The Anthropocene and Geological Time

August 16, 2019

There is a common argument that the idea of the Anthropocene is a joke. That in terms of geological time the idea of the Anthropocene is meaningless; it is currently much shorter than the margin of error for declaring a geological epoch, and that the traces of humanity are unlikely to be marked because “If 100 million years can easily wear the Himalayas flat, what chance will San Francisco or New York have?”. Geological time stretches for billions of years, not millions, and especially not hundreds of years. Even radioactivity is irrelevant “If there were a nuclear holocaust in the Triassic, among warring prosauropods, we wouldn’t know about it.” Personally I like the idea that there were intelligent dinosaurs – there apparently were big brained dinosaurs who were co-operative pack animals with opposable thumbs, and it is interesting to think that no traces of their civilisation survives. However, that is a digression

Basically the argument is that humans are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and that we have an inflated opinion of our ability to control events. Any human effect on the planet is transient and meaningless (just as was the effect of our imagined intelligent dinosaurs). We will probably be gone in a blink of God’s eye, in geological terms. The idea of the Anthropocene, according to this position, is stupid; nothing that humans can do matters.

I’d have to say this argument does not convince me.

The problem with geological time is precisely that humans, or other genus and families of creatures, don’t matter. It is true, we are probably not going to be here for 10s of millions of years, never mind 100s of millions of years, because if we survive we won’t be the same – evolution will change us. Taking a geological approach to human problems is probably why it seems that geologists are usually the scientists who don’t care about climate change or ecological destruction. In terms of geological time such destruction is totally trivial. The Earth goes on.

However, the problem comes when this position is used to imply that social action is not resulting in a series of ecological crises, that the sixth great extinction of life on Earth is not likely to be happening, that climate change is a mere blip, that we are not leaving forms of pollution all over the global eco-system, or disrupting that system to an extent which is dangerous for many species, and possibly for human survival. Such an implication is simply wrong, and when pushed, most geologists would probably deny they are making it.

The term ‘Anthropocene’ is useful because it recognises that contemporary human societies are having a marked effect on global ecological, climate and geological systems. We are potentially changing the ecology to such a degree that our current civilisations may not be able to survive, and possibly billions of humans will die off. These crises would probably not have arrived, or been the same, without human action.

In human terms, as opposed to geological terms, this recognition is relevant. Having a term that recognises those changes and our role in creating them is useful. Suppressing it, almost certainly makes it harder to think about it, which is probably why articles like this get published.

Now, I’m certainly not going to argue that we can reverse the crises and return to the world we have destroyed, or that people always achieve the results that they intend. The world involves interconnecting complex systems, and consequently unintended consequences are routine and reversibility is not generally on.

If human social action results in unintended, unplanned, consequences which involve ecological catastrophe and (as far as we can tell) the deliberate actions of bees (for example) don’t, then I think humans are more responsible than bees, dolphins, or koalas, for those consequences. Furthermore, I’m not convinced bees, or other creatures, can take responsibility or act differently, while we can.

Yes, the Earth goes on, but I would rather it went on with us, than it went on without us. This is irrespective of the billions of years of Earth history in which humans have not, and will not, exist. This may be selfish or self important, but if we are to think about humans and the creatures who share the Earth with us, then we cannot think primarily in geological time – that is an abrogation of responsibility, and of our own, and other species, survival in the immediate future – and, if we do cause a mass extinction, then we are affecting the future history of life on Earth – no amount of saying we don’t matter in geological time will change that.

Lack of total control of the world does not mean we cannot mitigate and lessen the crisis. Who says that we have to “defeat” an ecological crisis, rather than, say, refrain from causing one – given we know how we are causing it? We do not have to have complete control to take action. If we had to take control of the world before we did anything, we would never act.

Even stopping causing the problem as much as we can individually, or as groups, is an improvement on the actions of the Australian and US governments (to take two of many examples), who seem to be trying to encourage corporations to pollute more for higher profits and to make things worse for us.

Refraining from making the situation worse may not be enough, but it is better than nothing – and because we are living in complex systems with unintended consequences as normal, we cannot be sure a particular action won’t start something which eventually becomes enough.

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Free speech and the information mess

August 15, 2019

I read yet another article decrying the loss of free speech, by which they seem to mean that right wingers may have to think about abusing people, or damning them to hell, before they go ahead and do it anyway… but the article misses the point.

Yes we really do need to worry about loss of free speech, but the losses being complained about are trivial and avoid reality.

In Australia
We have the Federal Government harassing media organisations for reporting things they don’t like about themselves or right wing allies. And then suggesting that media are used by foreign spies, so as to make such critical media traitorous, and open to more harassment.

The government perpetually harasses and cuts back the public ABC news service because they don’t appear to like any news being critical or exposing them; if they can shut it off, they will, with screams of bias.

The government is actively hostile to animal rights activists exposing bad conditions on farms, making such activity criminal, while of course excusing those agri-businesses who cut back on decent conditions because it might lower profit.

I believe they have forbidden people in the CSIRO for speaking publicly about climate change – following the US example of shutting down talk about a really important problem they don’t want to face.

Public servants have been forbidden from even anonymously liking facebook posts critical of the government – even if these likes have nothing to do with the sacked person’s work. If you are a public servant you cannot talk.
We don’t know if this regulation will be extended to public universities or used to club people in the ABC even more.

The federal government routinely appears to revoke or delay visas for left wing activists, but this is rarely reported in the media unless they are semi-celebrities like Chelsea Manning.

The Coalition government’s (Federal and State) record on freedom of information is terrible.

Neoliberal ‘commercial in confidence’ regulations, means that much information relevant to taxpayer’s evaluation of services which have been contracted out is unavailable, and it can be a felony to release it. This helps support the corporatization of social services, and protects the unaccountable handing out of taxpayer’s money to the private sector.

The NSW government has, over the years, increased prison sentences for people protesting against mines.

We have no, or very few, protections for whistle blowers.
For example the people who revealed the Australian government security services spied on Timor in order to benefit the Woodside Corporation (which is surely a criminal act), and lower royalties paid to Timor for oil, face criminal charges and jail.
People who reveal massive corporate corruption may never get another job.

We have students being suspended for protesting against right wing speakers, as if such people deserve to be heard unopposed.

The Prime Minister has just announced that he will seek regulation of ‘Get-up’, a group funded by voters, which generally opposes his policies. No such regulation is sought of those groups who support his policies.

This is not just an Australian problem.

In the US Republicans are suggesting that protesting against fascism constitutes terrorist activities. They don’t appear to have any problems with death threats coming from fascists

The FBI is active against climate activists.

We cannot say that President Trump is welcoming of criticism and indeed seems to threaten those who criticise him regularly. Indeed free speech is not speech which criticizes him, because that is lying by definition. See an official speech

The President ignores the murder of an progressive (in Saudi Arabian terms) American based Journalist by Saudi Arabian friends, and then denies his own intelligence agencies reports which suggests his friend was responsible for organizing the murder. After all its a matter of priorities:

I only say they spend $400 to $450 billion over a period of time, all money, all jobs, buying equipment… I’m not like a fool that says, “We don’t want to do business with them.” And by the way, if they don’t do business with us, you know what they do? They’ll do business with the Russians or with the Chinese.

Snowden and Assange etc.

All of this comes about because rightwing governments want you, and everyone else, to be ignorant, and to support corporate profit taking from any challenge. Ignorance makes it easier for them to persuade you to keep supporting them.

However free speech is not simple. There are lots of situations in which free speech is not allowed: libel, defamation, national secrets, commercial in confidence etc.

We can say that with free speech there comes responsibility. If lying becomes a normal example of free speech, then maybe such speech has no meaning? And yet it is hard to tell lies from mistakes. The issue is complicated, and yet some examples, like those above, are clear…..

It is easy to favour free speech that favours the establishment, or attacks those opposed to the establishment, and attacks on established order can seem like vandalism deserving of punishment.

If you want to talk about this, then get real on the real sources of anti-free speech.

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Conventions, Knowledge and Politics

August 3, 2019

I want to discuss the connection of conventions and knowledge by consideration of a political speculation.

The speculation is Could US President Trump declare a third term, or even become president for life?

If you don’t like speculating that Trump is able to violate existing convention, then substitute the name of your favourite political villain, who has power, whenever you read the word ‘Trump’, or just delete the word Trump. Cut and paste if necessary.

To begin to answer this question we have to ask “What is a constitution?” “What kind of power does a constitution have, and how does it get it?” and “how do people know about the constitution?”

I will suggest that constitutions have power because of the way they are interpreted, and the web of institutions and conventions that grow up around that constitution. This web of conventions and interpretations, sets up people’s knowledge about the constitution. Most people will not know the constitution in detail, they will only know it by what they are told, or how they are told to read it. As the interpretations change and the web of institutions change, or the conventions around those institutions change or weaken, then the interpretations of the constitution, knowledge of the constitution, and the role of the constitution can change. No constitution has power in itself alone, outside of this dynamic and complex context.

Constitutions are, like most laws, to a large extent decided by argument and by what people find they can get away with.

To return to the initial question about President Trump. This is of course a difficult question to predict the answer to, because the answer precisely depends on the interactions in complex web of institutions, conventions and interpretations, which will inevitably be involved in political struggle. Victory in that struggle is hard, perhaps impossible, to predict.

The simple answer to the question about President Trump, is that ‘constitutionally’ “no, it can’t happen” because of constitutional amendment XXII.

The status of an amendment is, again, not set in stone, but in convention. That the term limit is set by an amendment, may suggest the Constitution could be amended again to remove that clause. There is also a debate as to whether the framers of the constitution would have supported such an amendment, or whether they may have intended the President to be an elected king. If so, people could argue that the amendment is unconstitutional in itself and should be revoked, subject to further debate, repealed, or de-ratified in some way. If the institutions, or some of them, could be persuaded, or commanded, to be considerate of this view then the struggle is partly over. Yes there will likely be dispute, but the result depends on the strength of conventional institutions, their interpretations and the ruthlessness of the politics supporting or challenging these conventions.

To repeat, constitutions are matters of struggle, interpretation and precedents which are not certain – the knowledge of the precedents and what the constitution means is tied up with the interpretation of the Constitution. Words are always ambiguous, and their meaning can alter as the context (political or otherwise) alters. Even knowledge of the past can be interpreted in different ways and become a different history, which then gives different meanings to the present, and can be used to justify the argument the presenter wishes to justify. So the supposed constitutional framework of politics, and knowledge of that framework, is affected by the politics that is conducted within it.

President Trump and his party have to be admired for the skill with which they have undermined convention, interpretation, precedent and knowledge, and have set up new modes of interpretation and knowledge which favour them. It is no longer apparently disapproved for the President and his family to profit financially from the presidency. It is no longer disapproved for the President to accept help from a foreign power to boost his electoral chances. The President can apparently seek to obstruct the course of justice and it is not a problem.

President Trump has been explicitly attacking standard conventions of the US constitution. He has claimed that Article II gives him powers which no one has previously realized. He says it means he can do whatever he likes. People who are experts in the Law, say this is not true, but he has made the point, and his followers are more likely to believe him, than the experts. He has not been condemned for making these claims about the lack of limits on his power, by many people on his side of politics.

He has also claimed on two separate occasions that he can easily overthrow the 14th Amendment which says:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Initially he claimed he could change it by executive order, and later by somewhat vague method. However, it is being asserted that the Constitution is not immutable and that he can suspend it, and those who say he can’t are wrong. Importantly Republican members of Congress seem to be largely not protesting against these claims, which suggests tacit support for Constitutional fragility, as long as it benefits them.

If any of this is disturbing to supporters, they can also deny it is true quite easily because of the mess of information, and because any position can be supported in information society – including positions which support any presidential overthrow of term limits. Likewise, as I have argued elsewhere on this blog, the information groups we belong to limit our access to disapproved-of-information and tie the information we accept to those we identify with so that information received and accepted becomes a matter of identity. In this situation, people who support, or oppose the President are less likely to have the full arguments of the ‘other group’ presented to them, and most likely dismiss them without understanding them. This is part of the way we come to know things.

President Trump also intensifies the patterns employed by previous Presidents to bolster power-concentrating conventions and precedents. He is part of a trend which helps him. He has continued deepening ‘the swamp’ of corporate interest, and governing according to those financial interests. He openly encourages corporations to pollute and poison people in the name of economic prosperity. He breaks treaties, and threatens war, by himself without consultation with Congress. His followers do not appear to expect him to tell the truth to the people, to conduct a remotely civil debate, or to refrain from multiple adultery and sexual assault. And so on.

The conventions have changed, and the sources of information the President’s supporters are repeatedly exposed to, have changed as part of this change. The lack of civility which the President encourages, also encourages the sharp separation of information groups, and the unlikelihood of his supporters or opponents getting information presented to them neutrally.

Within this kind of context, can we assume that if Trump did declare martial law, or claim a third term (perhaps because a winning Democrat had accepted help from Russia, had a sex scandal, or committed massive financial fraud that disqualified them from office), can we guarantee that fellow Republicans, judges and officials would not support him and would not denounce those opposed to this move as traitors, communists, or even terrorists? Would they absolutely not talk about armed insurrection if they were losing, or using the army to suppress dissent if they were winning? Would they not have the support of large swathes of the generally pro-Republican media? Especially after a few well placed threats? Would they not claim that violent neo-fascists who might go around beating up opponents were innocent, patriots, or just people fed up with the ‘deep state’? Would the institutions which support the conventional meaning and knowledge of the constitution, stand up for those meanings and knowledges against the direct instruction of politically appointed directors? Could they organize themselves effectively, or would they collapse in confusion and multi-directional impulses or internal dispute, which have resulted from the political discourse that splits the country?

I’m not sure whether any of this is possible or not. It would be nice to think it is all rubbish, but events suggest the US would not have that much further to go before it became possible, and then possible and acceptable, almost no matter who was President, and that the country and its institutions are heading in that direction, slowly and almost imperceptibly to most US citizens.

People can acclimatize to anything, given enough time, and the argument that President Trump is stupid, misses the fact that ignorance is not stupidity, and he has years of successful self-promotion behind him. He may have a limited set of skills, but they may be exactly what is needed for him to gain a third term if it is possible. He also has incentive to go for a third term because it protects him from prosecution…

There are plenty of occasions in which people have said that something could not happen, or would not happen again, just before it happened. Historically dictators have ignored convention, re-interpreted laws, declared states of emergency, got support from other interested factions, conducted massive misinformation campaigns, suppressed dissent, changed the status of knowledge or whatever. It has happened.

It would not seem impossible that Trump could suspend a Constitutional amendment, and that he would received support, rather than face immediate and compelled dismissal. Especially if he and his supporters were prepared to use violence to support their position.

Overconfidence in procedure, convention or knowledge, remains a great way to remain unprepared.

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Some biased thoughts on politics

July 26, 2019

An intemperate spiel inspired by a set of comments on some one else’s facebook page:

It is necessary to be clear on the general differences between right and left wing thought.

Right wing thought is always about defending and supporting hierarchies first and boundaries second. It is usually about defending established hierarchies. In the US and Australia, that is about defending plutocracy, but it can be about strengthening older hierarchies, such as military, theocratic, racial, or gender hierarchy amongst others.

Left wing thought is about weakening hierarchies and establishing some kind of close to egalitarian organisation. The problem with Left wing thought is that if it gets established through revolution then its supporters can try and support the new hierarchies, such as the party or whatever. Success means the left is in danger of becoming right wing.

Centrist thought could be about balancing the hierarchies off against each other; recognising them but weakening them, but it usually isn’t.

In the US and Australia, right wing thought, as said above, is nearly always about strengthening the power of the wealthy and the corporate sector.

It may be disguised in other language, such as ‘liberty’, but this always comes down to the liberty of the wealthy to do what they like and the poor to accept what they are told. The right may talk about ‘free markets’, but this always means that any control the workers may exert on the corporate sector is an interference with the market and has to be abolished, while any control the corporate sector may exert over the workers is the market in action and eventually for the workers’ own good.

Logically for the Right, everyone with enough sense and talent is able to get wealthy, and people are only poor because they are talentless, stupid or feckless. And as talentless, stupid or feckless people they should be left to rot. The only thing holding them back from the good life is themselves. Any support for them, other than grovel-demanding charity, will corrupt them even further.

However, support for the wealthy is just support for talent, so that’s pretty cool. Every wealthy person has earned their wealth. They rightly own everything produced by the people they pay. Wealthy people are wonderful, unless they disagree with rightwing theory, in which case they are ‘elites’.

If we have to maintain a level of unemployment to keep costs to business low, or use tax-payer funded food stamps to keep workers alive, and costs to business low, then great. Wages are always a drag on profits and to be eliminated if possible, except for the wages of high level executives of course, because talent deserves to get paid. Hierarchy and worker’s dependence needs protecting.

As plutocracy is wonderful, it should be extended to all institutions. Churches should only count if they make money – voluntary poverty is just stupid. Good churches will say wealth is a mark of God’s favour. Schools should have to make money, and wealthy schools are simply good schools. Education is a privilege not a right. If you can’t afford a good school, you are obviously stupid. Medical treatment should be about service to those good people who can pay, everyone else is trash. Medical care is a privilege. If you can’t afford privilege you don’t deserve it – even if the rest of us catch your plague. Universities should be run by managers and seek profit; research should aim to boost the private sector or be aimed at issuing patents for university profit. Students should be passed if they pay, because that is what they have paid for. Any idea that education should be about cultivation of the soul or gaining knowledge or whatever, is completely dumb.

Note that the only purpose of life is to get rich and to please employers. All of your education should be about increasing your obedience to employers and the wealthy. That way you will do well.

As plutocracy is good, profit is good. In the US, who cares if a few people get murdered or die by accident with guns if it makes a profit for arms manufacturers? Who would stop arms manufacturers from selling weapons to terrorists or our countries’ enemies? Who would stop them selling to people with convictions for violence or mental disease? Anyone who would propose lessening the profit of arms manufacturers by even a little, must be communists trying to stop profit altogether and take guns away from everyone. They must want to leave us helpless.

Likewise who cares if we destroy the environment if it makes a profit? Poison the air, then sell people air filters and oxygen; everyone benefits and more profit is made. All is good. If coal is profitable, then sell it. Let’s not worry about government subsidy of something destructive, its all good profit. If you can’t live anywhere because of the pollution and eco-system breakdown, that just means you were inferior to begin with. Living in a functional ecology is a privilege not a right. If you were good you would have bought that privilege. You could have bought property high above the waterline or on a cruise ship, or hired your own private army.

Wealth, however, is not a privilege it is the right of wealthy people and cannot be challenged. If you are wealthy, you should have every privilege you can pay for, if you are poor you should also have what you can pay for, and nothing else.

Profit for the wealthy solves all problems. Indeed no other solution to any kind of problem should be proposed.

Without maximum profit everything dies, the capitalist system collapses, the hierarchy collapses, so we can’t lower profit, and must support profit at any other cost and that includes the death of talentless poorer people.

The further thing, is that right wingers know what is best for everyone. Everyone has to do what we say or suffer. If you don’t please the wealth elite, you don’t deserve anything. If I think you are a man I’ll address you as a man, no matter what you think or want. If I think you are an ape then I’ll address you as an ape. If you object, you clearly have mental issues and are in need of assistance so you can come to think like me…. That way everything will work all RIGHT.

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What is Energy?

July 26, 2019

This is an attempt to talk about energy more concretely. It is clearly exploratory, rather than finished. Comments and disagreements more than welcomed. I do not claim to be particularly well informed.

What is Energy?

Many people spend a lot of time talking about energy in social theory, but they don’t say what they are talking about. This probably produces confusion, so this is an attempt to be more specific.

Energy is present in motion, change or transformation, or keeping things in regular dynamic patterns. This usually involves forces (such as electro-magnetism, differences in heat, or gravity) being transmitted through: physical contact; ‘radiation’;  displacement in space;  chemical bonding and so on. This is particularly the case when we are talking about “cause”. Causing or producing events takes energy. Jean Mark Jancovici, a French energy and climate ‘expert’ writes “Energy is what enables you to change the environment, by definition”.

Energy is often defined in terms of “work”. In normal parlance work means controlled, or directed, energy expenditure. It may, or may not, be useful to keep the term “work” for that specific meaning of human labour. Labour might be thought of as the directed and controlled application of human energy. With this definition, we can perhaps more readily understand why human labour may not have to increase, for there to be increased production, value or potentiality – we just need the energy to come from elsewhere.

Energy is in some ways observed in a dynamic set of relationships between ‘things/nodes’ and the systemic context and changes that the things/nodes ‘cause’.

What any organism, or group of organisms, can do, is limited by the amount of energy available to it for conversion into activity. Some animals spend almost all their obtained energy in eating, growing, healing and reproducing. As shall be stated later, energy is always lost, or dissipated, when it is used.

Let’s look at the cycles of energy on earth.

  • Naturally occurring nuclear energy within the Sun (energy within the atomic structure) provides sunlight and heat.
  • This heat drives movement of ‘matter’ on Earth: tides, weather, water cycles etc.
  • We also have planetary geothermal heat gradients, volcanoes and so on, and geographical gradients from uneven weather, stratification, upheaval, water flow, and other chemical state changes (expansion of water as it freezes, natural acids etc), which also drive the movement, and break up, of matter on Earth.
  • Chemical/biological conversions of sunlight, to the movement, or growth, of a pattern of material (an organism).
  • After organisms die they can form fossil fuels over very long (geological) periods of time and chemical processing. This also requires energy and pressure which is a form of energy stemming from gravity.
  • Organisms can convert other organisms to energy, through eating.
  • Finally we have ‘tools’ and ‘machines’, some of which are powered by human or animal energy, some by weather, some by fossil fuels, nuclear energy, or electrical energy from some other source.
  • For humans, after they are fed, using more energy really means “using more machines” (Jancovici again), or killing themselves through over-eating, or whatever.

Fossil fuels are amongst the most efficient forms of energy currently available to humans. They are easy to use, have been easy to find, and the technology involved is pretty simple. So far replacement technology for fossil fuels is more complicated, and requires more energy expenditure to build.

The laws of thermodynamics apply to energy. The important ones for social analysis, seem to be:

1) Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.

2) In a closed system the entropy, or dissipation of energy as random motion or heat, will increase over time. Things will run down. Hence energy needs to be arrive in the closed system from somewhere else.

Entropy is often equated to disorder and randomness, but this is not quite correct. With universal heat death, where entropy is maximal, order is almost total. Everything is uniform. One space is not distinguishable from another, over time. Nothing of “any interest” occurs. In that sense, disorder and difference seems essential for functioning systems. Energy occurs in patterned systems of difference.

These principles of thermodynamics roughly translate as follows (even experts sometimes disagree on what they mean):

1) Energy is not created. It is converted from one form to another, or transported from one place to another. Conversion and transport of energy usually require some other form of energy conversion. There is no energy available to humans without previous energy expenditure. Understanding this idea is vital.

Energy that is taken from a patterned system for a particular use, is not available for other uses – partly because of the next law.

2) We can never use energy with total efficiency. Some energy will be lost in processes of conversion or transport and dispelled into the general systemic context/relationships – perhaps disturbing or disrupting them. The more steps to a process, the more energy is likely to be lost/dissipated.

The ratio between energy expended and the energy available as a result of that expenditure is usually known as “Energy Return on Investment” (EROI) or, as I prefer, “Energy Return on Energy Input” (EREI)- because this makes it clear that energy input is central and money, while important, is secondary. The higher the EREI the higher the “energy availability” and the more freedom of action; although, for particular societies, this also depends on the social organisation. In economies of high inequality, large groups of people are likely to be powerless and poor with little energy available to them. EREI ratios of one or less are disastrous for complex civilisations, because it implies all the energy available is being used to produce less replacement energy.

The ‘external’ Sun is the basis for continuing life and any “interesting” planetary functioning. Without the Sun, the system would run down. Earth does not form a closed system because of the input from the Sun.

I have heard people say that “entropy will kill us anyway in the long run”, therefore we should do nothing about climate change. But they rarely say: “we don’t need to be employed because of entropy, or we don’t need wealth, we don’t need energy etc…” So this argument is rather selective.

Eventually we will all die, and the solar system will end; but this is probably not a basis for not caring about the near future. As long as the sun shines at roughly its current rate Life will continue. For current day humans, this ultimate end is not an immediate worry, or even a distant worry. It will not affect us, or our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren. It will occur in billions of years.

While it is not formally part of the entropy theory, we can extrapolate and say that any long-term directed use of energy to produce what the users consider to be order will produce disorder as well, because of the effects of dissipation of energy. Disorder or randomness is not unimportant to the system’s ability to function, or its ability to fall apart. Without generation of entropy nothing happens.

In macro terms, this means we cannot ignore the production of waste and pollution if we want to keep the system functioning. This means we cannot ignore the destruction of ecological sources of energy through energy usage (ie the destruction of ecologies, of food, the capacity for chemical conversion of waste into useful products for the ecology, and so on). These ecological systems provide energetic resilience, or systemic stability (within bounds). Without them, the system is more likely to become unstable. So we always have to look at the whole system in order to understand the effects of the parts of that system.

Most of these sources of energetic resilience are currently ‘free’ – or, more accurately, provided by the planetary system without human effort. Destruction of the natural ecology, destroys the processes of conversion of waste into resources, and the resilience of the system. This ongoing destruction, through social ordering, opens the possibility of a general transition to new and unfamiliar, disruptive stabilities or instabilities, which humans will find costly in all senses of the word. It will require a lot of energy usage for humans to compensate for the loss of these systems, and that will produce more pollution, and it will possibly take energy away from other necessary activities.

The problem with fossil fuels, despite their extraordinarily high Energy return on Energy investment, is that they increase disorder through pollution, and climate change, and they poison the systems they are used within. This is not strictly entropic, but it is comparable, as it disrupts the energetic resilience of systems.

If we counted destruction of energetic resilience as a problem, we would be expending more energy to solve the problem, whatever else we do. We might even abandon fossil fuels. There is also the possibility we are losing high EREI fossil fuel extraction anyway: people do not extract oil from tar sands if oil is easily, and cheaply, available elsewhere. Likewise, people do not frack, if gas is easily, and cheaply, available elsewhere – unless there are other incentives such as government subsidies, or economic distortions such as Ponzi type loan schemes.

Money is a sign of energy. Easily available money can enable the appearance of human organised energy, and activity. However, currency depends upon social power. If social power and monetary accounting is used to ignore real energy deficits, the destruction of energetic resilience, or increases in disorders, then we are headed for lower EREIs and probably for intensified disaster.

Monetary cost and profit can also distract from significant problems such as the noticeable entropic or disorderly effects of our ‘movement’, such as when we overgraze land, overfish waters, or stick poisons in rivers because it’s easy. In some cities the amount of heat produced as a side effect of air conditioning (cooling) is supposed to be noticeable, but in general that does not seem to be a problem.

One of the problems for decarbonisation projects is that those energy substitutes for fossil fuels, which are easily available, do not have as high EREI. They require more energy to build (in the short term) and are often built through heavily polluting processes. It may also be the case that the lower EREI means that less energy is freely available, lowering the ease of transition at the very moment we require freely available energy to build that transition. However, the consequences of delaying the change, get worse with every delay. This is not an easy process, but it is essential.

But if we did not have a civilisation that was based on ignoring the basic nature of energy, and the energetic production of entropy in the form of disruptions and dissipations of production through pollution and ecological destruction, then we could be better off to make the transition and to plan realistically for life afterwards….

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Energy, Management, Money

July 22, 2019

Economies and organisations always run on available energy, and energy is fundamental to any kind of economy/organisation. This is true whether you are hunting and gathering to obtain the food to enable people to have the energy to gather more food and socialise, or whether you are trying to run a world-spanning army through electric and oil power. The amount of energy that is available to the organisation after deducting the amount of energy expended to gain that energy, fundamentally influences the possibilities of what it, and its members, can do for ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Financial cost is one way of measuring this, but it should probably not be taken as the only or fundamental way of evaluating the relationship between energy expended and energy gained.

The ratio between energy expended and the energy available, as a result of that expenditure, is usually known as “Energy Return on Investment” (EROI) or as I prefer “Energy Return on Energy Input” (EREI)- because this makes it clear that energy input is central and money, while important, is secondary. The higher the EREI the higher the “energy availability” and the more freedom of action; although, for any particular group of people, this also depends on social organisation. In economies of high inequality, large groups of people are likely to be powerless and poor with little energy available to them.

Time is also a factor that is important. It might be necessary to expend more energy than is released in the hope of building a better energy system. It may also be the case that an energy system is so destructive in its side effects that it needs to be modified quickly. However, in the long term energy output must be greater than energy input for any kind of survival.

A fundamental reason why we have both our current prosperity and troubles, is because fossil fuels have been a massive gift. Their EREI has been very high. Some people suggest that it took the energy from one barrel of oil to produce 50 barrels of oil (figures vary but are large, I’ve seen figures of 1 to 100). We have had similar EREI’s for coal. Fossil Fuels are also easy to transport with relatively little energy loss – or in the case of gas, where there has been massive loss of escaped gas, the quantities of non-leaked gas have been so great and the loss so invisible, that it has not been counted until recently. Fossil fuels are also easy to use; the technology involved in their application is pretty straightforward and simple.

However, these huge ratios are no longer the case; EREI is declining for fossil fuels. Easy to access sources seem to have been used up, are close to having been used up or are taking more energy to extract energy. Companies are having to drill deep in the ocean, which takes lots of energy, with high potential for accident and loss. Other companies are moving into small, difficult or energy intensive processes such as tar sands, shale oil and fracking. These sources of fossil fuels would not be being used, if higher EREI sources were easily available. Coal appears to be still relatively low in energy consumption because miners now largely do open cut mining, which uses explosives, or straightforward drilling in to a cliff face. In other words coal seems to be good provided you ignore the ecological costs.

However, more people are starting to realise that fossil fuel pollution is not good for human and environmental health, coal in particular. Mines are often destructive of fertile lands needed for food production. Even more destructive mines which not only threaten food supplies, but threaten water or endangered wildlife are being opened or proposed. Finally, burning fossil fuels produces disruptive climate change, which is likely to consume even more energy in repairing, or abandoning, infrastructure damaged by that change. The more destructive, or potentially destructive, the mode of extraction allowed, the cheaper the financial cost, and probably the less energy deployed to obtain energy in the short term. There is an incentive for fossil fuel companies to be immediately destructive – which is not good on top of the destruction from climate change.

The energy needed to deal with, or remediate, such destruction and enforced change is quite high, and severely diminishes the available EREI, but the costs are usually put on the taxpayers (or ignored) rather than being charged to polluters, so the polluters notice it less.

With fossil fuels we have been spoilt. Energy became invisible, and rarely even features in most economics other than as price, despite its centrality. Likewise, we have not needed an economy of air, even if we all know that without air you are dead, and air might slowly accumulate poisons.

Declining availability of energy, may not mean that customer costs increase immediately; many energy companies have vast supplies of financial capital which they can use to maintain customer lock-in and prevent change, in the hope of recouping the loss over time, or in the hope of getting the last fossil fuels out of the ground before they become unsellable – either because people are sensible and abandon them, or because the system collapses in its own muck.

Given these factors of decline and destruction, it becomes vital for any organisation to think carefully about how they obtain the excess energy which enables them to act, and about the likelihood of the costs of cleaning up after destructive ways of obtaining energy.

Energy has to be the fundamental concern of any organisation whatsoever. Members of an organisation may always have to be thinking, ‘How can we get or generate more energy more efficiently, use it more efficiently, co-ordinate that use, and then expand what we can do with that amount of energy?’

Energy is even more fundamental than money, because without excess energy you cannot do anything. If the electricity to power the office buildings and computers is simply not available, nearly everything would shut down – no matter how much money you had.

Energy becomes a manageable problem if you use the right sorts of technology for the future, have the right kinds of organisation that can allocate energy where and when it is needed, and if the people in the organisation give the energy system the right kind of attention – the kind of attention that they would nowadays give to the monetary system.

Consequently, organisations probably need an Energy co-ordinator to make sure that different parts of the organisation co-ordinate energy uses, and that energy savings and efficiency are not diminished by another department making financial savings. Over time EREI, energy use and the effects of that usage are likely to become more pronounced in accounting and management measures.

An added aim for, say, local government involves questions about how they can increase the ability of their inhabitants to live well, which involves saving the conditions of life on the planet and local area (as they are not disconnected), providing adequate energy, guaranteeing low destructive energy supplies and using that energy well within the organisation and in local area.

To some extent renewable energy could provide an opportunity for organisations to become more self-sufficient, and less dependent on suppliers while saving money. ‘Distributed power systems’ also tend to be more resilient to shock events as they are not vulnerable to a central source collapsing or the transport wires collapsing. Taking such action may be inhibited by regulations which assume that the existing system is the only system possible.

If the EREI of fossil fuels is declining or increasingly produces dangerous effects, these energy sources need to be abandoned before they are used up, yet currently renewable, or low polluting, energies do not have as high EREI. Consequently organisations may need to restructure their energy expenditure, as part of their preparation for the future. It may be that for the short-term attempt to produce future energy savings, energy expenditure will be quite high, and this may also require financial expenditure.

At the moment, immediate financial savings are likely to disrupt energy savings, and possibly even make EREI invisible or low priority. What matters is what is counted, and the ease of counting money should not always make money the priority.

To reiterate yet again, the more energy availability, the more can be done for ‘good’ and ‘bad’. However, there are often organisational limits, what is often called ‘lock-in’; ways of doing things that become harmful after a certain threshold and are difficult to change.

For example, the more complicated an organisation can become, then in general the more it can do. All large multi-faceted organisations tend to become complicated. However, after a point the energy expended for the organisational energy released, can become unsustainable and declines. It takes more and more effort to maintain the physical and organisational structures. In many countries, we can see roads and bridges in bad repair. Maintaining complexity requires energy. Not using energy for the necessary repair and maintenance to keep the organisation going is a political decision deferring costs to the future. To save organisations from this fate, organisational limits may need to be investigated and recognised.

Money can resemble the excess of the energy system because an organisation can give itself temporary energy boosts by going massively into debt. This was the secret of apparent prosperity in the 80s; anyone can look prosperous if they burn up the future, but eventually the debt runs out or is called in. There has been an argument amongst financial analysts that fracking, for example, is only successful because of growing debt in the industry, based largely on future promises (imaginings) of high prices for the product and improved technologies of extraction.

However, if you constrain money too much then you cannot do anything because advancement requires financial investment. Ultimately, you can have a pile of money but if you do not have energy, you cannot actually use that money to do anything. Money may be based upon energy circulation and energy availability – if so, it can act as a form of stored energy (for a while).

Again with no energy availability, money is worthless. Energy production and its relation to Energy input is fundamental.

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Social action and adapting to climate change

July 14, 2019

Excerpt from an old article by Craig Morris slightly paraphrased:

To deal with climate change we are suggesting that we redesign our world and our social life. That’s exciting, but it’s also not the way we talk about it.

We could, for example, ask people some questions: how would you like to improve your community? What are the important things in life that should not be lost and should made easier? What do you value? These might help to get people involved, rather than resistant.

Instead, the discussion often reduced to lowering energy emissions, and roughly breaks down into three types of propositions, largely about technology (which most people don’t really understand):

1) We need to convert from fossil fuels to renewables quickly, as they can help us live within planetary boundaries at a high enough living standard;

2) Renewable energy alone will not suffice, and;

3) If we fail to do anything, our civilization is on a path to destruction.

None of this asks people what they want to work towards, apart from technology. And they cannot make the technology themselves, so this framing of the issues implies people are at the mercy of others.

The transition may not only need to reduce carbon emissions, but also strengthen communities and overcome the isolation that people increasingly suffer from. It needs to make life better, not more of what we have now…. If people do need renewables, and that seems likely, how are they going to organize this? How will they gain power over energy?

Getting people to agree on action and work together is not always easy, but it may need to begin, now to get action on other things progressing.

The need to bring people together is one reason to be skeptical of nuclear power. Up to now, the technology has required too much secrecy, thereby undermining good governance and democracy…. Communities and citizens have never made their own nuclear power.

However, this working together is not being encouraged and the wording of the Paris agreement itself shows how marginalized the focus on social benefits still is – perhaps because it suggests a “crisis of democracy” in which people want to rule their own lives with others, rather than obey the elites or retreat from demanding service from the State.

Coal and oil are bound into social formations, they are stuck in ‘Carbon Oligarchies’, where peoples’ lives are being risked to support established sources of profit. It is possible that renewables are not yet stuck in the same way, but open to being shaped by community involvement and democratic process. If so, we should encourage it.

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Mining in Australia II

July 10, 2019

There has been a recent report which suggests that fossil fuel mining in Australia accounts for 5% of global greenhouse emissions, as well as being one of the highest per capita producers or greenhouse emissions. It is possible that with the new coal and gas mines Australia could be responsible for something like 17% of Global emissions by 2030.

see RenewEconomy and The Guardian

Obviously the country hits well above its weight, and the argument that we shouldn’t do anything because our contribution to the problem is trivial, is completely wrong.

One potential response is to suggest that we are just not going to stop because its so economically important, but as previously suggested its doubtful we make that much from this type of mining, due to export of profits overseas, low royalty rates, massive tax concessions and decreasing employment in the industry.

But, if we recognised that fossil fuel mining and burning is a problem, then another possible response is “someone has to stop fossil fuel mining first, if we are going to survive in our society, and so it might as well be us.”

However, I suspect that the real question, may well be “should we go about increasing the amount of fossil fuel mining we are doing, so that we become the one of the world’s biggest exporter of emissions, and one of the biggest causes of ecological destruction on the planet, or should we begin to phase fossil fuel mining out?”

If people agree that is a real question, then we can begin to stop opening new mines, especially mines that threaten water supplies and agriculture as do the Adani mines, and the mines in the Sydney catchment areas, and when that is done we could stop expanding existing mines into agricultural regions, and then start phasing them out altogether.

If we are about to increase exports to provide 17% of global energy emissions, then it might well appear that the rest of the world is cutting back by comparison. Certainly some countries plan to phase out coal mining. So why not us as well?

This may not happen because the parties are bought by miners…. but we probably should not let corruption stop us from doing the sensible or moral thing. Behaving morally is not always easy, and won’t always make you as much money as behaving immorally.

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Mining in Australia

July 8, 2019

9th July 2019 version

People frequently say something like we should not stop fossil fuel mining and export in Australia, because we would go ‘bankrupt’ without income from mining.

This is a response which will be updated as I do more research.

Australia does not earn much in royalties or income from mining, as we tend to give away minerals (when compared to other countries), profits are transferred overseas to tax havens and so on….

Wikipedia states: “At the height of the mining boom in 2009–10, the *total* value-added of the [entire] mining industry was 8.4% of GDP.” That is not the same as useful income to the country….

Adani predicted in court that the full coal mine would produce less than 1500 direct and indirect *job years* (not jobs) over the life of the mine, which is basically nothing (given a life of 25 years that is an average total employment of 60 jobs per year).

The Labor market information portal states that mining employs less than 2% of the total workforce. And that is from all the mines (iron, copper, lithium, uranium etc), not simply the fossil fuel mines. According to a parliamentary website mining employs much less than any of ‘Retail Trade’, “Wholesale trade’, ‘Professional, Scientific and Technical Services’, ‘Construction’, ‘Manufacturing’, ‘Accommodation and Food Services’, ‘Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing’, ‘Transport, Postal and Warehousing’, ‘Financial and Insurance Services’ and so on.

Some old surveys suggest that Australians think that mining employs about 8-9 times more people than it does. Increasing, automation, means employment in mining is decreasing all the time.

I have no idea how many mining workers are here on temporary visas, ready to take their wages back home either. The mining industry is always complaining there are not enough locals with the skills – which is odd given that there used to be, and less people are working in mining. However, overseas based workers are probably not unionized so they can earn less.

If climate change goes ahead uncontrollably, then there will be massive job losses in tourism (no barrier reef) agriculture (Adani taking all the water and poisoning the artesian basin). People will loose their homes, and so on – but that will be a boost to building.

So while Australia may go bankrupt (or at least face financial stress in the future), it will probably not be from stopping fossil fuel mines or refusing to help the world be destabilised.

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2040

July 7, 2019

I suggest that people see the film 2040. It portrays how we can start to beat climate change with the tech we have now. Its a bit glib on occasions but it gives hope that something could be done, if we could remove the corporate and governmental opposition.

First he goes to Bangladesh, to see how villages (we are talking shacks) can put solar on their rooftops and share it with other households, through a network of wiring and metres, which allows people to buy energy from this micro grid, even without being able to afford solar panels. The process allows microgrids to connect up, thus making a robust local system, which can cover the countryside. If the grid is broken by the increasing natural disasters of climate change, people can still get some power, as opposed to none.

This system would work well in Australia, but is currently illegal due to pro-corporate regulations. (We sold off our wires, and had to make them safe for private enterprise…). At the moment if i want to share my solar power with my next door neighbour i can’t. We need to make such links, installed by registered electricians, legal.

Then he looked at self driving electric cars, and how people could come to think of cars in terms of use, like they now think of music and films, rather than ownership. This would free up massive amounts of parking space which could be turned into urban farms, solving some of the food supply crisis, and relieving the need to transport food over vast distances. He also seemed to think it would reduce traffic and traffic jams, but i’m not sure about that. It might work because the cars go off after they have delivered you and don’t have to search for parking.

As far as I understand, this set up is not yet workable, making self driving cars that are relatively safe outside of small areas is still quite difficult. If it did reduce traffic, then you could also expect massive opposition from our toll road owners who have paid billions for waste property, and of course from oil companies who are not renown for their ethics, but are renown for ruthless political operation and massive misinformation campaigns. Anyone need to say Exxon? I’m not sure carpark owners would sell their property for urban farming either, but this could be solved by the State buying land and buildings back for people’s use (however unfashionable it is for the State to do anything useful).

Then there is regenerative agriculture. One person claimed that agriculture was responsible for more carbon emissions than burning fuels. This makes it important.

It turns out relatively easy to fix (apart from droughts). In Australia, industrial farming with fertilisers kills the soil, and the water runs off, taking the soil with it and taking the fertilisers into rivers where they provoke algal blooms and dead fish. Destructive ecologies spread.

The film maker visited a farmer who had simply planted a mix of grasses, sunflowers, sorgum, millet etc. and let them grow to about over a metre or so in height. Then he let in some cattle who ate them and defecated on the soil, and moved about as they are supposed to. Cattle that eat corn are unhealthy and their meat not so good for people, cattle that eat grass are pretty good alround.

After three months it was possible to see a marked difference between the old concrete like soil and this new spongy friable dark and moist soil. Apparently this process puts masses of carbon back into the soil and makes it more fertile without fertilisers. If we eat less meat then more soil can be let wild, we can store more carbon, and probably get a bit healthier.

We can also grow seaweed for food and fertiliser on platforms in the ocean deserts (although transport might be a bit of a problem). This provides areas for fish to grow, de-acidifies water from excess carbon, and could revitalise fish stocks – although we would have to stop industrial fishing from killing everything again. We could also do this closer to the coast. It is really easy to upscale with few negative ecological consequences.

Problem: Big agriculture will hate this, as it requires care rather than cheapness of production. They will fight against it. They want us to eat GMO foods that depend on brand name fertilisers and weed killers. However, small farmers should love it, and in the non-industrialised world saving small farmers, removes poverty (from dispossession for large farms…etc) and provides most of the food anyway. Some possible problem as crops rot releasing CO2 and methane, but still better than industrial ag.

Finally educating and empowering women and girls. Lowers population, increases care for the planet. The whole deal. What can I say?

Problem: Religions…. most of them.

Watch the film, and have a look at:

https://whatsyour2040.com/

2040

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