The Truth About Alternative Energy

In order to understand where we stand with regards to alternative energy (energy derived from sources that do not use up natural resources or harm the environment), one first must understand the magnitude of various energy sources that are currently consumed each year.

Imagine a mile. Now imagine a mile wide by a mile long by a mile deep. This is a cubic mile. In order to make comparison easier between these various energy sources, all the units are in cubic miles of oil (CMO), meaning the amount of energy equivalent to that provided by a cubic mile of oil. (These numbers came from my Chemical Engineering in Society class, and I am sure they are credible.)

World Energy Use Per Year (CMO)

Oil:                  1.16

Coal                 0.99

Natural Gas      0.78

Hydro              0.15

Nuclear            0.19

Biomass           0.15
(burning wood, etc.)   

Biofuel             0.01

Wind&Solar     0.02

Total                3.45

This is the magnitude of our energy appetite. Although there has been a great push towards wind and solar energy, they still make up less than one percent together.

Here are some cost estimates for replacing the oil alone (1.16 CMO) with alternative energies:

• Solar: $80 Trillion (not to mention the threat to national security this poses since China produces and controls 95% of the world's supply of Rare Earth Metals)
• Wind: $5 Trillion to build. We would need to build 1000 2-Megawatt wind machines every week for the next 50 years to get them all built.
• Nuclear: $50 Trillion. We would need to build 2,500 900-Megawatt plants.
• Hydro: we don't have enough suitable rivers to create enough hydro-electric power. (We could maybe double current production.)
• Biofuel: Cost ??, but we would need to turn 25% of the cultivatable land into cropland for biofuels.

 Basically, it would take a lot of money, and physically a long time before we could substitute alternative energy sources for oil, not to mention natural gas and coal. Besides this, there are a lot of controversies about these sources of energy, such as there being hundreds of thousands of birds of prey killed each year by wind turbines; food shortages associated with using our cropland for growing fuel; the environmental and civil costs of building dams, real and imagined risks of nuclear plants and nuclear waste, and more.

Here are the numbers for the currently-known reserves for fossil fuels (which make up 85% of our energy sources):

Coal: 125 years at current consumption rate (the rate's increasing, but so are the number of reserves)

Petroleum: about 44 years of known reserves, but the amount of accessible reserves is increasing
Natural Gas: total amount left is unknown, but the amount of known reserves continues to grow

Besides these constraints on our resources, there are a slew of environmental impacts from using fossil fuels (which I'll leave for another post).

While it is true that we need to come up with alternative energy sources because fossil fuels will not last forever, the truth is that if we were to just stop using them, there would be about 60-70% unemployment OVERNIGHT. The cost of energy would double or more. If no one buys cars or fuel, no one travels, and the economy shuts down.

In short: availability of cheap energy drives the standard of living. The price of energy will steadily increase as we have to work harder to mine fossil fuels, and as the resources continue to shrink. While we need to find alternative ways of providing energy, it is important to recognize the magnitude of the task we are talking about, and the costs of switching to alternative energies.

My Thesis in Progress

As I looked through my past blog posts, I've realized that I have covered quite a breadth of subjects. I've categorized my posts into groups:

Science
The Definition of Open Science: What Went Wrong With Cold Fusion

Technology's Effect on Society and Government
Amusement
I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT SOPA
Predicting Technology's Effect on Society
Presentation is Everything--Especially in a Digital World
How Safe is Paperless vs. Paper for Digital Information?

Health Care and Government
Birth Control and Small Businesses

Education
The Barometer Story: A Superficial Learning Environment

Globalization
Elephants and Globalization
Economic Globalization, Free Markets, and the Growing Divide

History
Hero from the 19th Century: A Woman Called Moses

After categorizing my posts, I realize I have focused more on posting about technology than about history. Partly this is due to the fact that I am in the 20th Century group, but this actually does not excuse me since there are a lot of great connections between the digital concepts and the history of the 20th century, such as Lenin and Stalin in relation to "control". I did post historical-related posts on Google+ about the Trans-Atlantic Cable for the Telegraph, the origins of Black History Month, and a few others.

Still, I think I can do a better job of relating the things I am learning about technology to historical content. It would add depth to my thoughts.

Honestly, I was disappointed a bit at the lack of response to my Globalization posts. I guess they were too dense to catch attention. I was really excited about sharing the things I am learning from reading my book. Perhaps if I had relayed the information more like this:

African nations spend more on debt servicing each year than the UN estimates is needed to curb AIDS in Africa.

Exxon-Mobil has higher revenue than the GDP of Saudi Arabia.

Wal-Mart Stores has 2X as much revenue as the GDP of Thailand.

Out of the top 100 largest economies in the world in 2005, 42 were corporations, 58 were countries.

It is incredible to me that a single company can have more economic power than an entire country.

Overall, I think my thesis is still developing, but I am leaning towards something about technology and its effects on government and society.

Birth Control and Small Businesses

Today I attended a lecture by Scott Moscrip, founder of 10 companies, including Internet Truckstop, which holds the biggest share of its market in "matching up" Trucking companies with companies wanting to transport goods in the $3 Trillion trucking industry.

I really enjoyed hearing about his big break in entrepreneurship, which was in 1995 when he founded this online company, right as internet companies were taking off. Besides talking about his corporate jet he took to come speak to us so he could leave on his own time, he also brought up something that is going on right now in the U.S. government that I was not aware of.

Last month the Department of Health and Human Services ruled that all employers must provide free access to birth control for female workers. This has had a lot of opposition by the Catholic Church, since they do not want to be forced to pay for things against their moral beliefs.  President Obama gave an "accommodation" to religious institutions to force the insurance to pay for them, however, the Catholic Church in Washington D.C. is self-insured, meaning they would still have to pay the bill. This ruling is part of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, supports the ruling.

Scott Moscrip brought up an interesting perspective on this: he said it is just another impediment to entrepreneurs and small businesses. I can't imagine my employer having to ask me what birth control I would like so they can provide it/reimburse it! It seems to me that the government is just getting too involved in our personal lives. Overall, Scott Moscrip believes that the government's purpose in business is to prevent it from happening. I tend to think he's right. Maybe the government should stop using birth control on businesses.

Hero from the 19th Century: A Woman Called Moses

I was thinking more about this being Black History Month, and I thought about Harriet Tubman. As I did some research about her, I found that she was an incredible woman who had a strong faith in Christ, served many people throughout her life, and was extremely brave and courageous.

This video from history.com gives an overview of Harriet's role in the Underground Railroad, and how that even more than the 70 people she helped escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad, she was a symbol that thousands of slave owners feared. She led 20 dangerous missions back to the south to lead slaves to freedom, and she never lost a "passenger". She was nicknamed "Moses" by her people, and was a symbol of hope.

Harriet also served the Union Army during the civil war as a cook, laundress, nurse, scout and spy. She helped hundreds of slaves transition from bondage to freedom with the help of missionary teachers. She led a raid of Confederate property that freed nearly 800 slaves. She was the matron of the Colored Hospital at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, and cared for many injured soldiers there. She raised money for freedmen's schools, and she turned the home she had purchased for her family into the Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. She was also a delegate to the first annual convention of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896, and was an advocate for woman's suffrage (See this website for where I got this information).

As I was thinking about slavery, I remembered a post (Click Blog #5 Assignment) I made in my Honors 240 American Government class my Freshman year. This post expresses my thoughts and feelings on slavery. I re-read it and I was surprised; it was actually really good. That's another great reason about posting the things we write for classes online. It is great to have a documentation of my learning, and go back a couple years later and remember what I learned from a class.

Can Your Hack a Refrigerator?

A couple weeks ago, I saw a commercial for USPS on TV (the first clip on the video embedded in the webpage). Apparently, this advertising campaign was started last year because USPS lost $10 million in the last fiscal year. I found this discussion about why the US Postal Service is struggling, which I think has some good points, like what would happen if it went out of business, and how FedEx and UPS would have reign over mailing prices.

Anyway, the commercial got me thinking about how secure our paperless, digital forms of storing/sending information really is. It says, "A refrigerator has never been hacked. An online virus has never attacked a cork-board." This is true, but my credit union highly encouraged me to go with paperless statements a couple years ago, claiming it was more secure, so I did. The nice thing about it is that in order to view my statements, I have to log into my bank account online, so I feel very secure about it. They claim that it is a greater risk for people to steal my statement from my mailbox or the garbage than online.

But what about other kinds of information? What about credit card numbers and buying things online? What about businesses storing sensitive information on networks and servers? Here is a website with tips for individuals and businesses for protecting online data. I think there are definite issues with security of digital data, but I think that it is so much more convenient, earth-friendly, and cost-effective to store and send information online that these benefits outweigh the risk.

On a personal level, I think that most of the responsibility lies on the individual to take the necessary precautions not to share sensitive personal information (especially social security and credit card numbers) online, and to have adequate virus protection on their computers. Still, there are some things we cannot control. A personal experience with this is that I have gotten emails from acquaintances (including a BYU professor) claiming that he or she is stuck in some country and needs money. Prior to this, I had heard about my friend's dad getting his email account hijacked and an email like this sent out from his account. Someone actually did respond, sadly, and lost some money. When my friend's dad finally regained access to his account, all his emails had been deleted, including all his business ones (he owned his own business). I think it would be very annoying to have my email account hacked, and for my BYU professor, it was due to him using a computer in an internet cafe in France that apparently was bugged. It was no fault of his own.

However, the data shows that small business to medium-sized are quite susceptible to hacking. GFI Software conducted a survey of 200 small to mid-sized U.S. businesses in October 2011, 40% of which have suffered due to hacking. The problem is that small businesses do not take the possibility of being hacked seriously. This person on Yahoo claims there is no way to actually know how many businesses are hacked because businesses don't want to reveal that and cause doubts about their company. I think that this is probably true.

My overall perception is that use of the internet to store and share information has increased the amount of crime. I think this is due to ease of crimes being committed from a removed place, so people can steal with little chance of getting caught.

Presentation is Everything--Especially in the Digital World

Here are some clips that prove that in this new digital market, presentation is everything. For those Steve Jobs fans out there, compare the introduction of the iPhone to the introduction of the Nexus One...BIG difference.

(Only need to watch the first three minutes to be wowed by this one. I suggest putting it in full-screen mode for maximum effect):

(This clip luckily only shows under two minutes of the presentation...I don't know if I could take much more of it.)
















(Still, in this new domain of technology called the smart phone, there are room for mistakes--even for Apple.)

(Let's not let Google off the hook for technical difficulties during important presentations.)

Economic Globalization, Free Markets and the Growing Divide

 “Amount of money the United Nations estimates is needed annually to curb the AIDS epidemic in Africa through education, prevention, and care: US$20-23 billion. Amount of money African nations pay to service their debts each year: US$21 billion" (page 45 of Globalization: A Very Short Introduction by Manfred B. Steger). 


     One way economic globalization has taken place is through the internationalization of trade and finance. This includes the establishment of open economies and free trade. There is evidence that shows some national economies have thrived because of free trade. However, it appears that these benefits are spread very unevenly throughout the world. According to Steger, “Most studies show that the gap between rich and poor countries is widening at a fast pace.” The line graph to the left is a great visual representation of this (taken from page 108 of Globalization: A Very Short Introduction). Economic globalization is actually leaving part of the world behind: the Global South. Essentially, rich countries are able to exploit poor countries, making them more in debt to them and more dependent on them for survival. According to a couple websites I found, between 133-157 countries are in the Global South out of the total number of 195. See the graph below for the percentage of populations living on less than $1.25 a day (taken from Wikipedia).

     It is true that many international organizations give a lot of help to countries. In addition, as was talked about in the Google+ chat with President Obama, the United States gives financial aid to several countries. However, consider this: in 2005, developing countries paid US$355,025.5 million in debt servicing, and received only US$80,534.1 million in aid (page 55 in Globalization: A Very Short Introduction).

     If you still don't believe that there are ill effects from economic globalization, have you ever heard of the South-East Asia crisis in the 1990s? I hadn't heard of it until I read this book, but it demonstrates that global speculators often take advantage of the emerging financial markets of developing countries. This link has some in-depth background to some of the cultural and economic reasons for the crisis. Basically in the 1990s, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, and the Philippines slowly opened their markets to attract foreign direct investment, and linked their national currencies to the US dollar. Investment in stock and real-estate by foreign investors skyrocketed, but by 1997, prices had inflated so much that investors panicked and withdrew $105 billion from these countries, forcing them to remove their currency from the US dollar standard, resulting in a huge economic fallout that threatened to put the global economy into recession. The combination of international bail-out packages and the rock-bottom-price sale of South-East Asian commercial assets to foreign investors saved the global economy, but at a great cost. The citizens of this region are still suffering today from the consequences of this economic crisis.

Elephants and Globalization

When I read Thomas Freidman's book, The World is Flat, I was convinced that globalization is happening quickly, and that it is this incredible, wonderful thing that is enabling more people to have more opportunities than ever before!

However, one of the books I am reading for this class, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, has helped to convince me to see both the positive and negative of globalization. This book is very unbiased towards the positive or negative of globalization. However, the facts show that some aspects of globalization are not so peachy. (Note: I have several thoughts for blogposts based on this book. I am only sorry I did not begin sharing this knowledge sooner in my reading of it.) The question I pose is, "Is Globalization Good or Bad?"

First of all, it is important to understand the definition of globalization, as this book defines it. Globalization, it claims, is a "set of social processes" that are weakening the importance of current national, geographical, and other boundaries to shift towards an eventual "globality", or a social condition of which "global economic, political, cultural, and environmental interconnections" render current borders and boundaries "irrelevant." To be sure, the book does not claim that "globality" is yet upon us, in fact it claims the world has not yet reached it. However, it claims that globalization is indeed occurring.

There is a lot of argument going on about how globalization is occurring, what is causing it, and in what ways is it occurring. The author, Manfred B. Steger, brilliantly compares globalization to the ancient Buddhist parable of the blind scholars. Basically some blind scholars did not know what an elephant looked like, so they each touched the elephant, attempting to gain a mental picture of the animal. Each of them touched a different part of the elephant, one claiming it was lively like a snake (trunk), one claiming it was like a huge, rough column (leg), one claiming it was like an artist's paintbrush (tail). Each held firmly to his own idea, because his scholarly reputation depended on the veracity of his findings. The point of this story is that globalization is like the elephant. It cannot be reduced to a single dimension, but it effects several dimensions, and each must be examined to have a good picture of globalization. This book covers the following dimensions of globalization: economic, political, cultural, and ecological.

In my following blogposts, I will cover each of these dimensions, and relate them to some of the ideas that have been discussed already. I believe there is no answer to the question I posed above because there are too many dimensions to lump globalization into a "good" or "bad" category. As for the individual dimensions, the answer still is not clear, but at least a discussion can be made.

The Barometer Story: A Superfical Learning Environment

In response to the discussion started in class about the current educational system, I have thought about my personal experiences with it. One frustration I have with the educational system, especially in the sciences at a University level, is the closed-ended way everything is taught. From the very beginning, I have been taught that there is a "right" answer to every question the teacher asks, and if you can replicate the "right" answer, you get high scores. This may be the best way we have to measure how well someone learns material, but I believe there is a need for a different kind of learning in University-level science and engineering programs. The truth is, in the real world, it is rare that someone actually knows the "right" answer to the problems you'll be solving. The easy problems have already been solved. In order to have a more successful transition into the "real world" from the superficial "learning environment" of a University course, I think students need more training in handling open-ended problems. Ones that the TA can't just tell you how to solve. I admit that I don't know how this could be graded fairly, but I believe from my own experience with an engineering internship last summer, there is a need for this.

Linked here is a funny story by Alexander Calandra about a student thinking outside of the box when answering a test question. (snopes.com says it is actually "Legend", but it's a good story anyway.) This illustrates the typical "closed-minded" approach of the traditional educational system.

I also feel that the problems I am solving in my courses are pointless. They have already been solved hundreds of times. While it is true that the way to mastering anything is practice, which is the point of these check-your-answer problems, I'm just saying it's not enough in today's world. We are in a world where the problems keep getting more complicated. We--who the world is depending on to solve it's problems--need something more in our tool set than what the University experience is currently giving us. Miriam Burton called this educational "cannibalism". As far as I understand it, this is the idea that in today's classroom, we are expected to regurgitate material without enough room for independent exploration and creativity. While it is true that in practice, the scientific and engineering worlds do not consider this cannibalism useful, I feel it makes up a great deal of my classes in Chemical Engineering.

As a note, the Chemical Engineering program has made efforts to give more of this "open-ended" learning experience to students. There is 1 credit of "creativity" experience required (research, etc.), and 3 credits required of EMSB, which can be anything in the Engineering, Math, Science, and Business fields. In defense of the program, it is difficult for the major with the most required credits on campus (101.5-103.5 credits required) to make any more room for classes that would fill this need. It may therefore require a change in the way classes are taught, rather than the classes required.