More obscene behavior in Washington

I would normally object to posting of obscene material to this blog, but this hit me emotionally today in a way that I felt compelled to say something about. And for those of you who think that “obscene” is not the right word for this, I would agree only to the extent that “obscene” is not really a strong enough word.

What am I talking about? At one of the early presidential debates, Joe Biden repeated some folk wisdom his father told him. He roughly said “Don’t tell me what you claim your values are, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what your real values are”.

The new U.S. military spending proposal for Fiscal Year 2008 for the "regular" military budget, is $499 billion. This does not include the costs of the current occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. A proposed supplemental appropriation to pay for these adds $141.7 billion bringing the total to $647.2 billion. Note that this does not include debt payment for past wars, military pensions, Veterans benefits, etc.

In years past, the U.S. military budget was greater than the military budgets of all our potential enemies combined. The new proposed U.S. military spending for FY 2008 is now larger than military spending by ALL of the other nations in the world combined.

This spending spree comes at a time when America's main enemy is not a rival superpower like the Soviet Union, but a network of terrorist groups. Yet the budget includes items like the SSN-774 Virginia attack submarine ($2.7 billion), the Trident D-5 Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile ($1.2 billion), and Ballistic Missile Defense ($10.8 billion).

The FY 2008 military budget proposal is more than 30 times higher than all spending on State Department operations and non-military foreign aid combined.

The FY 2008 military budget is over 120 times higher than the U.S. government spends on combating global warming.

The military spending is more than the combined totals of spending on education, environmental protection, administration of justice, veteran's benefits, housing assistance, transportation, job training, agriculture, energy, and economic development.

As the poverty rate continues to climb, the FY 2008 budget proposes cuts of $13 billion in non-military related discretionary spending, including cuts of $1.4 billion from the Community Development Block Grant; $436 million from Head Start; $1.1 billion from the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program; $669 million from Special Education; and $111 million from the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

For full details on this, see:

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0210-26.htm

I'm at a loss for words at the moment. The only one that comes to mind in "obscene", or possibly a gut wrenching primal scream. History shows that the greater an empire overextends itself, the greater the crash will be when it falls. I see no evidence that we are willing to start pulling back yet, or that there is even an acknowledgement that we are seriously overextended. Special interest groups seem to have ever increasing control over our budget process.

Mike Ignatowski

Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century

The National Academy of Engineering sponsored a study to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century. Now their conclusions are revealed on this Web site: http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/default.aspx

A list of them is included below. At first glance, they seem to be very close to the mark. The only change I can think of after an initial read is to perhaps expand “Prevent Nuclear Terror” to “Prevent Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Terror”. One of the biggest parts of that is the ability to quickly and easily detect chemical and biological agents in the environment.

This list of grand challenges for engineering is such a fascinating topic that it certainly deserves more study, and more posts in the very near future. More later…

The Great Challenges

1. Make solar energy economical
   
2. Provide energy from fusion
   
3. Develop carbon sequestration methods
   
4. Manage the nitrogen cycle
   
5. Provide access to clean water
   
6. Restore and improve urban infrastructure
   
7. Advance health informatics
   
8. Engineer better medicines
   
9. Reverse-engineer the brain
   
10. Prevent nuclear terror
    
11. Secure cyberspace
    
12. Enhance virtual reality
    
13. Advance personalized learning
    
14. Engineer the tools of scientific discovery
    

Sustainability - the common thread among voter's priorities

We had a great informal discussion among friends recently to discuss our thoughts on the upcoming super Tuesday primaries. We started out by going around the room and letting each person talk about what issues were most important to them. This is a great way to proceed by the way, since talking about issues avoids anyone pushing someone's hot button by insulting their favorite candidate.

People brought up a wide variety of the regular issues, but I noticed one common theme as I listened to them - and that was sustainability. Although they didn't use that word, what people really seemed to consider important was to have a sustainable environment, a sustainable energy policy, a sustainable economy, a sustainable health care system, and a sustainable foreign policy. In each case I listed above, our current system is nowhere near being sustainable. For some cases in particular including our economy and energy policy, things are beginning to fall apart as I write. Sustainability is not a key word on the campaign trail this season, but it's a key aspect of what our priorities really are.

By the way, in the straw poll at the end of the discussion the overwhelming winner was Dennis Kucinich. When we restricted votes to the candidates still in the campaign, the clear winner was Obama.

Regulating Power Usage in the Very Near Future

An article in the NY Times on Jan 11th talked about a proposal in California that would allow state regulators to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, changing the temperature settings through a radio signal in all new of substantially modified houses and buildings. This would allow them to reduce the electricity demands during peak periods if it was necessary to avoid rolling blackouts. Customers could override the utilities' suggested temperature settings, but in emergencies the utilities could override the customers' wishes. The proposal is expected to be approved next month.

As you might expect, there has been a strong negative reaction to this. "Shades of 1984" was a common theme, thought the novel "1984" was mainly about thought control, not temperature control. Much of the negative reaction was predictable and understandable. It is troublesome to see aspects of denial of the power problem in some of the attitudes though. The situation is serious, and is likely to get worse each coming year. Some sort of change in the way people use electrical power is absolutely required, one way or another.

A compromise that is much more acceptable to most people is surely possible. It is likely to take both a carrot and stick approach. The carrot - significant discounts to people who voluntarily sign up for such control in emergencies. This could apply to old as well as new houses. The stick - a substantial increase in the price of electricity during critical peak periods for people who do not participate. The stick may have to be substantial, perhaps a 10x increase in the price of electricity during those peak periods. If rolling blackouts still do happen, there will be a tendency to blame those not participating with the program, generating strong social pressure for people to behave responsibly and voluntarily accept the carrot part of the deal.

Yes, this is not the way things worked as we were growing up. But yes, it is something we can and will get used to.

The Economic Legacy of the Last 7 Years

Sorry if the following post is a bit of a downer, but after listening to the Republican debate recently, I'm convinced that many of us are living in deep denial.

If you're interested in lower taxes, you should also be interested in the "tax burden". In reality we eventually have to pay, one way or another, for whatever our government spends. This is our long term "tax burden". If you think that by keeping our current taxes low you somehow reduce our overall tax burden then you're just fooling yourself. In reality we're just shifting around our payment schedule. We still have to pay for whatever our government spends. If we don't do it now, then we'll also have to pay for all the interest on the debt we're running up. The claims that the Bush administration has been keeping our taxes low is extremely disingenuous. In reality, our tax burden has sky rocketed during the last several years because of a lack of responsibility by both the President and our Congress.

To quote the conservative columnists Andrew Sullivan:

The proud irresponsibility is the most striking thing - the obliviousness to the future, to the debt the next generation will carry, to the huge increase in the power of government over people's lives that Bush has engineered. Joe Stiglitz is surely right: The economic effects of Bush's presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America's being displaced from its position as the world's richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.

Got that? OK. But now it gets worse...

Beyond the tax burden of paying for what we have already spent, there is the "fiscal exposure" of paying for what we have committed to spend in the future on such things as medicare, social security, benefits to wounded solders, etc. This is where things get really scary.

Now quoting David M. Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO: (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan for this quote)

"If the federal government was a private corporation and the same report came out this morning, our stock would be dropping and there would be talk about whether the company's management and directors needed a major shake-up."

"The federal government's fiscal exposures totaled approximately $53 trillion as of September 30, 2007, up more than $2 trillion from September 30, 2006, and an increase of more than $32 trillion from about $20 trillion as of September 30, 2000... This translates into a current burden of about $175,000 per American or approximately $455,000 per American household."

There you go folks, the economic legacy of the policies followed by the last 7 years of our national government is an additional bill for $32 trillion. As the main source of income for my family of four, my personal share of that bill is $455,000. When Alan Greenspan retired from the Federal Reserve, he lamented at the lack of willingness of our political leaders to address the coming tsunami. For all practical purposes, we are as a nation technically bankrupt and living in denial about it.

10th Anniversary of Blogging

There was a short piece this morning on NPR radio celebrating the 10th anniversary of blogging. The series will continue all week. Ten years ago the term weblog was first coined, which was shortened into blog. It is estimated that there are now about 100 million active blogs, with another 100,000 added per day. There are also an estimated 200 million blogs that have been started and abandoned by users that experimented with them for a while.

This is an excellent example of the increased rate of change now happening. Ten years ago people only a very small portion of people knew what the term blog meant. In one short decade it has become a pervasive aspect of our society, along with its other variations of user generated content sites. Who could have predicted the arrival of MySpace, FaceBook, or Youtube ten years ago? Or that the US Senate would change hands because of a Macaca moment?

It's very hard to predict what the next ten years will bring in this area, since the rate of change keeps increasing. Two thoughts on its general characteristics though:

1) There will be more personal information being made available by people on the web. This will not trigger the fear of loss of privacy that you might expect, because it will be information that is controlled by the individual.

2) There will be a growth in the ability to establish one's reputation, or check on people's reputation. This is an absolutely vital part of the functioning of humankind's off-line society, and is desperately needed as part of the on-line society in order to sort through the unlimited amount of content available on the web.

By the way, the most popular blog in the world? It is run by Xu Jinglei in China according to a Wikipedia entry. Yet another sign of the times.

Positive Trends on the Death Penalty

One of the clear future trends that leaves me with an optimistic view that civilization is slowly but surely advancing and leaving its more barbaric past behind is the gradual abolition of the death penalty around the world. This is the news from the NY Times yesterday:

The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday for a global moratorium on the death penalty. The resolution was nonbinding; its symbolic weight made barely a ripple in the news ocean of the United States, where governments’ right to kill a killer is enshrined in law and custom. But for those who have been trying to move the world away from lethal revenge as government policy, this was a milestone. The resolution failed repeatedly in the 1990s, but this time the vote was 104 to 54, with 29 nations abstaining. Progress has come in Europe and Africa. Nations like Senegal, Burundi, Gabon — even Rwanda, shamed by genocide — have decided to reject the death penalty, as official barbarism.

Wow, 104 to 54 - that's a rather lopsided victory after a long string of past defeats. Of course, the news was not entirely positive. Some nations still have a way to go.

The United States, as usual, lined up on the other side, with Iran, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Iraq.

But we'll get there. The state of New Jersey just set a fine example and outlawed the death penalty in their state. Other states will follow in the coming years. Thanks to Senegal, Burundi, Gabon, and Rwanda for also setting fine examples that the United States can someday aspire to follow. It's just sad that we no longer find our country in a leadership position on so many important trends.

Science Debate 2008

One of the most interesting presidential debates I can think of, and in many ways one of the most telling and important, would be one devoted to science. It's very clear that scientific issues will be in the forefront of the topics the next president will have to deal with. That's why I was glad to sign up as a supporter of the Science Debate 2008 movement. To quote from their website:

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.

I can't imagine a more interesting and unpredictable presidential debate.

The Future of Technology roundable at the Philoctetes Center

I had the pleasure of attending a roundtable discussion on “The Future of Technology” at the Philoctetes Center in NY City this weekend. It was not a comprehensive overview of technology issues, but there were some thought provoking discussions. Here is a summary of some things I found interesting:

PlayStation-3 is essentially a supercomputer in a box. We will soon have a supercomputer in a packet, coupled with pervasive access to everything from everywhere. We will be able to set up real time video monitors that call for help when an elderly person falls, or when someone in a pool seems to be drowning.

Another development is that everything about you will become more available to everyone. You will become more of a public persona, no longer the private individual the way you used to know it. One of the great urges of culture is to spread your virtual genes around, your name, thoughts, opinions, memes… This is already happening with FaceBook and MySpace. This is not generating a fear of the loss of privacy because the key aspect of these is that people have control over what information about themselves is made available.

Internet culture is a form of an extended childhood for adults. It goes back to the very early childhood phase dominated by fantasy and imagination, before the discovery of limits.

The human social contract was discussed in detail as something that can trump and control the exploitation of new technology. Unfortunately the social contract is not evolving fast enough to always keep up with changing technology. It is often difficult to figure out how to apply social norms (and formal laws) to new technology. They are adopting though. An example was given about a fraud suite pending in court for something that happened in the 2nd Life virtual world. This was viewed as something completely natural and reasonable by the panel. Another example of a development that the social contract will have trouble adjusting to - in 20-30 years it will become standard to know your genome and understand much about it.

Some aspects of technology use bring out the good and bad in people. Blog comments tend to bring out the worse in many people, for example. 50% of them seem to be just cruel personal attacks. The important thing in controlling poor behavior, and in judging the value of content, is the idea of “reputation”. We need a better way to establish and communicate online reputations. Anything with anonymous sources tends to be problematic.

While many of the poor behavior discussed has its roots outside of the online technology, the internet has lowered the barrier to creating fraud and deception on a massive scale.

Our physical metabolism craves sugar and fats, but you can get sick when you have an unlimited supply available and you don’t learn to restrict yourself. In the same way, our mental metabolism seems to have certain cravings that can be supplied in unlimited amounts online or in electronic games, and we can become psychologically sick when we don’t restrict our consumption of these. Additionally, the fact that you can tailor you online world to feed your phobias and prejudices is creating additional problems.

George Mitchell's Report and Denial About Professional Sports

So George Mitchell’s report on steroid use came out a few days ago. Is anyone really surprised that it concluded that steroid use was fairly pervasive in professional baseball? Some people were calling this report a major step forward in the effort to end the problem of steroid use. I think these people are living in denial. The report also stated that hundreds of thousands of high school athletes are now using steroids. There’s no way that we’re on the road to ending the problems with drug enhanced athletics, nor do I think we ever can be. If you somehow eliminate steroids, the race will be on to find a better replacement. Indeed, such efforts have been ongoing for years already. It’s an arms race where the offense (new drug manufactures) will always have the major advantage.

This is an example of a much large issue – advancements in technology tend to make old business models obsolete. The old businesses struggle to maintain their old way of making profits by increase rules and regulations. The music recording industry is a fine example of this. Technology has made their business model of the $15 music CD obsolete. In a recent legal argument, the recording industry made the incredible claim that taking a CD that you bought and own, and making a backup copy of it on your computer was an illegal act of theft. They can apparently do just fine by selling recordings of songs online for 99 cents, but their struggle to maintain their old business model has reached the level of absurdity now.

So getting back to sports. Any professional sport where strength, speed, or endurance plays a dominant factor is facing an increasingly obsolete business model due to the increasing dominance of performance enhancing drugs. Sorry to say it, but the days of professional sports as we knew them are coming to a close.

There were many people expressing strong emotional disappointment at the number of players listed in Mitchell’s report as having used performance enhancing drugs. “People looked up to these athletes as heroes and role models”. Actually, that is perhaps the much bigger problem that we have to come to grips with. The unhealthy obsession with professional sports in our society is leaving people in denial about the true nature of the business and the people engaged in it.

Peak Oil and this year's heating bills

Al Gore recently gave a moving speech when he accepted the Nobel prize that was very worthy of the occasion (click here to read a transcript). While I believe that climate change is ultimately the chief moral challange for our generation, I have commented in previous posts that the peak oil phenomena will likely superseed it in the public's mind in a few years.

Well, that may actually happen this winter. I just paid for my first fuel oil tank fill-up for the winter here in the north-east part of the country - almost $900, ouch! These fuel oil costs are going to hit many people like a 2x4 across the forehead. For some unfortunate families, it will be hitting them about the same time that a substantial increases in their mortgage payments happen. Energy conservation will be pushed to the forefront of public concern. The bright side of this is that whatever the motivation, this will drive energy conservation measures that will reduce our overall carbon footprint.

Many people who criticise any attempt at responding to climate change often claim that the cost are unaffordable. In reality, most of the important first steps actually result in a net economic benefit. This will become painfully clear this winter as people are forced to deal with the escaliting heating bills. And hopefully people will realize that this is not a one year phenomena. It is the only one step near the beginning of the long term trend.

The question of extraterrestrial life - It may be resolved sooner than you think

One of the important questions that we will almost certainly answer this century, one way or another, is the question about the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. Actually, we might answer that in the next 10 months or so.

It turns out that there is a tremendous amount of life existing below the surface of the Earth. By some estimates the total mass of living organisms below the surface is as much if not more of the total mass of living organisms above the surface. When you look at another planet such as Mars where the surface conditions are rather harsh, many scientists believe that life is much more likely to exist below the surface of Mars than on its surface. This would also be consistent with surface life developing during a milder Mars climate billions of years ago, then spreading underground and surviving there as much of the Martian atmosphere slowly leaked away into space over the course of billions of years.

If everything goes as planed, in about ten months the most advanced generation yet of spacecraft will land on Mars to look for life. NASA's Phoenix Mission will land on the northern plains and dig three-feet into the soil and ice looking for evidence of microbial life. Should it find any, and some experts think it is likely, then a tremendous set of questions open up. Could this Martian life have come from Earth, or visa-versa? We know that meteor impacts on each planet occasionally jettison rocks into space that eventually crash into the other planet. Or is it based on a chemistry that is total different from any life on Earth? Either way, the discovery of the first extraterrestrial life will put us at the dawn of a major new scientific journey that will eventually tell us much more about our place in the grand scheme of things in the universe.

For an interesting discussion of this topic and its possible consequences, check out this article on Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos Revisited

The Rise of Large Private Armies - Part 2

I intended to post more optimistic views, but I received some comments on my previous post on the rise of large private armies and first wanted to follow up on that. We should all be aware that the legal rules have been set in place to establish marshal law when then next major terrorist attack or natural disaster occurs (are you living in denial about this?). If you want to know what marshal law would be like, just consider the situation where our normal civil liberties already don't apply and security is considered paramount. I'm talking about customs at large airports. A growing number of reports have documented almost unbelievably harsh treatment from the security personal hired to do this work. For example, consider the case of some big-name Finnish musicians traveling to Minnesota for a music tour. One is allegedly the "Bruce Springsteen" of Finland. They've done nothing wrong. But this is what they get at the airport according to a report posted by Andrew Sullivan:

Immigration agents at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport subjected them to more than two hours of interrogation that the musicians considered so harsh and demeaning that they filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki.

"It was almost three hours of screaming, door-slamming and accusations, according to the report I received," said Marianne Wargelin, honorary Finnish consul for the Dakotas and most of Minnesota, which has the second largest Finnish-American population in the nation...

"They threatened us with severe punishments if we talk to each other," according to the complaint signed by musicians Ninni Poijärvi and Mika Kuokkanen, "Through the walls, I can hear officers yelling, screaming. They ask about the purpose of our trip -- except we are only allowed to give yes-or-no answers. I try to talk about our plans to meet with Finnish-American folk musicians. Nobody listens. They interrupt me constantly and they yell, 'You are a liar!"'

It's no wonder that American has earned the reputation of one of the most unfriendly places to visit by foreign travelers. Tourist and business travel are down sharply, as Fareed Zakaria discussed in a recent Newsweek article. This should be very disturbing and somewhat scary. This is not the America I grew up in! But Americans have a long history for not putting up with this type of outrageous behavior for long. I thank both Andrew Sullivan and Fareed Zakaria for publicising this matter while it's still easy to do something about it before it spreads during moments of fear.

Barry Bonds Indictment - more of a beginning than an end

On the News Hour last evening, Brooks and Shields were discussing the recent indictment of Barry Bonds for lying to a Congressional committee about his steroid use. One of the commentators, David Brooks, said "it will lead to the end of the steroid era [in baseball]". Ha, I thought, that couldn't be further from the truth. As I've said before, the increasing and pervasive use of performance enhancing drugs will bring an end to professional and Olympic sports as we know them today. Barry Bonds is just the beginning. The lesson other athletes have learned is that performance enhancing drugs can produce major benefits, but you just need do it in a way that won't be caught.

The tour de France bicycle race has been plagued by doping scandals for many years. The 2006 winner Floyd Landis was found guilty of doping and was stripped of his title. This year (2007) rider Alexander Vinokourov tested positive for blood doping after winning one of the time trials and was disqualified. And Michael Rasmussen of Denmark, who was leading the race at the time, was removed from the race for missing random drug tests.

In the most recent of a long list of Olympic doping scandals, sprinter Marion Jones admitted to the use of banned drugs and voluntarily returned her gold medals from the 2000 Sydney Olympics ( showing some integrity on her part). Normally those gold medals would now be awarded to the 2nd place finisher. But to illustrate just how bad things have become, the International Olympic Committee is considering the unusual step of leaving the gold medal for the 200m sprint unawarded to anyone. It turns out that the 2nd place finisher, Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou was caught up in a doping scandal at the 2004 Athens Games.

The performance benefits are so great that people are risking their entire careers by using these drugs. And as new designer drugs are becoming available that are much harder to detect, I'm afraid that it will become almost impossible for an athlete to remain competitive at the highest levels without taking them. And we are only a decade or so away from the introduction of genetically modified athletes.

The Rise of Large Private Armies

I recently listened to a very disturbing discussion on NPR radio about the growth of the private security forces being used in Iraq. The interview was with Jeremy Scahill, author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. This is partly a story about Blackwater, but it goes well beyond that.

There are now over 40,000 private security forces in Iraq, over 180,000 if you include people hired by the U.S. to do non-security work (cooking, cleaning...). That's more than the total number of military troops we have there. Blackwater is providing security for all our diplomats and top military officials. Even General Petraeus has become dependent on Blackwater to provide his own personal security. But Iraq is just the beginning. There are plans to pay these private security forces in the "drug wars" in South America, and Blackwater is lobbying to get the contract to guard the boarder with Mexico. The amount of money they stand to receive from these contracts is substantially more than the billions they're currently getting paid for the work in Iraq.

Blackwater, the largest and most infamous of these private security forces, has been in the news recently for its excessive use of force and careless killing of civilians in Iraq. It has really become a private "army for hire", with enough capability to take on the militaries of some small countries already. And they're growing considerably in size, fire power, intelligence gathering capabilities, and influence. . While they are currently being hired mainly by the U.S. government, in principle they could be hired by any government or corporation with enough money and the motivation. These companies have no oversight by the U.S. military or apparently any other U.S. laws when operating overseas. Unlike the U.S. military, they're not subject to control by an elected official, international treaties (such as the Geneva Conventions), or often even by a board of directors. Blackwater is a privately-held company and does not publish much information about internal affairs.

But the most troubling possibility is that they can become an "army for hire" for use within the U.S. boarders. There are many legal restrictions about deploying the U.S. military again U.S. citizens on American soil. These restrictions do not apply for private security firms. Black water was already hired to provide security in several states after hurricane Katrina - a dry run for future projects. Imagine a future president that decided to hire Blackwater to provide security for all Federal property during a major protest demonstration in Washington D.C. that over 100,000 people were expected to attend. Imagine if these security operations included gathering intelligence on all the groups that were potentially involved. And imagine if the orders were given to break up the demonstration because of some perceived danger after it started? If this doesn't frighten you, then you probably don't fully appreciate what could happen. (Of course people who consider "obedience and respect for authority" to be among their most valued moral principles may find this scenario appealing.)

You may think that we can control and rein in such private security firms if they get too out of control at some point, so why worry now? But this may be next to impossible once they get too large with too much political influence and the money to buy even more, plus more extensive intelligence capabilities to collect damaging info on any perceived opponent, and once they start to be considered indispensable because of the security they are providing for top government officials. They are already considered indispensable to our oversees military and diplomatic operations.

An economic market has some great features, but there are some situations where it does not work at all. One of these is privatizing our military and intelligence operations. A key component of any sovereign government is a monopoly on the use of force and violence within its boarders, and for very good reasons. If private individuals or companies are able to assemble (or hire) their own military and intelligence forces with enough capabilities to rival those of small countries, we will enter a dangerous new era that will undoubtedly have many painful lessons to teach us. This is one dark side of future possibilities that is not getting nearly the attention it deserves.

The Future Has Just Arrived

The Peak Oil phenomena has been predicted for a while now, and is expected to mark a major turning point in the history of our industrial society. Well, according to a new report just released by the German-based Energy Watch Group, Peak Oil has already occurred - in 2006. World oil production will begin to fall from this point on for the rest of humankind's existence on this planet. And the fall in production is expected to be a rather rapid 7% a year. This report is more pessimistic than others because it relies on actual production numbers, rather than estimates of the oil in left in the ground (which can be inflated for political and business reasons). Meanwhile, the demand for oil will attempt to keep rising as China and India grow their consumption rates. This report is certainly consist ant with the price of oil reaching a new peak of over $90 a barrel last week.

In addition to this news, the effects of climate change are hitting earlier than expected in the United States. Massive wild fires are devastating parts of southern California and severe draught conditions are causing major problems with Atlanta. Recent measurements of the Artic sea ice shows that it has been melting much faster than even the worst case predictions.

Add to that the chain of major economic instabilities now hitting the market in the technically bankrupt U.S. economy (see my post on Sept 2nd) .

People have been talking about these future problems for a while now. Well, it's official, the future is now here. Prepare for an increasingly exciting ride from now on.

Meanwhile, the Democrats in Congress seem to be unable to rally enough support and determination to make any major progress or for the most part provide any compelling vision. And the Republican presidential candidates are just arguing about who is the most conservative.

Will You Marry a Robot?

I couldn't pass up commenting on this article by Roland Piquepaille. It seems that David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher, will publish a book in November titled “Love and Sex with Robots.” Levy claims that within a few decades, we will be able to produce robots that are so human like in their appearance, functionality, and in their expression of human-like emotions, that many people will be falling in love with them, having sex with them, and even marrying them.

I suspect that people will consider this possibility either very interesting, very disturbing, or both. Is it realistic? People do have a strong tendency to mistakenly project humans qualities into non-human things and develop emotional attachments to them. Consider how common it is for people to treat pets as if they were cute little human children. Admittedly pets are emotional beings that people can develop relationships with, but all too often people mistakenly project too many human characteristics on them. It seems like a natural tendency we have.

People claim they "fall in love with their cars" all the time. (Personally, I have enough trouble developing relationships with humans. I never understood how people can develop strong emotional attachments to a hunk of rusting metal that you will discard in a few years, but I digress...) I think it's only a matter of time before people develop emotional attachments to computer controlled mobile objects (i.e. robots). Sexual activity with them could happen well before this. The market for this is potentially huge.

Is this a good or bad thing for society? I've heard that there is a declining trend in some Muslim communities for men to marry. They instead "marry their television", which is a slang expression for turning their attention to the newly available porn available on satellite TVs. This also suggest that adult version of online virtual reality ( "2nd Life", or other big multiplayer games) is a huge market just waiting to be tapped. The potential for addiction is great here, and the impact on the ability to develop relations with real humans is something to be concerned about.

So computer related sex - yes, it will continue to evolve and become more sophisticated than today's online porn. Computer marriage? No. Marriage is a different type of thing. It is a commitment on a deeper emotional level between humans with all their idiosyncrasies and faults. It is a commitment to share finances, goals, emotional support, sacrifices, physical support in case of accident or illness, and to grow old together. This is not the relationship you have with non-human things. I'm not sure I want to sacrifice to meet my robot's needs, which is a fundamental aspect of marriage. I expect the preferred relationship with robots will be more like a friendly servant - potentially one with "side" benefits.

Nobel Prize and Climate Change

I couldn't be more pleased that Al Gore was just awarded the Nobel Peace prize this year. President Bush, for all his faults, had the decency to say that he was pleased that Gore had won the award. That was more than can be said for some other right wing commentators with less integrity and class who appear to still view this as an ideological struggle. Such politically motivated denial will go down as a sad chapter when the future history text books write about this time.

Global climate change will continue to grow as one of the key issues facing humankind in the coming decades. It's not a political or ideological issue, at least it shouldn't be. The scientific support for this is overwhelming and continues to grow each year. Yes there is some uncertainty, but remember that uncertainty cuts both ways. The official projections from the IPCC panel tries to project a middle ground. That means there is a 50% chance that the results will be worse than these projections.

A recent posting at the Daily KOS does a good job of reminding everyone of this, and points out that the most recent data on decreases in sea ice in the Artic is actually showing changes much more severe than the best official predicted changes. So yes, in this aspect of climate change the data clearly shows the best scientific projections were wrong. They were much too opptimistic.

Pope to make climate action a moral obligation

Many aspects of the climate change issue cannot be handled well by traditional market forces and politics. The people effected most are 1) people in poor countries, and 2) future generations, neither of whom have any market impact for the next quarter, or vote in current U.S. elections. Thus it's important to see other organizations, and in particular religions stepping up to the plate on this.

When Benedict XVI was first elected to his position as the new Pope, there was a concern that he would turn the Catholic Church in a very conservative direction. The fact that the announcement below is coming from what most people view as a very conservative Pope makes it all the more surprising and important as a milestone in the changing views on sustainable development and climate change.

The Pope is expected to use his first address to the United Nations to deliver a powerful warning over climate change in a move to adopt protection of the environment as a "moral" cause for the Catholic Church and its billion-strong following. The New York speech is likely to contain an appeal for sustainable development, and it will follow an unprecedented Encyclical (a message to the wider church) on the subject... It will act as the centerpiece of a US visit scheduled for next April.... and round off an environmental blitz at the Vatican, in which the Pope has personally led moves to emphasize green issues based on the belief that climate change is affecting the poorest people on the planet, and the principle that believers have a duty to "protect creation".

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in the UK, said last night: "This is a crucial issue both today and for all future generations. We are the stewards of creation and we need to take that responsibility seriously and co-operate to care for the created world."

A Papal tour of America will be particularly potent during election year in
the US, where Catholics number around 73 million [emphasis added]

( from http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2987811.ece )

An Insightful Bush Quote

In his nationally televised speech this week, President Bush actually said something very insightful.

"In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people. We are now at such a moment."

I couldn't agree more. However, I suspect that he an I interpret this in different ways. We are now in a period where we have to make a fundamental choice about our future direction. Do we want to continue with the policies of attempting to establish military domination over the world? Or do we want to change to a policy of investing considerable effort into building a peaceful, cooperative world community? Depending on which road we decide to take, our future will be very different. This fundamental choice will reveal much about our character as a people. I only wish the politicians, news organizations, and religious leaders would talk more about it.

One of my favorite groups that are talking about it are the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and their promotion of a Global Marshal Plan. The other group is based around the Great Turning initiatives of David Korten and Joanna Macy. More on these later.

A Bankrupt Nation?

I didn't intend for this to be a purely negative blog, but since I'm on the subject of the collapsing American Empire, I couldn't resist comment on the recent article by Robert Freeman titled The Frightening Future in the Market Meltdown . He makes the following points:

• When Ronald Reagan took office, in 1981, the cumulative national debt stood at $1 trillion. Today, it approaches $9 trillion
• In 1975, personal household debt amounted to only 61% of disposable income. Today it stands at over 135%.
• Consumers have expanded mortgage debt by over $11 trillion since 2001, using mortgage equity withdrawals to purchase life styles far beyond what their incomes alone could support.
• The annual trade deficit that stood at $377 billion in 2000 now exceeds $800 billion.
• Over the past six years, this trade deficit has added a cumulative $3 trillion of debt to the economy.
• Adding up the national debt, consumer debt, and trade debt gives an increase in debt over the past six years comes to $17 trillion. (Note that any economy that borrows $17 trillion in six years can be made to look good, at least for a while. The problem is when the bills come due. )
• Lawrence Kotlikoff, writing for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revealed last year that the U.S. actually faces $65 trillion in “unfunded liabilities,” debts it has committed to pay but for which there is no identified source of funding.

Here's a definition (from Wikipedia)

Bankruptcy - a legally declared inability or impairment of ability of an individual or organizations to pay their creditors.

It's hard to see how the U.S. can pay these obligations under any reasonable scenario. We currently have to borrow $2.5 billion every day from the rest of the world just to keep afloat, sinking further and further into debt with no improvement in the situation in sight. Based on the above data, we appear to be, by any reasonable definition, a bankrupt nation waiting for the bills to come due. Where is this argument wrong?

Overshoot and Crash - U.S. Empire and the Middle East

It is a well known phenomena in the study of nature that when a system grows beyond a sustainable level, it will eventually decline. And the farther it overshoots that sustainable level, the more dramatic the decline, or in some cases "crash" will eventually be. One of the best illustrations of this is a population of animals that grows beyond what the local food supply can support. The population will eventually decline to more sustainable levels, and the greater the population overshoot, the more dramatic the die-off will be.

This brings us to the history of empires. They inevitably grow to overshoot what the base can sustain in terms of economic and human costs, followed by a decline. Whether they gradually shrink to more sustainable levels, or dramatically crash to a shadow of their former selves depends on how far they overshoot their sustainable level, and how long they manage to deny reality before starting to make the necessary draw backs.

In the case of the American empire, we now have over 700 military bases in other countries around the world. With the cost of the Iraq war likely to exceed $1 trillion, it seems likely that we have significantly overshot what we can sustain and are headed for a decline from our current state. Whether this will be a gradual orderly roll-back or a more dramatic crash depends on whether we continue with a policy of attempting to militarily dominate the world, or realize the folly of this effort and start to change our approach. Unfortunately, it looks like we may be on a path to push our military overcommitment even farther beyond the limits of sustainability. Consider the following news from the experts at Informed Comment Global Affairs

"...[from Cheney's 2002 speech referring to the campaign to drum up support for the Iraq war beginning in Sept 2002] After all "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

If you don't look forward to ruinous future for America, it's hard to think of a scarier scenario for the final months of the Cheney/Bush administration.

Where Will Major Water Shortages Hit the US First?

As our population and consumption rates continue to grow, we are face shortage of a number of natural resources within the next decade or two. Oil is one of the most talked about, as I mentioned elsewhere, but one that may cause major problems even sooner is water. Oil can be economically shipped from the other side of the world, and there are alternatives to oil for many of its present uses. These things are not true for water.

The area of America that will face severe water shortages first is in the south west. A recent report described the situation as follows:

The news coming from the Southern Nevada Water Authority Thursday about the valley's future water supply is worrisome. Unless we act quickly, there will be no water for hundreds of thousands of Las Vegas Valley residents in just three years…SNWA data shows drought conditions getting worse, not better
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=6943263

The article goes on to describe costly project needed to bring in water to Las Vegas from elsewhere, as well as stating the need for some more conservation. Nowhere does it mention the obvious fact here – it does not make sense to construct a large city in the middle of the desert where there are very limited water supplies. This is yet another good example demonstrating that normal market forces are not good at making long term plans for dealing with limited resources. More on that in a future append.

Another Report that we have already passed “Peak Oil”

According to a recent report ( details at http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0806/p15s01-wmgn.htm )

The world output of oil actually already peaked in May 2005 at 74.2 million barrels a day, says Matthew Simmons, chairman of Houston-based Simmons & Company International, an investment banking firm for the energy industry…. Since then, production has fallen about 1 million barrels a day (MB/D). If that trend continues, the results for the world economy will be “so real, so devastating” that peak oil concerns will overwhelm slower-moving global warming in grabbing world attention.

Last Tuesday, the price of oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange set a record, rising as high as $78.40. That exceeded the previous high of $77.03 set in July 2006 at the onset of Israel’s war in Lebanon.

Oil shortages, warns Simmons, could lead to war.

"Could lead to war??" How about "Have already lead to war." The desire to have large permanent military bases in the Middle East to exercise more long term control over that area was likely one of the key motivating factors for the start of the Iraq war in 2003. I'm afraid that armed conflict over oil will be part of mankind's fate for the foreseeable future.

The Noisy Restaurant

Humans have a great ability to pick out a conversation and understand it in a noisy environment, such as at a restaurant or a party. Computer speech recognition is gradually getting this ability too. I recently read about a new development in computer speech recognition that allows it to listen to multiple conversations in a noisy environment and actually understand what was happening in each of those multiple conversations. Why not? Once it can understand one conversation in a noisy environment, it makes sense that duplicating some hardware should allow it to understand multiple conversations.

This brings some interesting situations to mind. Imagine a robot waitress (waiter? what's the correct term for something without a gender - waitred?) taking orders at a table. Instead of taking turns giving their order, each person could speak up simultaneously and announce their orders all at the same time. It would take some getting used to, but it's fun to think about.

That leads to the question of what other capabilities such a robot waitress could have that don't necessarily mimic human capabilities exactly. For example, arms that are more flexible and extendable with additional joints for placing food dishes directly in front of people on crowded tables. How about the ability to see in all directions (360 degrees) at the same time to better keep track of all the customers at different tables? No need to limit it to two eyes. Science fiction films too often portray robots with physical characteristics similar to humans, but that just shows a lack of imagination.

Addendum: Here's an even stranger one that might be a little hard to grasp at first - there's no need for each of the robot waitresses to have a "separate mind". They could all share the same mind, linked to their bodies by radio communication. Then you can grab the attention of any robot waitress walking by, and they will be able to respond to you with exactly the same familiarity as the original physical robot that greeted you when you first sat down.