A plea to filmmakers

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The quote below gives the most interesting explanation I’ve seen of gun culture in the US.

“Guns are at the center of a worldview in which the ability to launch an armed rebellion must always be held in reserve. And so in the wake of mass shootings, when the public is most likely to clamor for gun regulations, Republicans regularly shore up gun access instead.”

No matter your position on firearms, there is no point in scolding the opposite side since few if any people are ever convinced to join your side. It is a waste of time and energy. The grownups of America need to find a way to de-normalize violence in general. Guns happen allow a person to commit violence from a safe distance, plainly a reason for their popularity. Obviously, self-defense is a delicate spot, but if committing violence is not nearly viewed as normal by the broader population, the need to for lethal self-defense just might diminish a bit.

American gun culture as I see it is comprised of a spectrum of individuals ranging from violent criminals to paranoid militiamen to peaceful hunters and sport shooting enthusiasts. Criticism of gun culture should not bunch them together under one umbrella. Carefully chosen vocabulary should be used so as not to antagonize the more peaceful side of the spectrum.

When the European frontier was settled by stone age people 40 or 50 thousand years ago, there were no firearms. There were weapons that could only be energized by their personal strength. Fighting was more intimate in the sense that clubbing and jabbing had to be done up close to your adversary. Stoning could be done from a few steps back. Killing wounds led to exsanguination and a rapid death while others led to sepsis and a longer, agonizing death.

The invention and spread of gunpowder starting in 9th century China led to the development of guns, cannons and, eventually, exploding projectiles. It was lost on no one that firearms enabled the projection of lethal force from a safer distance. The first really big war, World War I, in Europe was when advances like the Maxim recoil-operated machine gun and high explosives like picric acid were first put to large scale use. When the Maxim machine gun came out, many predicted that the mere appearance of the weapon would frighten the enemy into submission. Of course, it didn’t work and over the years the result was more and more efficient and mutual slaughter of opposing forces.

Male humans in particular have always been drawn to weapons and the martial arts. There are exceptions obviously, but men seem to take a shine to guns early in their lives. When asked why they like guns, they usually mention something about protection from intruders or perhaps just being a good guy with a gun in general. Often heard is the argument-terminating reminder of the 2nd Amendment and the vow that their guns could be confiscated only from their cold, dead hands.

Some Americans do live their lives in dangerous places. With some training, having a handgun in the nightstand may indeed be necessary for protection. Speaking for myself, I have never lived anywhere that was so burdened with crime that I felt it was necessary to pack a handgun. So, I can’t criticize those who are threatened by crime.

What I can criticize, though, is the broader culture that idolizes the Hollywood image of a good guy (or gal) who resolves conflict with a firearm. We have the screenwriters to thank for this. They dream up the story arc in the screenplay to include some fancy gun play. Death is always immediate and without the off-putting cries of pain and writhing that comes with a serious wound.

Gunplay in European TV programming is much less common. I’ve watched TV police drama series from the UK, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy and Germany. The only significant shooting I’ve seen is in a show from Germany called Luna & Sophie. Surprise, surprise. It turns out that a compelling police drama screenplay can be written without a lot of shooting and gratuitous violence. Or even with none at all. Perhaps it is because guns are not very abundant in the general population in Europe.

An effect of repeated and detailed depictions of gun violence on TV is that it suggests that shooting people is, well, normal. It normalizes the notion that the shooter can be the judge, jury and executioner. Killing someone with a gun also bypasses all of that due process stuff that wastes so much time. We all know that this is a dramatic depiction and that shooting people in real life will have very serious consequences. In my idea of civilization, people would be safe without a firearm. But, this is a fantasy I never expect to see unless I move to Iceland.

Maybe you could say that gunplay on US television mostly depicts good guys with guns defeating bad guys with guns. I’ll agree, that is a positive spin. The problem lies with population distribution within a large group. It often happens that a classroom or a large population will distribute itself unevenly when certain measurable attributes like personality or other performance metrics are considered. It is referred to as the bell curve. In the ideal mathematical sense, there is the standard distribution. Below is an example of a bell-shaped curve of % of members of a population versus age.

What is interesting to note is that as the population increases in size and barring any other influences, you would expect the population of each of the individual age groups to grow in number, though not necessarily in percentage. The point is that as the population grows, so does the subgroup of younger criminals.

Credit: National Institutes of Justice. https://nij.ojp.gov/media/image/2776

So, as the general population increases we can expect the population of criminals to grow as well.

Reality

Clearly, America is in a pickle. Mass shootings have been increasing in number, unlike with most other comparable nations. But with every mass shooting the cries for gun control go unanswered no matter the number of bloody dead children strewn about the floors of American schools. What can be done?

  • Removing guns from citizens or blocking their ownership will not happen. This is completely unworkable and serious people know it. It will only lead to civil war.
  • More laws and tougher sentences for gun-related crimes. This has been done and hasn’t solved the problem.
  • Training teachers to shoot attackers. If you know many teachers, you know this is unworkable.
  • The congress will accomplish absolutely nothing but handwringing.
  • A president can do nothing without the support of the congress. Nothing will happen here.
  • The gun lobby and the National Rifle Association will continue to spew their cold dead hands rhetoric, shouting down voices in favor of even the faintest of gun control remedies, regardless of the bloody mayhem happening.
  • Citizens dedicated to maintaining the status quo with 2nd Amendment hysterics will continue to shout, wave their flags and demand freedom.
  • Republicans will continue to whip up hysteria by lying that gun rights are on the cusp of disappearing.
  • Militiamen will continue to gather in the woods hoping for civil war.

The US has planted itself into a sort of cul-de-sac of violence and extremism in regard to the possession of needlessly powerful weapons and there seems to be no way out. There is no viable political action on the horizon. Instead, let’s forget the damned guns and look elsewhere.

A simple suggestion

In the US we are bathed in violence as entertainment. There were 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the United States in 2020 according to the Centers for Disease Control. That is an average of 124 Americans dying per day from firearm-related injury. These aren’t misfires from gun cleaning.

While multiple factors lead to violent actions, a growing body of literature shows a strong association between the perpetration of violence and exposure to violence in media, digital media, and entertainment.

Credit: American Academy of Family Physicians, https://www.aafp.org/about/policies/all/violence-media-entertainment.html

I’m not sure that viewers are actually asking for all of the entertainment violence that we see- it’s just that if it’s there we’ll eagerly watch it. It resembles click-bait. It is easy to write screenplays with of violence in it. Violence is genuinely exciting to most viewers. Violent content in programming helps to sell projects to those who finance and buy it. It definitely draws eyeballs which sells tickets, subscriptions and advertising. This is a reliable money machine.

What applies to movies also applies to video gaming. Many games are chock-full of violent content where the gamer does the simulated killing personally. I’ve played it myself. It triggers something that compels you to keep killing. But, does that condition you to committing actual violence? Maybe it is an effective release.

Producers and writers of violent content know full well what it takes to kick up the excitement factor. It is formulaic. While they operate under some sort of content guidelines, they are motivated to push it to the edge. The question is, do shoot ’em ups have to be every 4th scene? Are writers unloading their responsibility for compelling content to the stunt coordinators of gun fights and other violence?

What is needed is for screenwriters, producers and directors to back off on the violence a bit. All of the violence on TV comes from the imagination of the writers and producers. Surely it is within their power to throttle back a bit on the shooting, blood and guts. Desecration of human beings as entertainment should have tighter limits.

The goal is a safer and less violent civilization. The people who portray violence in vivid detail and orgasmic revenge produce a commercial product idealizes violence. They should be expected to self-govern better.

A Plea to Filmmakers

Your advertisers know that a certain fraction of viewers are persuaded to buy their products because of advertising within your TV programming. If they are persuaded to buy widgets they probably don’t need, don’t you think that your portrayals of violence might also be effective in negatively influencing impressionable young people? Will half the violence really reduce your profits by half? Does reducing violent content really infringe on your creative freedom? How limited are your creative abilities that you must accurately portray the destruction of human life?

Renewable Electric Power and Grid Inertia

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The Telegraph published an interesting opinion piece on unanticipated problems with increasing dependence on renewable energy sources in the UK. The author was Dr Capell Aris PhD, a former Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology of the UK. The thrust of the article has to do with grid inertia. It turns out that rotating generators have energy stored in heavy rotating turbines that can compensate for short interruptions in the power grid. Wind and solar power generating stations do not have inertia like a steam or gas turbine does at a conventional power plant.

Power generators at Hoover Dam.

A critical parameter that power generating stations must watch is the line frequency. The entire US power grid must be producing 60 Hz power all of the time for stability. The load on a system must be in line with the supply. If the load exceeds what the grid inertia can supply, then overloaded generators will begin to slow with reducing line frequency and voltage. This forces the plant to disconnect neighborhoods on the power grid to bring the frequency and voltage back into line. This is called load shedding. If the plant generator frequency drops outside of specifications, the plant must disconnect. Allowing the generator frequency to stray too far from 60 Hz +/- 1 % can lead to physical damage of power transmission equipment.

Power sources that lack this inertia remove stability from the grid. Solar and wind cannot participate in this stabilizing feature. It’s just physics.

The power outage in Texas on Feb 21, 2021, relates to this in some ways. There is a very informative article by Houston Public Media here which I won’t repeat in detail. The upshot is, due to a winter storm a number of power plants in Texas went off-line, leaving too few plants remaining to service the load on the grid. Oh, yes, somehow Texas has constructed a power grid that is isolated from the rest of the US. It is managed by ERCOT, Electric Reliability Corporation of Texas. So, as power plants dropped out, there were fewer and fewer remaining stations providing inertia to the Texas grid. Plants remaining in operation faced higher loads than they could service and saw reducing line frequency, causing them to gradually blackout certain areas. Operators made a last call for blackouts when the line frequency dipped to 59.3 Hz. More blackouts did the trick. Only after widespread blackouts were they able to achieve a steady state and avoid a total collapse.

Pat Robertson is Dead

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Warning: A large dose of sarcasm is being dispensed.

American media mogul, founder of Regent University and Southern Baptist Preacher-man Pat Robertson has fallen over dead. He was constantly yammering on television and leveraging his Christian nationalist views on conservative US politics to the point where disasters like 9/11 were blamed on spiritual revenge. Yes, big guy upstairs, you know, the one who set the galaxies spinning and knows our every impure thought, is upset with many of us because of our woke political views. The GOP loves the hellfire and brimstone stuff. It naturally attracts a certain caste of voters (MAGA people) who eagerly line up to see God-fearin’ preachers and Republican officials openin’ up a can of whoop-ass on the libs. These are the voters who Republican candidates lust after. Robertson’s apocalyptic theology depended on this.

Are such people retrievable from their trip down the rabbit hole of petty magical mystical thinking? It doesn’t appear so.

Dysprosium Supply

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One shining example of a scarce resource in need of conservation is the Rare Earth Elements (REE) series generally, and Neodymium, Nd, and Dysprosium, Dy, in particular. Nd is described as hard and not very malleable or ductile and Dy is very malleable. Both have a silvery metallic luster and similar chemistries forming +3 cation as the most stable cation. The REEs are often divided in a funny way. There are the Lanthanides which can be further subdivided into two subgroups – the light REEs from Lanthanum to Europium and the heavy REEs from Gadolinium to Lutetium. Of the lanthanides, heavy REE deposits are more scarce, but of the heavy group Dy is the most abundant.

Promethium is highly radioactive Lanthanide with a half-life of 17.7 years for the longest lived isotope, 145Pm. Interestingly, the mode of decay for this isotope is electron capture, sometimes called K-capture. Promethium has only a transitory existence due to its short half-life. The entire group of REEs share the ability to form +3 cations. This increases the difficulty of isolating pure elements from an ore since most ores contain multiple REEs. Worse, the +3 Lanthanides also have similar ionic radii allowing for them to substitute with each other in minerals. Similar ionic radii makes it a bit harder to isolate them.

The other subgroup comprises Scandium and Yttrium- sometimes called the Scandium group. In the periodic table all of the REEs are transition metals in Group 3.

For clarity, the periodic table below shows a yellow vertical column of two elements, Scandium and Yttrium. They are members of the REE group. The yellow row of elements below are the Lanthanide elements. All together they make up the REEs. The Lanthanide elements differ from the other two REEs in that they have f-orbitals with valence electrons.

Chemistry is about what valence electrons do. These are the electrons that interact with the world around the atom or molecule. All electrons in an atom or molecule spend their time in special regions of space called orbitals. Electrons in the outer valence level can be taken away or shared. If there is an empty space in the valence level, electrons can be dropped in. Valence electrons form chemical bonds. These electrons are chemically reactive because they are furthest from the nucleus and feel the least nuclear attraction. But their reactivity mostly disappears if the valence orbitals are full. Inert gases are inert because their valence orbitals are full. It is possible for empty low-lying orbitals to accept electron pairs from other neutral species like H2O, phosphorus compounds, carbon monoxide and the like. Metals can have both negatively charged and neutral species docked in place around a metal cation.

Removing a valence electron from an atom is called oxidation and dropping an electron into the valence level is called reduction.

Rare Earth Elements: Credit- http://www.ncpathinktank.org/rare-earths
This is NOT what an atom looks like. Electrons do not arrange themselves like this. Credit: https://www.chemguide.co.uk/atoms/properties/orbitsorbitals.html

Electrons spend their time in specially shaped regions of space around atoms and molecules called orbitals. We do not need to know where an electron is exactly at any given moment. The orbital shapes define where electrons spend 95 % of their time. Orbitals do not have sharp edges. They taper off into space. The image below is a more realistic representation of where electrons can be found. Orbitals represent regions where there is the largest probability of finding electrons of a certain energy. If you consider a spherical space surrounding an atom, you could say that the probability of finding an electron within is p=1. But due to the peculiar shape of the spaces where electrons spend their time, an electron is more likely to be in the space defined by spherical harmonics. Therefore, any given space within the sphere could be assigned a probability per cubic picometer of containing an electron, depending on its location. Probability per unit of volume can be referred to as probability density. It is the probability density represented by orbitals that is wavelike in quantum mechanics.

It turns out that we can describe the space electrons occupy if we apply the mathematics of a spherical harmonic series. The image below shows 4 levels of the series. The shapes define the space that electrons occupy around an atom. Each row represents a group of individual orbitals. Top to bottom, they are labeled s, p, d and f. The orbitals are filled with electrons theoretically in order from top to bottom rows as you move up the periodic table by atomic number, with each orbital holding as many as 2 electrons. Remember, orbitals are not physical objects. Each of them define a region of space in which one or two electrons spend their time. Also, there is some nuance in the energy levels of the orbitals. No matter though for this post.

Visual representation of a spherical harmonic series starting at the top and progressing down. Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_harmonics

Below is a chart showing atomic orbitals oriented in an xyz coordinate system. Interactions of orbitals between atoms or molecules very much depend on how they are oriented as they contact.

Atomic Orbitals. Credit: https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Oregon_Institute_of_Technology/OIT%3A_CHE_202_-_General_Chemistry_II/Unit_2%3A_Electrons_in_Atoms/2.2%3A_Atomic_Orbitals_and_Quantum_Numbers

The common elements we are most familiar with have s, p and d valence orbitals around the nucleus. As we increase the atomic number of the elements we drop down the rows of orbitals on the periodic table, the valence electrons get further away from the nucleus where they are better shielded by the innermost electrons. The consequence is that the energy needed by the first valence electron to escape becomes smaller.

Neodymium magnetism comes from the 4 unpaired f-electrons with their individual spins aligned in the same direction giving the atom a large magnetic dipole moment. The unit crystal of Nd2Fe14B magnetizes along a preferred crystal axis that is difficult to change. So, the large magnetic dipole moment from the 4 unpaired electrons in each Nd atom in the unit crystal are locked in space.

We live in a time of permanent magnets with extraordinarily high magnetic field strengths. They’re called rare earth magnets and two REEs stand out in particular in this application- Neodymium (Nd) and Dysprosium (Dy). Nd is the primary REE in this type of magnet, but It turns out that up to 6 % of Nd can be replaced with Dy to increase coercivity and increase resistance to demagnetization. This is important for heavy duty magnet applications like windmills and electric cars. It is estimated that replacement of Nd with Dy in REE magnets amounts to ~100 grams of Dy per car. Based on Toyota’s planned output 3.5 million battery operated electric vehicles per year by 2030, the current reserves Dy would soon be exhausted.

Rare earth magnets are generally comprised of 3 elements; Neodymium, Nd; Iron, Fe; and Boron, B, proportioned according to the formula Nd2Fe14B. Dy is an optional component of these magnets.

So, obviously Dy is a highly desirable metal for efficient use of permanent RE magnets. Even among the REEs, Dy is a minor element. There are no known minerals having Dy as the major REE. The crustal abundance of Dy is 0.3 ppm and the recycle rate is <10%. The major reserve holders are China, Russia, and the USA. Incidentally, for some years now China has been disinclined to supply REE ore in favor of value added REE finished goods. This is in contrast to their buying copper ore from Chile or Peru in order to capture lower copper costs by doing their own refining. They know what they are doing.

Plainly, much is yet to be done in regard to putting a recycle loop in place for REEs in products. This is especially true for dysprosium. So, do we wait for the free market to respond when the situation is dire and the bulk of the REEs are already consigned to landfills around the world?

Note: For the sake of keeping the post light and airy, I’ve made some generalizations above. Of course there are exceptions and nuances. There always are.

A Linguist Talks About “Woke”

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Columbia University associate professor of linguistics in the Slavic Department John McWhorter was interviewed August 18, 2021, about the evolution of the word “woke.” It is found on a substack podcast called “Banished” by Amna Khalid with a written transcript. Below is a short reply by McWhorter on the history of “woke.”

JOHN McWHORTER: Well, woke actually goes back further than many people would think. It’s actually first documented in the early 60s and it was a Black slang. What it meant was politically aware of certain realities that operate largely below the surface, but have a determinative effect on, for example, the Black American condition. And so you might think, if you were you or me, that woke is about 10 years old. But actually people were saying it on the Black street long before that. It did not leave the Black street. Then, in roughly the 2000-teens, it jumped the rails and started being used by a certain kind of politically aware white person on the left. And what it meant at first in the general culture was somebody who understands certain basic leftist analysises [sic] of the world. What it really was, was a substitute for a term that had worn out. It replaced politically correct, which, if you’re just old enough now, you can remember was used without irony back in the late 70s and early 80s. And what it meant was that you have a basic understanding of liberal/leftist realities. Then it became PC. PCstarted being used as a slur to ridicule the kind of person who used that kind of ideology as a bludgeon in a smug kind of way. And so you couldn’t say politically correct without making somebody laugh by, say, 2010. 

Source: https://banished.substack.com/p/banished-the-evolution-of-woke#details

Before there was woke, there was “politically correct,” or PC, which was a pejorative used to disparage the liberal’s idea of social equality. PC was used as an occasion to flash sarcastic air quotes to telegraph the senders disdain for liberals. Right wingers love to suggest that liberals are candy-ass in their views. Turns out that liberals value kindness more than some which may actually be candy-assed now and then. But what of it?

“Make America Florida” WTF??

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All around universal genius and gazillionaire Elon Musk will be engaging Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a conversation that will include DeSantis’ announcement of his bid for the US presidency. The DeSantis krewe is obviously trying to distance themselves from #45, but not so much that they can’t poach his voters. They’re embracing capitalist folk hero and boy wonder Elon Musk’s endorsement in hopes of snagging MAGA voters who have grown weary of #45.

The DeSantis campaign has dreamed up the slogan “Make America Florida.” I’m incredulous at hearing this. Outside of Florida, “Florida Man” is a common reference to someone who is maniacal, irrational, delusional or insane. This is because, extrapolating from the news, Florida has an overabundance of them. More likely, there is more reporting of police notes than other places. Is it slander? Of course! It’s American humor unlikely to amuse outside of the US.

Credit: I don’t know, somewhere in the interwebs.

What remains to be seen is whether or not “Make America Florida” will catch on outside of the state. Especially in northern states outside of the old Confederacy. Some think that there is still a north/south divide in the US by some measures. I’ll leave that for others to expound on.

Applying DeSantis’ penchant for belligerent and punitive state politics, his presidency would surely be a setback for US democracy and a step forward for autocracy along the path the GOP is heading for. The GOP model of the US is not a place I’d care to live.

Baptist Hate-Preacher

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A video dropped from the sky showing Christian preacher Jason Graber of the Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Spokane advocating for the execution of the parents of transgender kids by a gunshot to the back of the head. This video is echoing all over the interwebs. It is important to realize that managers who oversee news distribution are duty bound to allow only items that attract the greatest number of eyeballs through the filter. Their job performance is judged on this basis. They curate the news minute-by-minute as it happens.

Graber is a small frog in a very large pond. He and his flock are a small group in Spokane. However, I’m sure that his homophobia and anti-trans speech rhymes with what a great many people believe. You do not have to be explicitly pro-gay or pro-transgender to see that these views are a stage-4 malignancy in our democracy.

However, there is nothing new to this kind of vile speech. This is part of hellfire and brimstone preaching that has been in America since the very beginning. Only today it is amplified and distributed broadly in the Mulligan stew of today’s electronic media. Who would have guessed that the invention of the transistor would lead to this?

Plainly this preacher-man does not represent the views of all Christians. Population attributes are generally distributed as a normal distribution or sometimes called a bell curve with extremes on each side. Let’s say in this case that on the left extreme are those of Christ-like temperament of love and forgiveness and on the right extreme are those of hellfire and brimstone temperament. This character is obviously on the hellfire and brimstone end of the curve. In a normal distribution the population of extreme members is low and the bulk of the members are midrange. The mathematical ideal is sometimes called a Gaussian distribution after the great mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss**.

A normal distribution curve showing population percentages vs deviations from the average (Greek letter mu). Source: Simply Psychology, https://www.simplypsychology.org/normal-distribution.html

Brother Graber is very much on the extreme end of the curve, even for a fundamentalist. But the freakshow he puts on causes much rubbernecking on the great interstate highway of life. It makes him look bigger than he really is. Media rewards extremism with large viewership. Look at #45, the Elephant Man of media. You just can’t take your eyes off him.

One weakness of members of the human distribution is that many are liable to believe that his outrageousness is a measure of the purity of his righteous devotion to God. He is devoted alright. To a bronze-age deity who plays favorites and metes out lethal justice to the infidels. Historically, this kind of deity has always held an appeal to people. It so happens that I am not one of them. Tradition can offer great comfort for many. But it can also be unneeded baggage that bogs you down in the muck of obsolete beliefs. It is the imaginary cosmology of Deities, a theory of the universe that sees angels and demons lurking behind every tree. What’s behind every tree? The backside of the tree of course.

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**My blog name, Gaussling, is in honor of Gauss and in no way is meant to suggest that my mathematical abilities are anywhere near his. Au contraire.

AI

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The historian Niall Ferguson has made some important points recently on the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Ferguson also published a piece online in Bloomberg. His point was built around the idea that AI should be considered an alien intelligence not to automatically be trusted.

[This isn’t Ferguson, this is my own view.] It is important to remember that the AI phenomenon we’re presently experiencing is that it’s the beginning of an economic bubble. It is a commercial product line constructed for the generation of wealth. It is meant to be a stand-in or augmentation for human beings. This contrivance has the potential for exceeding human abilities in a great many applications in both peace and war. AI will have lightning quick access to the world of information on and off the internet. It will produce both intended and unintended consequences, both of which may be considerable.

AI can be taught to be politically agnostic on one extreme, a political demagogue on the other, or something in between. It can be instructed to commit deception and espionage or angelic kindness. It can be instructed to apply Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics or not. Everything depends on the intentions of those in control.

Look around the internet world. It is plagued with troublemakers who are able to escape detection. There is tremendous good available from the internet, obviously, but there are also individuals, criminal enterprises and malevolent governments that are constantly rattling the doorknobs of legitimate websites looking for a way in. Social media has opened up a broad avenue for the efficient delivery of propaganda and swindling to the millions of unwary folk.

AI has a great many applications where it will be of tremendous help to people and organizations. One of the effects of technology advancement is that the time needed for completion of a given task is reduced. Another effect seen since the invention of the wheel is the reduction of labor. Eliminating people from a project reduces costs and increases the concentration of wealth to a few. Understand that cost reductions in business aren’t frequently passed along to consumers. The benefits of cost reductions belong to the stakeholders and will only be directly passed along if absolutely necessary. Cost reductions often manifest as stable pricing over time or a nulling out of inflation, which is a benefit to consumers.

AI will be an honest and moralistic force only if it is instructed to be. Look at the excessively clever application of psychology and show business in advertising. This is a result of fierce competition in the marketplace. Do we really believe that AI will be any different? Given the current state of world affairs, AI will be used as leverage for the transfer of wealth and power from the many to the few. This is the behavior of technological advance.

The promoters of AI will sing its high praises and accuse the doubters of being Luddites. They’ll remind us of the buggy whip and the steam locomotive. In some sense they’ll be right. But our recurring blind spot is with unbridled development. Capitalism as is currently practiced isn’t equipped with much in the way of forward looking moral or existential wariness. It is concerned with the efficient use of capital and distribution of goods. Thoughtful reflection about the future isn’t part of the equation. Greed and desire are the engines of capitalism.

AI will amplify both the best and the worst in us. We must be prepared for the worst because it will come.

Drilling Wastewater Capacity is Running Out in the Permian Basin

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BNN Bloomberg published an article by David Wethe about a crisis building up in the Permian Basin shale-oilfield in west Texas. Drilling is facing the possibility of shutting down unless the new wastewater disposal wells are found. Wastewater is generated at a rate of 16 million barrels per day in the area and is pumped into disposal wells. The water can be up to 10 times saltier than seawater. These wells are seeing increasing backpressure indicating they are nearing capacity. Without disposal well space, oil drilling cannot continue to move forward. Associated with the disposal wells are earthquakes in the region.

From the article-

The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates drilling in the largest US oil state, in December announced cuts to water disposal in certain areas after a 5.4-magnitude quake rocked the region. 

“We are one earthquake away from having a whole different dynamic” in the shale sector, Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright told the Oilfield Water Markets Conference in Fort Worth this week. Drilling will “come to a screeching halt” unless the industry develops “seismic-resilient” disposal techniques or alternative uses for the 16 million barrels (672 million gallons) of wastewater injected underground in the Permian region on a daily basis.

The water-recycling sector only has the capacity to process about 30% of the waste flows for reuse in fracking, Amanda Brock, CEO of Aris Water Solutions, told the conference. 

Credit: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/shale-oil-drillers-are-running-out-of-places-to-dump-toxic-wastewater-1.1922000

Houston-based Oil & Gas producer Apache Corporation was cited by the Texas Comptroller website as an example of applied water conservation.

Credit: https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/2015/october/fracking.php

According to Apache, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can use 340,000 barrels of water per well. In order to conserve water, they treat and reuse water recovered from previous well completions. They also use brackish water from the local Santa Rosa aquifer which they collect in lined containment basins which can be transferred by pipes to other drill sites.

Say what you will about oil & gas companies, but this seems pretty progressive to me. The financial pressures on exploration and drilling people is immense. Compounding it is the highly volatile oil & gas market adding to the risk. It is no wonder that opening a new oil field is called a “play.”

Somehow Apache found the motivation and the funds to conserve water in an industry not known for progressive actions like this. The scheme does not seem technically difficult at first blush. It does, however, require up-from money to be allocated to the recycling infrastructure. Should the day come when recycling of water becomes mandatory, Apache will be in a good spot.

Credit: https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/2015/october/fracking.php

Hydraulic fracturing is a very contentious subject. Proponents cite the urgent need for oil & gas energy in the economy. This is meant to justify what environmental damage may come from it with their chosen practices. Opponents cite the adverse effects of leakage of both fracking fluid and produced water to potable groundwater. A pathway for drilling fluid migration also opens a pathway for oil & gas seepage as well. One EPA draft-document from 2011 is available for scrutiny. It is in regard to fracking activity in the Marcellus Shale area of Pennsylvania.

It is interesting to note that Radium-226 was identified in the water samples. Ra-226 is the most stable decay of the radium isotopes (alpha decay, half-life 1600 years) and derives from the uranium-238 decay chain. Ra-226 alpha decays to radon-222 (alpha, half life 3.8 days) followed by numerous alpha and beta decays to Lead-206 which is stable.

Drilling muds are highly engineered fluids that have very specific properties. They must have closely controlled density and rheology in order to perform properly. Returning drilling mud is stripped of drilling chips and sent back down the hole for recycling. Managing your drilling mud is an important part of the art and science of drilling for oil. I am unaware of the significance of ground contamination by drilling mud.

Online you can find a long list of substances used in hydraulic fracturing. There is a large variety of formulated commercial products, possibly containing multiple chemicals, that are used in fracking fluids in the US. Determining the actual chemical hazards at any given fracking site will require knowledge of what they are using. Safety Data Sheets may or may not be helpful in uncovering the chemical composition of a fluid. The hazards associated with fracking fluids naturally depends on the identities of the chemicals present, the amount of chemical and the way it is presented in the environment. Dose makes the poison as Paracelsus said in 1538.

Note to the wise: If you plan on raising a stink about “chemicals” in the local fracking activities, try to find out what chemicals are being used. Chemicals can vary widely in their toxic potency and health effects. Be armed with specific information to the extent possible. If you stand there angrily gibbering on about “chemicals” it will be seen as loudmouthed histrionics. Hand waving arguments can be brushed off with handwaving dismissal. If you can talk about specific chemicals, then you can bring the issue into a sharper focus and demand facts.

Dow Goes Nuclear

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It has been announced that Dow and X-Energy will be building a nuclear power plant to feed Dow’s 4700 acre Seadrift, TX, manufacturing facility. The plant will be comprised of a 4 pack of Xe-100 80 Megawatt (electric) High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) pebble bed reactors. The reactors are spec’d to each produce 200 MW thermal and 80 MW electric. The design is referred to as a small modular reactor facility and is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP).

According to Wikipedia, the history of pebble bed reactor operation is checkered by design and operational problems, many of which relate to the tennis ball sized graphite pebbles themselves. During operation of the pebble bed, radioactive graphite dust is generated leading to eventual contamination problems. Pebbles getting stuck within the equipment are difficult to dislodge and can lead to fracturing in doing so. The reactor needs fire protection because the hot pebbles are combustible when exposed to air.

The HTGR pebble bed design has many features that are very positive. The spaces between the pebbles duct the cooling gas, avoiding the need for coolant piping in the reactor. The absence of water prevents the formation of hydrogen by neutron collisions with the water. Hydrogen generated in a reactor will migrate into metal components and cause embrittlement leading to possible component failure. Overall, the design of a HTGR pebble bed reactor is considered to be much less complex than a water moderated reactor due to the lack of an elaborate water cooling system.

Despite the happy talk about their technology the maker of the system, X-Energy, will have to show how past problems with the pebble bed design have been overcome. Their website gives no clues about overcoming problems encountered in the past. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a tough crowd and both Dow and X-Energy will have to provide a strong case for safe operation.

I wish them success.