Everything New Seemed Impossible—Until It Existed
According to the Writer’s Almanac, it was on this day in 1897 that the first comic strip appeared in a newspaper. Why is that worth mentioning here? It was a new dimension, a new modality to our civilization’s capacity for expressing itself, a statement to the effect that: I have a new way of communicating something of value to the world around me.
Not too far into the future, we’ll find it in ourselves to get across to one another something that today seems impossibly distant: the notion that war is obsolete. We simply won’t do that anymore; we will no longer endorse the ceaseless death and dismemberment of brave, young soldiers and the innocent people around them that we refer to as “collateral damage.”
Maybe we need an interim step. When Saudi Arabia says it’s going to flog (perhaps to death) a young man for publishing a website that calls upon his fellows to discuss their political and religious environment, or that it will behead/crucify a 17-year-old kid for taking part in an anti-government rally, or that a woman is stoned to death for adultery on the basis that this punishment is not “extremist” (it is Islamic law), it’s possible that we’re close to drawing a line here. The Saudi government asks us to respect its strict adherence to Sharia. Asking for us to tolerate wanton abuse of human rights, regardless of what it’s called, is hard enough, but respect? Why on Earth would any decent human being respect savagery, regardless of where it’s committed, or under what name? We can only hope that the world’s patience with this has worn sufficiently thin with this outrage that we’re on the brink of saying, calmly but firmly: bulls**t. Not on my planet.
Yet putting an end to the systemic, merciless, and unending destruction in the context of war doesn’t seem feasible, does it? Remember: Neither did the comic strip before this date in 1897.
A highly charged topic. Nice, but doubtful.
1) Aggression and dictatorial ambition seems to be wired into the species. Perhaps genetic engineering will enlighten our biology, but that’s a reach. Lucas’s THX1138 imagined the use of drugs. Logan’s Run and the Saudi monarchy imagined give them all they could ever ask for and they won’t get too out of hand, but they obviously still do. Alaskans will vote for darn near anything as long as they get their yearly oil check. Basically, buying off every single living person so that peace is more desirable. I call it the Federation of Planets scenario. Any Trekkie will understand.
2) War is becoming increasingly likely in a more crowded planet scenario where that same planet is losing, not gaining, its capacity to support the ever greater numbers of humanity.
3) As harsh as it sounds, humans most closely resemble a virus that kills its host and moves onward.
4) Philosophical differences seem to be more than adequate stimuli for all out war. Shiite, Sunni, Alawites kill each other with impunity. The examples of such abound. Ties back into point 1. The data is clear. The answer is not.
The artist in me can certainly hope for and highly endorse your imagined future. The data driven observer in me wrote the above.
After all these years, you never ease to amaze me, Arlene. You were one of my first 10 subscribers, way back when. Thanks for the insight.
A reader notes: Craig…you must convince Hollywood! Thoughts are things.
Very true.
Comic strips may have been beyond imagination until they were invented but the invention itself did not go against human nature. Changing the human psyche may be possible through a totalitarian administration of zombie drugs but is peace really just the absence of war? Changing the hearts and minds of people on a grand scale is a noble goal but just a pipe dream if you think it can be accomplished without the sacrifice of human self determination and liberty.
I don’t think we’re right around the corner here, but I point out that renewable energy is not the only progressive cause that is in the process of making headway in the world. As I wrote recently:
In his landmark book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker concludes that all sorts of human evils — war, genocide, murder, rape, torture, dueling, wife-bashing, attacks on minorities, etc. — have faded enormously from the Western world….Pursuit of such humane goals lies at the heart of the liberal agenda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature
It’s really not a bad time to be alive. You and I are on the side of the good guys, and it happens to be the side that’s winning.
According to Princeton University, our interminably-bribed federal government shells out $35 million for each RQ-4 Global Hawk drone. That’s just in actual per-aircraft costs. With development costs also included, the per-aircraft cost rises to $123.2 million each.
Several of our generals have openly admitted that our global war against the tactic of “terrorism” is creating many more terrorists than we’re killing. Donald Rumsfeld’s private fear has come to pass.
Despite that fact, our bribed “public servants” endlessly stuff mountains of our tax dollars onto the jaws of our captive government’s self-defeating war machine.
Media Matters reports that the US “defense” budget is higher than the military outlay of the next seventeen highest-spending countries combined. Meanwhile, our congressional leadership does next-to-nothing about our national energy sustainability, our decaying infrastructure, the disruption of our climate, and all the other extreme needs across life in the United States today.
There is one malady in the human psyche that must be decisevly mitigated, if war is to diappear from the roster of human activity – greed. It is a disease that must be ruthlessly shackeled, inescapabaly harnessed and unswervingly directed, before it will work to benefit our species.
Doesn’t help that we install, arm and protect these thugs and dictators so we can more easily steal their people’s resources.
Many good comments here on a controversial top Craig.
I wonder if you have considered the paradox in your proposition? You start with the basis that war must cease. Then you move to the suggestion that we should be intollerant of people who’s views on human nature and punishment are so vary different than our own. You do seem to speak for many people with this position.
But you stop only one logical step short of advocating a “holy war” to free the oppressed people (our standard) from something we find an aberration. And so the article seems to suggest what it is against at the start.
Usually when I see this sort of thing there is more to the story.
You raise an interesting point. Obviously, I’m not advocating a war to end all wars. I certainly am recommending that:
1) We do everything we can to make oil irrelevant asap, thus taking an important action in ceasing to feed the monster
2) The U.S., as an ostensible force for good, use its influence to put pressure on human rights violators, and, of course, cut out our own acts of unwarranted aggression
It is largely oil money that is keeping the oppressive Arabian governments in power. It may be that the people in those countries would be better off if there were no oil money.
The situation in that part of the world is so complicated that I am not convinced that anyone knows exactly what we should be doing. Even our best intensions could make things worse.
Many schools of thought on this. Prevailing school believes in external intervention – basically what we’ve been doing right along. There is a ground swell, however, of those who believe that upsetting the status quo is what has led to massive destabilization and escalation. By example using Iraq, we would not have either the Shiite/Sunni internecine warfare nor the ISIL / AlQueda incursions if Saddam was still in power. The theme revolves around destabilization of existing frameworks that themselves are reasonably stable, regardless of how we define their propriety according to our standards. It can be argued that the iron hand of the Saudis and their free handouts to their citizens has prevented an Arab Spring like degeneration into anarchy as has occurred elsewhere. The handouts are a direct result of oil. Syria is the much more interesting case study in that it had minimal intervention from the USA, a long standing civil war in the making with respect to the Kurds, an Iran only too happy to themselves throw gasoline on the fire, and a Turkey only too happy to put pressure on the Kurds due to their own internal struggles with the PKK. You will note that our State dept is comfortable with Sisi resuming a strong arm type government in Egypt – basically a return to being just like the old boss. We also continue to provide them monetary and military aid. My theory is that its not popular to say out loud, but knowledgeable people within State see a strong arm government as stabilizing Egypt, democracy be damned.
Fascinating stuff. All out warfare is the result.
Craig,
Something that perhaps might give you hope:
War is proving to be a catastrophic choice in the modern economy.
When the U.S. decided to randomly attack Iraq in a recreational/imperial invasion… it negatively impacted our economy for decades. We were unable to actually GAIN anything from the effort – due to concern for global trade considerations. So we spent fortunes… blew their country up – which caused a serious supply shortage for the central industrial commodity of our time, which caused massive inflation…
The bogged-down occupation effort caused us to spend billions of dollars per day, sabotaging the dollar and creating a credit crunch. We then had a finance collapse – which was not entirely linked to the recreational wars, but not entirely separate – which nearly brought down the entire world economy.
When we finally stopped military combat action in our recreational war, we had 5000 dead troops and 100,000 wounded troops – causing a massive inflation in health care expense and a massive increase in VA budget appropriations for the next 5 decades.
The war was a total calamity… the net cost in direct budget expense is over 3 trillion, and the loss of wealth for the country at large was at least twice that… for ABSOLUTELY NO GAIN.
In that context, it will be many, many years before some idiot jackass is able to commit our country to a full-scale war again. We’re now fighting our actions out with drones and aerial campaigns… and maybe a few special forces missions. But you won’t see America commit to an actual war for at least 2 generations…
Next, Putin took control of Russia again, and pining for the good ole days of the U.S.S.R., he lauched an imperial land grab stealing the Crimea. From that point, Russia went from one of the fastest growing economies in the world to a net GDP growth of 0.65% in 2014 and a net GDP contraction of -3.7% annualized thus far this year. They’re projected to continue to contract for the next 2 years. To put that into perspective, the last two years for Russia have seen almost exactly the same contraction that the U.S. economy saw in 2008 and 2009… but Russia gets to look forward to two more years of consecutive contraction (The U.S. saw 2.5% and 1.6% growth in the two years following the Great Recession). The Ruble has fallen against the dollar by nearly 75%.
So both of the former opponents in the Cold War have attempted an imperial invasion of a sovereign nation within the last 12 years. In both cases, the immediate and long-term impacts of the invasion were economically calamitous. Most of the major world powers out there must have observed this: in the modern global economy the act of unprovoked military adventurism is ruinous for the country stupid enough to initiate it.
I used to think that it would be inevitable that China would re-take Taiwan militarily… but I no longer feel that is likely. There’s no way they would want to risk the ramifications in this economy. I used to feel that there would inevitably be a large-scale conflict between India and Pakistan, but I no longer feel that is likely. Neither country would want to test the economic ramifications of such a large-scale conflict.
It’s unlikely that any industrialized or industrializing nation will actively invade another nation in the current paradigm… which means wars will be limited to 3rd world nations – at least for now… and possibly will continue to be further limited as more and more nations begin the slow process of industrialization.
You are looking at the results from the perspective of civics or macro economics as taught in school. A more cynical view would say the the purpose of the war was to benefit one American company and the greed of its former CEO. Every other rational given starting with WMD were simply a “red herring.” But now who wants to tell 100,000 American Veterans that they were wounded or died for the greed of one American Corporation?
Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. Kennedy spoke of a secrete government. Regardless of the economic consequences generally there continues to be a mandate and profit in war for this huge section of the economy. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 we had the chance to reduce the military spending. But the collapse caused a panic and threatened a loss of “market” for this “industry.” Instead such pressure was placed that we essentially doubled down on military spending.
Yep. And as you’re aware you and I aren’t the only Americans who are cheesed off about this.
The challenge is many of those who influence policy made serious money, while our nation suffered as a whole. The expectation will also likely persist in the minds of warmongers that they’re to a great extent insulated from the consequences of the aggression they trumpet.
Were foreign policy decisions in every nation solely the realm of the rational and holistic economists, we might all sleep a lot better.
Graig,
What a bizarre juxtaposition of concepts ! How did you get from a desire for a more peaceful world, to blaming the oil industry ?
Since before the time of civilized man, humans have fought organized conflicts. The reason humans survived as a species, was an ability to wage organized warfare. Long before the discovery of oil !
Aggression, conquest and warrior instincts are hard wired into the human species, just as deeply as love, compassion, sympathy and a desire for peace. Failure to recognize that the some members of the human species will always resort to force to achieve what they believe is the best outcome, is exceeding dangerous.
The western world has achieved a relative improvement in curtailing major wars, simply because the technology became so advanced that mutually assured destruction and total annihilation became a reality. The growth of communications and information has produced some benefits, but the cacophony has also led to a surge in extremism.
Eventually, this phase will pass a people become inured to sensationalism.
By it’s very nature, all civilized human societies have economies based on human achievement and technology (be it in the form of art, craft, or weaponry).
The best we can do as a human society, is to try participants in conflicts to conform to certain rules. The price of suppressing all conflict, would be to remove free will and free thought.
The oil industry seems to obsess the American and European left. A fashion has grown up around oil -funded terrorism. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of “terrorists” have nothing to do with oil whatsoever, doesn’t stop the urban myths.
The roots of America’s problems in the Middle-East have arisen from it’s uncritical support for Israel, and it’s tacit support for Zionist extremism. This combined with a determination to support the continuation of sovereign integrity for nations whose borders were determined by the old European powers at the end of WW1. De-colonization, brought about a large number of nations, whose populations hated one another.
Sadly, the sovereignty of any nation, depends on it’s ability to either be able to militarily protect itself, or be part of a military alliance. As said most eloquently by nearly 1400 years ago by the Roman writer, Renatus Vegetius ” “Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.” ( if you want peace, prepare for war”).
This sentiment was later expressed by George Washington when he said ” being prepared for war is the most effective means of preserving peace “.
In some ways the world has moved forward, international institutions are growing stronger, the Nato, the UN, WTO, mass communication, even the multi-national corporations are creating a world where petty local disputes are no longer able to disrupt the efforts of so many interdependent economic dynamics.
There are increasingly few multi-national corporations, whose shareholders and executives come from an individual nation. Even fewer who see themselves as instruments of a particular nationalistic ideology or policy.
Capital is becoming increasingly international, and with that internationalism, old loyalties and sectarianism is becoming increasingly extinct.
The evolution of human society is never logical or well ordered, instead it’s fairly chaotic with all kinds of cul-de-sacs and blind alleys, but it does progress.
Yes, it does progress, but normally driven by the brave and bold acts of a few. Now, I’m not calling myself “brave and bold,” but my point is that our world changes because we make it change.
@ Craig,
Very true, human history is studded with inspirational examples of individuals who made a difference.
Anyone who believes that;
1) We do everything we can to make oil irrelevant asap, thus taking an important action in ceasing to feed the monster
And;
2) The U.S., as an ostensible force for good, use its influence to put pressure on human rights violators, and, of course, cut out our own acts of unwarranted aggression and replace them with a worldwide Peace Corps type approach
should be able to get their heads around the benefits for humanity that can be brought about with the AAEC technology approach that can empower humanity to power our human needs on the extraction of carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it in depleted farm soils as a means of boosting food production.
Biochar be used for fixing the world’s mounting ills
Carbon based “Biochar” improves soil structure and nutrient retention capacity and can be made from carbon extracted from the earth’s atmosphere via photosynthesis which occurs naturally.
Biochar is a product of a bio-conversion technology that can turn otherwise compostable organic leftovers to a form of carbon that when put back into the soil holds moisture and nutrients better, and even do so indefinitely. Composting is slow and isn’t very efficient in comparison to biochar production.
Biochar production can release energy on its own for producing electrical power and can sustain the conversion process in the absence of oxygen and it can also produce transportation biofuels or renewable biochar for sequestration of carbon in depleted farm soils as opposed to releasing the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It can also create heat that can also be very useful.
Agrichar or biochar production is the practice of growing crops or harvesting dead or living trees for producing biochar for agricultural use. I like the idea of using the same ground to enrich itself permanently. Even if it didn’t grow any crops very well before it will go on to produce maximum yields of most anything and it takes a lot less fertilizer and water from irrigation or rainfall.
It seems someone should be making small biochar production models commercially. Making it relatively small would be best for the common man who would like to demonstrate far superior gardening and home heating because something small is more portable, safer, user friendly, and it can be seen, experienced and popularized by the consumer. Also larger more fuel flexible and process flexible units could be manufactured for and marketed to villages, towns, communities, counties and even provinces.
I’m confident this technology will change the world. The application itself provides the intuitive education on how to live sustainably. Once people learn how to really live off the land they will have a basic ability to take relatively little and sustain their own nutritional needs in places that previously had poor soil. This is a much bigger deal for countries other than the USA. It could mean no more slash and burn. It can reverse the trend from using up plant life to putting it back again, preserving our wildlife.
Biochar’s potential for taking carbon from the atmosphere and using it to unlock the world’s food growing potential
By Katrin
As our planet faces a raft of pressing issues from shrinking energy resources, rapid human induced climate change to food and fresh water shortages, now would seem like a good time for some foresight, creativity, innovation – and a little risk-taking.
By Dr Michelle Morrison, principal environmental scientist with Wardell Armstrong
No single solution will be the panacea to all our problems. We’re going to need to use as many good ideas as we can. Just one of these could be the production of biochar using biomass feedstocks – combining as it does a number of very distinct benefits.
First, as a very stable form of carbon, biochar can provide a reliable means of sequestration – potentially locking away carbon in the soil for hundreds or even thousands of years, rather than allowing it to be released quickly back into the atmosphere.
Secondly, it could be used to improve soil structure and nutrient retention capacity which can help plants to grow – whether in poor quality tropical or desert soils, or brownfield land closer to home. And thirdly, the pyrolysis of biomass creates a syn(thetic) gas that can be combusted to produce renewable energy in the form of electricity and heat.
Polarised debate
A lot of the recent discussion of biochar as a method of carbon capture and storage has been focused on agricultural applications, and the debate has been polarized between pro and anti-camps. Some proponents may have over-hyped its benefits with unsubstantiated claims, while some detractors have damned the technology as they foresee massive land grabs with untold environmental and human health impacts. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.
So what exactly is biochar? Like charcoal, it’s a form of black carbon. But unlike charcoal (which is produced primarily for use as a fuel) biochar is the term used for char generated as a by-product or product of biomass pyrolysis, with the potential for applications other than fuel.
Biochar is the carbon-rich by-product that’s produced when biomass (such as wood waste, agricultural crop residues, coconut husks and so on) is heated (pyrolyzed) in the absence of oxygen, causing its thermal degradation into a synthetic gas and a char. This is different from incineration, which involves the combustion of materials in the presence of oxygen to produce CO2, other gases and ash with little or no organic carbon content.
Like its close cousins ‘activated carbon’ and ‘carbon black’, biochar has a number of chemical and physical characteristics which could prove very beneficial across a number of applications. A large surface area, porous structure and particle size distribution are three of the properties which have a marked influence on how biochar behaves in soil.
Pyrolysis technology itself is not new. It’s been used in the chemical industry for the production of syn-oils as precursors to certain chemicals and syn-fuels, in the plastics industry for the conversion of ethylene dichloride to vinyl chloride for the production of PVC, for the conversion of coal to coke, and the cracking of heavy hydrocarbons to lighter ones. What is novel is the application of the technology specifically for the production of char.
Combining soil improvement, carbon sequestration and renewable energy
Recent studies have shown that adding biochar to soils can in certain situations improve nutrient retention, water-holding capacity and cation exchange capacity (the ability to hold on to other charged particles such as metals), as well as reducing emissions of other greenhouse gases from soils and holding the carbon in the soil for centuries.
So in addition to potentially improving crop growth, soil productivity and structure, there’s also the potential for sequestering the carbon (which was originally taken up by the plant biomass as CO2 when it was growing) by converting it into biochar and burying it.
This is because biochar is largely resistant to microbial attack – soil bacteria get their food and energy from the breakdown of soil organic matter, “eating” their way through it and releasing greenhouse gases as by-products into the atmosphere.
And there’s yet another potential benefit of biochar – the production of renewable energy. The pyrolysis of biomass creates a synthetic gas, , that can be combusted to produce electricity and heat. Some can be used to maintain the pyrolysis process, while the rest is exported for external use. The amount will depend on the conditions of pyrolysis. Low-temperature pyrolysis can yield bio-oils which can be used as fuels or processed to produce chemicals. As the temperature increases, less oil and more biochar is generated.. Eventually, at high temperatures with the introduction of a limited quantity of air, gasification takes place – creating mainly syngas with some ash and little or no organic biochar carbon. So there’s a sliding scale of biochar/energy production which is controlled largely by temperature.
Interest in biochar originated from stories of lost civilizations in the Amazon. Initially, scientists didn’t believe that large and sophisticated communities could be supported by the poor quality, acidic soils of the river basin. But the discovery of the Terra Preta (Dark Earth) soils in tracts of land in the Amazon basin, a metre or so beneath the surface, showed that manmade char (biochar), derived from the slow burning of wood and other organic wastes, was a key component in improving the poor quality tropical soil’s productivity. In fact, it’s still productive today and still able to support agriculture some thousands of years later.
A no-brainer?
The argument for incorporating biochar into agronomy in certain arid/semi-arid/tropical areas looks like a “no brainer” – providing a relatively simple and cheap answer to problems of soil fertility, soil structure, water retention and hence soil productivity. There are some caveats, however. The diverse nature of biochar feedstocks, the physical and chemical conditions within the pyrolysis plant and the eventual application can result in different biochar characteristics and therefore different results.
But in theory, biochar production could be applied to many different organic feedstocks with some adjustment of the operating conditions. The versatility of the technology means that it can be applied to biomass products and/or biomass wastes. If the operation takes in waste biomass, it will be subject to the appropriate environmental permitting regulations and may fall under the Waste Incineration Directive in the UK.
Other applications could include using biochar as a soil forming material, combined with others for the restoration of brownfield land – acting as an ameliorant for contamination through its capacity to adsorb pollutants, as well as a soil improver.
What about the application of biochar technology in the waste resource management sector? Pure biomass feedstocks such as tree cuttings, forestry and crop residues, heather and even diseased plants should all be usable. Some wastes, of course, might contain contaminant levels which render the biochar unsuitable for application to land as a soil improver or pollution ameliorant. But it may yet be possible to bury this contaminated biochar deep beneath the surface in a landfill cell or disused mine void. This would still result both in reduced volumes of waste going to landfill and in the useful sequestration of carbon, preventing its release to the atmosphere for many years.
The scale of application can also be wide. Small scale family, community or farming projects – especially in developing countries – could benefit from investments in low capex equipment/plant for creating biochar for soil improvement, coupled with localised energy production. But much larger organisations could exploit the technology too – for example as an integral part of Birmingham City Council’s 2026 project to reduce the city’s energy requirements by 60%, by 2026.
A great deal of research is currently underway into risks to the environment and human health of biochar application, its longevity in the soil, its physico-chemical properties, and potential agronomical and agricultural benefits.
But there are still fundamental questions to be answered before legislation and policy can be drafted. Can biochar from different feedstocks be characterised? Can certain biochars be “matched” with application scenarios, or are there too many variables? What’s the energy and mass balance over the entire life cycle of the production of biochar, and how does it compare with other renewable technologies? If biochar is buried to sequester carbon, what is its longevity in the soil? And what’s the cost/benefit analysis?
The UK Biochar Research Centre is at the forefront of multi- and interdisciplinary research into biochar, and is seeking to create a UK hub which can feed into the work already done elsewhere and help to answer these questions. As a consultancy business with a broad and expanding portfolio of work in energy and climate change, Wardell Armstrong is working closely with the UKBRC on a number of projects, providing consultancy on policy and legislative requirements for the implementation of biochar projects.
Much of the commercial focus so far has been on energy production – not a surprise given the incentives offered to the renewable energy sector and energy users. The only current mechanism that exists to provide an incentive for carbon sequestration is the Clean Development Mechanism. Biochar projects in developing countries can apply for registration under the CDM. However, production is unlikely to reach its commercial potential in the UK and other industrialised countries unless a similar commercial incentive is in place which rewards carbon sequestration.
Biochar in the future
If the potential of biochar as one of the ways of alleviating climate change and food shortages is to be realised, there needs to be a concerted application of the technology at a number of scales.
Its great appeal is that it can be applied across a broad range of projects – everything from individuals and small businesses using small scale, low capital equipment, to large scale, high specification plants. Many different biomass feedstocks could be used – organic waste materials such as Waste Water Treatment Works biosolids, waste wood, crop residues and forestry residues or proprietary crops such as short rotation coppice. Depending on the requirements of a particular project, the technology could be optimised for biochar, bio-oil or syngas production by altering the pyrolysis conditions. The biochar could be applied to land as a soil improver, for land restoration, for long-term sequestration, or for contamination remediation.
But none of this must come at the expense of the environment or indigenous peoples. The spectre of unethical “land grabbing” and deforestation for biomass production should be fiercely guarded against to prevent the environmental and socio-economic impacts which accompanied the first wave of biofuel production from happening again.
As long as these risks can be legislated against and avoided, biochar could be an extremely useful and timely tool in combination with other measures for more sustainable living. We could do worse than support its progress.
“It is critical that we do everything we can to reduce our dependence on petroleum based fuels. Turning waste products into energy is good for the economy, local job creation and our environment.”
~ Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Basically, the technology for disposing of waste hasn’t caught up with the technology of producing it.”
~ Senator Al Gore 1992 ‘Earth In The Balance’ pg. 148
“The country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable
energy will lead the 21st century.”
~ President Barack Obama
“A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done
will be done”
~ Andy Grove, Co-founder of Intel
Remember—Everything New Seemed Impossible—Until It Existed