Category Archives: Current Events

Microbalkanizing the Balkans

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I was enjoying my morning shot of Pomegranate juice when I saw something sad on Reuters.  There is secessionist talk again in Serbia.  The drums are beating in the distance. 

BELGRADE, Nov 19 (Reuters) – Serbia is warning the West ahead of a new round of talks on its breakaway Kosovo province that a declaration of independence by the Albanian majority would lead to new secessionist moves in the Balkans.

“If the independence of Kosovo is recognised, it would not be the final stage of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, but the first stage of new disintegration and secession in the Balkans,” Serbia’s Kosovo minister, Slobodan Samardzic, said.

You see, I thought that the Balkans had already … Balkanized. I wonder what the Russians will do? Putin seems kind of frisky lately.

Ethnic identity is a kind of hallucinogen. Unrestrained self-medication leads to exaggerated claims of merit and delusions of manifest destiny.  When taken with a dose of religious or economic idealism, the patient may present with paroxysms of fascist ideation. 

[Note: this is a revision of another posting]

Carbonylated Surf and Turf

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As a desperate strategy to fight insomnia, Th’ Gaussling often finds himself watching C-Span at 1 AM.  Congressional testimony or a televised speech at the International Museum Docent Convention by the Acting Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of the Stratosphere is often enough to initiate somnolence.

But early this morning was different. A panel of FDA administrators were before a House Committee on Commerce Chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan. At issue was H.R. 4167, the National Uniformity for Food Act. Apparently, the proposed law will remove requirements for certain kinds of food labeling, in particular the presence of certain additives may not be part of manditory labeling.

What has come to light is the industrial practice of exposing meats and fish to an atmosphere of dilute carbon monoxide (CO, ca 0.4 %) in order to maintain a red color in the flesh.  Meat naturally turns brown on exposure to air over a short period. Industry has been wrestling with this for a long time, adopting and subsequently abandoning various schemes for maintaining the reassuring red color of meats and certain fish. Carbon monoxide coordinates with iron in haemoglobin to afford a complex that renders the tissues red in color. The FDA defines CO as a fixative in this application, rather than a preservative.

As a result of the use of this scheme, it is possible to keep meats and fish with a saleable red appearance for much longer. This reduces store losses due to the non-marketability of brown meat.

The House Commerce Committee was split down the isle in terms of its concern for this matter. Democratic committee members voiced considerable concern over the subterfuge of artificially reddening meat, allowing unwary consumers to falsely conclude that the meat could be fresher than it really is. Republican members seemed disinterested in the matter and several voiced concern that the FDA should spend it’s time with Salmonella rather than CO. The honorable Republican member from Kentucky tried to suggest that as a “simple country doctor”, he was having trouble understanding the issues and pronouncing the words (Rep. Elmer T. Bonehead, R-KY).

Whereas many of the members soft pedaled their questions, Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan, offered no quarter to the FDA group. In particular he focused his attention of Director of Food Additive Safety, Laura Tarantino.  In earlier testimony, Tarantino was a picture of confidence. Her knowledge of the statutes and the Byzantine procedural details as well as her confidence and instant recall was impressive. However, when Dingell’s time for questions came along, he went after her with rapid fire questions, not allowing time for her to qualify her answers or fend off subtext.  “Just answer the question, yes or no”. It was interesting to see.  Dingell was obviously disgusted with the FDA.  The regulations and protocols that govern FDA movement are very complex and apparently even the administrators have faint grasp on much of it.

Director Tarantino stated that no specific rule-making concerning CO fixatives had been completed because it was still under study.  The working assumption was that CO was considered GRAS- Generally Recognized as Safe. These assumptions are often advanced by industry and accepted with scant examination by FDA.

When asked about the general safety of CO in the product, one FDA manager stated that the added CO posed no hazard. I have no reason to doubt this. But the real issue is consumer deception. I think even libertarians would have to agree that without disclosure of food additives, the market cannot rationally award its demand to preferred providers. You can bank on the notion that consumers are particular about meat and freshness. HR 4167 is a step backwards for consumers and we can only hope that good sense prevails in the House.

Mandarin Moon

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Apparently, the Chinese have decided to shelve plans for a manned moon landing by 2020.  According to XinhuaNet, there are no plans for activity beyond the landing of a rover and the return of samples by 2017.  Officials state that the technology for a manned program is still out of reach and that the risk and expense are too high for a 2020 landing. 

This is an interesting development.  I think there was some real interst in China for putting taikonauts on the moon.  No doubt, the infrastructure and development needed for such an effort became apparent. There is considerable prestige for any nation that manages to return the crew safely from a moon landing. But the pragmatic characters in the governing party surely recognize that the Giant Leap for Mankind has already been done and that resources are better spent on other “firsts”.

Other than operating a kind of Lunar Ice Station Zebra where a few lonely scientists would bivouac in metal pressure cans out in the hard vacuum and cosmic rays, I can’t think of a compelling reason for anyone to reside there for too long. For the value proposition, it’s hard to come up with any known mineral wealth up (over?) there that would justify the cost of transport. Generally, only pharmaceuticals have the extreme $/kg that might cover the expenses.  Mumbai, Newark, and Shanghai are much closer.  But who knows, maybe they’ll find a big vein of rhodium (US$6375/toz) on the surface.

Planetary scientists and atronomers would make good use of a lunar research station. But funding it would almost certainly require the shutdown of many other kinds of research here on the Good Earth. But what else would we do there? Take pictures? Wave the flag?

Going to a moon station would be like going to jail.  You would be confined to a cramped pressure vessel for the duration and Death could visit in new ways and old. What if you get a toothache? Would NASA have to mobilize a rescue?

What real military leverage would any country get from a moon base other than defending the moon? If you could afford a military moon base, you could also afford a fleet of nuclear submarines that could hammer any patch of real estate on earth you desire, and maybe bounce the rubble a few times.

I suppose there is planetary tourism.  A couple of weeks in the ISS will cost the plutocrat down the street a cool US$20 million.  Imagine what One Small Step on the moon would cost. Maybe Richard Branson is working on a package deal- rountrip space fare (coach seats, Virgin Galactic) and a week in the fabulous Sheraton Green Cheese resort for US$50 million. Some restrictions apply.

Hummers Hummin’ Along

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According to the Detroit News, GM has announced that they are going to spend $73 million on the Hummer H3T pickup manufacturing line.  The first units are scheduled to arrive at dealerships sometime 3Q08.  The new model is supposed to be somewhere between the Silverado and the Colorado in size.

It’s a curious thing as we approach US$100/bbl oil that GM is plowing forward with upgrades to its Shreveport pickup truck operations. Could it be that they see enough remaining price elasticity with fuels that their pickup production upgrades will pay off? It is notable that GM is introducing a Hummer pickup and not a mini-Hummer.  Economy isn’t in the equation.

To produce an economy Hummer would be to invite questions (and ridicule) about the merit of such vehicles to begin with. It is like diet fudge. What’s the point?

I think GM is taking a purely market-pull approach with this brand. The brand has value and they will offer the Hummer product line until the demand falls away.  GM hasn’t given up on large vehicles because the public hasn’t given up on them.

Take Control of Hydrocarbon Consumption

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The US petrochemical industry has had many challenges post WW-II.  The restructuring of Europe and Japan as well as the US after the war lead to an unprecendented network of markets.  Add to the economic map a whole new spread of advanced technologies resulting from the war effort itself.  Advances in piston and jet engines, rocket propulsion, aeronautical engineering, RADAR, and nuclear energy were a direct result of the war or were highly accelerated therein. 

Postwar, the aforementioned technologies were exploited in the private sector and contributed to an unprecedented economic engine driving the growth of cultures and nations. Generous US spending on cold war military hardware added somewhat to the creation of jobs and spending.  The overall explosion of goods and services not only met the demands of consumers, but raised the expectation that technology would provide an endless parade of new things. 

For the present, the range of frontier for paradigm expansion is dramatically different compared to 50 years ago.  In the context of economics, to a large extent we now live in an age of refinement rather than an age of discovery. Most of what we regard as “new” is actually derivative of more fundamental tools. Transistors, penicillin, and fission can only be introduced to the market once as new technology platforms.  Subsequent innovations are derivative. Excited speculation of the future as a place of flying cars and a cure for cancer gives way to the pragmatic adoption of cars that parallel park themselves  and treatment of cancer as a chronic condition.

Today, hucksters promote ethanol or hydrogen as fuels of the future without a syllables worth of consideration for conservation.  The search for the replacement of fossil fuels is really the search for convenient, high energy density combustible fluids that can be mass produced and shipped in the present distribution system for low unit cost. Instead of finding a new fuel stream, why not try to figure out how to get 2x performance (or 1/2 consumption) out of the hydrocarbons we are already using?

One objection might be that we have already squeezed maximum fuel performance out of the internal combustion engine. Further technological improvements to the Otto Cycle engine going forward are going to be hard to capture.

Another objection is that higher material efficiences are always being sought by the marketplace. A 2x jump in efficiency probably is generally not possible across the board, though isolated exceptions do exist.

But the easy fix, the one that no one mentions is to simply burn less hydrocarbons/ethanol by driving fewer miles. The answer is in the hand that holds the car keys. Consolidate trips. Avoid hopping in your Hummer and driving to 7-11 for cigarettes. Car pool. Demand less cheap-plastic-crap from Big Box Mart.

The main stumbling block is this:  how does a market embrace reduced consumption? I think the answer is that it cannot. But it seems clear that our US consumption trajectory cannot continue indefinitely.

The insatiable demand for hydrocarbons has brought out the worst in us. Our oilman White House has lead us into a thicket of foreign entanglements that may well get much worse before there is any relief.

Thorium and Methanol

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As we track down the back side of the petroleum curve, we will see a transition from the alkane/alcohol fueled Otto engine to a greater reliance on electric conveyance. Here is some wishful thinking-  Ethanol as a direct petroleum replacement will collapse under the weight of scrutiny as better cost data becomes available. Eventually, ethanol will be prized foremost as an oxygenate additive replacement for MTBE. 

Methanol and Fischer-Tropsch hydrocarbons from coal and biomass will provide high energy density fuels for the carbon-neutral future as petroleum scarcity drives other technologies into play. The Fischer-Tropsch liquified fuels technology from 20th century pariah states (Nazi Germany and South Africa) will assume a greater role in the post-petroleum age.

Fermentation of starch-derived glucose to ethanol and CO2 is too wasteful in the end to be attactive.  Fermentation of cellulosic material to acetate is more mass efficient. Esterification and reduction of ethyl acetate affords ethanol. One company, ZeaChem, (former coworkers, actually) is already working to bring this technology on stream. It remains to be seen how it will go over. I wish them well.

Electric power for the future will come from many sources. Distant, centralized power plants will channel energy across the grid to home-charged automobiles. Electrons travel fast and quietly over the lonely wire. They do not require fleets of ponderous 18-wheelers to move them around in limited quantities.

I see a future heavily reliant on electrons supplied from nuclear plants. Uranium-235 infrastructure will continue to supply fuel to nuclear plants for a long time. But the low abundance of U-235 (o.7 %) and the ever present proliferation potential of Pu-239 from this fuel cycle raises questions as to the wisdom of building U-235 nuke plants in the third or fourth tier states.

A more obscure nuclear fuel that is more abundant than uranium will see a phase-in as demand on the present nuclear fuel infrastructure exceeds supply.  That fuel is Th-232. Thorium-232 is  generally more abundant that uranium and has the additional benefit that it’s major isotope, Th-232 , is the nuclide of interest. Th-232 is not a fissile nuclide, but is a “fertile” isotope instead. Th-232 absorbs a neutron in a reactor seeded with U-235 or Pu-239 to provide an initial neutron flux to become Th-233, which beta decays to Pa-233 which further beta decays to U-233.  It is U-233 which is the fissile nuclide.  U-233 then participates in the fission chain reaction that generates the heat.

You can’t make a nuclear weapon out of Th-232, though in principle you could make one from U-233. The downside of a U-233 bomb is the high specific activity of this isotope.  U-233 is intensely radioactive and poses extra problems in handling.

The economics of thorium energy is advantageous in many ways to that provided by uranium/plutonium infrastructure. Thorium is abundant in monazite formations- reportedly up to 16 % thorium oxide.  The present problem with the thorium cycle is handling the intensely radioactive U-233 that remains in the spent fuel elements. Separate processing infrastructure will have to be put in place to supply reactors that burn thorium before this fuel can go forward.

An HTGR  Brayton cycle reactor with a helium turbine could provide up to 50 % thermodynamic efficiency.  Combine this reactor design with the potential cost savings of the more abundant Th-232, and you have a technology that is well set to provide power to keep the lights, cable TV, and the internet going into the post-petroleum age.

Check out the blog dedicated to Energy from Thorium. I’m writing about thorium because I think it is an important fuel and it needs to find its way to mainstream thinking.  

American Parliament, part II

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In a previous posting, I daydreamed about an American system that more resembled a parliamentary system. The motivation for this is that our executive branch has apparently gone astray with the presidents military ambitions in nation building under the guise of the war against terrorism. The ability to dissolve a government off the election cycle and repopulate it with different characters seems like a desirable attribute.

Viet Nam and GW-II are examples of ideological pageantry lead by stubborn presidents. Like the fighter pilot who is so target fixated on his opponent that he follows him into the ground, we cannot allow our presidents to drag the country into self-inflicted disaster.

As suggested by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the noises now coming from the White House concerning Iran resemble the noises made by the same White House about Iraq.  What is strange about this distressing circumstance is this: The checks and balances that are provided by the constitution seem to be inadequate to restrain the executive.  The congress seems to be genuinely flummoxed.

Despite popular sentiment and wise counsel by very well regarded citizens, the president continues to press for ideological conquest in the middle east.  Despite the floundering dollar, no-child-left-behind-except-for-4-million-uninsured-kids, and tera-dollars of debt accumulated in the “War Against ______”, our executive continues to press on within the bounds of the constitution.

The question is this: Does the US Constitution provide adequate checks and balances against the abuse of power?

I suppose it is inevitable that a president would be elected who didn’t have both oars in the water. Who knows if this guy really is disturbed. But the executive retains substantial control of the military.  The president is able to amass a vast force of civilian security contractors who seem to be beyond the audit of the congress.  Does your view change when they pack weapons and answer only to the executive branch? Did the framers miss this possibility?

The US has a president that is hell-bent on performing a script that is neither transparent nor mandated by anything other than the enchanting voices of a few dark characters who are temporarily burrowed in the White House. We’ve had 2 terms of a war president. It’s enough.

Kunstlers Most Excellent Rant

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If you don’t read Jim Kunstlers blog, Cluster***k Nation, you’re really missing out on some juicy stuff. Thanks to the all-seeing eye of Uncle Al for this particular post.  Kunstler writes with a manic urgency rather like Hunter S. Thompson (and … Uncle Al).  I’m not calibrated for the negative spin on the mortgage disaster that he makes.  Perhaps others can comment.

Tempest Down Under. Bush-Roh Row.

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It is funny to read about the minor presidential dust-up between the Bush and Roh. The fracas is now being blamed on poor translation. That could be true.  But how do you focus on a fuzzy picture? The translators art is to precisely translate ambiguous language. There are too many degrees of freedom- it’s like pushing a rope. The presidents walk away as the translator falls on his sword.  I think I’d rather work with hazardous chemicals.

Wake up chemists! The DHS is on the Case.

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While American chemists have been busy going about their lives, making and analyzing molecules, the legislative and executive branches of the government have also been busy making things more complex for the chemical industry. Procedures, protocols, rules, guidelines, and consequences for inaction have been drawn up for our “safety” by the Department of Homeland Security, DHS. Even the American Chemistry Council (ACC) has bought into the changes.

I remember as an adolescent boy in the 70’s daydreaming with friends about how much trouble we could cause society.  We would scheme about how easy it would be to crash the power grid or interefere with traffic or a hundred other things that would amuse idle teenagers.  These were mischievious thought experiments that we would titter about, but would have never actually done.  Some fellows discovered marshal arts and others developed a fascination with weapons and personal protection. 

For a few of these fellows, the teenage obsession with weapons and security has grown into an adult paranoid lifestyle whose world view features a threat environment squirming with risks. To be sure, there are risks. But the 9/11 attack and chronic Islamic terrorism have stimulated the fight or flight bundle of neurons in the brainstem and they are firing alert signals everywhere.  It is worth noting that some of this threat is push-back stimulated by a century of unintelligent foreign policy by petroleum importing states.

Some of these righteous-yet-paranoid youth have grown up and gone into government.  The politics of fear mongering is everywhere. Security at all costs. Monitor telecommunications. Control everything. Worry about everything.  Restrictions on liberty are always justified because we are trying to protect liberty. We’re the good guys, right?

<<< Sigh >>>

One of the most intellectually challenging things for humans to do is to quantitate and plan for risk. Few people walking around on earth have a true grip on what probability really means, and only a few of those folks have an idea of how to devise plans based on it. Good data is scarce so planners have to make assumptions.  Most people, when faced with a perceived risk, will assume and plan for the worst. It seems defensible.  After all, isn’t the satisfaction of the complete excision of risk worth any price?

A more mature and nuanced view must balance risk with the cost to liberty and make choices about what kinds of failures are acceptable. But this is the choke point. It is difficult to come to agreement on acceptable risk in a democracy because votes have no logic test. For the chemical industry, it would appear that choices are being made for us by someone else.  Chemical incidents have a fair likelihood of exiting the perimeter of a plant, so the authorities naturally become involved. This is not unreasonable.

What is unreasonable in my view is the newly enacted statutory control of useful or even critical industrial substances.  The military considers chemical weapons to be largely ineffective owing to the point source nature of the release and unpredictable factors such as wind direction and speed. Somehow we’re worked ourselves into a lather over imagined improvised terrorist chemical calamities at US manufacturing facilities. 

US chemical industry should audit for weaknesses in security. But the path we’re on with the security state imposition of controls on materials is a bad trend and is likely to harm an industry that is already in a precarious competitive position.

[Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are solely those of this writer and do not represent opinions and policies of any organization the writer may be associated with.]