Air-Conditioning The Arctic  

Past Peak points to a story about the unfolding impact of global warming on the arctic.

hey never used to need air conditioners up in the Arctic.

But earlier this year, officials in the Canadian Inuit territory of Nunavik authorized the installation of air conditioners in official buildings for the first time. Artificial cooling was necessary, they decided, because summertime temperatures in some southern Arctic villages have climbed into the 80s in recent years.

Inuit families in the region never used to need to shop in grocery stores, either. But the Arctic seas that always stayed frozen well into the summer have started breaking open much earlier, cutting off hunters from the seasonal caribou herds on which their families depend for sustenance.

And experienced Inuit hunters, as comfortable reading ice conditions as professional golfers are reading greens, had seldom fallen through the ice and drowned. But this year in Alaska, more than a dozen vanished into the sea.

"These are men used to running their trap lines, people who know the area well, yet they are literally falling through, they are just gone," said Patricia Cochran, executive director of the Alaska Native Science Commission in Anchorage and chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. "The ice conditions are just so drastically different from all of their hunting lifetimes."

It took a while, but global warming, the relentless greenhouse gas phenomenon that most scientists believe has altered climates across much of the rest of the world, appears to have finally breached the northern polar redoubt. And the effects on aboriginal societies trying to hold fast to traditional ways have been jarring.

The people of this far northern Canadian hamlet of 250 used to hunt eider ducks every summer, using the meat and eggs for food and the soft feathers for clothing. But this past summer was the third in a row that the Inuit couldn't reach the nesting grounds because the ice around them was too thin.

The seals have changed, as well.

"Now when we are trying to take the fur off the seals, it's very hard to do," said David Kalluk, 65, a village elder and veteran hunter. "It's like it's burned onto them. Maybe this is because the sea is warmer."

Wayne Davidson, the resident meteorologist in Resolute Bay for 20 years, says monthly temperatures throughout the year are 5 to 11 degrees higher than recent historical averages. For example, Davidson said, the average daily temperature last March was minus 13.4 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with an average of minus 24.2 degrees from 1947 to 1991.

"Science for us in the Arctic is experience," Davidson said. "Resolute used to be a horrible place to live as far as weather is concerned, absolutely brutal. Now it's much milder." [...]

"The basic question of global warming is no longer a subject of dispute in the scientific literature," said Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science at the University of California, San Diego, who reviewed 928 scientific papers about climate change published between 1993 and 2003 and found none challenging evidence of human contributions to global warming.

"The discussion has moved on to how quickly will things change in the future, the rate of ice melting and differing climate models," Oreskes said. "There's almost nobody left anymore who doesn't accept that global warming is real."

It certainly feels real enough to the people of Resolute Bay. From their perch on the edge of the Barrow Strait, they watched this summer as the waters of their rocky bay melted and filled with drifting icebergs — a view as depressing as it was picturesque, because in years past the water remained frozen solid enough to traverse aboard sleds and snowmobiles to their traditional hunting grounds.

"The heat of the sun is different now," said Kalluk, the village elder, trying to make sense of the changes. "I think there is global warming, because snow that has never melted before is starting to melt now."

The Economist has a look at the rapidly expanding solar power industry - no link to global warming or peak oil , but at least they are paying a small amount of attention to the future.

MOST of the power generated by mankind originates from the sun. It was sunlight that nurtured the early life that became today's oil, gas and coal. It is the solar heating of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans that fuels wave power, wind farms and hydroelectric schemes. But using the sun's energy directly to generate power is rare. Solar cells account for less than 1% of the world's electricity production.

Recent technological improvements, however, may boost this figure. The root of the problem is that most commercial solar cells are made from silicon, and silicon is expensive. Cells can be made from other, cheaper materials, but these are not as efficient as those made from silicon.

The disparity is stark. Commercial silicon cells have efficiencies of 15% to 20%. In the laboratory, some have been made with an efficiency of 30%. The figure for non-traditional cells is far lower. A typical cell based on electrically conductive plastic has an efficiency of just 3% or 4%. What is needed is a way to boost the efficiency of cells made from cheap materials, and three new ways of doing so were unveiled this week in San Francisco, at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society.

... The technique used by Dr Lee and Dr Heeger boosts the efficiency of plastic cells to 5.6%. That is still poor compared with silicon, but it is a big improvement on what was previously possible. Dr Lee concedes that there is still a long way to go, but says that even an efficiency of 7% would bring plastic cells into competition with their silicon cousins, given how cheap they are to manufacture.

A second approach, taken by Michael Grätzel of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is to copy nature. Plants absorb solar energy during photosynthesis. They use it to split water into hydrogen ions, electrons and oxygen. The electrons released by this reaction are taken up by carrier molecules and then passed along a chain of such molecules before being used to power the chemical reactions that ultimately make sugar.

Dye-sensitised solar cells seek to mimic this assembly line. The dye acts like chlorophyll, the pigment that makes plants green and that is responsible for absorbing sunlight and liberating electrons. The electrons are passed via a semiconductor to an electrode, through which they leave the cell. By using a dye called phthalocyanine, which absorbs not only visible light but also infra-red wavelengths, Dr Grätzel has been able to raise the efficiency of the process to 11%. That, he says, should be enough to make dye-sensitised cells competitive with silicon.

The third technique, being developed by Prashant Kamat of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and his colleagues, uses that fashionable scientific tool, the carbon nanotube.

The Energy Blog has a post on developments in solid state lighting - other recent posts that caught my eye include some on ocean power developments in South Africa and San Francisco, and new battery technology from Firefly and NanoeXa.

Group IV Semiconductor, Inc., Ottawa, CA, has announced a three-year, $9.1 million initiative aimed at developing solid state lighting products made of silicon that use 90 per cent less energy than a traditional incandescent light bulb and last up to 50 times longer.The goal of Group IV's silicon-based technology is to dramatically reduce the cost of solid-state lighting—overcoming the critical price barrier and enabling widespread adoption.

While compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) have caught on lately with their promise of energy savings, they’re still only about 20 to 25 percent efficient. Lamps that use solid-state lighting (SSL) technology, by comparison, can achieve efficiency levels as high as 80 percent.

The global lighting market is worth about $12-billion, Group IV estimates. The company says about 20 per cent of the world's electricity demand is for lighting through light bulbs.

Deconsumption points to an article about Indonesia threatening to cut back LNG exports to demand. If this eventuates, I suspect it will be good news for at least one of Inpex, Woodside or Oil Search.

Indonesia has notified Japanese companies that it intends to halve exports of liquefied natural gas to Japan by as early as 2010, sources said Thursday...With the soaring price of crude oil, and growing concerns over environmental problems, countries including China, South Korea and the United States have started importing LNG. This increase in demand from other nations, and subsequent reduction in LNG imports from Indonesia, is likely to have a significant impact on Japan's energy strategy, observers note."

(Hmmm...you think?)

"Japan hopes to compensate for the reduced amount with imports from other locations such as the Sakhalin-2 project plant in Russia. However, with the Russian government recently cancelling a permit for an oil and gas development project by an international joint venture, the prospects for domestic gas and electric company procurement have become increasingly gloomy.

....Japanese companies are currently negotiating with the Indonesian government on the assumption that imports will be cut by half in the renewed contracts. But with the Indonesian government suggesting it may call for further dramatic reductions, negotiations could become even more complicated, the sources said.

Jeff Vail has been meditating on complex credit derivatives and the prospect of financial collapse.

Bear with me for a second here. This isn't an easy topic. That's because no one understands Credit-Default Swaps (CDSs), or other complex credit-derivatives, but it is important that we try to understand the implications of their exponential increase. Sure, some people claim to understand: hedge fund managers, investment bankers, etc. They understand the derivatives marketplace just like neuroscientists understand consciousness—they know the component parts, they can use them as tools barely under their control, but when it comes to understanding exactly how the greater dynamic emerges from the component parts they are in the dark.

No one really understands the credit-derivative market, but everyone is impacted by it. Credit-derivatives represent the creation of money out of thin air, like some act of financial wizardry. Take a Credit-Default Swap, for example. Here’s how it works: Corp. A needs to raise funds to expand operations, so they issue a $10 million bond. Pension Fund B buys that bond, but is concerned with the risk of Corp. A going bankrupt and defaulting on the bond. So Hedge Fund C offers what is, in effect an insurance policy—Pension Fund B pays Hedge Fund C $200,000, and in exchange if Corp. A defaults on the bond, Hedge Fund C covers the $10 million for Bank B. Here’s the magic: because this insurance policy creates the market for this otherwise too-risky bond from Corp. A in the first place, and because the par-value of the credit-default swap (the insurance policy) that the Hedge fund issues does nothing more than eat up the difference between the risk-premium on this bond, this $200,000 that the hedge fund makes is essentially fabricated out of thin air. Don’t forget to sprinkle in a liberal portion of fractional-reserve-banking fairy dust and viola: now you understand the credit-derivatives market as well as anyone else in the world.

Clear as mud? Try this on for size: there were $25 Trillion dollars in credit derivatives issued so far in 2006. That’s about half the size of the world economy. Oh, and it’s unreported, unregulated, and largely non-transparent. But wait, it gets better

Peter at Karavans has a review of a book called "The Flip", which includes the great quote "If you watch television, Madison Avenue has your mind colonized". I like the way a lot of tinfoil writers refer to TV as the "mind control device) - or, more subtly, "the glass hammer". Hopefully YouTube and Google Video will slowly replace it with something more balanced. Though I guess its entirely possible we'll just end up with MySpace instead...

(Karavans also recently hosted a Carnival of the Green).

A few months ago, I plugged David Korten's latest book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, which deals with one of my favorite topics, namely extricating oneself from the great "rat race" as much as possible. This resulted in a good conversation about the book. But while the book serves as a fine overview of how we came to be in the present mess, the final three chapters on what to do about it were on the weak side. They didn't leave the reader with a clear set of ideas on what to do after they had finished reading it.

Now a new book is out which performs this task admirably although there is no connection between the two. It's called The Flip: Turn Your World Around and is co-written by Jared Rosen and David Rippe. I would say that the book title refers to a mental or gestalt flip we can all do instantly to change how we view situations and circumstances.

I am about half-way through this book and like very much the way it's organized. The eleven chapters focus on the key areas of life such as our values, health, finances, media exposure, diets, religion, and work life, etc. The first half of every chapter explains how to look at these areas differently--in a healthier and more balanced manner-- and then the second half provides short interviews with people who did "the Flip" and serve as living proof that it can be done. Each chapter is short and easy to digest but offers a fresh perspective.

I find that often all that's required to make a change in one's life is to first simply realize that there are other ways of being and doing. This book is a good starting point for doing the flip.

Let me share a personal example with you. Back in 1982 one of my philosophy profs was talking about the detrimental effect watching television has on your life. He summed his position up with the immortal words, "If you watch television, Madison Avenue has your mind colonized." I thought about it for a few days and then cancelled my cable subscription and left the set connected only to the VCR (now replaced by a DVD player which is used to watch two movies per week from Netflix.) I have never regretted the decision to rid myself of the lobotomy box.

An example of TV being referred to as a mind control device can be found in this rambling essay on the likelihood of an attack on Iran and the impact on oil prices (amazingly enough he thinks they will go up).

The United States is an unusual country in that it does not have a government in the normal sense of the word. This is because many politicians who ostensibly represent the people are primarily answerable to, and therefore controlled by, the big business interests who ultimately determine their fate. These interests are collectively known as the Military-Industrial complex and this power grid is the effective government of the United States. The Defense, Oil and Pharmaceutical lobbies in particular have immense power in Washington. This state of affairs explains why the food supply in the United States is adulterated with genetically modified crops and harmful additives such as Aspartame, and other substances that promote obesity.

When the Cold War ended in the early 90's, the people had a reasonable right to expect a "peace dividend" - reduced defense expenditure, because the United States no longer had any enemies of significance. The defense industry didn't like this at all, they were getting a big slice of the pie, and it is reasonable to suppose that they would bring whatever leverage they could to bear to ensure that their cut did not decrease, and if they could get it increased, so much the better. It is therefore obvious that the events of 11th September 2001 were like a Las Vegas jackpot to them. Barely had the victims been buried than big increases in the Defense budget were announced. Big defense budgets require an enemy to justify them, and if there is no enemy, well, you just have to invent one, hence the "War on Terror". Clearly, it is not enough to have an enemy in name only, you need, in addition, to get them stirred up and energized, and hence readily identifiable to the masses back home as an enemy. This is achieved by perpetrating atrocities and outrages against them, and making sure that these are publicized sufficiently to get the populations of the target countries or racial or religious groups sufficiently incensed to take to the streets and want revenge, the goal being to foment as much polarization as possible. This is the underlying reason for the interrogation and torture of prisoners, and for the recent pulverizing of Lebanon by Axis forces emanating from Israel. The elites within the Axis powers, who, to whatever extent they are religious, are either Christians or Zionists, view Arabs and Muslims in the same way that a gardener regards ants or termites - at best as an irrelevance to be tolerated, perhaps utilized as a source of slave labor, and at worst as a pest to be exterminated. When you understand this point you can readily appreciate why the Axis powers would be quite happy to foment an inter-Arab war, Shiites versus Sunnis, for example, and then stand back and watch with satisfaction as they wipe each other out - as long as they don't damage the oilfields. Not that they have much more respect for citizens in their own countries, who they broadly class into two groups. One is civilians who are farmed for their labor and tax revenue; the working classes of course, but also the broad swath of the middle class, the stewards of the system, who like to think that they are in control of their own lives, but are in reality just operatives for the elites. The other group is military personnel who are the unwitting henchmen that do their dirty work in far flung lands, putting their lives on the line to serve their master's geopolitical ambitions.

Dr Josef Goebbels, the godfather of propaganda, who was head of propaganda in Nazi Germany in the 30‘s, would have thought he had woken up in heaven, had he found himself suddenly transposed to being in charge of the Axis propaganda machine in our times. The greatest mind control machine in the history of the human race, the television set, is to be found in virtually every home in the developed world, sometimes several of them, and the people weren't forced to accept them, they went out and bought them of their own accord. The seductive allure of the screen is much more attractive to most than the effort involved in reading. Nowadays the television is the main source of information for the vast majority of the population - if you can gain control of its throughput you can control the minds of the masses. In the United States, almost all Newspaper and Television stations are controlled from above by the process of syndication, which means there is in effect no such thing as an independent local press.

I'm not sure Josef Goebbels should really be called the godfather of propaganda - he was more of a skilled practitioner (though the best propaganda wouldn't be seen as such - it would be generally be believed by most "normal" people to be true). The actual father of propaganda was a man named Edward Bernays, who was a nephew of Sigmund Freud.

Bernays defined the profession of "counsel on public relations" as a "practicing social scientist" whose "competence is like that of the industrial engineer, the management engineer, or the investment counselor in their respective fields." To assist clients, PR counselors used "understanding of the behavioral sciences and applying them—sociology, social psychology, anthropology, history, etc." In Propaganda, his most important book, Bernays argued that the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Bernays' celebration of propaganda helped define public relations, but it did not win the industry many friends. In a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter described Bernays and Ivy Lee as "professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism and self-interest." And history showed the flaw in Bernays' identification of the "manipulation of the masses" as a natural and necessary feature of a democratic society. The fascist rise to power in Germany demonstrated that propaganda could be used to subvert democracy as easily as it could be used to "resolve conflict."

In his autobiography, titled Biography of an Idea, Bernays recalls a dinner at his home in 1933 where:

Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. ... Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.

Bernays and his work were the subject of a TV series by Adam ("Power of Nightmares") Curtis called The Century of the Self.

The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.

His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.