The end of paper?

Our civilization depends largely on paper.

                                --Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder (23 - 79 AD) was a lawyer and Roman provincial governor who is best known as the compiler of what we would recognize as an encyclopedia, one of the very first. Naturalis Historia filled 10 volumes covering astronomy, geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, pharmacology and mineralogy as well as a myriad of subtopics. Pliny knew something about the value of paper to civilization.

It goes without saying that paper is what made it possible for Pliny's entire encyclopedia to be available to those living now nearly 2,000 years after his death. If at the time Pliny had been able to place his whole encyclopedia on a DVD or flash drive and had forgone creating a printed version, would we know anything about his encyclopedia today?

The 2,000th anniversary of Pliny's birth was marked last year by the discovery of a complete papyrus in an ancient tomb near Cairo which contained text from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It has apparently been more than a century since the last complete papyrus was discovered. This latest one comes from a tomb that is more than 4,000 years old. Such is the staying power of papyrus.

Taking a holiday break - no post this week

I'm taking a holiday break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, January 7.

China grinch stops rare earth tech transfer in time for Christmas

Just in time for Christmas, China expanded its already tight restrictions on export of technology related to refining rare earth minerals. The most recent restrictions involve technology for making rare earth magnets which are used in electric motors and generators. These minerals are also used extensively in the automotive industry and in consumer electronics such as cellphones.

I have previously written that the clean energy economy is a metals energy economy, and rare earths constitute a substantial and key part of that metals energy economy.

Export of rare earth extraction and separation technology had already been banned by China. The most recent and previous restrictions are part of a broader trade war between the United States and China over exchange of technology.  In late 2022 the United States banned exports of advanced microchips. China responded with a ban on the export germanium and gallium, two metals crucial to the manufacture of advanced chips. The United States imports half of its germanium needs and all of the gallium it uses.

Self-driving cars are driving right into their own grave

One of the favorite shibboleths of the world's tech overlords is "Move fast and break things." It seems that one of the things that is now breaking is the dream of driverless cars. The Guardian has a piece out that says that after the billions spent on trying to bring so-called autonomous vehicles to public roadways, the industry behind them is retreating rapidly. (I say so-called because it turns out that many of the vehicles have remote drivers making regular adjustments to each vehicle's movements because the software doesn't work properly.)

I have written previously that such vehicles will only work on closed courses where all vehicles are operating as part of a single system and where the possible actions of all those vehicles are known in advance so that there are no surprises—at least from other vehicles.

It would have been very difficult to predict the incident that has sent General Motors' entry into the autonomous vehicle race, Cruise, into a death spiral. A pedestrian in San Francisco was hit by a car driven by a human driver and then bounced in front of an autonomous taxi operated by Cruise. Instead of stopping, the taxi drove over the person since, by one analysis, the taxi's code tells it to pull off to the right when it encounters an unfamiliar situation. Believe it or not, the poor pedestrian survived and will likely be collecting a very hefty settlement from GM. The state of California suspended permission for Cruise to operate its taxi service—but this came just three months after the state allowed expanded operations by Cruise.

And this was just one of a series of problems that continue to befall the robotaxi industry: "The cars have driven into firefighting scenes, caused construction delays, impeded ambulances and even meandered into an active crime scene."

Doubling down on fusion

The United States will propose a new emphasis on fusion energy at the UN climate summit known as COP 28. The summit began on November 30 and runs through December 12. Fusion is what powers the Sun and fuses hydrogen atoms to make helium plus a lot of energy. So, it seems like a perfect solution to power human societies without creating the dangerous radioactive waste products from fission reactors nor the carbon emissions from fossil fuel plants.

The reality of fusion―at least the way we humans are pursuing it—is much more complicated and messy than most people realize. The path we are on now suggests lots of radioactive waste will still have to be disposed of on a regular basis and that commercial fusion power is still decades away if it ever becomes feasible.

So, it turns out that fusion is part of the fantasy of a painless energy transition to a society powered by clean, renewable fuels that not only replace the energy currently generated by fossil fuels, but also grow continuously to feed our growing economy.

Watch what people do, not what they say about renewable energy

In a Pew Research Center poll early last year 69 percent of American adults said that they "prioritize developing alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas." Some 72 percent believe the federal government "should encourage the production of wind and solar power."

So why are there no working wind farms in the waters of Great Lakes, one of the best wind resources in the country? You don't have to take my word for it that this area is a prime location for wind turbines. Here's what the National Renewable Energy Laboratory said in a June 2023 news release about its latest report on offshore Great Lakes wind resources:

Wind resource assessments estimate that the Great Lakes’ potential power capacity is 160 gigawatts for fixed-bottom wind turbines and about 415 gigawatts for floating wind energy systems. That wind energy resource potential exceeds the annual electricity consumption in five out of eight of the U.S. states bordering the Great Lakes.

Taking a holiday break - no post this week

I'm taking a holiday break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, December 3.

Self-extinction: Male fertility, pesticides and the end of the human project

It is a common meme these days that humans are busy bringing about their own extinction. This is usually imagined to take the form of mass death resulting from the effects of climate change including food shortages, and/or from the rapid decline in the availability of fossil fuels, and/or from a worldwide pandemic caused by a microbe as lethal as the Ebola virus.

But what if our path to extinction is really taking the form of damage to human fertility of the type described by a new report that links the dramatic decline in male sperm count directly to pesticides? What if human society collapses for lack of new humans? The plants and animals might rejoice if they can do such a thing. But the human project would come to an end.

And that speaks to the central issue for humankind. Is the human project worth saving? And, if it is, are we as a global society willing to do what it takes to save it? On current form one would expect that the answer is no. But in order to change the answer to yes, the "yes" forces would have to proffer some very compelling arguments to get the world's chemical companies to give up on synthetic pesticides. I can imagine arguments that include reference to the literary, musical, architectural, artistic, philosophical and scientific achievements of humans. But these would likely fall on deaf ears unless the scientific achievements are allowed to include the continued dispersal of pesticides into the air, water and soil across the globe.

We'll never run out of sand, right?

The single most abundant element in the Earth's crust is oxygen making up 46.6 percent of the mass. The second most abundant element is silicon making up 27.7 percent, mostly in the form of various molecules combining silicon and oxygen. Silicon dioxide is the kind people are familiar with and it is found on most, but not all beaches of the world.

It just doesn't seem reasonable to be concerned that we will somehow run out of sand. After all, the estimated weight of the Earth is 1.3 X 10²⁵ pounds (13 followed by 24 zeros) or 6.5 X 10²¹ tons. The crust makes up 1 percent of that total weight, so the crust weighs 6.5 X 10¹⁹ tons. Of that, 27.7 percent is silicon or 1.8 X 10¹⁹ tons. The world consumes about 50 billion tons a year. For comparison's sake, that's 5 X 10¹⁰ tons annually—which if you do the math means we will run out of sand from the Earth's crust in 360 million years at current rates of consumption.

But, of course, not all sand is created equal. Much of it is unsuitable for industrial purposes such as making concrete or proppants in hydraulically fractured oil and gas deposits (fracking). The shape and uniformity of sand grains are crucial in certain uses such as proppants (which keep fractures open once they've been made). Sand casting (used to make metal objects) requires a mixture of three different kinds of sand, each with a different chemical formula. Sand of particularly high purity is required for glass-making and for solar panels and computer chips.

AI: The information economy becomes ever more energy and resource intensive

Back in 2009 I wrote a piece entitled "The unbearable lightness of information." Since then the information economy has become ever more resource intensive. Examples include Bitcoin, the widely recognized digital-only currency, which, as it turns out, consumes about as much electricity as the nation of Norway each year. (Why a currency with no physical bills should weigh so heavily on the energy system is explained in the same linked piece.)

Data centers and data transmission networks account for between 2 and 3 percent of global electricity consumption. Think of all the things in the world which use electricity, and you'll see why this share for this one facet of society is such a large chunk.

While the telecommunications industry is becoming more efficient in its energy use, total energy use continues to expand. The emerging 5G system uses three times more energy than 4G. Between 2020 and 2026 network energy needs are expected to increase 150 to 170 percent. So much for the information economy being light on resources!