Subject: Re: Solar Energy

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 25 Oct 1995 16:05:29 -0400

<[email-masked]> wrote:

>[email-masked] (Nick Pine) writes:

>>To me, this "competitive market" would be like my local supermarket, if I were
>>to pick up a bag of oranges, and pull out a gun, and say to the checkout
>>clerk, "I don't want to pay more than 10 cents each for these oranges."

>I gather that your point is that oil is so cheap since the oil 
>producing countries are paid so little for it.

   Not exactly... I'm saying that this is not a pure "competitive market."

   It seems to me that that oil is linked to "international problems."
   This fact is too often forgotten. Amory Lovins said (Atlantic Monthly,
   December, 1994) "We would not have invaded Iraq if they had only grown
   broccoli there" (referring to George Bush's dislike for broccoli.)
   Even before George Bush, five US presidents had publicly threatened 
   to go to war in the Middle East, if they "cut off our vital supply of oil,"
   which included raising the price. The Gulf War was about cheap oil. 

   By some accounts, we killed 100,000 human beings in Iraq in the Gulf war,
   directly. And another 500,000 people, mostly women and children, died
   after US troops left the area, as a result of starvation, homelessness,
   poor sanitary conditions and lack of medical care. The loss of 600,000
   human lives is not a trivial matter. These dead people would make a line
   568 miles (947 km) long, if you stretched them out end to end, counting
   an average person as 5' tall in this case, since Middle-Easterners are
   shorter than Americans, and most of the dead people were apparently
   women and children. 

   So I would conclude, "sometimes people want to sell us oil at a higher 
   price than we are willing to pay, so we kill them."

   I think it's important to point out that a lot of oil is being wasted
   heating houses in this country, and that such waste is avoidable,
   and that avoiding such waste contributes to world peace. 

>Never in history were people paid so much with such small investment
>of their own effort.

It's their oil, and they have a basic right to set their price.

Nick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 24 Oct 1995 06:10:11 -0400

Gary Coffman <[email-masked]> wrote:
 
>... There's little reason
>to expect breakthroughs except that trend lines for some disciplines,
>such as microelectronics, plotted from the beginning of the discipline 
>to the present might lead one to extrapolate it will continue forever 
>in the same fashion. That's a very risky extrapolation, however, as such 
>curves have always taken on an 'S' shape as a discipline matures and
>approaches physical limits. You finally reach the point of diminishing
>returns where no matter how much money and effort you expend you can't
>expect breakthroughs that push you much further down that road. 1 kW/m^2
>is one of those limits for solar power, and research already has us
>within the same order of magnitude. Breakthrough advances are unlikely.

I agree, as far as microelectronics, which has some physical limits.
We can't keep doubling the number of transistors on an IC forever, by
making finer lines, etc. But one of the differences to think about is
that there are many ICs in this country, but very few solar heated houses.

One of the reasons is cheap oil.

Why is oil so inexpensive?

Nick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 25 Oct 1995 01:09:33 -0400

Linden Lindy Sisk <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Nick Pine ([email-masked]) wrote:

>: Why is oil so inexpensive?
 
>In a competitive market, which currently exists for oil...

To me, this "competitive market" would be like my local supermarket, if I were
to pick up a bag of oranges, and pull out a gun, and say to the checkout clerk,
"I don't want to pay more than 10 cents each for these oranges."

Nick

---

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 25 Oct 1995 22:25:51 -0400

<[email-masked]> wrote:
 
>This is truly heart breaking.

Your sympathy for these 600,000 dead humans is noted :-)

>It also completely ignores the fact that the Gulf War started not with
>the US attacking Iraq but with Iraq invading Kuweit, a country which didn't
>attack Iraq, threaten it or do it harm in any way.

A country set up for a few shieks by Standard Oil in the 50's...

Yeah yeah yeah, sure. All those people deserved to die. We had to invade Iraq.
And Israel only defends itself from agressors, and we only invaded Grenada
to protect those poor medical students, etc., etc. We seem to say, "Step over 
this line: I dare you," like children. And then we defend ourselves to protect
our country from the hideous menace of a nation like Nicaragua. If your 
neighbor started acting uppity, and browbeating his family, would you kill him,
and install a new person as head of his family, to help ensure neighborhood
tranquility? Could you accomplish that legally? Could you make him so angry
at you that he attacks you, and then "simply defend yourself," waiting in
ambush with ten times the weaponry? Would you perform training exercises
on the sidewalk in front of his house, with guns, and shine spotlights into
his windows at night? Would that be a neighborly thing to do?

>... I perfectly agree that there probably would have been no international
>involvement in the Gulf would Iraq and Kuweit grow only broccoli...

OK then. 

>The international community learned, the hard way, in this century,
>that when somebody starts throwing his weight around too much you'll
>better act or else.

Or else what? Shark repellent works pretty well in Nebraska... I have
no wish to pay for making the world safe for democracy. But this
matter of oil complicates things, doesn't it? Another complication is
people like the US Navy Ensign who told me a few years ago, "In order
to get promoted again, I will have to see combat." We should find
easier ways for him to earn his promotion :-)

I think you are talking about the domino theory, in political vs
economic terms. But it seems to me that this is an impure theory,
which has always had to do with economics and unclearly stated agendas.
Hey, it worked in Vietnam :-) We contained the red menace...

>And no, it wasn't just a war about cheap oil, since would that have been
>the case you would have US Marines landing in Saudi Arabia and Kuweit 
>in 1973, when OPEC raised the prices sky high.

Good point. I'm not sure why that didn't happen. Perhaps we were too
busy with the red menace, or there were some sort of smarmy political
deals going on with the big oil companies making bigger profits, as our
nation secretly supported both sides of the war between Iraq and Iran,
to ensure a political balance in our favor, and controllable oil prices.

>Yeah, that's why there was always peace in the world, till people 
>strted using oil.

I'm not sure how that follows. All that I said was that if we didn't use
so much oil to heat houses, i.e. if we were not such oil junkies, there
would be less pressure for war in the middle east. And kicking the oil habit
for house heating isn't that difficult, from a technical point of view. 
We'd see a lot more of that if oil were not so artificially cheap. (Amory
Lovins went on to say in that article that the real cost of oil, including
the Gulf war, was over $2 a gallon, with the difference being paid indirectly
to armies by every US taxpayer.)

>That's right, and they do.  Nevertheless the fact remains that "Never
>in history were people paid so much with such small investment of 
>their own effort."  There is no contradiction between the two.

I agree. And I'd say they are lucky, or played their cards right. But we seem
to try to sway them a bit, unfairly I think, by murdering them by the 
thousands, as a part of this "competitive market" price-setting process. 

Nick

---

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 26 Oct 1995 09:02:48 -0400

>Your point?  If we go a bit further back (say, to 1917) almost none of 
>the countries that we know now in the Middle East did exist.  So, all 
>of them are free game?

I wouldn't say that. Now that all this desert is nominal sovereign countries,
I think we should mind our own business and let them do what they will to
each other, and take care of our own energy needs in some less violent way. 
 
>Yes, we did.

No, we didn't. (In rhetoric, an assertion demands no more than a
counterassertion :-)

>Else we would have to deal with a way bigger menace couple years later. 

I dunno about that. Seems like if we don't bother them, they won't bother us.
And if they do bother us (not someone else), we can easily smite 'em, from
high moral ground, but not before that. Consider the Swiss, whose last major
battle was some 800 years ago, when 1,100 Swiss killed 20,000 French soldiers
one night. Everyone died, but people don't mess with the Swiss anymore. We
have proved our military reputation over and over. We don't need to do it
again, or worry about countries like Iraq or Panama or Grenada conquering the
U S of A. We should also grow up and kick this ugly oil habit, at least for
heating houses. And stop being world police. That is arrogant and expensive.

>I trust you do read newspapers sometimes.

I avoid that. Very depressing and time-consuming. I used to read the NY Times
every day, which took about an hour. Then I only read the good news in the
Times, and that only took 5 minutes. Newspapers always seem to be reporting
on wars. I don't know if wars are always going on, and the newpapers have
to fill up space devoted to wars and just report the biggest wars du jour, 
or what, but it always seems that when one war disappears from the papers,
another appears right away to take its place. Armies need employment too.
Perhaps they can pick up litter in parks, when they aren't out fighting.

>>And Israel only defends itself from agressors,
>
>Well, doesn't it?

Not really. As I recall, the six day war started with one of those puny
attacks, with a massive over-response and permanent land-taking on Israel's
part. The phrase "excessive use of force" comes to mind, at least, altho
there is a part of me that says that any country that invades another
deserves whatever response they receive. But that war seemed like 3 or 4
eyes for an eye.

>>and we only invaded Grenada
>>to protect those poor medical students, etc., etc. 
 
>No. we didn't. There wasn't any serious justification for either 
>Grenada or Panama.

Gee, it's nice we agree on something. Perhaps this was military training.
Steve Baer suggests I should have given that ensign some on the spot combat,
eg a punch in the nose. But I was visiting his aircraft carrier at the time,
and that would not have been polite. And he might have punched back.

>>If your neighbor started acting uppity, and browbeating his family,
>>would you kill him, and install a new person as head of his family,
>>to help ensure neighborhood tranquility? 
>
>If I'm living in a place which has no law and no police (which is 
>exactly the situation of the world as a whole, taking your nations as 
>persons analogy)

I'd like to think the UN and World Court could fill that role...

>and my neighbor seems to be menacing me, I'll take 
>any steps within my ability to remove the menace. 

Oh I could see never inviting him to lunch, or refusing to let my kids
visit his house, or perhaps embargoing the mailman, but not killing
him and setting up a new husband in his place... That seems like too
big a step, if all he is doing to you is giving moral offense, or
refusing to sell you the oil in his basement.

>>Could you make him so angry
>Certainly it wouldn't.  However, if you refere to Iraq than you still 
>ignore the fact that Iraq inveded Kuweit, unprovoked.

I don't know why they did that crazy thing, but it seems to me that was
none of our business. Too far away. Isn't Kuwait spelled with an a?

>Did you ever read anything about the history of this century or is 
>everything before Vietnam just a big blank for you.

In truth, I don't know much about history.

>How does the phrase "why should we send our young people to fight and die,
>for people whom we don't know in a country whose name we can hardly
>pronounce" strike you. 

Makes perfect sense. Bertrand Russell used to say something like, "All that
is necessary to bring about peace in the world is for enough good men to do
nothing." Everyone has to make his/her own choice in this. I like Chuang
Tzu's approach to government: if you must govern, do nothing.

>Sounds familiar?

Sounds like the chorus of ladies and policemen in the Pirates of Penzance.

>>I'm not sure how that follows. 
>
>But of course it follows.  You think that avoiding the "oil waste" 
>will contribute to the world peace. 

Absolutely.

>I disagree.  The world wasn't peaceful before oil appeared on the scene

I didn't say this would make it peaceful, just perhaps more peaceful.
The local analogy to this is that whenever you have rich and poor people
in the same place, there is crime. We are oil poor...

>>...I'd say they are lucky, or played their cards right. But we seem
 
>No. we don't.  But, since you've already made up your mind, I doubt 
>whether you want to be confused by facts.

I do know people who seem to behave as if once you've made up your mind,
the reasons don't matter. This does make life simpler, in terms of cognitive
dissonance, but I'm trying to keep an open mind on this.
 
Nick

---

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 27 Oct 1995 06:45:00 -0400

Mati Meron <[email-masked]> wrote:
 
>The reason nobody messes with the Swiss is that it is a difficult 
>terrain which leads nowhere.

Not to mention that a lot of Switzerland, eg most of the bridges, is mined
with explosives, by the Swiss, as a little surprise for invaders. Nor that
they have sufficient nuclear shelters for every Swiss person, and everyone
is in the Army. It would not surprise me to learn that they have a few
on-site nuclear booby traps as well. Kinda like a burglar alarm attached
to 100 pounds of dynamite. Impressive, those Swiss :-) They also have a lot
of other peoples' money...

>>As I recall, the six day war started with one of those puny attacks...
 
>Oh, now I understand.  You're posting from a parallel universe.  There 
>is no way you could've picked up this version of the events in this 
>universe.

I don't get out much.

I still don't see how you could disagree with me, Mati, on this little point:
if we used a lot less oil in this country, the world would tend to be a
somewhat more peaceful place. Then there would be less pressure for certain
kinds of wars in the world, eg the ones we start :-), or finish... I find it
difficult to see how you could disagree with that. Perhaps you are saying
that this factor is very minor, among all the factors that lead to wars,
and that without it, there would still be lots of wars in the world, eg
to keep the armies employed. But it still seems to me that if you take away
this single US oil waste/use factor, and everything else in the universe
stays the same, this world would be a tiny bit more peaceful. 

>... this debate is a waste of time.  Let me just tell you this...
>... when you embark on a mission of building a better future, an
>ignorance of the past doesn't make for a solid foundation.

I try to avoid embarking on things with solid foundations.

It's too hard to move them :-)

Nick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 31 Oct 1995 06:00:41 -0500

Some historians might enjoy looking at a book, actually more of a pamphlet,
called _Oil and War_, by Robert W. Czeschin, a "special investment report on
petroleum and the history of armed conflict among nations, published in 1987,
2 years before the Gulf war, by Agora, Inc./824 E. Baltimore St./Baltimore,
MD 21202. Here's the table of contents:

   Scarcity, abundance and conflict                          3

   Oil-fired engines of war                                  6
       the history of oil in world war I

   Blitzkrieg and surprise attack                           21
       the history of oil in world war II

   Forging the oil weapon                                   33
       the suez crisis of 1956

   Persian gulf, 1980                                       52
       the untold story of america on the nuclear brink

   Oil and the war against civilians                        65
       the terrorist threat

   Oil and war in the 1980's                                77
       the geopolitical rollercoaster
 
   Lessons of the past and future                          108
       the days ahead

Nick