Carbon Trading

There has been much discussion in the last few years about carbon dioxide and how to reduce emissions. I don’t want to talk about global warming or similar. To my mind reducing any sort of venting of any sort of waste is a good thing; whatever justification is used.
Australia’s response has been to introduce a framework for trading in carbon dioxide. Companies who vent are charged accordingly but given credits based on various factors (which I admit I have not bothered to understand). These credits can be traded to reduce or eliminate the amount that needs to be paid.
The idea is, of course, to artificially impose a market value on carbon and hence allow the normal economic forces to counter the drive to throw it away. The trouble with this is the unintended consequences which attend almost any attempt to use economic forces to drive anything.
The intended consequence is for the artificial costs of producing CO¬2 to be passed on to the consumer which, in theory will reduce demand. In many areas this will provide incentives for alternatives – even in areas such as power generation. However, there are so many other consequences that I suspect that the dynamics of the situation are likely to change completely. I will leave it to the economists to consider in detail.
However, one major point of concern is that this is an artificial market in carbon. Indeed the market is in a secondary resource – carbon emission credits. I would have thought that a better solution, although considerably more difficult, would be to create a real market in carbon. Who would vent a valuable commodity into the air if it could instead be sold to off-set production costs?
The underlying problem is not with CO2 production per se, but with the fact that it is vented to environment. Indeed this is the case with any pollutant: gaseous, particulate, solid or liquid. They are created because the most efficient industrial processes used to produce the enormous number of consumables we use also create large amounts of waste product as a side-effect. Disposal of the waste products is done in the most cost effective way – which often means just venting because capturing and/or storing them is often more expensive.
The problem here is the classification of substances as ‘waste’. One industry’s waste is another industry’s raw material. The point of carbon trading is to make the CO2 worth something so that it is traded instead of thrown away. But the value created is artificial – imposed by government regulation. But what if the gas had some real and tangible value as a raw material in some other industry?
Actually there are a number of industries whose waste product provides a raw material for some other industry. Connecting these production systems could (does?) provide a lucrative business for some entrepreneur.
This could be a prime area for some basic research – what can CO2 be profitably used for?
I am not an expert in this field and so I cannot answer that question myself but I would have thought that it was a ripe – over ripe – field of inquiry. Is there anyone in the world looking into it? I know it can be used to carbonate drinks, but I suspect that this will not use a great deal of the current world supply. I have heard of mechanisms of using C02 as a purifying agent – say for de-caffeinating coffee. Injected CO2 can be used to greatly enhance the strength of concrete. I can conceive of using it as a fuel or additive in cars – thus reducing petrol consumption at the same time.
CO2 is used to make dry ice – is this something that could be more extensively used in our society? Are there any other properties of the gas which may be useful? Could we fill our greenhouses with it – or at least increase the partial pressure a little (we don’t want to kill those people who work in greenhouses). Are there any medical uses? The possibilities are endless (mostly because I don’t know enough to discard them).
By providing funds to research agencies (most of which are government owned in Australia) to follow this chain of logic is likely to provide greater benefit for less outlay than the current approach. Of course, the approach is not restricted to carbon. Most major industries could profit from creating an alternate market for their own waste material. Even in obscure cases - waste heat from power generation need not be vented, especially when the power is, itself, going to be used to generate heat somewhere else. The trouble is in transporting the waste from the major industrial centres where it is generated to the places where it can profitably be used.
However, that is drifting off topic somewhat and I think I will explore another time.

Waiting for the Train

Standing on the platform,
Watching the last of the stars fade from the sky.
The scattered clouds painted with brilliant colour by the rising light
As the sun cranks itself up in the same direction as the arriving train.

My fellow commuters,
In clumps where the doors will be,
Huddled in black and grey,
Staring at the ground.

Words

Words are tricky things.
It is difficult to get them to say exactly what I want. Individual words carry connotations which vary not only with the person hearing them but also with the context and ideas which they have in mind at the time. Sentences (should) only carry a single thought and therefore ignore all the other inter-related aspects which impact on the underlying idea.
There is this whole mental construct with a myriad of implications and ramifications, multiple different aspects to be explored; and it can only be passed on through a single linear stream of variable symbols. Whatever is said, it leaves out so much and implicitly orders the remainder so that an unnatural prioritisation is applied.
Following one train of thought means neglecting all the other possible paths. But all facets are important to faithfully transmit the underlying concept. For anything but the most basic of ideas, what is communicated is, at best, a rough outline and at worst a completely distorted view.
There are, of course, other communication methods – most of which revolve around pictures or diagrams. These 2D mechanisms are better but can only be used in specific circumstances. But they are not generally useful in normal conversation.
Part of the purpose of this blog is for me to practice expressing complex concepts in this sort of linear fashion. When running an idea through my head I will often chase down the various chains and linkages to explore all sides of an idea. Where the idea came from, both in the context of why I am thinking it and conceptual pieces which compose it. The logical consequences and the other ideas that flow from it. The inter-relationships with other conceptual structures.
Trying to order all this in my head is difficult and can take some time – picking words and making connections to properly express the idea to myself. And when I have worked through it all and find the concept is fully formed, all these words and images are no longer necessary and the framework disappears. However then, for whatever reason, it becomes necessary to make someone else aware of the implications. The whole thought process needed to be re-constructed; preferably without all the false starts and doubling back.
What I am trying to do here is get the process done in appropriate words the first time so that I can avoid the re-work later. This does double duty of getting it out of my head so that I don’t keep running over the same old ground. However, the ideas that do occur to me are likely to be a fairly eclectic bunch since the driver for doing this is not so much the ideas themselves but the process.

Seeing broadly

I recently re-read one of Heinlein’s old books and came across a concept which obviously had caught his attention at the time. It has to do with a technique of training a person to be more attentive their environment and Heinlein referred to it as “Renshawing” after the creator.
Obviously the technique is not in common usage now (at least not that I have ever heard) but out of curiosity I looked it up in Wikipedia. Few of the training methods can be applied without specialised equipment, but there was one which required nothing other than your own eyes. It has to do with consciously noticing things that occur at the edge of your vision – cars passing as you walk past and store displays being the examples given.
Apparently this not only increases your awareness of your surroundings but may have a positive effect on your vision generally. Being of a ‘certain age’ I have noticed significant deterioration of my vision in the last couple of years. So, although some of the benefits sound a little implausible, I thought that I may as well try it occasionally. Especially since increasing awareness is supposed to be a significant factor in ‘luckiness’.
Of course, introducing any new habit, means actually remembering to follow it occasionally – often easier said than done. Remembering to perform some action, at least for me and in this sort of context, triggers a round of thought processes about the purpose of the action and especially why it might be something worth doing: creating a mental model about what it happening and the underlying basis for it.
All of which is a round about way of getting to a series of thoughts about how eyes are used. Being an office worker I spend a lot of time in front of a computer. This requires focussing on a small area of my full range of vision (about 50cm – or probably less – in diameter). Much of the rest of the time my gaze is focussed on a small area – a book, a face or similar.
There are few situations in a city dweller’s my world where a wide view is necessary. And there are so many extraneous details that tight focus is often advantageous. This sets up a positive reinforcement to the extent that people walking in the streets don’t notice anything happening around them; and the bigger the town the worse the effect. (I live in a small town and work in the city.)
As it comes to the end of summer I realise that sunglasses also contribute. There is a great deal of my field of view which is NOT covered. But in general use I don’t tend to notice this – I only see what is in front of me and therefore what can be seen through the lenses.
Obviously this is all the absolute opposite of the technique described above. I wonder what the constant tight focus is doing to both our vision and to our view of the world around us.

Resource Decentralisation

One of the major issues with the environmentalist/sustainability/climate change debate is why the developing countries should restrict their standard of living because of the excesses of the western world – especially the US.
But the normal articulation of the problem skips over one key step in the argument. The implicit assumption is that it is not possible to have a high standard of living without the excesses. But a large percentage of the resources expended in the developed countries add nothing to the lifestyle of their citizens. There is enormous amounts of waste which are inherent in almost every part of the system. Removing this waste could allow the same end result with much less raw materials.
Waste is generally a consequence of inefficiencies. And the supply side of is constrained by mechanisms and processes put in place a hundred years ago.
Consider for instance, power supply. It is enormously inefficient to generate power in massive facilities and then ship it across distances the size of a country. Transmission lines use very high voltage because this reduces losses in the line. Even so, carrying the power over hundred of kilometres means that a large percentage is lost. How much better it would be to generate the power at the point it is to be used. [Aside: this is the mechanism used in cars or gas appliances. The energy is generated at the point of use by burning a suitable fuel. The trouble is that you still have to move the fuel to the usage location.]
There are a number of reasons why this solution has been locked in; not least of which is the enormous investment made into power stations and associated infrastructure (such as transmission lines). However, while new technologies do not YET afford a practical alternative, they are not far off. Concerted effort driven by an urgent need (such as climate change?) is likely to lead to fairly rapid progress. The problem is that there is not such a drive in the western world which already has the expensive infrastructure in place and additions can be considered incremental costs (although fairly large increments given the cost of power stations).
However, the developing world has not yet made as much commitment to existing paradigms. Although, there is some and they do provide a significant barrier to alternatives, they are no where near as difficult to pass as in the ‘developed’ countries. The barrier is even lower in places such as much of Africa where there is no established infrastructure. There is no real reason why such places should not leap-frog the cul-de-sac that the European settled countries find themselves in.
Assisting small countries to develop localised utilities (water, power, communications etc.) in the same way that they also have localised food sources would allow relatively rapid improvement to those areas. At the same time the advances could be included in developed worlds as supplements to the existing infrastructure, with the aim of eventual replacement.

Decentralised or desalination

The Victorian government has instituted a plan to build an enormous desalination plant. The idea, of course, is to create enough fresh water to supply the state for the “foreseeable future” (a phrase that sets off alarm bells for anyone who pays attention to politics at any level – it generally means until the next election).
A desalination plant is a large facility which requires enormous amounts of power and which generates great amounts of heat and waste. And even in the best case the final product needs to be moved over long distances to where it is used.
Of course there is quite a backlash from many different groups. The locals don’t want it near where they live. Greens have a number of reasons to object from pollution to power use to environmental damage. Even economists are concerned about the cost of the plant and potential return on investment.
All these are good points but my major concern is along different lines. Basically this is simply not a good solution to the underlying problem.
Centralisation of production generally is a throwback to the industrial revolution. With today’s technology there are often better methods and in this specific case there are many. This is a theme that I will return to in other cases as well. Decentralisation of resource production is often the best, simplest solution to the sort of sustainability problems that we are facing as a culture.
In the case of water as a resource, there is more than enough fresh, clean water available exactly where it is needed. But we throw this away into the ocean and are now proposing to import it again over a long distance after an expensive and difficult re-processing.
Instead we should consider how to best utilise the rain which is generally available. At minimum water tanks could be installed in every household and to all major buildings. Re-cycling storm water (which would only need minor re-processing) as well would provide the majority of requirements. We may still need catchment areas for cultivation and supplementary supply, but new dams and especially the facilities such as desalination should generally be unnecessary.
Such a solution would be far superior in numerous ways. It would be more robust; failure at one site would have almost no impact across the rest. It would be more flexible; variations according to site needs would be easy to implement. It would be more extensible; updates and additions can easily be rolled out as needed (for instance adding a first flush system so that the water can be used for drinking as well. It would be more scalable; additional capacity can be added easily and specifically in locations where required. It would be more maintainable; although trained personnel (plumbers) would be required but not the sort of specialists necessary at a central plant. And, support costs would be dispersed to the individuals who benefit most taking significant load off the government.
Of course, there would not be a big new project run and owned by the government. It would not make the same sort of splash in the news. And there is no where need the same sort of control over the process.

Customer Service

There is a service station near us which has introduced a simple but marvellous boost to its customer service.
They have a bowl on the counter next to the register filled with 5 and 10 cent pieces. A sign on the bowl states that these are for customer use if they are just over a round dollar amount for their petrol. For instance, if you put $50 dollars in and drift slightly over so the charge is $50.05, you can take one of these coins to make up the difference.
Think about this for a second, for the cost of a few dollars in coins, the store has enormously enhanced the customer experience. They remove the need for their operators to provide large amounts of change or to eat into the till float. They implicitly recognise that the amount is trivial and that they are willing to waive – except that they cannot do it through the register. It is a tip that the manager cares about the customer’s convenience.
I am sure that there are people who abuse the system, there always are. But the bowl is right next to the till and couldn’t have more than about a hundred coins anyway – about $5.
Personally I am never likely to use this facility – if I am short I will use the controls on the pump to limit what I put in the car. However, I will preferentially use this service station simply because they have thought of this idea.