GW Skeptics vs Scientific Concensus

[Rezwan]

Thanks for the clarification Brian H. Rezwan, I had to do a search for this information to find it in the new web design:

https://focusfusion.pmhclients.com/index.php/site/article/focus_fusion_vs_nuclear_reactors/

I think it used to be more accessible.

Quite right! I’ve set this up for now: https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/category/C152/ a bit redundant with the “Aneutronic” category, but it’s important for people to get to this information from different approaches.

Still more clarification to do, but things are starting to gel.

[Brian H]

Rezwan wrote:
…
I don’t see the harm of learning how to share or make do with less.
…
But in its absence, you might have to face this question. If it comes down to it, are you the kind of person who will explore ways of egalitarian cooperation and accommodate others’ needs, or are you the kind of person who will blow others away and take as much for yourself as possible? In a limited resources scenario, your primal character is revealed.

“Share” has, in the big picture, SFA to do with the improvement of the lot of the planet’s poor. It is by overall betterment of economies and technologies which “lift all boats” which is responsible for the overwhelming majority of such improvement. Attempts to impose “sharing” do indeed end up with having to “make do with less” — for everyone except the enforcers.

The phony “caring” challenge you pose is delusory. Humanity is what it is, and improvement in the lot of others occurs by providing them with opportunities and removing barriers, not by handouts.

[benf]

SFA=Snack Food Association? 🙄

While sharing has it’s limits, it also has it’s place. The Focus Fusion Society is set up as a vehicle to exchange ideas and popularize the concept of fusion power as a viable energy source. The exchange benefits people who want to learn about the technology but also helps the folks at LPP learn about issues related to how their technology will find it’s place in society. This is all positive, everyone gains by it. Having a new energy source of the type proposed by LPP and it’s Focus Fusion would really solve a lot of problems, whether you believe in global warming or not. Since oil supplies will be dwindling and harder to recover and coal is difficult and destructive to mine, we have the prospect of a resurgent fission nuclear industry. Something I fear. If you do believe in global warming you might think this is our only realistic way out, apart from wind and solar. This change of perspective has happened with some prominent environment movement activists.

There are environmental groups that are very concerned about the pro-nuke developments who have discussed the possibility of fusion in the past, but my investigation at this point is showing they are woefully ignorant of the emerging aneutronic fusion developments that are going on. They are only aware of the huge tokamak mega projects, which haven’t produced any breakthroughs they could embrace. It may be premature to be seeking endorsements from them (yes, I believe that could be a prospect!) but this site gives them a window to the future, they should be made aware of.

It is to LPP’s credit that they are making their research public. Perhaps it’s also partly out of necessity for fundraising, but I believe this site has genuinely been set up to share the knowledge so there will ultimately be public acceptance that Focus Fusion will be a viable green alternative. Otherwise, why bother going the pB11 route?

Brian H. you ascribe to a more cynical view of human nature and it’s capacity to share in a beneficial way. Your other postings show that you’re networked into this world view. But what we also have to fear, is that the corporate elitist’s view isn’t bound by standard rules of propriety. They are capable of burying promising new technologies for the sake of maintaining the status quo or their own insatiable greed. To them they may feel there’s more money to be made mining and drilling ever deeper or building massive cooling towers for fission powered, steam engine generators.

All of humanity, including corporate power, stands to gain from this new energy source. Resources won’t be as stretched to the limits. More countries will be able to participate with the creation of power grids over larger demographic areas. Less environmental regulation will need to be imposed because of it’s smaller impact and footprint. Engaging and involving more people who are interested in finding solutions cooperatively is the best way to go.

[Brian H]

benf;
SFA=Sweet Fanny Adams. :cheese:
Fission is nothing to fear. It is expensive, but not dangerous–aside from decrepit plants run by decrepit countries, like the Chernobyl disaster.
As for corporate buyout and suppression, it’s probably already too late for that to happen. Eric has made so much of his work public that others would pick up the ball and run with it. And once anyone succeeds, it will be more than twice as easy for others to duplicate the result even without detailed information. It’s called the “existence proof” effect. Once researchers know something is possible, they are more than halfway there.

Your fear of big bizniss is, I think, ideological. The vast bulk of companies are small to medium-sized, and they employ the great majority of people. Profit-making is getting paid for the added value you contribute, whether that’s physical change, relocation, distribution, or anything else others would prefer to pay for rather than do themselves. There is constant turnover in who’s successful; e.g., less than 20% of the members of the Fortune 500 stay on the list 20 years.

As for the “more money to be made by drilling”, that’s a temporary condition. FF will change so many variables in the landscape that I doubt anyone can predict what will go on.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:
Your fear of big bizniss is, I think, ideological. The vast bulk of companies are small to medium-sized, and they employ the great majority of people. Profit-making is getting paid for the added value you contribute, whether that’s physical change, relocation, distribution, or anything else others would prefer to pay for rather than do themselves.

I’m all for people getting paid for added value. Also for a diverse ecology of small and medium-sized companies. Long tail and micro-finance, markets which accurately reflect preference and value.

In numbers, most companies are small and medium, and that’s great. But there’s something else going on here. Some “smart” guys acting like they are adding value, when they’re not. Taleb (“Black Swan“) puts it this way:

Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.

Banks hire dull people and train them to be even more dull. If they look conservative, it’s only because their loans go bust on rare, very rare occasions. But (…)bankers are not conservative at all. They are just phenomenally skilled at self-deception by burying the possibility of a large, devastating loss under the rug.

The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events “unlikely”.

There is no way to gauge the effectiveness of their lending activity by observing it over a day, a week, a month, or . . . even a century!

(…) the real- estate collapse of the early 1990s in which the now defunct savings and loan industry required a taxpayer-funded bailout of more than half a trillion dollars. The Federal Reserve bank protected them at our expense: when “conservative” bankers make profits, they get the benefits; when they are hurt, we pay the costs.

Once again, recall the story of banks hiding explosive risks in their portfolios. It is not a good idea to trust corporations with matters such as rare events because the performance of these executives is not observable on a short-term basis, and they will game the system by showing good performance so they can get their yearly bonus. The Achilles’ heel of capitalism is that if you make corporations compete, it is sometimes the one that is most exposed to the negative Black Swan that will appear to be the most fit for survival.

As if we did not have enough problems, banks are now more vulnerable to the Black Swan and the ludic fallacy than ever before with “scientists” among their staff taking care of exposures. The giant firm J. P. Morgan put the entire world at risk by introducing in the nineties RiskMetrics, a phony method aiming at managing people’s risks, causing the generalized use of the ludic fallacy, and bringing Dr. Johns into power in place of the skeptical Fat Tonys. (A related method called “Value-at-Risk,” which relies on the quantitative measurement of risk, has been spreading.)

Brian H wrote: There is constant turnover in who’s successful; e.g., less than 20% of the members of the Fortune 500 stay on the list 20 years.

Not a compelling metric. US population is over 300,000,000 now. So when the dude slips from the top 500 down to the top 10,000, he’s still in the top .003%

But it’s not about the individuals. It’s about the corporations. Get ’em to be triple bottom line, lose the corporate socialism, and we’re good. Meanwhile, take away some of the limitations on people, which hamper their effectiveness in the market (like limits on investing to “accredited investors” and… 2 tiered currency would be useful, too. Global and local. We have hardly begun to exploit long-tail markets. and… ).

I consider myself a capitalist. Taleb again:

Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

[benf]

Correct me if I’m wrong in my understanding of the Black Swan, but what was “just” an exploding oil rig killing some workers has now turned into more of a Black Swan type of event, including birds and other animals soiled black with oil. If I follow Taleb’s narrative, some institutionalized thinking may have to change with this event, depending on how it plays out. Regulations for undersea oil drilling were engaged voluntarily, meaning the industry could police itself. Thus they didn’t have to put all the available safeguards in place. I see the powerlaw view coming into play though in another way as well, because of this event more people may lean toward another source of energy besides oil drilled in the ocean. They might want to see fission nuclear plants developed more rapidly, though the catastrophic failures with those could be profoundly worse.

Environmental issues must be a pain to have to take into account, especially if you’re dealing with energy. But it is a reality one has to accept this day and age, whether or not you accept GW. Likewise environmentalists have to accept that scientists and engineers figure into solutions to issues of technology in this modern world. There’s now a mutual exchange that goes on, codified into law between the people and the scientific community. When we didn’t have that arrangement, rivers caught on fire from pollution, radiation leaked, oil covered the beaches. We don’t want to go back to those days. The problem with Global Warming is that it’s mostly invisible. We won’t know it’s really a problem ’till it’s too late to change. Being more energy efficient in the mean time doesn’t really hurt anything accept maybe some stockholders returns. Car pooling and mass transportation helps the traffic flow. By listening to some of what the environmentalists views are, is the world necessarily worse off? I also think it’s good to have them as friends when you’re trying to introduce a game changing energy technology imo. The Black Swan is an interesting perspective on how people view their world. I think collaborating and developing a greater network of people supporting what you’re doing, get’s you a greater chance of promoting ideas to a broader audience and might even help encourage thinking outside the box.

A picture of a Black Swan I took, coasting along in a brook in France:

Attached files

[Rezwan]

benf wrote: Being more energy efficient in the mean time doesn’t really hurt anything accept maybe some stockholders returns. Car pooling and mass transportation helps the traffic flow. By listening to some of what the environmentalists views are, is the world necessarily worse off?

It doesn’t even need to hurt stockholder returns if they have a diverse portfolio, with both new and old tech covered. Being energy efficient in many cases means using advanced technology, fresher patents, new innovations, more money. You would figure this is an economic win. Actually, it was an “ozone hole denier” who put forth that argument to me. He said the patent for CFC based refrigerators had expired, and this whole ozone thing was a scam to get a new patent on new refrigerants so 3rd world countries couldn’t start making the old fridges and bypassing the 1st world.

Whether or not it was a scam, the continuation of economic activity is the lesson here.

[Brian H]

The only worthwhile “efficiency” initiatives are the ones that pay for themselves. Attempting to promote/hype one or the other with subsidies and tax benefits has consequences in Bastiat’s “unseen” sphere: the opportunity costs, the uses of capital now deflected that will never occur. The most obvious and dramatic modern reality-proof is the Spanish govenment report on the Spanish GreenJobs initiative. Each GreenJob cost 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy. It’s a rolling disaster.

[Aeronaut]

What gets swept under the rug is that solar and wind work best at the 12volt dc level, lose some kick in the translation to 120v ac, and do not scale gracefully beyond the single house level. Furthermore, it takes both types of solar (heat and electricity) plus wind to make a serious attempt at making a few bucks from net metering.

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote: What gets swept under the rug is that solar and wind work best at the 12volt dc level, lose some kick in the translation to 120v ac, and do not scale gracefully beyond the single house level. Furthermore, it takes both types of solar (heat and electricity) plus wind to make a serious attempt at making a few bucks from net metering.

Excellent and concise summary. Very few installations are viable without “externalizing” costs; i.e., loading them onto the mass market as concealed overheads.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: The only worthwhile “efficiency” initiatives are the ones that pay for themselves. Attempting to promote/hype one or the other with subsidies and tax benefits has consequences in Bastiat’s “unseen” sphere: the opportunity costs, the uses of capital now deflected that will never occur. The most obvious and dramatic modern reality-proof is the Spanish govenment report on the Spanish GreenJobs initiative. Each GreenJob cost 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy. It’s a rolling disaster.

Would have to see how they came up with that. Correlation or causality is hard to determine. Job availability is always shifting.

Things like productivity increases in a sector, which are considered good for the whole economy, end up costing jobs, but I don’t see you labeling that a “rolling disaster” even though it is to many families involved. In any case, not enough info here to put it in perspective.

Is it like the studies where mgmt wrings their hands about how much it costs them that people at work are surfing the internet rather than doing their jobs?

You can also look at the unregulated games high finance institutes have been playing and calculate how many jobs have been lost for each of those hedge fund jobs. I’m guessing it’s much higher than 1:2.2

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: Fission is nothing to fear. It is expensive, but not dangerous–aside from decrepit plants run by decrepit countries, like the Chernobyl disaster.

Paraphrasing John Stewart: “Spoken like a true scientist. From the first reel of a disaster movie.”

And if it’s nothing to fear, then why aren’t my fellow Iranians getting the green light on their nuclear aspirations? They just want energy. The official President assures us all.

[Rezwan]

benf wrote: Correct me if I’m wrong in my understanding of the Black Swan, but what was “just” an exploding oil rig killing some workers has now turned into more of a Black Swan type of event, including birds and other animals soiled black with oil.

That would be a black swan if the industry didn’t think that sort of thing could happen and didn’t have precautions in place to prevent it. Did they think oil rigs were fool proof as compared to tankers? If they didn’t see it coming, it’s a black swan. If they have an insurance policy for it, it’s part of their business as usual, risk strategy. (not acceptable from an eco-view, but then again, 40,000 deaths on the highways every year doesn’t stop us from driving off to work every day.) In other words, we’re addicted to oil. Oil spills are acceptable. Just like the occasional exploding meth lab is worth it to those addicts.

The black swan is more the things you aren’t planning for – the “unknown unknowns” as opposed to the “known unknowns.”

Example from the book, a Vegas Casino’s risk management division was geared toward
1) reducing losses resulting from cheaters
2) sophisticated surveillance (to thwart an “oceans 11”)

Their four largest losses and risks, however, “fell completely outside their sophisticated models”. They were:
1) Loss of $100 million when Roy was maimed by a tiger. In scenario analysis, they had considered the tigers attacking the audience. But not attacking Roy. Seems so obvious now.
2) A disgruntled contractor, injured at work, was insulted by the settlement they offered him and attempted to dynamite the casino (explosives around the pillars in the basement). He was thwarted – but if he had been successful…?
3) An employee whose job it was to file a special form with the IRS simply didn’t. For years. No one noticed, until the IRS did. Tax violations and negligence could have resulted in loss of gambling license or suspension. They ended up paying a huge (sum undisclosed) fine. (I wonder what happened to the employee).
4) Casino owner’s daughter was kidnapped (!). This caused him to violate gambling laws, dip into casino coffers to pay ransom. (I thought K&R didn’t happen in the US.)

And more! Such drama.

C’est la vie.

[Brian H]

Rezwan wrote:

Fission is nothing to fear. It is expensive, but not dangerous–aside from decrepit plants run by decrepit countries, like the Chernobyl disaster.

Paraphrasing John Stewart: “Spoken like a true scientist. From the first reel of a disaster movie.”

And if it’s nothing to fear, then why aren’t my fellow Iranians getting the green light on their nuclear aspirations? They just want energy. The official President assures us all.
Irresponsible people with overtly destructive goals are the risk there, not the plants. There are, in any case, plant types that are very hard to use as the bases for atomic weapons.

[Brian H]

The oil rig disaster is almost a pure case of “black swan”; in fact, it may be a red or purple swan. It was apparently caused by a huge surge of gas pressure blowing the valves, sending flammable gas to the surface. It was so large that it is unique in drilling history: there has never been a blowout like it. Safety measures in place saved over 100 of the workers; the ones who died were almost certainly at “ground Zero” in the initial explosion, and probably vaporized by it.

Such events must be treated with care in formulating standards and assigning “blame”. “Hard cases make bad law.”

[Author]

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