Category Archives: Politics

General Politics

Can technology save us: Food production?

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In 1768 Thomas Malthus wrote the Principles of Population, which posited that eventually all populations are held in check by disease and famine. This theory argues that any population that grows to sufficient size will outstrip the resources in that the population requires, which will result in famine disease and population crash. While, this is likely true in a Darwinian sense (he used this as to help develop the theory of evolution) it is not true for populations that are able to innovate and provide additional food resources.

Innovation allows the human population to develop new techniques for providing additional food in the same area of space. In some ways this happens through domesticating crops such as corn or bananas and increasing the size of the produce until it hardly looks like the wild version of the produce, which can be seen below for the banana. For a fruit that is roughly the same size an individual will receive a great deal more energy than with the wild fruit.

Source: Wikimedia

Obviously bigger fruits and vegetables aren’t the only product that we’ve seen increase in density of calories. Cattle are being breed to be larger and provide more meat on a single cow. In the extreme case, the Belgian Blue, they are so large they are unable to reproduce without human assistance and are taller than most cattle at the shoulder.

In many cases our cattle, pigs and chickens are being raised in some pretty terrible living conditions. These living conditions cause pollution of our land, cause diseases and can be smelled for hundreds of miles away from the farm. The production of the meat isn’t healthy for the animals nor for the people that live near them. However, for most people it’s out of sight out of mind, or they can’t afford to pay the market for humanely raised animals (grass fed beef or free range chickens).

In the US there’s child hunger, but there is famine in other parts of the world. Part of this is due to poverty, water shortages or powerful people withholding the food that is available. What technologies are out there that may be able to address some of these problems?

One of the most interesting me to me is Lab Grown Meat. This would remove the requirement of using killing animals to provide the meat and proteins we need to survive. Currently, these meats don’t taste all that great and most people would likely be against eating it. However, it could actually lead to a lot of other benefits. For one, if we are able to get cow meat to taste right, that means that we have the muscle and fat ratio correct. This could also allow us to use the same method to rebuild muscle mass for people who have been injured. Other benefits for people with special diets, like vegetarian or vegan, may be able to eat the meats because they aren’t coming from animals.

Labs devoted to growing animal meat would reduce the amount of corn and grains going to cattle and would increase the general supply of these foodstuffs. Additionally, the area required to grow animal meat would be a lot smaller than that to raise a herd of cattle. We won’t be able to replace every source of meat with this, but it is likely that it could replace a lot of it.

Another interesting idea is called the Vertical Farm Project. Instead of a farm taking up huge tracts of land, the farm could be contained in a single structure. It could take the idea of local to the extreme. There could be different floors for each type of crops and the crops could be grown using hydroponics or in a more traditional method if desired. These towers are planned to help power themselves through wind and solar power collectors. The crops would receive both artificial and natural sunlight through large windows and UV lights.

It is also likely that aside from simply providing crops the lower levels could also be used to house a version of grass fed cattle. The number of cows in the herd would have to be very small, but the manure could provide the nutrients some of the crops require. Additionally, since the air would be filtered it would reduce the impact of the smell of the cattle in the surrounding areas. The air circulation equipment could also filter out methane that the cows release and use that as an additional power source by burning it. The idea of a vertical farm like that would essentially ensure that all the material within the farm would be reused and maximize the sustainability of the farm.

At this point these ideas aren’t yet proven to work. It is going to be some time before these technologies are going to be fully workable and deployed to the general public. They could work in both the developed world and the developing. The vertical farm could seriously help the sub Sahara countries in Africa as it is likely that a vertical farm like that would be able to provide crops that normally would not grow outside of the farm. Additionally, the vertical farm could have a water collector on the top and use sun light to convert ocean water into drinkable water through a evaporation and collection.

Can technology Save us: Energy Problems

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Energy is one of our largest concerns moving forward. We know, at least on some levels, that the technology that is feeding us power isn’t exactly the cleanest technology or power sources. For the most part, the US is powered through coal and natural gas. Between these two roughly two thirds of our power is generated. Both of these power sources need to be extracted from the ground. There are several ways to extract coal from the earth, those of us from Pennsylvania know of both of these. The first is the old fashioned digging of huge mines. In some cases these mines catch on fire and can burn continually until all the coal is burned through. This can take decades or centuries. Not only that, but if you’ve seen ads or the show Coal on Discovery, you know that it’s horribly unhealthy for the miners and can lead to black lung. The other method is mountain top removal, which is less well known but equally destructive. According to a recent study it has removed 500 peaks and eliminated 2,000 miles of streams in the Appalachia mountain range.

Natural gas extraction is equally destructive, but it’s talked about less frequently than mountain top removal. Fracking has been banned in several countries and regulation in US states has been mixed (Ohio very strict PA very lax). However, the US is being compared to Saudi Arabia in terms of the quantity of Natural Gas in the ground (these estimates are highly contested). Because of the abundance natural gas is being touted as the clean alternative to coal. While it is true that natural gas does burn cleaner than coal it still is not a clean reaction. As it is a hydrocarbon molecule it’s reaction does not lead to 100% efficiency and only water as a resultant material. It still produces Carbon DiOxide but at a much lower rate than coal or gasoline (benzine).

While it is strongly debated among politicians the use of coal and natural gas are causing climate change (Obama compared them to Flat Earth Society members), it’s fairly obvious that they cause local pollution levels to increase. However, as we saw from the Iceland volcano ash and other pollutants are able to enter the jet stream and move around the world. This same affect can happen with coal and natural gas power plants.

However, as technology caused a great deal of these problems perhaps it can fix them. One of the first technologies that we should look at is captured carbon sequestering (CCS), which I’ve discussed before. This could help remove the excess carbon in the atmosphere now. However, there are risks it does reduce housing values and can leak to the surface in a similar manner as smoke from a coal fire. However, there has been success in countries like Iceland. While this is small scale, its the appropriate level to be testing in the US. There are several different technologies for CCS and many states in the US could experiment with different technologies. This will allow the selection of the best technology. The US government should encourage testing different technologies through programs at the state level to designed to increase testing different technology. This could include highest capture and lowest leakage rate from the captured location. Companies could then bid on the right to use their technology for the projects. Additionally, as this can be tied to economic benefits such as job creation and pollution reduction, without impacting current power production, it should gain bipartisan support.

Io9 recently had an interesting article about using caves as a method for batteries. This technology, while very very young, would be used in conjunction with renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and wave (when that matures more). This would allow for a massive storage area for extremely windy or sunny days to effectively smooth the energy production for a region. In addition it also could be used to buffer from over production for traditional power plants as well. It is difficult to plan for excess demand, but if these caves could be used to store energy from a colder time of the year until the summer it could be used to buffer against increased demand during the hot summer months.

Renewable energy sources must be part of any plan to create a national energy plan for any country. Without these energy independence would be impossible. Creating incentives for home owners and removing barriers, such as home owner associations that are against solar panels, should be a goal of government at several levels. Austin currently has a huge push for renewable energies where something lie 35% or more of the city energy needs should be generated by renewables in 2020. Including individual home owners in this plan will make it easier to reach.

Finally, nuclear reactors will also be required for wide area energy generation. Currently nuclear energy accounts for nearly 20% of US energy production. Developing safer techniques for nuclear energy generation is extremely important with Fukashima and the risk for using the same technology for creation nuclear weapons. Fortunately there are safer materials to use. One of them is called Thorium. This material reacts more safely and cannot be used to create weapons. This type of reactor would also be extremely useful for desalinating water.

To achieve true energy independence we will need to use all of the available materials for energy production. It will likely require a transition period from coal to natural gas to a combination of renewable energy sources and nuclear reactors. This will likely take 20 to 30 years. However, we need to use economic and national security as much as environmental concerns to win the argument. With the current mentality in the US government environmental arguments are not likely to win over many converts. Using job creation, through construction and managing the facility, and the long term economic benefits will likely win over more converts than any other method. Including in the argument a way to capture the pollution as a method of reducing pollution rather than simply require cleaner burning is also likely to win over converts as the GOP tries to defund the Environmental Protection Agency.

It is likely to be a difficult fight to get the US to be independent of foreign energy sources, but it is possible. To do so will require a clear plan of action. Sadly, the US has been lacking that for the past few decades.

Denouncing Rush

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My friend sent me this email. If women’s rights matter to you, then please read on.
Sandra Fluke is a classmate of mine.  You may have heard of her.  She’s an inspiring woman who worked with victims of domestic violence before coming to law school on a public interest scholarship.  She is the woman who was supposed to testify before congress on birth control but was blocked by republicans.  This was the congressional hearing about birth control in which no woman was allowed to testify.  The statement she had planned to make was later publicized.  Rush Limbaugh completely misrepresented it, called her a slut, and demanded that she post sex tapes online.
Even if you do not believe that birth control should be accessible for contraceptive reasons, or even life-saving medical reasons, I hope you do find it unacceptable for Limbaugh to defame a woman and lie about her testimony. Limbaugh is attempting to bully women out of speaking and create positive publicity for himself. Sign this petition if you want it to backfire on him.  http://dccc.org/pages/denounce-rush
Please forward this to anyone you think would be interested in signing.

Biting the hands that feeds it

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Yesterday I read an article which explained that a Republican Congressman berated the head of the National Science Foundation for high gas prices. This is pretty distressing because it shows a clear lack of understanding of the goals of the NSF, the role of industry in innovation, consumers and the policies the Republican party and the US government has in place in regard to fuel usage.

First of all, the NSF is an organization that funds cutting edge research that expands the frontier of science. The goal is not to pick winners at that early of a stage. Picking a technology specifically to reduce the cost of fuel would be that. The goal is to pick the best ideas in a broad range of topics and fund several ideas within the same topic to get competing technologies and research groups. They groups can look at the same problem with a different perspective and lead to very different results, which together could lead to a huge break through (if they each don’t get their own break through or the same one). The goal is to create variety. I’m sure there are tons of projects that are focused on creating alternative fuels and increasing the efficiency of our combustion engines. However, the research isn’t going to be commercializable for 10 to 15 years. That’s just how long it takes. The research we’re funding today will be driving our economy through the next decade. 
If the Congressman wants a better target to go after, he should look to the car companies. There has been research for a large number of years on engine technology, however not all of it has been used to actually improve efficiency. Some times it’s used to increase the power of the vehicle. They do this because that’s what the consumer wants. Americans love their big powerful cars. There’s no reason why my mother in-law NEEDS to drive the extended Tahoe, but she does – she feels safer in her “Battle wagon.” However, the vehicle gets very low gas mileage, which of course is a double whammy when the prices increase. Huge tank and high prices make it expensive. The more gas the vehicle uses the higher the prices will be going. In Europe the gas prices Americans are complaining about are absurdly low. In the Netherlands it’s something like $8/gallon, around $3 of that is in taxes. However, in those countries there are much more fuel efficient vehicles because they have to be. Many of those countries don’t really want people to be driving.
The same car manufacturers that complain about putting minimum fuel economy standards on cars are able to meet higher standards in Europe. The US government could easily play a role in increasing the standards for new vehicles. They may not be doing enough. Continually increasing the standards with higher gas prices will increase the incentives for manufacturing those vehicles. Especially if the US government provides a customer for those cars. This would ensure that the car companies will be able to sell a minimum number of the vehicles without fear of a complete flop of the technology. 

Social network patent war?

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Today the first salvo has been launched in what will likely be a brutal and bloody patent war in the social networking world. Yahoo! has decided to go after Facebook with several patents which were bought from Friendster a now long defunct social networking site. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts companies that start suing over patents likely have lost their competitive edge. However, I think this is going to have long reaching impacts.

Facebook will likely try to find something they can use to counter-sue Yahoo! Which I believe will open a huge can of worms. A large number of companies have put forth effort into creating social networks and there are companies that are built on top of those networks. Essentially, this is an entire ecosystems of companies and products that interconnect and work together. Until now, it has been rather peaceful except for a few angry words tossed back and forth.

I’m not really aware of what patents are out there for these types of sites, however, it is likely that all the major companies are going to be scrambling for patents. Some of the companies involved have already been in patents wars, Google for example. I don’t think Google is going to sit by and allow other companies to attack them the way that Apple has gone after Android. This would be an extremely foolish business move so, I think it makes sense for Google to actively defend (attack) competing firms by acquiring patents and aggressively targeting firms that may be infringing.

Apple has also tried to get into the social networking side of things with their Ping network. Based on their previous patenting strategies, it seems likely that they have built their own war chest of patents and we know how Apple likes to use them.

Yes, much of this is simply speculation. However, as the entire ecosystem of social media and networks have developed into a huge new area of business and marketing, we need to be aware of how these could impact us. Systems that allow access to multiple different social media accounts could be shut down using patents to enforce the use of each platform. I use tweetdeck and I know other people that use Hootsuite they essentially work in the same way (results may vary), but could a patent derail their use? I don’t know at this point, but i’m not happy about the prospect. I’ve mentioned before my distrust of Facebook, which is why I use tweet deck and sign in using Incognito. An all-out patent war could seriously disrupt this growing environment and reshape the way we use these networks.