Genetics, Morality, and Profanity

I recently read about research into the possible genetic influences on our sense of right and wrong. Some scientists believe that a moral conscience is an evolved brain function as much as a learned cultural artifact. I agree. I believe that there are several traits that have evolved in gregarious species, humans included, that interact and balance one another.

The smoking gun for genetically based morality is Tourette’s Syndrome. Tourette’s is a hereditary disease that manifests itself mostly as facial tics, meaningless involuntary vocal sounds, and involuntary body movements. However, in 10-15% of cases, it manifests as involuntary obscenities or aggressive speech. The unfortunate sufferer will suddenly swear, insult someone, or utter an ethnic slur (generally the opposite of how the person feels). It has been called “the uncontrollable urge to voice the forbidden.”

So, here we have an inherited disease that causes people to express what is forbidden. That fifteen percent of TS sufferers do not blurt out “Have a nice day!” Ergo, there is a piece of genetic code that recognizes what is acceptable and what is forbidden. It makes evolutionary sense. Even though there are cultural variations as to what is moral or immoral, our species needs members who can make that distinction.

The immediate counter argument is the wretched behavior of humans throughout history. War, murder, torture, theft, and deceit are always with us. How do we reconcile an inherited neurological understanding of right and wrong with all this?

I propose that there are two other fundamental forces at work, both necessary for survival in their own ways. One, as evidenced by the famous Milgram experiments, is the human tendency to obey authority figures. Stanley Milgram had each of his subjects paired with a “learner” (actually an actor) in a supposed educational experiment. The learner was placed in a room with fake electrodes on him, and the subjects asked him questions, giving him ever increasing shocks (so they thought) with each wrong answer. 65% of the subjects, sternly prodded by the experimenter, “shocked” the learner to the final limit.

Our treatment of authority figures is similar in nature to the dominance relationships in other species. Wolf packs have the alpha male and female, herds of horses have the stallion and the lead mare, and human beings have the doctor in the white coat, the general, and the political leader. Obedience to leaders is a survival trait that served our species well during the hundreds of thousands of years that we wandered around in groups no bigger than wolf packs. It has served us less well as our societies have grown larger and our weapons technology deadlier.

Another intrinsic trait among humans is conformity. Mirror neurons probably have a lot to do with this. Scientists in Italy, studying muscle-activating neurons in monkeys, found that the same neurons fired when the monkey was picking up a peanut or when the monkey saw a human picking up a peanut. Other researchers found the same response in humans, both for actions and emotions. When we observe other people doing things or feeling things, a part of our brain is actually experiencing the actions or emotions. This neurological mimicking is entirely involuntary and unconscious. There are also studies where the opinions of others modify an individual’s behavior or actual perception of reality, on subjects as basic as the color of a projected slide (Moscovici, 1969) or the relative length of two lines (Asch, 1951).

Again, this is a small group survival trait. It promotes unified action and group solidarity. It also motivates members of a group to learn and preserve the customs and taboos that the group evolved to deal with its environment. Of course, the necessary restriction of the individual in a tribal society eventually becomes the mob mentality of the modern nation state.

What we have is a set of innate behaviors that balance one another. The general format is, “Don’t break the rules, unless ordered to by a superior, or if everyone else is doing it, or both.” The balance was important during our long small-group phase. Rigid rule-based behavior would have prevented necessary adaptations to changing conditions. Group cohesion was a better survival trait than moral purity. In tribal societies existing today, the extension of moral relevancy to those outside the tribal group varies, but is often absent.

Our dominance behaviors and mirror neurons have trumped our innate sense of right and wrong in most in-group vs. outsider interactions for eons. There is hope, however. In the experiments by Asch, Moscovici, and Milgram, a number of factors tended to reduce submission to authority and conformity.

Physical proximity to the “learner” in Milgram’s experiment
An ally that also disagrees with the majority
Inconsistency of opinion within the majority
Clarity of evidence – conformity increased with the ambiguity of the information

The findings of Moscovici and Asch indicated that a confident and consistent minority opinion tends to influence people’s actual beliefs, while majority opinion tends to only influence public compliance.

This all points to Margaret Meade’s statement about never underestimating the ability of a small, dedicated group of people to change the world.

The Chinese philosophers of old considered people to be naturally moral and social. The seeds of “jen” (humanity) were in us, and just needed to be developed. They lacked an understanding of genetics and neurology, but they were on the right track. So take some consolation from this in the world as it is. Speak up and stand your ground. Present evidence for your beliefs. Give people’s mirror neurons something positive to copy. Show people the humanity of those they consider enemies. The human brain is ready for it.

Burning Tires and Turning Turbines

Burning Tires and Turning Turbines

You might think that the experimental tire burn at the International Paper (IP) mill in Ticonderoga, NY was only an issue for those of us who live downwind. IP wanted to save some money by augmenting the oil and wood waste in its boiler with shredded tires. There was great outcry from the residents of Vermont, who live generally downwind of the plant, legal resistance from the State of Vermont, and staunch affirmations of safety and economic necessity from IP, the State of New York, and IP employees. As it turned out, IP was unable to burn more than a fraction of the desired Tire Derived Fuel (TDF) without exceeding emissions limits. It looks as if the process isn’t worth the cost for IP. All could be well for the air breathers to the east of Lake Champlain.

The whole IP/TDF issue highlights a greater issue for me, namely the greater good. It brings to mind the wrangling over wind turbines in Vermont. There have been a number of wind power projects proposed for Vermont. All of them have engendered opposition, mostly from those who would have to look at the turbines on a nearby ridgeline.

Both sets of opponents raise environmental issues. The arguments of the IP tire burn opponents are basic – they don’t want soot, heavy metals, and petrochemical residues in the air and accumulating in their soil. The wind opponents raise issues to do with aesthetics, damage from construction and maintenance in sensitive areas and bird kills.

Amid the claims and counterclaims, how do we distinguish the greater good from the lesser special interest? I’d like to offer some basic questions to ask about any controversial project.

1) Is it truly necessary?
2) Is it reversible?
3) How does it stack up against the alternatives?
4) What do the independent scientists say about it?
5) Qui bono? (“Who benefits?” I use the Latin only to illustrate that people have been asking this one for a while)

The answer to the first question, for IP burning TDF, is no. The plant’s spokesperson, Donna Wadsworth, in an interview with the Rutland Herald, stated that the plant was “ …very competitive, in our market.” The 10% savings on energy costs would have added to the bottom line, but it wasn’t make or break for the plant.

The same question applied to wind turbines gets a different answer: Do you need electricity? Right now, a majority of our electricity comes from non-renewable sources – coal, natural gas, uranium, and oil. The supply and energy returns on investment of these resources are going down. That means we’ll be spending more energy to get less out of the ground, and spending more money on the result. Eventually, making electricity by burning stuff that we pull out of the ground will be unaffordable. Renewable sources of electricity will be necessary.

Reversibility: Once those particles of soot, mercury, zinc, and benzene from the tires hit the atmosphere and precipitate into the soils of Vermont, there’s no getting them back. On the other hand, if you don’t like the location of a wind turbine, you can unbolt it from the base, jackhammer the base into bits, and truck the whole deal away. The grass will grow over the fifteen-foot circle.

Alternatives: There are two issues having to do with alternatives to TDF. One has to do with the energy use at the plant. I have insufficient information about what efficiency measures have been implemented and what alternative fuels have been explored, so I won't comment on that. The other issue is the imminent loss of the TDF alternative. Old tires are presently a serious solid waste problem, and using them as fuel is an economically viable disposal method. Not so in the future. Technology is catching up with TDF – there is now a clean process for breaking down old tires into their useful components: crude oil, carbon black, and steel. Scrap tires will soon become too valuable a commodity to burn.

As I stated above, there are no alternatives to renewable energy, including wind energy, in the long run.

The independent expert who I trust on the issue of air pollution and IP was less concerned about the two week test and more concerned about the long term effects of chemical accumulation in the bodies of downwind Vermonters and Vermont soils. This person pointed out that IP’s intent was to see just how much pollution it could get away with without investing in emissions control equipment.

The independent experts that I trust on wind issues say that if designed correctly, sited properly, and installed with care, wind farms are relatively benign in the world of large scale power generation. The aesthetic considerations I give the back of my hand. Tourists come to Vermont and gaze rapturously at our farms – which inevitably have multi-story cylinders of concrete or blue steel rising next to the barns, which are considered more picturesque if they haven’t been painted in a while.

Qui bono? On the TDF side, the shareholders of IP benefit. Maybe not even them, considering that we all share one atmosphere. On the wind power side, the shareholders of the wind turbine and wind farm companies, the property taxpayers of the town with the wind farm, all of us who would suffer from global warming, and anybody who pays an electrical bill.

So why is it that an entire state is unable to even delay a transnational corporation from emitting air pollution as a test for emitting more pollution in the long term, while a handful of people can stall a renewable energy project indefinitely? More on that another time.

Cars, Trains, Energy, and Danger

A couple of striking experiences recently crossed paths for me. One was my attendance at the World Oil Conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (See previous posts). The other event was someone dear to me coming within inches of being hit head-on by a moron who pulled out into the oncoming lane of traffic. The conference had already set me to thinking about alternative transportation. The near miss set me to thinking about the absurdity of our dominant mode of transportation, the automobile.

Most people in the U.S. spend an hour or more a day in a ton and a half steel box on wheels, hurtling down a twelve foot wide strip of pavement. They have to maintain constant attention, stretching the limits of their reaction time and intuitive judgement in order to avoid leaving their lane or running into someone else doing the same thing. Last year, six million people failed to do this, causing 43,000 deaths and 2.7 million injuries. The deaths alone are like two commercial jets crashing each week. Would you fly at all if that were happening? But you drive, and so do I.

Our road system came into being at a time when horse drawn carriages were the established technology, running at 5-10 miles per hour. The turning radii, grades, and sight lines were appropriate for those speeds. In many cases we have just paved over these original tracks. Cars started out as modified carriages, with single digit horsepower and top speeds in the teens. As the road surfaces and automotive technologies were improved, the weight and speed of vehicles went up, along with the death toll.

Given a one-second perception/reaction time, a carriage travelling at 6 mph would travel just 8.8 feet before the driver could yank on the reins. At a modern highway speed of 65 mph, a vehicle travels nearly a hundred feet in the same time. The kinetic energy per kilogram of the modern vehicle at highway speed is 100 times that of the carriage. Free-steering vehicles travelling a mile a minute on roads laid out for horses is a recipe for carnage.

There is also an energy problem.

Even with modern materials and design, cars need a certain amount of mass. One big reason is simply for survivability in collisions. The force of an impact on occupants is directly related to how fast the vehicle decelerates, which in turn is related to the relative mass of the vehicle to whatever it runs into. Of course, it takes energy to move this mass around.

Cars need to be much larger than necessary just to contain passengers and their luggage. All cars have extensive crumple zones, for that precious slowing of deceleration and to prevent intrusion into the passenger cabin. This increase in size increases the air drag of the vehicle, and therefore the energy consumption.

What if we abandoned the concept of a two-ton steel box rolling on a twelve foot wide paved lane? What if we went back to first principles and asked “How do we get a person and a few cubic feet of luggage from point A to point B with the least energy and most safety possible?”

Standard passenger rail is much more efficient than driving, but it has physical and social limitations. Tracks are designed for gross weights per car of up to 315,000 pounds, which is absurdly over engineered for passenger travel. A standard Amtrak passenger car weighs in at 1200 lb. per seat. The sheer mass of both rail bed and rail cars adds to the cost of laying track and running the system. The killer for rail, though, is convenience. We are used to having our vehicles wait around for us, rather than us standing around waiting for them. In rural areas there is also the issue of mass transit without mass population. It is difficult to run a transportation system economically with 80 passenger vehicles when you can’t find 80 people going the same place at the same time.

There is another option in between the private steel box and the massive rail coach – Personal Rapid Transit, or PRT. A number of designs have been proposed and some developed, but they all include lightweight, automated vehicles running on rails, each carrying up to four passengers. (See also PPTProject)

Putting a small passenger vehicle on rails would eliminate a lot of problems, foremost among them the possibility of colliding with other vehicles. A fleet of ultralight rail cars all running at a preset speed could neither head-on, rear-end, nor “t-bone” each other. This would eliminate the need for all that mass and crumple space. Rail vehicles make electrification simple, improving efficiency and reducing emissions without the need for onboard battery storage. Most importantly for public acceptance, travelers could walk into a PRT station, buy a ticket, and hop into a vehicle without waiting. Overhead track would be small enough to penetrate into the heart of a downtown commercial district, eliminating the need for separate local public transport. The whole system could be cheaper per mile than repaving an interstate highway. All this at an energy cost per passenger-mile that is a fraction of automobile travel or standard rail.

We are facing a dramatic increase in the price of oil sometime in the next decade. This will increase the cost of fuel, the cost per kilogram of manufacturing a vehicle, and the cost per mile of maintaining roads. PRT is a promising concept for maintaining affordable high speed passenger transportation despite high energy costs.

ASPO Conference – Further notes

I couldn’t resist going back through my notes, and there seems to be a bit of interest, so here is an abbreviated version of the Friday afternoon presentations.

Kelly Sims Gallagher of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government spoke about China and the growth of auto culture. My mention in an earlier post about 13% of those polled in three major Chinese cities intending to buy a car in the next year comes from her presentation. To give a sense of proportion, she pointed out that China –

Has 2/3 of US energy consumption
Produces 61% as much CO2
Uses 1/3 as much oil
Imports 1/3 of its oil, 3.5 mbpd, 3rd after US and Japan
Accounts for 37% of world coal consumption

In 1991 China was producing less than 100,000 cars a year
In 2005 it produced 4 million
China has 25 million cars on the road, compared to 220 million in the US
Cars are now the leading source of urban air pollution in China

China is projected to surpass US in CO2 production in 2015

Those numbers, without any commentary, paint an ominous picture of China’s future effect on world oil consumption and CO2 production.

Michael Klare is the Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies and author of “Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum.” He spoke on Peak Oil and Energy Security.

He started out with the obvious and the less obvious points about peak oil. Point one is that oil production peaks and declines. Point two is that the first half of the oil is easy to get and the second half is hard. We will transition from oil fields that are shallow, big, onshore, safe, and close, to fields that are deep, dispersed, offshore, remote, and unsafe.

He pointed out that of all the oil reserves left,
62% is in the Persian Gulf
10% is in Africa, mostly Angola, Libya, and Nigeria
10% is in the FSU, mostly Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan
10% in Latin America, mostly Venezuela

Three fourths is in predominantly Muslim countries, and most is in countries that are unstable, corrupt, undemocratic, and ethnically or religiously divided. Historically, oil development increases ethnic and religious violence.

He used Iraq as an example. The Shias and Kurds occupy the major oil regions of Iraq, and all the political maneuvering since the invasion has served to exclude the Sunnis from any control of the oil resources and revenue. Its no surprise, then, that the Sunnis are driving the violence in Iraq.

In Nigeria, likewise, oil development and the unequal sharing of the benefits drives the violence.

The more we pursue their oil, the more they resist.

He concluded that for the U.S., and especially the young people of the U.S., the implications for violence and military action are as important as scarcity. The U.S. military has become an oil field protection service for the oil industry. He considers changing this a moral imperative. We cannot allow oil dependence to bring us into foreign wars.

Cutler Cleveland gave a fascinating talk on energy quality, net energy, and the coming energy transition.

Some historical points:
In 1800, 90% of our energy came from wood and animal feed.
By WWI, coal was dominant.
We made the transition from coal to oil and gas around 1950.

He made the point that from an economic perspective, all BTUs are not equal. Different sources of energy have different economic usefulness, different GDP per joule or BTU.

Quality factors:
Physical characteristics, Chemistry, Economics, Environmental
Cost, Density, Safety, Storage, Conversion Efficiency, Ease of transport
No one factor can adequately reflect quality – it is as much art as science right now.

Gasoline and diesel have a very high volumetric density, making them ideal transportation fuels
Hydrogen has a very low Vol. Density.
Biomass has a very low volumetric and gravimetric density – bulky and heavy for its energy content.

The dollar value of an energy source per BTU generally reflects its quality.

We tend to use the most concentrated sources available – highest watts per square meter (W/m2)

The Energy Return On Investment (EROI) is the ratio between the useful energy obtained from a source divided by all the direct and indirect energy inputs needed to obtain it.

An economy thrives on high EROI sources.

Oil 20:1 (2000)
Coal 80:1 (2000)
Gas 10:1
Corn Ethanol 1:1
Oil Shale Negative to 8:1
Coal Liquefaction Negative to 5:1

Methods of producing electricity (I’ll forgo the “:1” and give the ranges of the first number)
Nuclear 3-10
Coal 5-11
Hydroelectric 6-18, increasing with size
Geothermal 2-14
Wind 5-30, again, increasing with size
Solar Thermal 1-7
PV 2-10, depending on technology

Cleveland noted the drop in EROI between refined petroleum and best case numbers on corn ethanol. At 10:1, it takes 10 exajoules to net 90 useful exajoules. At 1.5:1 for ethanol, it takes 300 ej to net the same 90 ej. As Cleveland put it, if we tried to run our transportation system on corn ethanol, two-thirds of us would be working for Archer Daniels Midland growing and refining the stuff.

Another point he made was about energy concentration. If we compare the average energy draw of a building in units of Watts to its area, we get a W/m2 rating for a home, commercial building, or factory. The W/m2 of our buildings matches the W/m2 of our energy sources. Renewable energy sources tend to have low W/m2. We will run into a problem when we try to run concentrated uses on diffuse sources.

I was very impressed by Cutler Cleveland’s presentation. As we plan, design, and advocate for our energy future, we need to be cognizant of the relative qualities and EROIs of energy sources and their relation to the intended use. Some of the “gee-whiz” technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells and ethanol founder on the rocks of quality and EROI.

Charles Hall of SUNY followed, appropriately enough, with a call for a standardized protocol for determining EROI. Presently there is no global standard for defining assumptions, methods, and boundaries on EROI calculations.

He made some disturbing observations about EROI:

There may be a minimum EROI necessary to sustain a technological civilization – 5:1 has been proposed.
While renewable energy is promising, the magnitude of its resource is presently microscopic compared to the need.

Most significantly, the EROI for oil and gas is dropping. As we go for deeper, more difficult to extract deposits, we are spending more energy to explore, drill, and pump. Hall showed a graph of EROI for oil that indicated that the industry would reach a 1:1 ratio for newly discovered resources in 2015-2020. That means that within 10-15 years oil exploration for energy would be useless. We would have to operate on existing reserves as they deplete and approach 1:1 EROI themselves.

Again, it brings me back to lifestyle. Dick Cheney famously (infamously?) said that “the American way of life is not negotiable.” It seems that he is right. Nature will take away our lifestyle without negotiating.

The question is, where on the energy ladder will we be during the last resounding energy crisis? Right now we are balanced on the top rung, unsteady, with a long way to fall. Out in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, there are some hunter-gatherers who will notice that the white men don’t come around much any more, and will get on with their lives. The best we can do is to start the climb down from the top rung before the whole thing goes over.

World ASPO Conference - Final thoughts

I have learned that ASPO-USA will be posting the PowerPoint presentations from the conference in a week, so I will spare myself the labor of transcribing my notes. That is, unless there is a great popular outcry for immediate gratification.

I will, however, offer up some observations about what I heard and saw over those two days.

The ASPO crowd, both presenters and audience, were a heterogeneous lot. I saw a lot of business suits and professional casual, and a few “soul patch” beards and dreadlocks. Some were touting oil shale and coal liquefaction, while others dismissed that and promoted renewable energy. There were contradictory presentations in sequence by Bill Reinert, the president of Toyota USA and Andy Frank of UC Davis on the speed and feasibility of the introduction of plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs). Reinert spoke of a slow, difficult development and introduction with a long time before serious market penetration, while Frank said exactly the opposite.

Nevertheless, there was general agreement on some main points. These had a lot to do with the timing of both fossil fuel depletion and the responses to it.

1) There’s not a huge gap between the optimists and the pessimists on peak oil.

The range of predictions for peak oil varied from December of 2005 to 2020, with a cluster around 2012. Robert Kaufmann, one of the old hands of depletion modeling, pointed out that one could vary the number for the amount of oil reserves left by a factor of two and still not shift the peak by more than about six years.

2) Increased exploration and drilling isn’t paying off.

David Hughes, a Canadian Government geologist, along with a number of others, pointed out that the physical and financial efforts around the world to find more gas and oil have been increasing dramatically. Meanwhile, the actual amounts of gas and oil discovered are holding steady or declining. The best case scenario is analogous to the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, running as fast as she can to stay in one place. The oil and gas situation is worse, with companies multiplying their investments for diminishing returns. Quadrupling the number of gas drilling rigs in North America since 1996 has kept the reserve to production ratio (the theoretical “out of natural gas” date) about ten years ahead, with a 3% decline in production.

3) Worldwide demand is increasing despite high prices

Oil is so vital, so interwoven into developed economies, that high price doesn’t destroy demand. In fact, many people in the developing world are trying to get their hands on more of it. In a recent poll, 13% of people in the three largest cities in China intended to buy a car in the next year. At present rates of growth, the number of cars in the world could triple in the next two decades. That is, if there is still enough oil to fuel them. We are cruising towards the peak with the pedal to the metal.

4) The most optimistic assessments keep getting shot down by new data.

For example, the EIA has downgraded its initially optimistic predictions for natural gas production every year since 2001, as new data came in. What was once a healthy graph headed for the sky is now flat.

5) Major oil producers have inflated their reserve numbers, generally by a factor of two.

If you look at a graph of stated reserves for OPEC members, each line, somewhere in the last 25 years, has a sudden jump, with no apparent justification.

6) The alternatives to conventional crude oil are expensive and a long way off.

You can’t pull a coal to oil plant out of your pocket. After all the design and permitting, it still takes about four years to construct and start up. This increases to eight years for an oil shale facility. The cost per barrel is really unknown, except that it will be $70 a barrel and up, with huge upfront capital costs. Likewise, renewable energy sources, although they can deploy quickly, are an infinitesimal part of our present energy picture. Even at breathtaking expansion rates, it would take decades for them to make a significant impact.

7) Many alternatives to conventional oil take too much energy to be practical.

Cutler Cleveland pointed out that even if we take the most optimistic energy profit ratio (EPR, energy used compared to energy gained) for ethanol, it would be impractical to run our present fleet on it. As he put it, “Two thirds of us would be working in the ethanol industry.” The energy profits on oil shale and coal liquefaction are low, as are those for tar sands.

8) The energy profit on fossil fuels is declining

The EPR of newly discovered oil used to be 100:1, that is, it took the energy of one barrel of oil in exploration, equipment, and pumping to get 100 barrels out of the ground. Now newly discovered oil is well below 10:1 and dropping. When we look at numbers for oil reserves, we should consider that the last 20% in the ground might take more energy to extract than it contains, rendering it useless. Some of the new deepwater oil drilling that is being touted as saving us may soon be futile.

9) Market forces won’t work.

The price of oil is so volatile that oil markets can’t get clear signals. Even if they could, these markets hardly ever look more than a couple of years out, and with volatility, even less. Relying on market forces to drive our reaction to oil depletion is like putting an impact sensor on your car’s bumper to tell you that it is time to design and construct a seatbelt. We need a level of forward thinking, hard nosed policy that is now lacking in government at all levels.

10) All the factors above will combine to impose sudden and dramatic lifestyle changes on us.

The effects of fossil fuel depletion and our lack of preparation will have economic, political, military, and social consequences the like of which we have not seen since the first half of the 20th century. We are looking at economic depression, inflation, and rising interest rates, partly due to energy inflation and partly due to the collapse of the dollar as an international reserve currency. We will experience the effects of political unrest at home and abroad. Many of the services, conveniences, and activities we now take for granted will be increasingly expensive. As I have noted in a previous post, some economic models predict that a 4% shortfall in supply would produce a price per barrel of $160. How would you be living if the gasoline that gets you to work, the diesel that grows and delivers your food, and your heating oil all cost $7 a gallon?

The only thing that could change fast enough to make a difference would be human behavior. Likewise, only changes in human behavior can be implemented fast enough to forestall the inevitable shortfall till we are halfway ready for it. The answer lies in the boring inconvenient things: driving less, carpooling, using mass transit, turning the lights off, and easing back on the thermostat, and so on, and so on….

Tragically, it always comes back to our bad habits.