Biofuels are good because they do not cause carbon dioxide pollution. The dioxide emitted by burning them is the same the plant fixed by photosynthesis, so there’s no greenhouse gas input into the atmosphere, unlike the case of fossil fuels. The big problem is that currently we can use only a small part of the plant’s tissue to make fuels. Ethanol is made by sugar fermentation – for example, of the sugarcane marrow, while biodiesel is made using fats – for example various seed oils. But sunflower, or canola oils are found only in their seeds, and not all of the seed’s mass is made up of fats. So, a big mass of plants gives us only a small amount of fuel. This means growing larger and larger areas with energetic crops. Eventually, they would come in direct competition with food crops for the available surface. And when states subsidize biofuel cultures, what do you think farmers would prefer to grow?… The solution to this problem is using microbial biotechnologies to break up lignocellulosic matter (i.e. most of the plant’s structure) to produce simple sugars, and, in turn, ethanol. Similar strategies are being conceived for biodiesel – using other fats than those in concentrated oils. This field of study is just beginning to rise, and some years of research are still needed before we would be able to use such techniques in mass production.
But there are more sinister menaces to global agriculture. We all know (or should know) that there are already serious food shortages throughout the world. We witnessed food riots in countires like Egypt, Mozambique etc. during the last years. Current agriculture is reaching its output limits, while world population is still growing (what should be done… well, this is another discussion and i’ll leave it for another post). But what are governments of developed countries in these circumstances? They subsidize “eco” agriculture! And if they don’t, there are increasing wealthier elites that are willing to spend money on “eco” products (convinced by mass media propaganda).
Now, let’s get things straight. There is the concept of sustainable agriculture – it uses environment-friendly means for fertilizing crops, carefully planned polycultures, integrated pest control; to make it short, it has a highly scientific basis and it wields remarcable outputs, similar to those of intensive agriculture, at lower costs (and products are surely healthier for the consumers and for the environment). On this I agree. But there is also traditional agriculture, using manure for fertilization, and virtually no pest control, but more resistant (and less productive) strains. For buyers (and for the states subsidizing the production) there’s no difference. And farmers, for example in European countries, tend to shift towards traditional production, because there is demand… The trick is that this type of agriculture is much less productive than intensive one (after all, there’s a reason why people invented fertilizers and pesticides). Favouring ineffective means of production in the wake of a global food crisis is not just a bad business, it’s murderous stupidity. Governments should first consider output when they decide to subsidize agriculture.
And there’s worse. EU countries, and, if the pressure by “Green” politicians and NGOs continues, more and more governments will join the “club”, are virulently rejecting genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). These organisms (mostly plants) are genetically enhanced in order to yield higher productions, to grow on hostile soils or to resist to various pests, without needing pesticides. So, why shunning them? Well, that’s a good example of eco-stupidity. Some groups are, probably, on the payroll of chemical industry companies (no GMOs means lots of fertilizers and pesticides used). It’s also about protectionism: developed countries have mostly temperate climates, suitable to traditional or intensive agriculture, while tropical countries are those needing GMOs, to withstand the ongoing desertification. So, if you don’t want to import food from Africa and wish to protect European farmers, what can you do (plain protectionism is not an option, since you might want to export, let’s say, electronics to Africa)? You say you can’t buy it because Africans use GMOs, which are not healthy (as a paranthesis, this reminds me of EU refusing to import kava – a traditional drink form Vanuatu, stating that it might damage the consumer’s liver; no kidding, and EU-produced alcoholic drinks, or tobacco, they don’t affect people’s health? what about marijuana, legal in some EU countries – that is surely pure health!). And there’s, of course, paranoia. After all, Green activists and nutritionist need to justify their activity somehow. GM soybeans have 0.00x% possibility of causing, I don’t know, toe cancer? Yeap, so does breathing.
What I mean is that world’s governments should be more responsible and face the truth, we are heading to an agricultural crisis, and irrational policies, based on any other arguments than productivity will certainly worsen this crisis
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When you see a space shuttle, you surely notice that it has a huge external tank and rocket boosters, which together are larger than the shuttle itself. They only contain the fuel needed to exit the atmosphere. And they are not reusable. So, for every launch, NASA needs to produce such tanks and fiil them with a huge amount of fuel.
So, in order to become a truly spacefaring civilization, we must find an inexpensive way to get into orbit. The first idea that strikes us is using a cannon. Actually, a huge railgun. This is the “Bifrost” Project coined by M.T. Savage (check the LUF website). Surely, this would also consume huge amounts of energy. The advantage is that spacecraft won’t need to carry all that fuel with them.
Another method would be to have a direct connection to a low-orbit launch station. One way to achieve this is by space elevators. However, building such structures is a daunting task. Just consider that no material known to man could support the mass of some thousand-kilometer-cable. Except for carbon nanotubules, that look promising, but that we are unable to produce on a large scale.
A far more interesting (and really impressive) proposal is the StarTram Project, which, according to its supporters, would lower launch costs to less than $40/kg and would allow transporting millions of people in space each year. Basically, it’s a MagLev train that reaches a low-orbit station, from where the journey continues by conventional spacecraft. The trick is that the railroad itself would be magnetically levitated to a certain angle. This would certainly consume lots of energy, but it’s a good way to hold such a high structure above ground.
So, both Bifrost and StarTram projects look promising, and they would certainly solve one of spaceflight’s gratest problems. Building such structures would surely need huge (i.e. international, mostly state-supported) investments, but for now it’s the only way to achieve true spaceflight efficiency and send sicnificant amounts of material and people to colonize the Solar System. In order to begin exploring and exploiting the universe’s vastness, we first need to break out of our atmospheric eggshell.
]]>2. No economic activity should compete with food production – think of what effects the expansion of energetic cultures (for biofuel production) have on agriculture.
3. No debts – grow slowly, based on your own resources and avoid relying on loans.
Sounds well, don’t you think? They weren’t stated by me, but these are the basic principles of the Southern Ute Growth Fund (as I once read in an NYT article). The Southern Ute are a Native American tribe, whose members founded this private enterprise, with significant investments in self-sustainable economic projects, including innovative domains such as using industrial emissions to grow biofuel-producing microalgae. And they are considered one of the enterprises with the best solvency in the USA, with quite a tiny debt . You can find out more about them on http://sugf.com/.
]]>Certainly not. Apart from Conservatives, Marxists also used to think that the first communities were idyllic commun(al)ist societies, based on the simple idea that people had almost no material possessions. But archaeology, ethnography and common sense show us nowadays a totally different picture. It’s not about possessions, but about power. Otherwise richer societies would always be more autocratic than poor ones. It’s about who has the best weapons, the largest number of (armed) supporters and the will to use them against their opponents. It’s sure that primitive communities were usually autocratic, ruled by military and spiritual leaders and they waged wars against each other for controlling essential resources (water, food, raw materials), this also implying some groups subdued and oppressed others. Material progress just brought some order, wealth usually serving as a distinctive feature between various ruling and ruled castes.
Democracy came later. Much later. Except for some partial, small-scale and short-term experiments, such as Athens, Heliopolis, Kharijite states in the Middle East etc. democracy and civil rights were an anomaly for most of our history. Not even after the American and French Revolutions, these didn’t beacome a norm (think that even the most advanced societies didn’t have universal suffrage, including female vote until the end of the 19th century). Most countries have no more than 20-30 years of truly democratic history.
But why do we talk about this? Tyranny is still a reality, and writing blogs won’t change much. After all, you can’t use a website to blow up Kim Jong Un, for example (unfortunately). No, indeed, but we can “blow up” the ideas standing behind autocracy.
Because it’s not just a political, but also an ideatic conflict. Tyranny may be brutal, barbaric, violent, but it usually has some phylosophical “justifications”.
Dictatorships are different: absolute monarchies, or aristocratic regimes, oligarchies, military juntas, Fascist dictatorships, Communist regimes etc., but the ideology behind them can be reduced to some basic ideas. We can simply call them “Integralism” or political “Organicism”, after a pro-Fascist, Far-Right doctrine that stated these principles clearly in the first half of the 20th century. But its ideas are valid for all tyrannies, from ancient Sparta to modern dictatorships.
The idea is that the society is, or should be organized like a living organism, with each individual as a single cell. Each individual has his strictly defined place in the society, and performes a certain function. Among such functions is leadership, which is exercited only by some “chosen” individuals (after all, bone or muscle cells don’t think and don’t take decisions, only nerve cells do that, and only the brain rules the entire nerve system and the entire body, isn’t it?). So, ruling a country is a job only assigned to an “elite”: the aristocracy, junta, “vanguard party” (having a pyramidal structure, with the supreme leader on top – the monarch, “crowned by God(s)” or even a god himself, the Pope, the Fuhrer, el Caudillo, the Secretary General of the Party), which is entitled to think and decide what’s the best for the entire society. And what happens when a low caste “cell” starts to think on its own or even directly disobey to the elite? Well, the “immune system” (Gestapo, Ohrana, NKVD, DINA…) reacts and eliminates such a “cancer”. You may take any totalitarian ideology you may think of (Reactionary, Bolshevik, all strains of Fascism, Juche etc.) and find out on your own how they all fit this model.
In such societies, most people are slaves to an abusive, arbitrary power, who decides what they should think (or whether they should; a very “popular” slogan in Nazi Germany told Germans that they didn’t have to think anymore, because the Fuhrer would do it in their place!), forces them to pay arbitrary taxes, sends them to war for various bizarre reasons, and is entitled to imprison, torture or even kill them when it wishes so. People are not citizens, but mere subjects to the ruling elite.
The opposing ideology came into existence during the Age of Enlightenment, states that all human beings are born equal and should have equal rights in front of the state authority. State should be based by social contract, with both the authority and citizens having their precisely defined rights and duties. According to this phylosophy, ruling a country is not just a job for a small elite, but is something of public interest, and all citizens should have the right to participate in taking political decisions. After all, this is true citizenship.
Which of these two ways is best for mankind? It should be obvious. Everyone enjoys freedom, or should do so. Also, arbitrary power means total corruption, which leads to economic inefficiency and nasty repercussions. But the real reason for writing all this text is that when we deal with a certain political doctrine, we should ask ourselves wether it fits into the first or the second category; it’s democratic, or it’s “Integralist”, reactionary, antidemocratic and totalitarian. If one has the power to choose and he choses tyranny, he’d better prepare to be nothing more than a slave or worst…
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So, no stress, no bureaucracy… But also no medicine, death from pandemics (in the 14th century, an outbreak of bubonic plague killed almost 10% of the world’s population), or from trivial wounds, illnesses you could counteract only with plant remedies. How about malnutrition, with regular famines due to drought, plant parasites and locust invasions. A total dependence on the own agricultural production. Continuous wars and conflicts with no discrimination between combatants and civilians, not even at an ideatic level. Abuses by rulers, aristocrats or the Church, with arbitrary taxes and torture for those who couldn’t pay them.
But most of all, ignorance and fear. A few centuries (or even decades; for some people, right now) ago, your ancestors were living in continuous fear, not only due to real threats, such as famine, diseases, thugs, wild beasts, tax collectors, but also due to superstition, mythological beasts and phenomenons (orcs, trolls, ghosts, vampires are “trendy” as film and game characters now, but they were “real” for various ancient peoples), with a fear of doomsday at every eclipse. People having preindustrial reveries after reading fantasy novels or playing Warcraft don’t think that most preindustrial people weren’t able to write or read, usually didn’t travel beyond the borders of their own village and certainly hadn’t the basic comfort people enjoy nowadays.
But also let’s take a look at the greater picture! A stone age, bronze age, or feudal economy couldn’t support the current world’s population. You can’t feed more than 7 billion people with non-intensive agriculture or just foraging. If all our tech level reverted to stone age overnight, 99.99% of the mankind would starve to death.
Actually, the relation between demography and progress is more complex than that. Demographic growth requests economical and technological advancements, but progress also promotes growth. The more food and medicine available, the less people are going to die prematurely and more offspring will be born. But also consider that demography supports progress. Dense human populations mean more innovative ideas in one place and more intellectual exchange. No wonder all civilizations started in mild climates and not in tundras or dense jungles.
So, we do not progress just beacuse we like to do so, or because it eases our lives, but because we need progress. More people need more resources and a more efficient way to exploit them i.e. a higher technology. Agriculture feeds much more people than hunting and foraging; metallurgy improves agriculture; urban development creates resource (basically food and stuff required by agriculture) trading between distant areas; industry allows intensive agriculture; electronics and cybernetics improve industry, trade and transportation etc.
But it’s not just about food, water, clothing or sheltering, but also your basic civil rights. Prehistoric societies were not communitarist utopias, like Communists thought, but collectivities ruled autocratically by the strongest or better armed, by the wealthiest and by the sliest crook, who convinced the others (and somtimes believed himself) he/she could communicate with spirits or gods, i.e. the shaman or priest. Tyranny was born around 400,000 years ago, with the first Homo sapiens communities. Democracy, freedoms and civil rights were a (very) late innovation. Society needed to become enoughly urbanized, litterate, informed and with decent life standards in order to create democracies. It’s easy to control an ignorant and atomized community, but imagine doing this in the Internet era! If you look at a world map, you will find out that most countries only became democracies during the last 20-30 years.
But don’t think that progress is granted; and not only natural catastrophes can reverse it. Think of a nuclear war. And also think of savage dictators, like Pol Pot or Franco, who turned their own countries to rubble, in order to get and hold power and to realize their retrograde dystopian dreamworlds.
So, that’s why progress is good and that’s why mankind must never stop from its continuous innovation and quest for new technologies, economical and political models. And that’s why we should be circumspect when we are dealing with anti-progress, anti-growth, past-worshipping politicians. Among other sublects, in this weblog, I’ll try to expose such retrograde ideas that are plaguing the modern society.
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Outside the space science mostly left to the site, this blog will also treat some other ideas, concerning science in general, demography, ecology and economy, and, why not, politics. After all, science is not the only thing needed for our progress, but also changes in our society. Can we step in a new era together with Assad, Breivik or the dickhead(s) behind the Wisconsin Sikh temple attack, for instance? Or who wants a future in which, let’s say, an U.S./Israeli/Saudi/Al-Qaida-controlled Venus is at war with an Iranian/Syrian/Lebanese/Palestinian-controlled Mars? Or a tyrant in alpha Centauri who crushes his opponents (maybe using Venus or Mars-provided arms)?
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