The Dark Planets Conjecture

Why haven’t we detected any evidence of alien intelligences yet? The wallpaper on one of my computers is the composite picture NASA published in 2000 of the entire earth at night. The amount of light visible from space is at once beautiful and intriguing, and it makes me wonder how much energy we waste by unintentionally beaming it into space, whether it is light, infrared radiation (heat), or radio waves. Looking back through human history, it is clear that, as a species, we used comparatively little of our planet’s resources before the industrial revolution, and I suspect the view from space back then showed very little human-made light, if any. Then I contemplate the probability that, in the absence of any great new energy-producing technology (fusion?), we will run down our available fossil fuel sources over the coming decades, driving the price up to the point where fewer and fewer people and organizations can afford to use and waste energy as we do today. In another century or two we may be conserving energy to such an extent that we will have to stop our light, heat, and radio waves from dissipating into space, and the planet may return to the way it appeared before the industrial revolution. This brings up some interesting questions about our universe.

We Are Nanotechnology

All life is composed of nanotechnology. From the original molecular structures that developed the ability to replicate themselves a billion or more years ago to the most sophisticated life forms, we all have resulted from an evolutionary process that started with, and uses at every level, nanotechnology concepts.  Life started at nano-scale, and a huge majority of all life forms, the greatest bio-diversity, still exists at nano-scale.

“The Bomb” is Here, But It’s the Population Bomb

My childhood fears of nuclear war have come to pass, but not the way I expected. When I was a kid I had a great fear of nuclear war.  At school we drilled, hiding under our desks, in case Russian missiles with nuclear warheads should wreak terrible, radioactive firestorms on us.  One winter night around the age of 6 I woke up from a dream and looked out the window to see the sky glowing yellow – I was immediately convinced that either a nuclear attack was creating the incredible light in the sky, or that the nearby Fermi nuclear power plant had blown up, and in either case the radiation would soon get us.  As it turned out, it was just a full moon illuminating a light snowfall, but I will never forget the terror of those moments.  These days, with nuclear war seeming to be a much more remote possibility, I don’t even think about it.  The other night, however, I noticed the sky glowing orange most of the way around the horizon, and realized that, if I didn’t know it was street lights illuminating the falling snow, I would have thought a nuclear war had broken out.  The lights were like those of an explosion frozen in time.  Then I realized that this IS an explosion – a population explosion.  This extremely long, slow-motion explosion started over a century ago and the echoes won’t die out for decades, or maybe centuries, to come.  Unfortunately this explosion has consequences potentially more devastating than even a global nuclear war.  So what are we doing about it?  How can we mitigate the effects of this very-slow, long term explosion on ourselves and our descendants?

What Will Happen to Businesses When Energy Cost Eclipses Labor Cost?

Today the cost of labor is the biggest single cost element for many businesses, and drives most decisions. The rise of fossil fuel prices will not be smooth,  however, as we have seen in 2008, when oil prices doubled in a matter of months and then fell back to 30% of their peak in a few months more.  During these spikes, and in the longer term as fossil fuel sources become more difficult and costly to extract, energy costs will rise to a level that challenges or surpasses labor as the biggest component of cost for many or most businesses.  The law of supply and demand also kicks in as population continues to expand, and labor costs in many industries will fall as increasing numbers of people are seeking those jobs.  At the same time, rising energy costs will reduce or eliminate the advantage of manufacturing in “low cost countries” such as China.  How will businesses react?  Will the net effect be to cause people to generally live at a lower economic level and make less money for equivalent work compared with today?  Will manufacturing of progressively lower cost and higher margin goods return to the developed countries?

The Road to Sustainability: Individual Specialization is a Two-Edged Sword

Specialization and collaboration are the hallmarks of human success as a species. We may have started as generalists like members of most other species, but specialization has gotten us where we are today.  While all non-microscopic life forms are made up of specialized parts and symbiotic relationships, specialization in conjunction with cooperation between members of the same species has been raised to a high art by the human species.  Since long before recorded history humans have been collaborating as families and communities, and much success has been achieved, largely through increased efficiencies realized through individual specialization. For example, when a mother can care for the children the father can gather food, when a sentry is watching over the village everyone else can carry on their daily business without wasting energy on being vigilant, and when a farmer is raising large quantities of food, other community members such as the person making cloth for the farmer’s clothes are freed to optimize their efficiency and quality. The farmer is not only well fed, but also has better clothes. Like most things, however, specialization has a down side.

Harnessing the Power of the Masses to Achieve a Population “Glide Path”

The population explosion is testing our intelligence as a species. There are a great many of us on the planet now, and the power of the masses has become incredible. When there are 6 billion people, and 10% of them change their habits in a way that causes them to use a tenth of a gallon less water per day, the savings of 60 million gallons of water per day, or almost 22 billion gallons of water per year, is staggering to contemplate. This incredible power over our planet and our future can only be harnessed through the use of our media to educate all those people, and that will require breaking through a lot of political and economic barriers. Can we do this and get ahead of our problems before a large proportion of the world population dies from famine, disease, or some combination of natural and man-made disasters?

What Ever Happened to the “Better Mouse Trap”?

Back in the early 20th century they had a saying: “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” What happened? I just don’t hear much about individual inventors any more, though I am sure they are out there.  Part of the reason must be that today’s mass media don’t report on such things like they once did.  Another may be that people are both afraid of getting tangled in patent and copyright lawsuits and afraid to let anyone know about their inventions for fear their ideas would be stolen.  Still a third reason may be that our current cutting edge technologies are all seen as being too expensive or requiring too much knowledge for the average person to attempt, leaving invention to the academics and corporate researchers.  This is all unfortunate, for individual inventiveness was surely one of the great strengths of the American economy going back to the inception of the country.

Southeastern U.S. Gas Shortages after Hurricane Ike Reveal How Far We Are from Sustainability

Aftereffects of hurricane Ike revealed a need for consciousness-raising in the American Southeast (and the U.S. in general). I went on-line and viewed TV reports and newspaper stories from the Carolinas Monday (Sept 29, 2008), which said that 4 of 15 gasoline refineries in the Houston area were still shut down since the hurricane 2 weeks earlier, and many others were still operating at reduced capacity, but the situation in the Carolinas should improve and be fine in a week. In the meantime they suggested people buy gas only when their tank was below one quarter full, and that some gas stations were limiting customers to ten gallons per visit. Police also asked that people stop calling 9-1-1 to ask where they could find gas, as it was impeding real emergency calls. Many stories were hopeful, but none sounded certain. Worse yet, none offered any suggestions for people to actually save gas, such as by carpooling, taking the bus, bicycling, walking, or planning out and combining trips, among other solutions that would actually reduce gas demand. I wasn’t surprised, then, that absolutely nobody mentioned any long term solutions, let alone that our overpopulation of the region and the planet is at the root of the problem. Does the word clueless come to mind?

Global Warming and Our Responsibility to the Future – A Call to Action

Global warming and climate change are only pieces of the puzzle. The storm of media coverage and conflicting scientific data around global warming is overwhelming, but it is concealing very real problems we need to face if we are to ensure ourselves and our descendants can continue anything like the kind of lifestyles we have today. Climate change will happen, whether we cause it or not, and when it does, how prepared will we be? Energy supplies are a key factor, not only for our current relative comfort but as an enabler to our ability to deal with issues we will face in the short and long term. Where does this all lead, and what are our responsibilities as individuals? What can we do to ensure a better future?

Education Provides Hope for Sustainability, Though Some Forces Oppose It

Improvements in education are needed to ease the path to sustainability.  Creativity and critical thinking will be needed to deal with the problems of overpopulation, and educational systems that promote these skills aren’t always prevalent, and are not without opposition in both the developed and undeveloped countries.  Berenice Bleedorn, a major proponent of creativity development in educational and other settings, wrote the following:

Although some of the planet’s resources are finite, the reason for unwarranted optimism is that the HUMAN MIND IS UNLIMITED IN ITS CAPACITY TO THINK, grow, plan ahead, and act in terms for the common good.
- BERENICE BLEEDORN / THE CREATIVITY FORCE IN EDUCATION, BUSINESS AND BEYOND 

In the developed countries, opposition to good education is amplified by the media, however, while in underdeveloped countries it may come from both religious and government groups.

A Positive and Cost Effective Path to Birthrate Reduction and Population Control

Why are third world families so large?  In poor agrarian societies there is a direct incentive to have more children, as it provides more hands to do the work and makes the family farm more productive and profitable.  It doesn’t appear to me, however, that there are many poor agrarian societies left, and a quick look at world population trends shows that in most of the less-developed countries the bulk of the population has moved or is moving to the big cities.  There must be other reasons for large families in these fast growing countries.

Achieving Sustainability Will Involve Birthrate Reduction, But How Can That Be Achieved?

Let’s face it: the earth has too many humans, using natural resources up too quickly, and the population will be forced to decline to a sustainable level sooner or later.  Achieving a sustainable situation will require that there be a lot less humans, especially when fossil fuels become scarce.  That means the human birthrate must decline.  For population to be reduced without a birthrate reduction would mean that average lifespans would have to decline to near the minimum childbearing age, which I think is highly unlikely.  Before sustainability is reached, however, there will be a long period of change, of probably 70 to 200 or more years.  How will population most likely be reduced during that period?

Everyone’s Help is Needed in the Pursuit of Sustainability

Moving towards sustainability requires everyone’s involvement. The biggest barrier to accomplishing the things we need to in order to move towards sustainability is in our own heads.  Too often, the people I talk with about sustainability and the global situation express either an indifferent attitude, downright rejection, or disbelief of what most of us consider to be facts.  I see a couple of common threads in their thinking.

How Pundits Support Denial of Climate Change

Some media pundits create a system that promotes and supports denial of climate change. Most media pundits are opportunists by nature. Their pay is based on their ratings, and being controversial gets more attention than being rational. It is to their advantage not only to say startling things and draw attention to themselves, but to nurture constituencies that will bolster their ratings. That is one of the ways human nature interacts with our mass media. Unfortunately, our global challenges just happen to provide excellent opportunities for unscrupulous pundits.

Biotechnology and Nanotechnology Are Merging … in the Classroom

Biotech is coming, quickly, and with nanotechnology helping.  NPR broadcast an item in the past week about college students at MIT engineering e. coli bacteria to have a minty fresh smell (instead of poopy one) when growing, and then a banana smell when the culture is mature (link) (link).  This reveals a technological capability that was unthinkable to most of us a decade or less ago and goes far beyond the chemistry sets children got for their birthdays in the 1950’s.  Young people today are making biotech and the custom engineering of microorganisms an increasingly casual undertaking, as nanotechnology-enhanced bioengineering demonstration kits are appearing in classrooms.  How long will it be before bioengineering is a popular hobby among young people, and … what happened to working on cars and playing in rock bands?