Category Archives: Social Issues

Fear and Loathing with Frac Fluids

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There is considerable handwringing over hydraulic fracturing fluids and their potential effects on “the environment”. I use quotes in ironic fashion because I see very little parsing of the issue into relevant components. The chemical insult to the environment is highly dependent on both the substances and the extent of dispersion. But I state the obvious.

There are surface effects at the drill site and there are subsurface effects. A spill on the surface is going to be relatively small due to the limited size of the available tankage on site. I drive by these sites almost daily and can see with my own eyes the scale of the project. A surface spill of materials will be limited in scope.

The subsurface effects are complex, however, and the magnitude of consequences will depend on both the extent of the fluid penetration into aquifers and the nature of the materials in the fluid. Much criticism has been dealt, rightfully I think, over the secrecy claims on the composition of these fluids. The default reply from drillers has rested on trade secrecy. To be sure, the matter of government forcing a company to reveal its art is a serious matter. But the distribution of chemical substances into the environment requires some oversight. Especially when substances are injected into locations where they cannt be readily remediated. The remediation of an aquifer is a serious undertaking which may or may not be effective.

If you want to see what is potentially in frac fluids, go to Google Patents and search “hydraulic fracturing fluid”. A great many patents will be found. This will give the length and breadth of the compositions patented. Of this large list only a few are used in current practice. The potential carrier fluids vary from water to LPG (!). Water is a common component, but brine is said to be preferred. Additives include hydrochloric acid and surfactants. The MSDS documents may be a good source of info. Consider that a substantial threat to ground water may be that it is rendered non-potable rather than outright  toxic.

Devon Energy Sells Stakes to SINOPEC in Shale Gas Plays

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Devon Energy has raised $900 million in cash from Sinopec Group for a stake in Devon shale gas plays. These gas projects include the Utica, Niobrara, and Tuscaloosa formations. 

What is interesting is not so much that China has bought its way into the extraction of a resource that the USA has in some abundance. What is more troubling is that China has bought its way up the learning curve in horizontal drilling and fracturing. 

According to the article in Bloomburg Businessweek-

China National Petroleum Corp., Sinopec Group and Cnooc Ltd. are seeking to gain technology through partnerships in order to develop China’s shale reserves, estimated to be larger than those in the U.S.

“In these joint ventures, the partner does typically get some education on drilling,” Scott Hanold, a Minneapolis-based analyst for RBC Capital Markets, said today in an interview.

So, the business wizards at Devon in OKC have arranged to sell their drilling magic to the Sinopec for a short term gain on drilling activity. Way to go folks. Gas in the ground is money in the bank. These geniuses have arranged to suck non-renewable energy out of the ground as fast as possible.  Once again US technology (IP, which is national treasure) is piped across the Pacific to people who will eventually use it to beat us in the market.  Score another triumph for our business leaders!!

The market is like a stomach. It has no brain. It only knows that it wants MORE.    Th’ Gaussling.

 It’s a banner day for American Business.

Euphemisms and similes to avoid in 2012

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I propose a 20 year ban on the following overused and often mangled euphemisms and similes-

Rocket scientist–  “it doesn’t take rocket scientist to …”.  This one is really tiresome. I propose that it be banned indefinitely and that repeat offenders be tatooed with some humiliating symbol on their noses.

Holy Grail–  “… It’s like the Holy Grail of …”.  This was overused centuries ago and abusers should be called down on the carpet forcefully and publically. A good swatting with a rolled newspaper may be called for.

American taxpayers–  “… The American taxpayers are tired of …”.  You mean, American citizens. To play to the taxpayer’s emotional conflicts over taxes is a ham fisted rhetorical manipulation that bypasses the greater good of citizenship and responsible stewardship over our civilization. I am a citizen who pays taxes and I insist on being addressed as a citizen.

Perhaps the dear readers have even better examples of rhetorical ditties that should be retired.

 

Eat Venter’s Dust

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I gave a talk in a morning I&EC session last thursday at the Denver ACS National meeting. During an interlude provided by a no-show speaker, a member of the audience began to quiz down a hapless speaker who earlier presented on the filtration of plasmids. The gentleman’s concern was this- We are continuing to develop conventional processing technology while fellows like Craig Venter are devising step-change techniques for genomic analysis and synthesis. People like Venter have their names mentioned in the same sentence with “synthetic biology”.  Why do we bother with the more primitive methods of research when the real action is with folks like Venter?

The inquisitive fellow was asking a rhetorical question to all of us. But the point he skipped over was the matter of intellectual property. He kept asking why don’t “we” just switch the paradigm right now and use such technology? Why continue with highly manual R&D?  The problem with his question was in the assumption that Venter’s technology was something that “WE” have access to. Venter’s technology does not automatically translate into a community tool. It is more like an item of commerce. In reality, this will likely represent a major uptick in productivity to the financial benefit of the intellectual property owners and licensees and their stockholders.

How the scientific workforce will fare is a different matter. Increased productivity usually means reduced labor per unit of output. I suspect that Venter’s technology represents a higher entry barrier to those who want to be in the market.  It may be that the outcome will be a broader range of diagnostic and treatment services available to a shrinking pool of insured people able to afford it.

In praise of polyolefins

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Being a person nestled in the dark and humid recesses of industry, I find myself boggling at certain things out in the bright and sunny world.  Truly, it boggles my mind how little appreciation people have for polyolefin resins. That is to say, polyethylene, polypropylene and all the myriad copolymers and formulations found thereto.  Ok, let’s throw PVC and polystyrene in the mix as well.

Why do I boggle at this? What makes my head spin in puzzlement? I’m so glad someone asked.  Polyolefin films look innocent enough to be ignored. In their uncompounded state they are clear and colorless or they may be white.  Polyolefin films and extruded components are ubiquitous in packaging and thus are not normally an object of desire. They serve the object of desire. They occupy a lesser state interest in nearly all contexts.   They are made inexpensively enough to be torn asunder from the desired object and tossed wantonly to the side for later clean up.

But if the uneducated user of polyolefins only knew the extent to which modern science and engineering had been carefully applied to the lowly stretch wrap or the roll of 1 mil PE film. If they only knew the scientists and engineers who carefully devised the ethylene crackers to produce high purity ethylene, or if they knew the highly educated people who devise the polymerization process, they might have heard an account of the long march to produce water white films with properties matched to the end use.

Puncture resistance, elongation, fish-eyes, haze, modulus, crystallinity, glass transition temperatures, melt points, low volatiles, melt viscosity and strength- all attributes carefully tended to so that the film appears invisible to the consumer. High gloss, low haze films to make the product look even better.  Low volatiles and residues for food contact use.  Polyolefins engineered for specific densities for the global market.

All of the attributes above to attend to with a continuous polymerization loop that spews 50,000 to 80,000 lbs per hour of pellets into silos and rail cars. Pellets that will eventually go to converters who will blow films and extrude widgets all day long.  All so the consumer product can arrive at its destination wrapped unscuffed and free of dust.

Polyolefin materials are incredibly useful and amazing in their own right. We should have more appreciation for these materials and how they serve our needs.

The influence of a committed minority

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A paper recently published in Physical Review Letters E is stirring some attention on the web.  The citation and abstract are below.  The work was funded by the Army Research laboratory.

J. Xie1, S. Sreenivasan1,2,*, G. Korniss2, W. Zhang3, C. Lim3, and B. K. Szymanski1
1Department of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, New York 12180, USA
2Department of Physics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, New York 12180, USA
3Department of Mathematics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, New York 12180, USA

Received 17 February 2011; revised 25 April 2011; published 22 July 2011

We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pc≈10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time Tc taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion. In particular, for complete graphs we show that when p<pc, Tc~exp[α(p)N], whereas for p>pc, Tc~lnN. We conclude with simulation results for Erdős-Rényi random graphs and scale-free networks which show qualitatively similar behavior.

I’ll confess that I have not paid for a download nor have I been to the local university library to look at the paper.  There is an RPI website that details the highlights of the paper. 

The results of the work seem very intriguing, though. And making a tie to current events is all too easy, so I’ll attempt to restrain myself.

If you have ever done simulation work, you know not to confuse simulation with reality.  However, the great value of simulation is that it forces one to think hard about the parameters of a system and to develop quantatative relationships. This is especially useful in iterative or non-linear processes where intuition easily breaks down.  Even if you do not succeed making a bullet proof model, you have almost certainly come to understand the system better.

Thr RPI article goes on to say-

Once the networks were built, the scientists then “sprinkled” in some true believers throughout each of the networks. These people were completely set in their views and unflappable in modifying those beliefs. As those true believers began to converse with those who held the traditional belief system, the tides gradually and then very abruptly began to shift.

“In general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion and are always seeking to try locally to come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in each of our models,” said SCNARC Research Associate and corresponding paper author Sameet Sreenivasan. To accomplish this, each of the individuals in the models “talked” to each other about their opinion. If the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the listener’s belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief.

This seems to connect quite naturally with Chomsky’s notion of the “Manufacture of Consent” by the ever burgeoning political-media complex in operation today.  My guess is that the backers of conservative media have had an intuitive grasp of the benefits of repetition and existential certainty for a long while.  When you claim to have the “founders” and a deity on your side, logic and reasoning becomes distinctly non-linear.

Andy Grove on Scaleup

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Andrew Grove is the former CEO of Intel who was responsible for its transition from memory chip producer to microprocessor producer. According to Wikipedia, Grove is responsible for an increase of 4500 % in Intel’s market capitalization. In his youth he and his family escaped from Budapest, Hungary during the Soviet invasion of 1956. Groves holds a PhD in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley. Grove is now retired and is a senior advisor to Intel.

Grove recently wrote an article for Bloomberg that is quite insightful in its analysis of certain aspects of American corporate culture. In particular, Grove notes the disconnect between US technology startups and the subsequent expansion of business activity leading to job growth. He also notes that startups are failing to scaleup their business activity in the USA. The Silicon Valley job creation machine is powering down.

Grove makes an interesting point here,

A new industry needs an effective ecosystem in which technology knowhow accumulates, experience builds on experience, and close relationships develop between supplier and customer. The U.S. lost its lead in batteries 30 years ago when it stopped making consumer-electronics devices. Whoever made batteries then gained the exposure and relationships needed to learn to supply batteries for the more demanding laptop PC market, and after that, for the even more demanding automobile market. U.S. companies didn’t participate in the first phase and consequently weren’t in the running for all that followed. I doubt they will ever catch up.  Andrew Groves, 2010, Bloomberg.

To build on what Grove is saying, I’ll embellish a bit and add that an industry is actually a network of manufacturers, suppliers, job shops, labor pools, insurers, bankers, and distributors. When deindustrialization occurs, the network of resources collapses. The middle class takes a big hit when a commodity network moves offshore. In the end, the intended market for commodity goods and services- ie., the middle class- is weakened by the very move that was supposed to keep prices down and profits up.

Grove is most concerned with the matter of scaleup. This is the business growth phase that occurs after the entrepreneurship proves its worth in the marketplace. Investors pour money ino large scale operations and staff to get product onto the market. Grove suggests that investment in domestic startups who do not follow on with domestic scaleup are not participating in keeping the magic alive.

Offshore scaleup negatively counteracts the benefit of domestic innovation. In a sense, it is an abdication of the trust given to the entrepreneurs by the citizens who provided the infrastructure to make the innovation possible.

Grove makes a good point in his editorial and I think that the rest of us need to take an active stance to question the facile analysis so often uttered by business leaders when it comes to relocation of business units offshore.  Citizens paid for the infrastructure and a large part of the education that makes our innovative technology possible. There needs to be more public pushback on business leaders and government officials about this topic.

Viewpoints on American Business

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Over at the Robert Reich blog there is a recent commentary on Chinese currency policy. Reich makes some interesting comments on the Chinese approach to industrialization.

But most fundamentally, China is oriented to production, not consumption. It wants to become the world’s preeminent producer nation. While keeping the yuan artificially low is costly to China — it pushes up the prices of everything China imports — China is willing to bear these costs because its currency policy is really an industrial policy.

We think the basic purpose of an economy is to consume, not to produce. So we only grudgingly support industrial policy. We think of government efforts to rebuild our infrastructure as a “stimulus.” We approve of government investments in basic research and development mainly to make America more secure through advanced military technologies. And we give American companies tax credits for R&D wherever they do it around the world.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that US companies will continue to make big profits from sales in China. China allows big U.S. and foreign companies to sell in China on condition that production takes place in China – often in joint ventures with Chinese companies. It wasn’t American know-how, so it can eventually replace the US firms with China firms.  [Italics by Gaussling]

It seems to me that American policy leaders have no clue whatsoever on how to coexist or compete with China economically. Because of the authoritarianism in contemoporary Chinese culture, they are able to focus their resources on long term goals while we in the USA rely on a kind of economic Darwinism. It seems that we are waiting for the rational forces of the marketplace to take us forward in the economic struggle with China.  In reality, American businesses have no nationality. Their obligation is only to achieve maximum shareholder value, irrespective of parochial concepts of national interest.

Americans like to put on a show of maintaining an orthodox capitalistic stance against a nation state like China. One with a centrally controlled economy.  Unfair currency policy is a foreign policy that China is using to leverage the flow of export dollars their way.  Somehow we are content to play cards with an opponent who has stacked the deck.

It is worth remembering that much of the technology that economically emergent states use to energize their manfacuring sectors was paid for by US citizens over the last 100 years. Electronics , metallurgy, chemistry, aerospace, transportation, automation. The US has made substantial contributions to technologies that are now ubiquitous.

These emergent states have not funded generations of successive invention and improvement to achieve their semiconductor FAB or petrochemical complex. Corporate investors dropped it out of the sky.  This technology that we have been busy exporting has been dearly paid for by generations of hard working citizens here. Yet, through the exercise of advanced business philosophies, this magic of ours has been transplanted off shore to the benefit of a few.

I think there is an assumption that our American democracy is somehow a uniquely robust form of democracy. It is hard to make that argument anymore. A culture that equates money with speech and validates it in the Supreme Court is a culture that accepts the notion that the congress is part of the marketplace of goods and services.

In the face of a shift in the global economic center of gravity, Americans are busy in an orgy of fratricidal disassembly of its institutions. Journalism and independent media come to mind.  The former watchdogs of democracy are now quasi-analytical entertainment divisions of a few major comglomerates.

The market is like a stomach. It has no brain. It only knows that it wants more. I think nations like China know this about us and take full advantage of the fact that we like to wear the badge of orthodox capitalist on our sleeves. In a way we are just country bumpkins who have never traveled out of the county. We’ll be true to our doctrine as we run aground.

I think that, in the end, publically owned corporations will be the death of our economic vitality. Blind reverence for CEO’s who maneuver a dividend no matter what the economic climate force this species of organization to abdicate any sense of national affiliation. It’s been happening for many years. Legions of B-school students study the strategy of Jack Welch and similar ethically agnostic characters who serve the greater good of the corporation.

Instead, legions of B-school students should be trying to figure out how to sustain American manufacturing rather than how to outsource it. These people should not confuse M&A with progress. Making things and offering services that people want is how progress happens. If taxes are too high to sustain business within these borders, then an open effort to bring corporate taxes into line based on mathematically defensable arguments should be made. To work for progress is to be progressive. We need more progressive business people, not more financial wizards. The grownups of America need to step up.

Adolescent Phillies fan receives Joules from constable

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Have you seen the footage of the police officer who tasered some 17 year old  kid who ran onto the ball field at a Phillies game the other day? What kind of world do we live in when cops feel they’re required to electrically stun a kid who stupidly ran onto the field? Why is this a stunnable offense? Welcome to the city of brotherly shove.

It wasn’t a meeting of the United Nations or a drunken brawl at a biker party. It was just a ball game- entertainment for the idle- where a fun lovin’ kid was trying to outrun the baseball authorities. We have become so intolerant of unstructured behavior that we allow our police to partially electrocute citizens.

This is only the latest incident where a law officer seems to use his stun gun when he’s merely inconvenienced. Maybe if Philadelphia had skinnier cops, they could catch more of their suspects rather than having to zap them like livestock.

Naturally, the police chief stated that it appeared that the officer was within department guidelines.  This kind of answer from a chief of police is really disturbing. The fool didn’t have the wits to say it was under study or some other delay tactic.  Yeah, the kid was a bonehead for running onto the field. But when the state feels justified in using this kind of force on some goofy kid, it has gone too far.

It’s a hip hop hippity hop

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I was standing in a light rain this afternoon watching a hip hop dancing exhibition. A lawyer friend standing next to me commented that it was so cold he had to keep his hands in his own pockets. I thought that was funny.

Since the kid has been studying hip hop dancing, I’ve been to one hip hop concert and a few dancing exhibitions. I have to say that I rather like it. 

I’ve noticed something over the years at school functions where parents gather to watch their kids. Strangely, the parents are almost universally uncomfortable around the parents of other kids. When they (we) walk into the school they automatically become shy. Their social skills seem to be left outside. Even the elementary quantum unit of civility, an introduction and a handshake, is offered only after awkward minutes elapse and it becomes apparent that anonymity cannot be maintained. The notion that the parents of your kids friends are also your friends is not an axiom.

In fact, this whole business of adult friendship is a puzzlement to me. I can’t tell you how many times a discussion with another adult escalates into “that’s bullshit, this is how ya do it …” or terminates as “well, we don’t do that…”.  Many adults I know are seemingly unable to enter into a discussion where ideas are tossed around and back and forth analysis ocurs with mutual curiosity and interest.

So many people I know will take any given comment as an invitation to render approval or disapproval. There is rarely any interest to build on a concept or flesh out possibilities. One coworker is unable to discuss any topic I bring up. The reply to my sentence is invariably to throw out onto the table the activity or thing they do in a superior way than implied by my comment. There is never any back and forth- their participation is just a series of reflections off a mirror back to themselves.  Some of these folks are very brittle emotionally and intellectually.

Then there are the people who only participate in a discussion when they can dominate it. If they cannot dominate the proceedings, they leave. I have taken to the bad habit of preempting them by leaving when they arrive to dominate the discussion. Who is the bigger fool? I am not sure.

Somebody (William James?) once said that for most people, thinking consists in the rearranging of their prejudices. There is a lot of truth in this.