Individual vs. national sacrifice

A few quotes from a CNN article demonstrate the failures of logic that result in bad policy.  The first, from the writer, Steve Hargreaves:

Anecdotal evidence from one utility says some Americans, about 20 percent, are willing to pay about 8 percent more for this power. Yet when given the option, only about 5 percent of people actually sign up.

It’s subtle, but clear example of not understanding the argument of Me vs. Us.  If you asked me, I’m willing to pay more than 100% more for clean electricity, if I get the full benefit.  But if you offer me clean power for 50% more I’ll turn it down.  Why?  Simple, I receive between 1/6,500,000,000th (my portion of the world population) and 1/600,000,000th (my portion of the world GDP) of the benefit.

If, however, the question is a national U.S. policy, I receive 20% of my contribution’s value, since the United States spends 1 of every 5 energy dollars spent worldwide.  Additionally, since my electric use is half or less the U.S average, my ratio is over 40%.

The fact the difference is only 3% demonstrates an astounding degree of selflessness.  Even if you banked on the 5% who actually did sign up, the ratio of willingness should have been 50 to 1, or 0.16% for the initial 8%.

Local vs. national

Next is the argument of the president of a natural gas based energy company, Michael Allman:

Allman’s argument implies that if natural gas prices really did spike, people would build more renewable capacity without a mandate from the federal government.

"When you constrain something, it has never been good," he said.

Here, the mistake is similar (though possibly intentional).  Without a national bill, building renewable capacity is a localized concern, whereas natural gas shortages are national (not global since natural gas is rarely imported/exported).  The overall ratio ranges from 1 to 100 in sparsely populated areas like Alaska, and as high as 1 to 20 in an area like California.

There is also a second mistake.  The assumption that the reaction to a spike will be timely and commensurate.  I’m sure a spike would have an effect, but since clean power is a 20 year investment, and localities may assume a spike is temporary, the reaction won’t be as large as warranted.  It also takes time to build clean power.  There is no clean power switch waiting to be flipped on.

Individual Encouragement

If you want individuals to invest in clean power individually, you need to give them benefits.  The best system I’ve seen yet is pricing lock-in.  One day in a not too distant future, for many areas, clean power will be more economical than natural gas.  When this happens, it’s only fair that those who believed in clean power reap the benefits.  All individually elective clean power programs should offer this benefit.  Anything else is not only missing a major opportunity, but also lacking in fairness.

Cities – Efficiency, Sustainability and Quality of Life

Cities are great places to live, and plenty of urban dwellers will attest to that, but they’ve always had a bad reputation with a large segment of the population, often for reasons that were once, though not currently, true or other types of misconceptions. For example, they often are given a very bad view by environmental groups, despite being far less impactful per capita than almost all alternatives.

So I was encouraged by two tidbits form Gristmill. The first, mentions a study comparing the health benefits of rural vs urban. The study shows that young people, babies and those under 24 years of age fare far better health wise, on average, in an urban setting.

Another article from the New Yorker extols the value of New York city itself. In short, the life expectancy for residents of New York is now longer than the rest of the United States, and increasing faster too. Admittedly, cities got off to a rough start with the dawn of industrialization and a lack of insight into the problems of pollution, sanitation and safety. But all over cities are finding their groove, are discovering how to cope, defeat and excel in areas in which they did horribly.

It’s an encouraging trend, because when you truly consider the world, and its large and still growing population, it’s clear that heavy usage of cities are the only sustainable option to support them all. If cities have bypassed a turning point, where they can not only balance efficiency, sustainability and quality of life, but increase them all simultaneously, it’s very encouraging.

As an aside, I’ve been reading, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. It’s a great book, but one thing I disagree with Bill McKibben is his inability to consider some alternatives. Sure, we all know there is a greater need for community, for less resource intensive behavior, but he makes the mistake of thinking his way is the only one. Worse, McKibben seem highly biased toward the rural lifestyle with his emphasis of the farmers markets, and myraid other small details. On observing all of this I can’t help but notice how much damage some things he takes for granted actually cause.

Take farmers markets as an example. Sure, they have the benefit of not having carted tomatoes 1700 miles to reach their destination, but there are plenty of costs involved with the extra miles associated with the farmers and consumers driving to their markets. Does it add upto 1700 miles? No, but there’s no reason the giant grocery chain can’t change it’s practices to avoid 1700 mile tomatoes, and thus gain both benefits. But McKibben is almost dismissive of the chains heading in that direction.

That brings me to the second tidbit from biodiversivist. He’s obviously aware of the problems with “off-grid” living, and the lack of sustainability involved. Placing a home inside a natural environment is not environmentally friendly. It’s nice that people who do this try and minimize the impact with solar panels, but there’s two major problems with the idea. Number one is except for some very extreme examples, there is an impact, and it’s much larger than an urban dwellers impact. If you drive in and out of your rural cottage, and it is 50 miles to the next town, that’s not good. Worse if you still work in the city.

If you’re on the grid there’s an awful lot of wire (and power loss), and you’re house is going to be comparable in energy consumption to a suburban house of the same size. If you are off the grid, there’s certainly some impacts associated with you’re power generation facilities. If it’s solar, you’ve probably bought many more panels then necessary because you need to meet your own “peek” needs. Any personal energy source is going to appear to have a minor impact compared to a coal burning power plant, but when you divide that plant’s impact by it’s number of consumers, you may be very surprised. Even more, if you compared your personal energy source per capita to a wind, solar or other commercial clean energy source, the comparison will be even worse.

The second problem is how many can actually live that lifestyle, before reasonable sites are exhausted? The answer is astonishingly few. And the sad truth of the suburbs, I’ve noticed, is many, perhaps half, of the residents didn’t want to live in the suburbs at all. They wanted to live in the country. Problem is, they edge of the suburban landscape, the barely rural, and then their neighbors moved just a bit farther out, and so on. This is how sprawl was born, and how it continues.

The fact that yet another suburb was not the intent, changes the outcome not at all. The hermit should be careful never to proclaim the superiority of his lifestyle, or he may inherit a great deal of fellow hermits. And thus the original proclamation would be laid low by the unsustainable nature of the promise.

Ways to reduce mercury

Concerned about mercury?  There are better ways to reduce usage of mercury than to spread fear about compact fluorescent lightbulbs.  For all the attention CFLs have been given, the state of linear fluorescents in offices, commercial spaces and industrial spaces has gone largely unnoticed.  Yet this is the biggest pie a the moment, and although relatively cheap alternatives are available, not all business are buying them.

One alternative is the EverLED lamps.  These lamps cost 3 times as much as a fluorescent tube, but last twice as long, contain no mercury and a save 25% more energy.  At a 50,000-70,000 lifetime these lamps will last 8 years at 24 hours per day.

Seeing as I’ve never seen an EverLED in action, I’ll present another alternative, the Phillips Alto II T8 lamps.  They use 1.7mg of mercury per lamp, 100% of the mercury used is recycled, and the lamps last 36,000-46,000 hours (that’s nearly 5-6 years at 24 hours per day) and efficiency is almost twice that of a CFL, or 8 times that of an incandescent.  I’m not sure if there available yet as I couldn’t find them at online retailers, but it’s possible the large distributors have them.

In fact, running the numbers for three sets of bulbs, LiteTronics F32T8, a Phillips Alto II (price not yet available, estimated at $90 for case of 25), and the EverLED bulbs comes up with the following results (11 cents per kwh US average, 14.26 cents CA, 16.55 cents NY, 18.85 cents CN):

	Cost	Hours	Watts	Per 10k hours (US average)	Per 10k hours (CA)	Per 10k hours (NY)	Per 10k hours (CN)
Alto I	$2.50	30,000	32	$33.67	$46.47	$53.79	$61.15
Alto II	$3.60	46,000	32	$33.61	$46.41	$53.74	$61.10
EverLED	$150.00	70,000	24	$47.83	$55.65	$61.15	$66.67

All three are very close in operational costs, so why not give an EverLED a try?  In a few years, perhaps LED based alternatives to CFLs will be available too.  That doesn’t change the fact that incandescents need to be replaced today.

Flexibility – Personal Transit variations (Part 3)

As I said in Part 1, I’ll compare the differences between Space Individualized Transit (SIT), Individual Mass Transit (IMT) and RUF.  PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) is an effort to add flexibility back to public transportation systems, and thus increase their use. 

Conventional PRT makes progress, but it still misses the final mile.  Sometimes I look forward to a walk, but there are many instances where it’s a problem.  Also, not everyone thinks like I do.  Bad weather and time are downers for almost everyone, myself included.  In addition, 35lb bags of dog food or furniture are more than just inconveniences.  Thus with conventional PRT, conventional rail or buses the need for conventional roads remains.  Those costs, being rather large, will always hold back secondary transportation methods.

IMT and RUF however interface with conventional roads and make to your door delivery a reality.  While that doesn’t reclaim the costs of roads, it does make IMT and RUF viable replacements for 100% of needs.  Once you have a guideway and a vehicles capable of using it, there is no reason not to.  Guideways are thus no more secondary than highways are today.

SIT provides the same capabilities since compartment can be placed on drive-by-wire sleds in non-automated environments.  Operators can then use controls inside the compartment to drive like any other car.

Since SIT’s is multi-modal, compartments can interface with conventional rail, long distance mag-lev tracks or Evacuated Tube Transport.  In addition, conventional rail or light rail can provide mid range travel to reduce initial infrastructure costs.

• Part 1 – Personal Transit
• Part 2 – Storage
• Part 4 – Efficiency
• Part 5 – Morning Options
• Part 6 – Service

Devil in Disguise

After writing a response to another CFL doubter, I think I let this guy off the hook too easy.  Since 1996 D.C. Agrawal has been conducting research on incandescent bulbs, and has this year taken it upon himself to post a great deal of misinformation about CFL bulbs.  I’ve also seen his "response" in other places on the net.

The thing is, this is, on a smaller scale, the exact same kind of scientific infidelity which explains how we have scientists out there still claiming that there is no way humans are causing global warming, that smoking doesn’t kill, etc.

The real devil in disguise is those individuals who hide behind claims of scientific freedom.  That is harmful to policy, to public opinion, and to the future of scientific freedom, which despite it’s abuse is fully justified.

Accounting and Metrics; Investing and Management

I just finished Essays of Warren Buffet: Lessons for Corporate America.  It’s an interesting book, not exactly exciting, but Buffet is very clear and humorous.  The worst part was since it’s a collection of essays some topics become slightly repetitive.

One such topic, the difference between economic goodwill and accounting goodwill struck me as a clear example of the "What isn’t easily measurable, doesn’t exist" rule.  Economic goodwill is "the intangible advantages a company has over its competitors such as an excellent reputation, strategic location, business connections, etc.", where accounting goodwill is "the excess of cost over equity in net assets acquired".

The point Buffet makes is, at the time, the substitution of accounting goodwill for economic goodwill in GAAP rules required accounting goodwill to be amortized over a period of 40 years, but in the majority of cases, this charge was not valid.  In fact he makes a good case that when rational purchases are made, economic goodwill will not only be greater than accounting goodwill, but will increase with inflation, rather than waste away.

The reason economic goodwill wasn’t used is because if you ask two people to evaluate economic goodwill, you may end up with two very different answers.  In other words, economic goodwill is not measurable.  Accounting goodwill however is easily calculated by subtracting book price from purchase price.

The rules have changed a bit since Buffet’s essays were written.  Accounting goodwill is still the standard, but now it is not amortized unless it is judged to be "impaired".  A lengthy set of rules (see statement # 142), describe these rules, but the changes only reduce, not eliminate the original problem.

It’s unlikely accounting rules will ever correct the error because measurement of economic goodwill is not easily specified.  It can only be estimated, and often requires judgements greater than what accounting procedures are comfortable with. 

There is some justification to the purist view of accounting procedures as Buffet says,

The accountants’ job is to record, not to evaluate.  The evaluation job falls to investors and managers.  Managers and owners need to remember that accounting is but an aid to business thinking, never a substitute for it.

I could expand upon this wisdom to point out it’s validity to all metrics, not just accounting numbers.  You cannot reliably react to those numbers directly.  Unless you really understand the source, meaning and validity of the numbers to be precisely match your evaluation criteria direct reactions will run afoul.  Business is not science, and anyone who ever thinks it can, should or will be doesn’t understand business at all.

Comparison of Personal Transit variations (Part 1)

Jerry, who has been tracking innovative transportation technologies, at UW, pointed out a few projects with similarities to the transportation concept, I’ve blogged about.  I’ve never given it a name before, but lets call it Space Individualized Transit (SIT) for now.

The first, Individual Mass Transit, outlines a dual-mode system, where the first mode is the conventional rubber to road, manual control system.  The second mode still is rubber to road, but upon raised guideways and with automated control.

Drivers manually maneuver to a guideway entry station, after which automated systems control distance, speed, routing, merging and exit.  As all vehicles are under control, and external obstacles are precluded, the safety characteristics are high.

The second, RUF, is also dual-mode, with the first mode still conventional rubber to road, manual control.  The second mode is monorail guided and propelled by internal motors.  Like IMT, the second mode is automated and controls all functions from entry to exit leaving the operator to merely select a destination.  Since vehicles are singular, an operator can change his mind (oops forgot to pick up flowers!) and routing will automatically adjust.

Both systems are variations of a concept called PRT (Personal Rapid Transit), which calls for small, automated vehicles using a guideway and routing to provide origin to destination service.  PRT is also the inspiration for the concept I’ve written about too.

The primary difference between RUF or IMT and SIT is they are dual-mode, while SIT is multi-modal.  Both RUF and IMT keep the drivetrain welded to the passenger compartment, which imposes limitations and inefficiencies.  SIT separates the two, which would produce lower weight, increased flexibility, and less space usage.

In the next several posts I’ll cover some of the implications, both as a comparison of SIT to RUF and IMT, and the three of them to conventional cars.

• Part 2 – Storage
• Part 3 – Flexibility
• Part 4 – Efficiency
• Part 5 – Morning Options
• Part 6 – Service

Policy, Subjectivity and Intelligence

Cosine writes about "Policy Hell" and the sticky nature of policies, the difficulty in pruning an ever growing tree of policy process.  I can’t help but recognize the applicability of the "What isn’t easily measurable, doesn’t exist Rule" here.  It’s not always that people cannot quantify costs, but that their simply unwilling to ever live with a subjective estimation, even if it’s clearly right.

Objectivity is great, but sometimes it’s just too expensive to obtain.  Of course the ironic element here is that much of what makes policies sticky is the unrecognized subjectivity of fear.  Maybe the real problem isn’t in peoples ability to reason, but a simple emotional imbalance?

I’ve wondered how much of perceived intelligence is really a reflection of emotional balance or imbalance.  Is the poor investor, who sells low and buys high stupid, or are they simply driven by fear and unable to apply what might otherwise be creative and thoughtful analysis if operating in a fear free environment?

Googling around shows there are some thoughts on this topic, "Emotional Intelligence", seems to be a close topic, though more broad then my thought, and apparently a field that has fallen prey, quite ironically to the need to measure everything.  The end of the Wikipedia article linked shows echoes of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, namely that in many cases it may not be possible to take measurements without affecting the condition you are measuring.

But regardless of the missteps, someone is thinking about the topic, which is interesting in itself.

Idea – Tankless Water Heater.. with a tank

Tankless Water Heaters for most uses are more efficient than tanked water heaters because they don’t heat water until it’s used. It occurred to me that a tank could help boost the efficiency of an electric tankless water heater further. Sounds strange, but this contraption would be different from a normal water heater.

For the most part the on-demand water heater would work like a tankless water heater. Water would be heated directly in the pipes as it runs through. The difference is a side-tank would be installed to buffer power usage. The most obvious use of this capability would be to warm up the tank water overnight when excess electricity goes unused. That way, during shower time when electricity usage is higher the heating elements wouldn’t need to do as much work.

Another theory which I’m unfortunately unable to test is it would require less energy to gradually keep the tank water lukewarm and then raise it up to shower temperature on demand than to on-demand increase cold water to shower temperature.

The idea works far better with electric than gas for some obvious reasons.

Evil misuse of the "executive summary"

I was in the middle of reading a Washington Post article about the decline of reading, when I had a tangential thought.  It came to me as the author describes high school students who read about books, rather than reading the books.

Cliff notes can help you pass a test, so one might be tempted to believe they contain all the value of the original book, or at least a higher per word value.  But that’s simply not true.  A great book is not about the ending, or any concluding moral statements, or even it’s observations of human behavior.  It’s not about any observation you’ll find the common interpretation of summed up succinctly in Cliff notes.  The real value is the why of those interpretations.

The same is true of the average book/article on business, technology or other topics.  Surely, many could be better written to be more succinct, but the executive summary concept isn’t attempting to make a more compact, denser and clearer book.  It’s cutting to the ending.

That’s okay in some situations, hence why I caveat the title with “misuse”.  The ending may be a suitable substitute for someone who only needs to know what is going on. 

It’s far more questionable for decision making.  It may be a necessary evil for individuals responsible for large numbers of decisions.  But if you’re forced into a situation like this, perhaps you need to reconsider how decisions are made.  Maybe you need to delegate more decisions to people with time to fully consider them, and devote more of your own time to the most important decisions.  It’s hard letting go, I know I have that problem, but it’s definitely necessary.

However, implementing conclusions without understanding why is generally wrong.  There are exceptions.  When the Surgeon General says “stop smoking”, you don’t need to read the 400 page report to implement the conclusion.  Most conclusions are not so easy.  The books and articles for which executive summaries are created have vague and/or shaky conclusions.  If you understand the “why”, then you’ll have a framework to fill in the gaps which your situation presents.  Reading one-hundred 2 page executive summaries won’t equal the value of one good 200 page book.