unleashed art and political expression. Radical and avant-guard publications flourished. Hollywood movies glorified sex and crime (some conservative complaints never change.) Homosexuals, like the poet Gabriel Garcia Lorca, even stuck a toe out of the closet.

To the traditionalists of Old Spain, these were abominations, made even worse by the economic changes that industrializiation and democracy had wrought. Of the old sacred trinity of church, army and crown, the latter had been overthrown while the first two appeared in mortal danger. Foreign doctrines -- socialism, anarchism, communism -- were infecting the national soul. The republic was viewed as an instrument of Spain's enemies, one that had to be destroyed. Or, as the leader of the Falange (Spain's quasi-fascist traditionalist movement) put it:

"We must kill the old soul of the liberal, decadent, masonic, materialist and Frenchified nineteenth century, and return to impregnate ourselves with the spirit of the imperial, heroic, sober, Castilian, spiritual, legendary and knightly sixteenth century."

You know, I think he would have made an excellent speaker at the last Justice Sunday rally.

As in America, though, the Spanish cultural divide was superimposed on long-standing geographic, ethnic and economic fault lines. The Basques and the Catalans had always aspired to greater autonomy if not outright independence. Landless Andalusian farm laborers were in a perpetual state of revolt against feudal landowners. And the industrial working class was organizing both in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament) and on the shop floor. Socialist and anarchist trade unions and political parties were growing more powerful, and the Comintern had gained a foothold.

The point is obviously not that all these conditions exist in America today (I haven't seen any Comintern organizers around my office lately, and if there are any separatist movements out there looking to peel off a few states they're keeping it pretty quiet.) But the fundamental political dynamic of a society polarized between two broad cultural coalitions, deeply hostile to each other, but also riven by internal contradictions, does seems highly comparable. And, as in Spain, the growing paranoia of the traditionalists is being fed by an almost obsessive fear of external enemies -- Al Qaeda and immigrants instead of the Comintern and socialism.

What's most sobering about all this is what happened in Spain when the moment of truth came. Because the two sides didn't begin the war with neat geographical boundaries between them -- e.g. the blue states and the gray -- the result was a chaotic bloodbath. Every city, town and village in Spain became a battlefield where old scores were settled and new ones made. Priests and nuns, union leaders and policemen, peasant activists and local landowners were slaughtered by the thousands. Those who happened to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time (like Lorca) were imprisoned, tortured and/or executed by the tens or hundreds of thousands.

The terrors and crazed hatreds of those early weeks basically ensured the entire war would be conducted with exquisite cruelty (of which Picasso's Guernica was only a shadow) and would end in a victory without mercy. It left scars on the Spanish people and nation that are visible to this day.

It's probably not a bad idea to keep those scars in mind when contemplating the current state of the two Americas. There have certainly been times over the past few years when I've wondered whether a separation -- a velvet divorce, like the one that partitioned the old Czechoslovakia -- wouldn't ultimately be best for both sides of our increasingly disfunctional domestic partnership arrangement. It definitely makes for some interesting what-if scenarios, along the lines of Tierney's Confederate day dream. But the hard reality is that political conflicts like ours don't lend themselves to velvet divorces. They're too messy, too vicious, too . . . existential.

The problem is not so much that there are two Americas, but that each of them -- particularly "red" America -- believes they constitute the only true America. Thus all the talk on both sides about "taking back the country." The only way to reach a property settlement in a divorce like that would be to wade though an ocean of blood.

Talk of disunion and civil war may seem like hyperbole. I'm sure it would certainly seem so to the vast majority of Americans who don't think much about politics or culture and just want to get on with their lives. I'm sure most Spaniards felt the same way in the summer of 1936, just as most Americans did in the winter of 1860.

But the historical truth is that civil wars aren't made by vast majorities, but by enraged and fearful minorities. Looking at America's traditionalists and the modernists today, I see plenty of rage and fear, most, though hardly all, of it eminating from the authoritarian right. For now, these primal passions are still being contained within the boundaries of the conventional political process. But that process -- essentially a system for brokering the demands of competing interest groups -- isn't designed to handle the stresses of a full-blown culture war.

I've been listening through much of the back catalog of podcasts from RU Sirius lately - both Neofiles (generally pretty techie) and The RU Sirius Show (generally pretty fringe).

For those who aren't familiar with him, RU used to publish a magazine called Mondo 2000 which was around during the days that Wired was first launched and Boing Boing was a paper magazine rather than a blog - it was a strange mix of technology, weirdness and the counter culture that contained the occasional interesting gem, and seemed to influence a lot of the Californian futurists who moved on and created a lot of the Viridian sites I recommend here.

A lot of these are relevant to the topics I cover here - for example, try Wind Power, or interviews with Jamais Cascio and Alex Steffen (all mp3).

A lot of others are focussed on the counter culture (and I think it would be fair to say that RU, his co-hosts and a lot of the guests are relics of the 1960's who are something of a warning for those tempted to take a few too many drugs) - they can be quite eye, or at least ear, opening at times (at other times you'll begin to wnder if anyone is going to manage to string a coherent sentence together) - you can see echoes of the traditionalist-modernist divide all over the place - for example Let’s Get This War Started! (which features possibly the only liberal fundamentalist I've ever heard - and I hope he wasn't seriously suggesting we need to wipe out all the religious fundamentalists out there - both muslim and christian - though its hard to be certain), Seven Addictions & Five Professions, The Hipster Whores of Weimar Germany: Mel Gordon pt. 2, Speed Freak Fascists - Drugs in the Third Reich and It’s 2012! Do you know where Quetzalcoatl is?.

I'm sure pretty much all of this would make your average conservative individual from some bible belt state rather uncomfortable (or completely outraged) - the techie / futurist / energy crisis type content provoking future shock and the counter culture stuff simply prompting outrage - I wouldn't be surprised if they listened to the Weimar Germany episodes they'd say Hitler was on the right track.

I also listened to a podcast from an Accelerating Change conference that had a panel discussion loosely guided by Jaron Lanier and Will Wright which touched on this - one of the guys (I'm not sure which one) suggesting that those on the cutting edge of all this stuff are freaking out those trying to get by back at the trailing edge of the economy / culture and that arrogantly castigating them for their backwardness might not be such a good idea. This is probably true for the global warming and peak oil issues as well - for people struggling to keep up with a changing world as it is, being told that the world is going to end, and its their fault for refusing to change their ways, probably isn't the best way of convincing them to get with the program.

On that note, I'll log the fact that even Pat "bring me the head of Hugo Chavez" Robertson has finally conceded that global warming is real. Can't be too many deniers left now (apart from the professional ones on the coal / oil industries payroll of course - CEI - that would be you - and some loony hosts on Fox News).

Robertson had been a self-described skeptic on global warming, but on the August 3 edition of The 700 Club, he announced that the intensity of recent heat waves has convinced him that global warming is real and a threat, adding, "We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels" because "[i]f we are contributing to the destruction of this planet, we need to do something about it." Hannity asserted that while "Pat's a good man," he is "dead wrong on this one." After announcing that "Al Gore is unhinged" while discussing how liberals have "politicized" the "whole global-warming debate," Hannity declared that Robertson, despite now saying he believes in the real threat of global warming, is "sane."

I'll close with a quote from the Iridescent Cuttlefish at RI which vaguely ties into this (towards the end of a comments thread which veered away from the original post on a particularly ugly topic).

Some people view the related dynamic of the individual and the society as a struggle, or even a dichotomy of sorts, with one side representing good and the other evil. Adam Curtis uses this idea in his documentary The Power of Nightmares (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1037.htm) to tie the neocons to their symbiotic brothers, the shadowy terrorists they may well have created in their current quest for dominion through (the War On) Terror. For Agent Osama as well as for Leo Strauss, the primacy of the individual in Western culture is the root of all degenerate evil. One can guess Hitler’s position on this easily enough.

On the other hand, if we can’t make any generalizations, then talking about how life is in the US or how it was in Nazi Germany becomes impossible, as we’re reduced to comparing diaries and anecdotes. If we can’t really discuss these large, multi-threaded historical events and political constructs because to do so is to rely on generalizations, then what’s to say which is preferable?

Obviously, the only answer is to make it clear that we are dealing in abstraction and generalization in order to address such large entities. Your mother’s story does ring true, as it was fairly common for women to look back on their experiences in the girl’s wing of the Hitler Youth, the BDM or Bund Deutscher Mädel, as a meaningful, even “good” experience, partly because of the terrible poverty and instability of the Weimar years, but even more so because of the feeling you described of Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl, which doesn’t translate well into English. It’s more than camaraderie, something like togetherness, or a sense of belonging together under a higher purpose. The 3 virtues of the BDM were discipline, obedience, and self-sacrifice. It’s the last one, this self-abnegation which gave meaning to their lives, as long as they believed in the purpose they served. (Which may not have been the case for your mother, but as a generalization does hold.)

One of the most famous stories of these girls was that of Melita Maschmann, whose book Taking Stock. My Journey within the Hitler Youth is still widely studied for many different reasons. There’s a very interesting discussion of the roles of women in fascism here: http://www.cf.ac.uk/euros/newreadings/volume6/saynerj.html. The subjects are the autobiographies of a Jewish girl, a resister, and the BDM girl, Melita Maschmann. Life for the boys in Hitler’s Germany was a very different thing, however, due to the different goals of the boys’ organization.

The relevance of all this to us — and I know some of you are wondering — is that we’re again faced with this supposed “choice” of continuing gaily down the road to Sodom and Gomorrah or banding together to fight the good fight against enemies real or imagined. This is tragic bullshit, in my obscure opinion. Why is it that we can only find the elusive Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl in the struggle with some enemy? Wouldn’t it sell better (and feel better, not to mention being more productive) to band together in a cause that did the world some good? Like reforestation, like a modern Civilian Conservation Corps to rebuild our cities into energy-efficient and aesthetically-pleasing hobbit warrens, or building high-tech public transport lines ? Or is this too much like Creeping Socialism? Should we only be allowed to hate (insert group of choice) together? Build Autobahns together?