Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 12/01/06
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE 22 TERAWATTS?”
by RONALD BAILEY, REASON’S Science Correspondent
“The flip side of the climate change conundrum is energy. Burning fossil fuels – coal, oil, gas – produces 80 percent of the world’s commercial energy. They also produce 61 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that are thought to be increasing the earth’s average temperature…
“Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes a sobering analysis of the challenge of supplying adequate energy to the world in 2050. In his article, ‘On the Future of Global Energy’ in the current issue of Daedalus (unfortunately not online), Nocera begins with the amount of energy currently being used on a per capita basis in various countries and then extrapolates what that usage implies for a world of 9 billion people in 2050. For example, in 2002 the United States used 3.3 terawatts (TW), China 1.5 TW, India 0.46 TW, Africa 0.45 TW and so forth. Totaling it all up, Nocera finds ‘the global population burned energy at a rate of 13.5 TW.’ A terawatt equals one trillion watt-hours.
“Nocera calculates that if 9 billion people in 2050 used energy at the rate Americans do today the world would have to generate 102.2 TW of power – more than seven times current production. If people adopted the energy lifestyle of Western Europe, power production would need to rise to 45.5 terawatts. On the other hand if the world’s 9 billion in 2050 adopted India’s current living standards, the world would need to produce only 4 TW of power. Nocera suggests, assuming heroic conservation measures that would enable American lifestyles, that ‘conservative estimates of energy use place our global energy need at 28-35 TW in 2050.’ This means that the world will need an additional 15-22 TW of energy over the current base of 13.5 TW.
“So where will the extra energy come from? Relying on figures from the WORLD ENERGY ASSESSMENT by the United Nations Development Program, Nocera looks at the maximum amounts of power that various non-fossil fuel sources might supply. Biomass could supply 7-10 TW of energy. But that is the equivalent of harvesting all current crops solely for energy. Nuclear could produce 8TW, which implies building 8000 new reactors over the 45 years at a rate of one new plant every two days. Wind would generate 2.1 TW if every site on the globe with class 3 winds or greater were occupied with windmills. Winds at a class 3 site blow at 11.5 miles per hour at 33 feet above the ground. And hydro-power could produce 0.7-2 TW if dams were placed on every untapped river on earth. Nocara concludes, ‘The message is clear. The additional energy we need in 2050 over the current 13.5 TW basis, is simply not attainable from long discussed sources – the global appetite for energy is simply too great…
“Given the magnitude of the problem of fueling the future with carbon-neutral energy, Nocera argues that the only real alternative for carbon-neutral energy production is some form of solar power. More energy from sunlight strikes the Earth in one hour than humanity uses in a year. But converting sunlight into energy useful to people is a huge unsolved technological problem. In 2000, author Richard Rhodes and nuclear engineer Denis Beller calculated that using current solar power technologies to construct a global solar-energy system would consumes at least 20 percent of the world’s known iron resources, take a century to build and cover a half-million square miles. Clearly a lot of technological innovation needs to take place before solar becomes an option for fueling the world.
“The challenge of supplying the world with carbon neutral energy has a lot of people calling for the launching of a ‘Manhattan Project’ or ‘Apollo Project.’ What they mean is that the Federal government should dramatically boost research and development spending for novel energy technologies. Let’s recall that the Apollo Project absorbed 5.3 percent of the Federal government’s budget in 1965. A comparable expenditure would be $136 billion in 2006 – that’s almost 5 times higher than the Energy Department’s 2006 budget. It is also more than the Federal government spends on the agriculture, commerce, energy, homeland security, interior, justice and labor departments…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.reason.com/news/show/116887.html
“A RANSOM WORTH PAYING”
portions of an article from Economist.com on 11/27/06
“‘The soybean frontier is approaching,’ warns Virgilio Viana, the secretary of the environment of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. He is predicting an imminent surge in deforestation in the vast and relatively pristine heart of the Amazonian rainforest. First come roads, then illegal loggers, then pioneering homesteaders, and, finally, full-scale land clearance for soybean farms and cattle ranches. The states closer to Brazil’s Atlantic coast have already suffered this fate, which now threatens the remoter jungles of the interior.
“These disappearing trees serve as a huge repository of carbon. When they are cut down, the carbon finds its way into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, the most common of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Deforestation accounts for roughly one-fifth of the greenhouse gases produced each year. If the world does not find a way to make living trees more valuable, Mr. Viana fears, the rainforests of Amazonas will vanish within a generation – and the climate of the western hemisphere will become much less pleasant…
“Prickly nationalists in Brazil have long resisted internationally inspired measures to stem deforestation, both out of distaste for the notion that outsiders might have any say in how their country is run, and out of the conviction that converting forests to fields is the quickest path to development. But Mr. Viana argues that, for the poor indigenous people of Amazonas at any rate, payments for avoided deforestation, along with the harvesting of forest products, such as rubber and Brazil nuts, will provide a better livelihood than deforestation.
“The International Institute for Environment and Development, a British think-tank, has estimated that logging, and the subsequent use of the land cleared each year, in eight forested countries, would bring in $5 billion over a 30-year period. That translates into a benefit of $3.50 for every tonne of carbon dioxide released. So far rich countries have paid an average of $7 per tonne to reduce emissions in the developing world, under the Kyoto protocol. At that rate they could pay deforesters twice as much to leave trees alone as the latter get now for cutting them down…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8343294&frsc=RSS
“IN PRAISE OF THIRD PLACE”
portion of article by James Surowiecki in 12/04/06 THE NEW YORKER
“…while it’s true that in many industries there is a correlation between market share and profitability, one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other. A recent survey of the evidence on market share by J. Scott Armstrong and Kesten C. Green found that companies that adopt what they call ‘competitor-oriented objectives’ actually end up hurting their own profitability. In other words, the more a company focuses on beating its competitors, rather than on the bottom line, the worse it is likely to do. And a study of the performance of twenty major American companies over four decades found that the ones putting more emphasis on market share than on profit ended up with lower returns on investment; of the six companies that defined their goal exclusively as market share, four eventually went out of business.
“The point is that business is not a sporting event. Victory for one company doesn’t mean defeat for everyone else. Markets today are so big – the global video-game market is now close to thirty billion dollars – that companies can profit even when they’re not on top, as long as they aren’t desperately trying to get there. The key is to play to your strengths while recognizing your limitations. Nintendo knew that it could not compete with Microsoft and Sony in the quest to build the ultimate home-entertainment device. So it decided with the Wii, to play a different game entirely. Some pundits are now speculating, ironically, that the simplicity of the Wii may make it a huge hit. Nintendo wouldn’t complain if that happened…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.newyorker.com/printables/talk/061204ta_talk_surowiecki
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