Why do we see so many news articles praising technologies that clearly have limitations in terms of ability to perform, complexity to implement, obvious flaws, long time delays to perfection or just look plain crazy ?

If this question has ever shambled across your mind, casting a shadow of indeterminate length or duration, be encouraged to know you are not alone.

We just love technofixes, the more far-out leftfield whacky the better. And newspaper editors know we love the shock of the new, so they keep on feeding us with it :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/25/osmosis-plant-emission-free-energy

Have you spotted the fatal flaw ?

It’s not just newspaper editors that regurgitate this kind of gumpf. Corporations who are trying to steal Public Relations market share are also in on the technofix game.

This has to be the “techno-lemon” of the month – an ongoing saga of endless research and development that may lead literally in a vat of pond scum (and low flow production rates) :-

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/algae-energy-orgy

Remember the “Hydrogen Economy” ? The metals for the Hydrogen fuel containers would drain world resources overnight.

And Carbon Capture and Storage ? Nobody wants to pay twice or triple for Coal power.

New reactor designs for Nuclear Fission Power ? Tell me any of them work properly and safely. Show me the proof that engineering has improved to allow the new generations to be built to last. Show me the evidence that there won’t be major “unplanned outages” in the new plants.

And tell me somebody has figured out how to do the permanent safe disposal of the radioactive waste. I can remember from my childhood a TV programme about “vitrified waste”. Still don’t see it anywhere.

Nuclear Fusion ? Still in development and still 35 years away; and has been for the last 35 years of research.

But you never know, someday one or two of the ideas coming up might help :-

I love the “helicopter landing platform” part of this plan, plus the fact that it’s “grid-ready” !

Important take home fact #1 : Energy efficiency and energy conservation are cheaper and more effective, long-term, than whole new fleets of Energy stations.

Important take home fact #2 : Technology doesn’t always work :-

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3126

Important take home fact #3 : Technology often wastes energy and creates pollution. The classic all-time example would have to be the motor car.

To be honest, he was taller than I expected, and more Eastern in appeareance, a kind of lanky version of Mehmet behind the deli counter at my local Turkish International Food Emporium.

David Miliband was also considerably thinner than I would have liked, considering he might one day rule the New Labour Party, who might just rule my country again. We wouldn’t want him blown away by the slightest breeze, surely, would we ? He needs feeding in my opinion.

“Should be starting any minute now”, assured one of the event stewards as the clock ticked resolutely onwards after the advertised 11:00 am starting time for the Fabian Society’s “The Global Change We Need” one-day conference, hosted by Amnesty International.

We were made to wait by the interminable rise of “celebrity politics”, as Mr Miliband the Elder needed a commanding entrance, a long and powerful walk to the podium in full view of all the big fat cameras and young, shiny-faced campaigners and researchers.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, was terribly aware of his facial expression, holding himself in a way to under-accentuate his off-balance face, but he was a human, too, as he had a broad smile when he was amused by something. He is, as Private Eye have cartooned him, a schoolboy character.

He spun a load of goop, even sometimes putting his finger under the words on the page, probably written for him while he was on the plane back from yesterday, where was it this week ? Istanbul or Sarajevo or Belgrade. He mentioned all three.

I didn’t think he was convincing, not on Foreign Policy, not on the illegal and immoral warfare the United Kingdom military is engaged in; not on the key issue of Climate Change; not on social political engagement.

His theme was ostensibly, allegedly, about the new relationship between people and governments – addressing the disconnects in the public discourse resulting from the loss of trust in public institutions. He decried populism as dangerous. He applauded the (Barack) Obama campaign for the American Presidency last year, which he said was defiantly optimistic. That it was internationalist and unifying. That it was fresh and radical.

David Miliband said that his personal starting point was the realisation of how ambitious Obama was, and how it addressed the issues of the times – the deep recession and the closing window on Climate Change. He went on to mention other aspects of Foreign Policy which I shall not go into here, about which I strongly disagreed with.

Miliband constructed a narrative surrounding what he defined as the rise of soft power – how people doing media for themselves has “fuelled change”. How graphic media images have changed the course of events around the globe, by raising public support for various policies and measures. How that “our own enemies” have also exploited social media in the civilian population for their own ends.

He said that the rise of the Peoples’ Media did not signal the end of traditional diplomacy. How rulers were becoming more constrained by the power of public opinion. How he was emotionally engaged by the marching monks in Rangoon, Burma. “They knew we were standing up for them”. And so on.

During this I was thinking, there are some issues where we really can’t benefit from having more “soft power”. The people of Great Britain, for example, have a significant and vocal minority who live a British National Party kind of life, a Climate Change denier, petrol-head kind of life. If the Brits are politically apathetic, generally, then these small dangerous minorities will have too much influence if the Government is seeking to follow or respond to the “soft power” mood of the public mind.

David Miliband talked about “soft persuasion”, how “success will come when people start switching sides”, when people can see justice and fairness…we need a genuine political settlement…where people don’t refuse to engage with the other side. On Climate Change, he said he valued the ability of businesses and people to have their voices heard. Governments should not be afraid of public opinion.

On which I reflected – does he not understand about the wrecking agenda that some businesses have spent money on ? That the self-interests of some businesses, especially those who are resolutely hanging on to the Energy technologies of yesterday, are undermining progress ? How public opinion is based on falsehoods propagated by some businesses ? There is documented evidence of both the undue influence of corporates on government policy and the way that corporates have misled people. If we listen to public opinion, that opinion is tainted. Just look at the Wind Farm refusal brigade !

And “switching sides” is useless in the Climate Change and Energy debate without real action being possible to reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions. Often people make the decision to Go Green, but then end up with making token gestures of change, because they are hampered in their ability to make real changes. Because our Energy supply is dictated by the business of Fossil Fuel companies, and our whole society is managed by the Energy provided by the Fossil Fuel companies, and nobody can escape that without great personal sacrifice.

David Miliband talked about his big three challenges. Without values, soft power is more fragile. How it breeds distrust, value-free politics, “grey” areas, a tendency to “slip back”. He cited the case of the extreme right-of-centre politicians who used the “tunes” of freedom and democracy. David Miliband said that progressives should not be scared of being, what was it, “decisive” ? A different approach, holding firm to the “good life”. Responsible, but still open to being held to account through the system of law.

David Miliband praised the value of institutions – “how to put values into practice”. The importance of the European Union…we have to support our institutions, a durability that supports democracy. Then he went on to discuss the need for mass public mobilisation. In the run up to Copenhagen, he said, there has to be a lot of debate.

Mr Miliband worried that citizens may not be part of the debate. He mentioned that there are still many people who don’t believe the risks of Climate Change, and that was why the Government had worked with the Hadley Centre to put out the Four Degrees map of the world. He anticipated mass migration, sea level rise, issues with food security. He said this was “not catastrophism, but reality”.

David Miliband said that we need to prove the “first mover advantage” for businesses enacting the changes to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions by 2050. He also said we need to engage in the ethics of Climate Change. It’s not just about technology or science, he went on, it’s about the need for mitigation and adaptation for people around the world. He praised the European initiative on pledging money for developing nations, and how this commitment could “enluc” a global deal. Or that’s what I heard him say anyway. The Spanish verb “enlucir” means “concreting”, “plastering”, “parget”, you know, firming things up.

“The ethics of Climate Change are in the end going to determine the potential”, David Miliband said. He said that soft power is more important, and that we need to have “progressive means as well as progressive ends”, whatever that meant. He said that the power to change the world is distributed, that no country has the power on its own to “bring the world to heel”. (“What control language”, I thought). “We all have a role to play”, he said. “That is the change we need.”

In questions from the floor, somebody asked about legitimacy, about how important it is to get citizens involved in democracy. David Miliband said that the experience shows that we need to have democratic process build from the bottom up – like the institutions have been built from the bottom up. That we need transparency, that public opinion should be a regulator, that we have suffered from a centralising of power. “You can’t engage people in politics if you don’t give them power”. “It’s very hard in mass organisations to give people power…can give people a sense of purpose and agency – feel that they’re making a difference.”

My internal reaction to this centred on my understanding of the nature of Science and Technology – and the knowledge that many peoples’ opinions about Science and Technology are nowhere near reality. If you give people power over issues of Science and Technology, and they have no idea about the realities of the Science and Technology, then they could be an unhelpful political power. There are many examples of “Bad Science” in the Media and in popular campaigning groups.

Do my opinions count ? Why do my opinions, as an ordinary citizen count ? And if my opinions are based on fallacies, falsehoods or poor reasoning, should I be allowed to have power in the political dialogue ?

I know that lack of knowledge and understanding don’t prevent people taking up opinions about things; but are those opinions valid ?

I also considered the role of the Coal industry, documented in the United States as having spent large amounts of money building fake “grassroots” organisations to support “clean” coal. How can “building from the bottom up” be authentic if there are deliberately manipulative pressures ?

David Miliband talked about how mass organisations can give people power. He gave the example of the RSPB, mobilising people around the EU Habitats Directive, which would otherwise not evoke mass participation.

In questions from the floor, Charlie Kronick, Chief Policy Advisor to Greenpeace, tried to challenge David Miliband about his call for mass mobilisation around Climate Change. He asked whether it was right to assume that the “agencies” (including the environmental campaign organisations) representing the voice of people will propagate the voice of the people to the Government, or just the voice of the Government to the people.

David Miliband slipped out of this one. “The great thing about democracy”, he said “is the right to disagree.” He mentioned the advice “beware of being captured by the NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations”, and that progressives are sick of “interest-group liberalism”. He said that was how the Green New Deal in the United States broke down – caught between the interests of capital and labour. That this was a lesson for politicians, to engage people and not just groups. By tweeting and blogging you can meet millions of people without meeting them. Just as he does. Rather than “campaign in poetry and govern in prose”, Obama shows how you need to campaign in government. The biggest lesson is the art of persuasion.

Somebody else asked from the floor, that since on Climate Change people have had an expectation of a massive treaty that now people will be disillusioned (as everybody is now predicting a “political agreement” but not a “binding agreement” on emissions at Copenhagen in December). The questioner asked how we can overcome the void between leading and following. How we can make the leaders willing to lead ?

David Miliband said that we need people to mobilise and not to start with low aspirations. He said there must be a global legally binding agreement. Every country in the world, acting on common but differentiated responsibilities – which means the rich countries should do most. He said “You have to persuade from office…a challenge to campaigners to put pressure where necessary.”

In other words : we, the people, are expected to rise up and follow the lead from Government. I’m not convinced. The Government is not leading on communication with the people about the reality and seriousness of Climate Change. There is no educational television backed by public money, fronted by the Government’s expert advisers/advisors explaining the Science of Global Warming and the demands of creating an entirely new and Renewable Energy economy. The Government does not sponsor or promote initiatives that expose and remove right-wing, industry-funded propaganda about Climate Change from the Media.

Only 20% of the British people care enough about Climate Change to attempt to do something about it. Without massive financial backing, the educational charities cannot correct the lack of comprehension in the public about where we are heading as the world warms.

The public will not respond in masses to calls to support Climate Change action. All Climate Change regulation and measures involve things that appear like sacrifice and being asked to give up a life of easy Energy and cheap Transportation and mass market consumption.

People can work out that the Government have already decided what to do, and that they are being asked to support it, not challenge it. We are not putting pressure on the Government through our campaigns. We are merely acceding to their agenda. And not in huge numbers, because the Government is not being fully open with us about what they know (or rather, their Scientists know) about Global Warming.

The Government is only painting a water-colour picture of concern about the impacts of Climate Change. What is needed is a blockbuster surround-sound IMAX 3D all-action action-hero film. I know, I know, there is the film The Age of Stupid. But what I’m talking about is replacing BBC 24 News with Climate Change education programmes; pushing The Sun newspaper to feature regular features on visions of a future Low Carbon world; pulling sceptics and deniers from their influential positions in newspapers and online newspaper websites. I’m talking about a rather more active Government engagement with the people – full of honesty, Science and frankness.

We need more information and less preaching.

Very large sums of public tax money have been ploughed into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration over the years, peaking in 1966 :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget

OK, it gave us the Moon landings and Teflon (TM), but just recently, I don’t see much in terms of really, really new things.

What’s happened to the innovation ?

Just yesterday I was reminiscing with several older family members.

During the Second World War, my much older family member recollected, a “doodlebug”, a Nazi V-1 unmanned flying bomb, landed near the family home. The air pressure wave caused by the explosion emptied the chimneys of coal soot into the house, and shattered all the windows. It was a miracle no one was hurt.

My other family member recalled how rubble was rapidly colonised by buddleia bushes. “We all thought that it was Hitler’s secret weapon. How could it grow on bomb sites ?”

I asked why people had been so fearful. “Remember it was at the time when nuclear weapons were first being made, when all sorts of things were being discovered. Nylons were news. We didn’t know what the scientists could do…”

People are perhaps less paranoid these days. There hasn’t been a major discovery of a new Energy resource in nearly a 100 years. Yes, I know that new forms of geological hydrocarbons have been uncovered, coal-bed methane, methane clathrates, and so on. But nothing really novel apart from Nuclear Fission and Nuclear Fusion. And we can’t get Nuclear Fusion to work, really.

We have become more clever, collectively-speaking. We have shot satellites into the atmosphere that manage to stay there, monitoring the Earth and enabling telecommunications.

But this new technology is merely tinkering with older forms.

This is what concerns me when I read from the Gospel of Economics, for example, the recent “manifesto” from the UK Government called “The Road to Copenhagen” :-

http://centralcontent.fco.gov.uk/central-content/campaigns/act-on-copenhagen/resources/en/pdf/road-full-document-pdf

“The scale of the challenge we face is enormous: to achieve the emissions reductions necessary in time to reach our goal of limiting
temperature increases to no more than 2°C, we need a huge global shift towards low carbon technologies in the next ten years. Yet this is achievable with the right blend of private sector investment and public policy incentives and support. To make this technological revolution happen, we need a new approach to technology cooperation between developed and developing countries. Developing countries have called for the creation of a fund to help pay for the largescale transfer of technologies and patents – intellectual property rights (IPR) – from developed countries. But we do not believe this is the right solution. Low carbon technologies are too many and too varied, they constantly evolve and develop and technology needs vary from place to place. Simply sharing intellectual property will not deal with the initial development challenge, and could even reduce incentives to innovate – and therefore increase costs – as IPR is an incentive for companies to invest in developing technologies. Nor will it support the development of skills and know-how needed to transfer technologies successfully. The UK believes that it is possible to deliver enhanced technology cooperation, whilst both protecting IPR and where appropriate sharing and transferring it. In most cases
innovation is at its greatest when there are strong market incentives and a high level of competition: companies race to be the first to bring new technologies to market. At the same time effective collaboration can bring together the best skills from different companies and help make sure products are tailored to suit different locations. We need to reach an agreement in Copenhagen that capitalises on the benefits of both competition and collaboration, so that technologies are deployed cost-effectively wherever they are needed most.”

Leaving aside the obvious ideological problem with Intellectual Property Rights, which has exercised many people around the world in the fields of food (“Basmati” rice, patented) and medicine (the fight for cheap AIDS drugs), the Big Question is : where and what are these new technologies ?

I don’t see anything new about Nuclear Power or Carbon Capture (and Storage).

http://www.ndbusinesswatch.com/nd-energy/co2-sequestration-in-north-dakota-making-history/

“Carbon sequestration has been paying off for Basin Electric Power Cooperative since the late 1990s, when it began selling the greenhouse gas to help with enhanced oil recovery in Canada. For clean coal enthusiasts who want to see carbon capture at power plants as well, it’s a step in the right direction. The carbon dioxide is currently sold by Basin Electric’s subsidiary Dakota Gasification Company as a byproduct of natural gas produced from coal at the Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Beulah. According to Daryl Hill, media relations supervisor with Basin Electric, the Great Plains Synfuels Plant is the nation’s only commercial scale coal gasification plant producing natural gas from coal. A sister plant in South Africa uses the same types of gasifiers but produces liquid fuels like diesel and kerosene. The process used in the gasification plant is called the Lurgi process. Floyd Robb with Basin Electric said it was developed during World War II by the Germans, who had plenty of coal but not as much access to petroleum. “They were developing that process to fuel their war machine,” Robb said. The gasification plant itself grew out of the energy shortage in the 1970s.”

The economists’ view of innovation is that it is a natural response to supply shortages and price changes. But what if it’s got nowhere to go to ? What if we know all we’re ever going to know about Energy sources and the way to harness Energy from those resources ?

Well, there was the proposed “Hydrogen Economy”. Where’s that now ? And cold fusion. Well, that is still a joke in many circles…

Most economists now realise that Carbon Emissions cause “externalised costs” to the Environment. They apply their same methods to every form of pollution : attempt to price it out of existence.

But what happens if we can’t innovate our way out of the Carbon pricing pincer ? No amount of “competition” can break the Laws of Physics. And we are so depdendent on Fossil Fuels…

My view is that we know all we need to know about Energy, we just need to apply it. Yes, there will be some efficiency gained with new machines, and there will be price advantages with reconfiguring designs, but the technology will remain the same.

You know, harness the wind (various devices); harness the power of the waves and tides; harness the power of the sun. Energy Conservation. Break the back of Energy Demand increases…

There’s really no point in spending spiralling sums of money on Research and Development. Demanding public money for technological development is the logic of corporate interest lobbying.

The large corporates want to stay in business : continued profit-making in constrained economic times. Management people know a gravy train when they smell one.

From “The Road…” : “In most cases innovation is at its greatest when there are strong market incentives and a high level of competition: companies race to be the first to bring new technologies to market.”

That could read something like this, if you’re being honest about the limitations of “innovation” and the progress of “technology” : “In most cases marketing spin is at its greatest when there are strong signals of public funding and a high level of corporate lobbying: companies race to be the first to bring new sources of financial return to their shareholders“.

Here’s an example of the baby steps that are being heralded in technology. Cheap solar photovoltaics : it’s not quite there yet, but will it ever be ?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090707131901.htm

“Inexpensive Solar Cells: Low-cost Solution Processing Method Developed For CIGS-based Solar Cells : ScienceDaily (July 11, 2009) — Though the solar industry today predominately produces solar panels made from crystalline silicon, they remain relatively expensive to make. New players in the solar industry have instead been looking at panels that can harvest energy with CIGS (copper-indium-gallium-selenide) or CIGS-related materials. CIGS panels have a high efficiency potential, may be cheaper to produce and would use less raw materials than silicon solar panels. But unfortunately, manufacturing of CIGS panels on a commercial scale has thus far proven to be difficult. Recently researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a low-cost solution processing method for CIGS-based solar cells that could provide an answer to the manufacturing issue. In a new study to be published in the journal Thin Solid Films on July 7, Yang Yang, a professor in the school’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and his research team show how they have developed a low-cost solution processing method for their copper-indium-diselenide solar cells which have the potential to be produced on a large scale. “This CIGS-based material can demonstrate very high efficiency,” said William Hou, a graduate student on Yang’s team and first author of the study. “People have already demonstrated efficiency levels of up to 20 percent, but the current processing method is costly. Ultimately the cost of fabricating the product makes it difficult to be competitive with current grid prices. However, with the solution process that we recently developed, we can inherently reach the same efficiency levels and bring the cost of manufacturing down quite significantly.” The copper-indium-diselenide thin-film solar cell developed by Yang’s team achieved 7.5 percent efficiency in the published study but has in a short amount of time already improved to 9.13 percent in the lab. “We started this process 16 months ago from ground zero. We spent three to four months getting the material to reach 1 percent and today it’s around 9 percent. That is about an average increase of 1 percent every two months,” said Yang, also a member of the California NanoSystems Institute, where some of the work is being done…”

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/07/08/08greenwire-breakthrough-reported-on-low-cost-alternative-to-388.html

“Breakthrough Reported on Low-Cost Alternative to Silicon Solar Cells : By KATIE HOWELL of Greenwire : Published: July 8, 2009 : Solar cells could be produced from materials other than silicon under a breakthrough that scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, say could dramatically reduce the price of solar technologies. Solar companies have been searching for some time for materials that are more efficient, cheaper to produce and use fewer raw materials than silicon. But tests of copper, indium, gallium, selenide (CIGS) or related materials have failed so far to produce a winner . “People have already demonstrated efficiency levels of up to 20 percent, but the current processing method is costly,” said William Hou, an engineering graduate student at UCLA, in a statement. “Ultimately the cost of fabricating the product makes it difficult to be competitive with current grid prices.” Hou and his colleagues report in this week’s Thin Solid Films the development of a low-cost processing method for solar cells made from copper, indium and diselenide. Those cells, they say, will have the potential to be produced on a large scale for a number of applications, including placement on backpacks or clothing. “With the solution process that we recently developed, we can inherently reach the same [20 percent] efficiency levels and bring the cost of manufacturing down quite significantly ,” Hou said. So far, the researchers have achieved 9.13 percent efficiency over the 16-month project, but they are optimistic that they will reach their goal of 15 percent or 20 percent efficiency.”