Alternative energy

David MacKay, a University of Cambridge physics professor, is a straight shooter and he hits the bullseye with a commentary on cnn.com.

We need to introduce simple arithmetic into our discussions of energy.

We need to understand how much energy our chosen lifestyles consume, we need to decide where we want that energy to come from, and we need to get on with building energy systems of sufficient size to match our desired consumption.

Our failure to talk straight about the numbers is allowing people to persist in wishful thinking, inspired by inane sayings such as "every little bit helps."

Read the whole thing here: www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/05/13/mackay.energy/index.html (Sorry, hotlink isn't showing up).

Alternative energy has become a front in the Culture War instead of a scientific/economic quest for the next paradigm. People identify their "side" in the war with symbolic icons like the cars they drive: Hummer vs. Prius.

Fortunately, it seems that thinking like MacKay's is becoming more widespread. More and more people are seeing that environmental and economic interests are not necessarily in conflict when it comes to alternative energy. That maybe it's in all our interests to pursue clean, diverse sources of energy in addition to fossil fuels, which aren't going to go away any time soon.

MacKay is right; we need an honest discussion about costs and benefits and the scale of the questions we're facing.

Nothing inhibits that kind of dialogue more than a holier-than-thou attitude, which attaches as much value to marginal symbolic actions as to substantial ones. We need to lose the cultural baggage that too often attaches itself to environmental and energy issues and start talking about what it would take to sustain the American way of life as it currently stands.

Then, when we have a real assessment of costs, we can talk — without preaching — about ways we should change for the better.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

No duty to retreat

This from CNN:
Authorities do not plan to file charges against a Florida orange grove owner who fatally shot a 21-year-old woman, saying he is protected under the state’s controversial “no retreat” law.

Bullet holes pocked the windshield of the crashed SUV, and blood stained the passenger seat.

But the woman’s boyfriend faces second-degree murder charges in her death, because the woman was shot to death during an alleged felony — the theft of an SUV.

Tony Curtis Phillips, 29, didn’t fire a single shot. He didn’t even know his girlfriend, Nikki McCormick, was dead until police showed him an online news story.
Police said McCormick accompanied Phillips as he attempted to steal the SUV from a barn in an orange grove near Wahneta, Florida, before daylight Tuesday.

Grove owner Ladon “Jamie” Jones opened fire as the SUV approached him, according to an affidavit released by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Phillips fled; McCormick was shot in the head and later died.

Authorities said Jones is protected by Florida’s “no retreat” law, which gives him the right to use lethal force if he reasonably believes his life is in danger. Phillips, however, faces charges because police allege he was committing felony grand theft auto at the time of McCormick’s death.

This is nearly perfect justice. People have the absolute right — and should have the capability — to defend themselves against criminal acts that threaten their safety, wherever such acts occur. “No retreat” means that self-defense is a legitimate first response, not a last resort.

This should be a first principle of law everywhere.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

A pig in a poke

Swine flu may be the most overblown story of 2009 so far. It’s my bet that it’ll take the title come year’s end.

Maybe it’s a kind of crisis hypersensitivity. We all got conditioned to the economic news getting worse and worse — continually exceeding expectations for bad news.

So as soon as the swine flu story broke, everybody seemed to immediately go to the worst case scenario. Every hypochondriac nerve in the population started jangling. Wait... I’m getting a sore throat. I’M GONNA DIE!!!

Well, no. Turns out that swine flu, though it has claimed lives in Mexico, isn’t all that deadly. It’s not the 1918 flu. It’s probably not even an average year’s flu.

Why do we do this? Every year thousands of people die from complications of seasonal flu (36,000 in the U.S. is the number currently being reported. So far, swine flu has claimed one life in the U.S. — of a little boy who came here from Mexico and had underlying health conditions).

Influenza can be deadly, especially if you have underlying medical problems. I’ve had the real-deal flu a couple of times and I can see how it could kill you. I’ve got a pretty stout constitution and it wiped me out.

But the flu is a normal part of life and most years, most people don’t get it. Those that do mostly suffer and recover. Some die.
Eventually there will be another 1918-style pandemic and boy that is scary. A lot of people died in that one and, perversely, it disproportionately affected the young and healthy.

Those kinds of pandemics happen very rarely. It makes sense to plan ahead and for public health and emergency agencies to coordinate a response. I don’t fault the CDC and the World Health Organization for tracking a new mutation of a virus and informing the public. That’s their job.

But I do fault the national media for climbing all over the story with a maximum of hype and bombast and a credulous public for reacting as if the sky was falling.

I guess there’s something extra scary about the idea of a virus spreading silently, deadly, like a conscious malign force. It’s the stuff of Stephen King novels; in fact he wrote the story in The Stand.

But c’mon folks, let’s keep things in proportion here. Take the usual flu season precautions — you’re gonna be okay.

...Until SKYNET becomes self aware and launches a nuclear strike, destroying most of mankind and launching a war between humankind and cyborgs. Where are you John Connor????...

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Big trouble in Pakistan

We’ve got big trouble in Pakistan and there’s very little we can do about it.
The Pakistani Taliban are making significant territorial advances in the wake of a peace deal that basically turned over big swaths of territory in the Swat Valley and elsewhere to the black turbans.

This is a huge problem for the Obama Administration, which has linked Afghanistan and Pakistan strategically.

In the immediate sense, it means an ever-larger sanctuary for Taliban fighters engaged in Afghanistan.

The 20th Century history of insurgency and guerrilla warfare from Rhodesia to Vietnam shows that insurgencies that have sanctuaries are almost impossible to defeat, no matter how successful counterinsurgency forces are in the area of operations.

In the larger sense, Pakistan is well on its way to becoming a failed state — nuclear-armed failed state. For years the real nightmare scenario of Islamic terrorism has been the possibility of fanatics getting their hands on the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

That raises the specter for which we went to war in Iraq: the possibility of a state regime handing over weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. It must also be making India very nervous...

Pakistan is near economic ruin and the massive aid packages planned by the Obama administration may just be poured down a rat hole. We can’t afford to prop them up, but we can’t allow them to fall down.

All this may seem very far from Sisters and very distant from the daily concerns of keeping afloat in a dire economy. But we’ve got community members going into harm’s way in Afghanistan. They will be directly affected by what goes down in Pakistan.
And if Pakistan itself goes down, we will be living in a much more dangerous, much more unstable world. If Southern Asia goes up in flames, don’t think it won’t have an effect on us.

There’s nothing you or I can do about Pakistan, obviously. But it makes sense to get ready for the aftershocks as it totters toward a fall.

Jim Cornelius, Editor