Before getting into the first Weekly Musings, I want to say that the response to my weekly email subscription has been really gratifying. Thanks to all who are participating! I also received a number of inquiries to give a little more detail about what would be in the "exclusive" email - a testament to the smartness (and skepticism) of my readers.

Item #1: My friends know I have an extreme aversion to online video clips because my "job" requires a high bandwidth of info absorption and video is usually too slow. My friend GFB sent me this link which at 4:47 is just within my tolerance for video (5 minutes max) and meets a high standard of visual info communication: it displays health/wealth trends in 200 nations over the 200 years from 1810 to 2010.

No surprise that the enormous gains in lifespan and wealth correspond to the introduction of cheap oil, technology and antibiotics. But what is surprising is how the imperial home countries (England and The Netherlands) made huge gains in lifespan and wealth long before the age of oil or antibiotics. This suggests a lifestyle that consumes significantly less energy per person can still yield up a very good life--something I often comment on when discussing the Tang Dynasty circa 800 A.D., Paris circa 1570 and San Francisco circa 1880.

Item #2: Correspondent Shawn B. sent an email that relates to just this issue: can technology offer up a satisfactory lifestyle for billions of people without consuming vast quantities of fossil-fuels energy?

""An area I would like to hear your thoughts on sometime 85is whether all of the amazing
things going on science and technology can keep us out of the dark ages. Or whether
most of those new things only compound the issue of energy dependence and
complexification (my made-up word for increasing complexity that results in less
resilience and more risk to a system 85.).

There are also some slivers of positive social developments 96 increasing connectivity
via the WWW, openness in some areas, information sharing across societies and groups
85witness the TED sessions 85that certainly are not all doom and gloom. Can those things
mitigate or counteract the forces of human nature and the entrenched vested interests
to change the direction of things? Sometimes on the days when the glass is half
full I think they can. Other days 85.

The final issue I have given some limited thought about 85I work in the corporate world
so my free (and clearheaded) thinking time is limited 85is whether there is anyway
to develop a social and political consensus (in a democracy) on where we go from here 85
today of course we are politically deadlocked 85.on a collision course. Neil
Ferguson 92s recent lecture in Australia hints that such things are the way of empires in

Excellent question, Shawn, and it summarizes much of what oftwominds.com is about: finding positive strategies and responses which avoid deadlocks and dead-ends.

1. I suspect there is an inverse correlation between the enthusiasm for future, unproven technologies and working knowledge of those technologies. In other words, those most enthusiastic about biofuels tend to be those who are not actually working in the R&D in that field. Those who know the most are the most circumspect and cautious.

2. It's very difficult to scale up new technologies, even with unlimited funding. Biofuels have the benefit of fitting into our liquid-fuels distribution system but no one has any clue if any production system currently being developed can produce 800 million gallons of fuel a day (roughly the U.S. daily consumption, 19 M barrels of oil X 42 gallon/barrel).

3. Distributed energy sources are inherently more resilient than concentrations of energy. 10 million solar panels don't have the same energy densities as Saudi supergiant oil fields, but then the fragility of the supply chain from Saudi Arabia to the corner gas station is intrinsically high while the resilience of 10 million panels is intrinsically high.

You might say we could trade resilience and lower energy densities for vulnerable long supply chains of high-density energy.

4. The easiest source of energy is conservation, but conservation is unsexy and uninspiring as a technological marvel. When supplies plummet or costs skyrocket, humans make remarkably sudden and effective adjustments in their energy consumption. When energy, water, etc. is cheap and "limitless," humans squander it.

As I have often noted, the entire production of 20 power plants in the US is devoted to keeping electronics on standby. Requiring much better energy management IC chips in every power adapter of every device would cost perhaps 50 cents per chip and would yield massive reductions in energy consumption.

Things like this suggest that we've barely scratched the surface of what existing energy conservation technologies can accomplish.

5. The technology that we hope to scale up over 10 years has to be out of the lab now. Many advanced technologies have been "10 years away" for decades--fusion, for example. The basic technology of the Internet, for example, the protocols and so on, were in place in the 1970s. It took about 20 years to scale the Internet up and about 40 years to globalize it.

So I don't see "miracle technologies" such as algae-based fuels as being potential saviors over the next critical decade. We will have to work with the technologies that already exist.

For instance, I was just talking today with a top-level researcher on solar systems which integrate organic (biological) and inorganic arrays based on nano-scale "sponges" with complex surfaces to catch more light. The potential here is to capture much higher efficiencies of solar energy: conventional silicon-based solar panels are theoretically limited to about 29% efficiency and in the real world 19-20% is excellent.

This sort of very advanced research is only possible in the major research universities of the world, which tend to collaborate on such projects (and in the national labs of advanced nations).

All primary existing energy sources are flawed: fracced natural gas, oil, nuclear, and all alternative energy is limited in efficiency, storage, transmission, etc. There are no "perfect" solutions. But domestic natural gas seems to offer the best "transition" fuel, and radical conservation strategies and technologies offer the easiest energy--saving what doesn't have to be consumed.

6. As the capital markets suffer contraction and risk rises in the global financial system, the amounts of capital available to build out vast new technologies may well be limited. In other words, even if the lab work suggests a technology is scalable, there may not be enough private or State capital available to construct it.

7. Technologies which are accessible to communities, towns, cities and households are the most promising in my view because they can be built with local capital. Any technology which requires $1 trillion to get off the ground is not much of a solution. Depending on the locale, these include geothermal, wind, solar, natural gas, hydro and so on.

8. People claim an alt. energy future is "impossible." In terms of physics, that's incorrect. Capturing a small part of the total solar flux, wind and tidal forces and geothermal heat is possible, if a global infrastructure and investment program were put in place. Alas, that seems unlikely, so we have to do it ourselves, locally, and support larger-scale projects at the ballot box.

California is broke, but requiring energy companies to use alt. energy sources has propelled the alt. energy industry forward in California, even as the state government heads toward insolvency. Private capital can do the heavy lifting once it is given the opportunities and regulatory structure.

9. Political gridlock. Yes, this sort of loss of social goals and a "game the system for private profit" ethos seemed to characterize the last decades of the Roman Empire as well. I touched on a solution this week when I discussed "shared awareness"-- solutions can only achieve a critical mass if enough people know about them and have discussed them. That's where social media has real potential.

Right now the discussion about Facebook, twitter etc. is focused on reaping billions of dollars in profits and on sharing photos of pets and other personal data. The real potential is for social media to do the heavy lifting of political debate and building a new consensus for national action. Blogs and other social media have the potential to carry this forward.

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