Economists have predicted 5 out of the last 4 recessions.

For a long time, my attitude toward economics was cold. I was very frustrated when I learned about the law of Supply and Demand. If the price falls by $20.00, how many more items will you sell? There were never any numbers or formulas given with the law of supply and demand, therefore it wasn’t real science (in my opinion). Some terms, like GDP or Unemployment Rate have strict definitions, and can be calculated, but the things you do with them are just rough ideas. The Laffer Curve has never had any scale. My attitude on economics has been changing of late though.

For me, I now think of economics as psychology of the masses. Psychology does not have numbers or formulas either, just ideas about how a person works. Economics has ideas about how a people work. What does any of this have to do with being green though?

The economic principle of the day is the law of latent demand. Television sets used to be 16″ and run at 1000 watts or more. Todays television sets are 36 to 56″, but run at 200 watts, and today’s homes also have 2-4 sets per house. We also have TiVOs, entertainment systems, computers and monitors, and Video Game systems, each of which can run at 150-200 watts. In the long run, televisions have become a lot more efficient, but the total power usage is the same.

Think of computers. They were touted as “getting your work done four times faster!” So how come we are still working 40 hours a week? Because all they really did was succeed in was giving us four times the work.

And of course when a road is crowded, it is expanded. However the expanded road immediately gets crowded out because there is a latent demand: People who wanted to use the road but couldn’t until the expansion.

People work hard to make a more energy efficient widget, but this does not necessarily cut our energy use. Human nature causes us to just buy and use more widgets. We cannot rely on improved technology to save the environment unless we make personal sacrifices.

Journal of Physics D. recently published an article about the upcoming solid state lights—those LEDs in your flashlight, key chain, or solar garden lamp that will someday be lighting your dining room and office building. What they noticed is that we humans have spent roughly 0.72% of our GDP on lighting. Whether this is efficient fluorescent bulbs, or whale oil lamps, we have forever spent the same amount on lighting. If this trend continues into the future, we will not be saving any energy going from 28 watt bulbs to 4 watt bulbs, because we will install 7 times as many lights.

This isn’t all bad news. Thanks to computers we all have a lot more work to do, but our productivity is also much greater. A Ford Model-T gets the same gas mileage as my Toyota Camry. But the Camry is far less polluting, more comfortable, more powerful, and needs far fewer repairs.

Energy efficiency is a great goal, and I whole-heartedly support all research. However, we must not look at it as a way to lower our energy footprint. The weak link here is human nature.

Future thinkers of old imagined that by the year 2000 we only need to work a few hours a week because of machines. Robots would take care of our household needs and life would be a paradise for all.  That never happened.  We have the technology these people never dreamed of, but instead of going to paradise we just went back to work.

Maybe this is what we need to aim for. To be Green, we may need to try for the paradise displayed at world fairs of old. Granted we may not be as productive, but so what. This is a small price to pay for increased time with friends and family.

In writing this blog post, I am constantly thinking of examples of latent demand in real life. I’ve been appreciating economics a lot more recently, as a way to improve and understand human nature. Please share your thoughts or latent demand examples in the comments.

–Dave

Yet, I will still prefer to purchase free range eggs (if practical, money is a little tight) just because I don’t like the idea of chickens spending their entire lives enclosed in cases.  I just won’t be telling people that it’s healthier.

–Dave

As a skeptic, I need to know what “better” is. America has the best health-care system in the world was quoted a lot last year, yet when you ask for numbers or rankings, we were always very far from the best.

One of the points of this blog, will be to illustrate that if something is “best” in one area, it is often at the cost of something else. If you want to eliminate genetically engineered (G.E.) foods around the world, then a billion or more people will starve to death. (Science may help in the future, but then again, science’s solution to starvation in the first place was G.E. crops.)

It is incredibly difficult to judge whether or not organic farming methods are better than conventional (modern), because different countries have different definitions of what organic is, governments often provide exceptions from the strict rules anyway. And what exactly, does it mean to be better? A recent paper tried to examine this issue in one, very narrow way.

They looked at six pesticides: two conventional, two new but “reduced risk” pesticides, and two organic pesticides. To further isolate variables, they only looked at soy bean plants, and the soy bean aphid. One of the environmental impact factors is the ability to selectively kill the aphids, but keep the lady-beetles and insidious flower bugs alive. These are natural predators of the aphids, so killing them is not a good thing.

The organic pesticides are simple Mineral Oil, and Beauveria Bassiana, a natural fungus harvested, packaged and sold to be spray applicable.  Both of these are considered organic by the Canadian Government.

Each chemical also has an “Environmental Impact Quotient”. This number is calculated from the Material Data Safety Sheet, application directions, and other factors.  It is a scientific standard of measure.  An organic farm chemical may have a lower residue, but if you need to apply it twice as often, then there are heavier fossil fuel, emissions and erosion costs.  The EIQ takes all of these things into consideration.

Of all six chemicals tested, the two organic pesticides had the first and third worst EIQ.   They also had the two worst selectivities- they killed more than just the aphids, and they couldn’t even do that too well.  One of the conventional, and both of the newer reduced risk pesticides did a great job of killing just the aphids and leaving the ladybugs alone.

I like this study because it is very specific, although at the cost of only being able to rate 6 chemicals. By all measures, the organic pesticides did not look too good. One of the conventional did not look too good, but the other one did. The newer chemicals were the very good.

I think the lesson to take from this, is that just because something is newer or science-based, does not mean it is bad or that it will be used 10 years from now. Science is always finding flaws in the way things currently work, and seeking ways to improve it.  The more modern, reduced risk pesticides had low environmental impact, while still being effective, and selective.  This will only get better.  Mineral oil will not, and natural fungus will not.

Please let me know what Organic means to you in the comments. Do you pay more?  Why, or why not.

–Dave

This is my kid we’re talking about here.  I want medicine designed by doctors, pharmacists, and other medical experts.  And yet someone, somewhere, decided that “Designed by a Teacher” was good marketing for a medicine, and it is probably successful.

We see this a lot.  ”Designed by a Mom” is a very common marketing ploy.  What if the “Mom” was Joan Crawford?  Being a Mom probably qualifies you for some things, but not Engineering, Law, Medicine, Acting etc.  Not unless she’d had the specific training.

I see politicians employ experts when they agree with them, then ten minutes later refer to the opponent’s experts with finger quotes.  ’Her experts are too smart and out of touch with regular people, but you should believe my experts.’

You should always believe the experts.  Sometimes they will disagree, so go with the majority opinion.  In the vast number of cases though, the split will be 99-1 or even higher, making it easy to choose which side to follow.  If there is not a lopsided majority opinion, then don’t form your own.  Just wait.  I remember when plate tectonics was a 50-50 split.*

Anthropomorphic (man-made) climate change (ACC) is a tough topic.  Here the consensus is about 97-2-1 for it being true, false, and unsure.  The problem here is that being an expert in climate does not also make you an expert in manufacturing, agriculture, and any of the other things that can contribute to climate change.  Who exactly, constitutes an expert?  (Certainly not these people: electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, medical degrees, etc.)

Recently, a group of researchers at Stanford University examined the publications of 1372 climate researchers.   The names were taken from scientific conferences, global political summits, and even petitions. Researchers’ expertise was ranked by the number of papers they authored or co-authored.  Prominence was rated by how many people cited a researcher’s paper.  Science works kinda like google— the more links to your web site, the higher your google ranking.  In this case better researchers have more people citing their work.  Poor researchers have few people citing their work.  We now have two methods of telling who the experts are.

And they aren’t the ACC deniers.  The above paper is very easy to read (Yes, it truly is!)  They thought of everything, and compensated for possible abnormalities, and yet still 97-98% of the experts believe in ACC.

It is not possible for me to get a degree in pharmacy, just so I can design and manufacture a pain reliever for my child.  Similarly, I can’t study weather and climate for 4-6 years just to have an opinion on ACC.  In both cases, I need to rely on experts.

From the main stream media, it sounds like opinion on ACC is a 50-50 split amongst the experts.  You don’t have to do the research yourself, but you do need to seek out what the majority expert opinions is.  Question everything- question me.  Only this way can your opinions become stronger.

Share your stories of experts being denounced when they don’t agree with a personal bias in the comments!

–Dave

*As a side note, one of the things that totally disgusts me about science journalism is that they present the 99% and 1% with equal time, thereby implying a 50-50 split when there is none.  The law of evolution is a classic case of this.  99.999-0.001 is presented as a “controversy” with each side given equal weight.

Why am I currently gushing all over her now? Because of this:

If you haven’t heard, someone filmed an oil sheen on the roads of New Orleans and narrated with “its raining oil” over and over again.  As an example of modern science reporting, the Huffington Post asked readers if they felt it was really raining oil or not, as if our votes could decide what was really happening.  (Again, I will not link to this particular video because I don’t want to increase it’s popularity.)

Rachel Maddow took the time to correct to her followers that it is impossible for it to be raining oil.  It sounds crazy that I should like something so simple, but the state of science reporting is absolutely trash.  I remember when ABC reported that the very last link between autism and vaccines was shredded, they gave 10 times the airtime to a celebrity saying that she believed to still be true anyway.

If Rachel Maddow has an agenda, she would want her viewers to be disgusted with BP, and our politicians for allowing BP to go unregulated.  This particular YouTube video could have played right into that agenda.  She mentions that many of her followers sent her the video, showing their disgust.

Knowing the video is a mistake, many reporters and pundits are faced with two choices:  say nothing, let the rumor spread and with it any agenda, or  promote the video anyway.  Seeing her take the third option was quite refreshing. She does not seem to want followers for followers sake, she wants smarter, better informed followers, even if she has to tell them things they may not want to hear.

And this is why I think she is the a good skeptic.

First.  The odds of having a winning ticket in my state’s lottery, is about 1 in 7 million.  People don’t expect to win if they buy a single ticket.  If you purchase two tickets, then your odds of winning increase by 100 percent!  Sounds impressive, right?  So why might  you not be impressed?

No one really thinks that purchasing two tickets will make you any more of a winner than before.  However, when exposure to X causes a 30% increase in some specific form of cancer, then we label X as very dangerous.  As a general rule of thumb, if you are given data in the form of a percent, someone is trying to either hide or exaggerate something. The relative risk of X is noticeable, but nothing can be said about the real risk.

The cell phone study may have shown an increase in the relative risk of getting one specific type of brain cancer, for those people who used their phones for 10 hours a day.  However, what is the real risk of getting this specific type of cancer in the first place?  You are probably more likely to develop Glioma than win the lottery, but increasing this low risk by 40% still results in a low risk.

Second.  Why does anyone expect a biological effect anyway?  I have a degree in electrical engineering, and I’ve sold cell phones (a long time ago.)  I know how much power they produced, and the idea that so little power can cause us harm seems ridiculous.  For comparison, I crunched these numbers:  your cell phone uses about .6 Watts to broadcast, and is about 2 inches from your brain;  a low power computer monitor is about 15 watts, and is about 18 inches.  You monitor is irradiating you with 1.5 times more energy than your cell phone.  Most people also spend far more time in front of their computers than talking on their phone.  (edit, I found this extremely physics-y explanation.)

OK, numbers scare a lot of people, so lets look at this in a way to can explain to your coworkers.  Light from the cell phone passes through you head like visible light through glass.  If it didn’t, you would have no reception.  You teeny tiny cell phone emits a frequency of light that can pass through you, your car, your home, your office, school, and surrounding buildings, and still reach the tower.  Metal, and other materials can attenuate this signal, but they need to be designed as such.

If your cell phone caused a biological effect, than your cell phone signal would have a very difficult time reaching out.  Cell phone light frequencies are designed to pass through your body with no attenuation.  No attenuation, no energy passed off to your body.

In a similar vein, cell phones use a very large variety of frequencies, and these frequencies have changed over the years.  Cell phones have used hundreds of different specific frequencies from about 800MHz to 2.4Ghz. As the technology has advanced, the higher frequencies have become more common.  The above study looked at long term cell phone usage.  I seriously doubt that there was a single person who was exposed to one single frequency for every call, for length of time of the study.

There are much better odds of winning the lottery.

So, why rehash this whole thing?  A NYTimes blog highlighted products to protect you from this imaginary danger.  There are many more, but I don’t want to link to them as it would only help their google ranking.  And today, San Francisco passed a totally stupid law forcing a label on all cell phones “warning” what their broadcast power is.  (Hint, it’s 0.6 watts.)

California is weird.  On one hand California, and especially San Francisco is very counter cultural. There is a lot of spiritualism, homeopathy, and distrust of anything not “natural”.  How  many products are in your home come with the warning: “this product contains an ingredient known to the State of California to cause cancer.”  Sometimes good and sometimes bad, but leave it to California to jump on the ultra-careful side.

But this is San Francisco— Silicon Valley.  This is where 70% of all cell phones are designed.  If anyone should know better, it is these guys.

Finally why should I be irked?  Why can’t I just leave well enough alone?  What is the harm in studying something so incredibly unlikely to do anything?

Because this study reportedly cost $30M.  Not only that, this is but the latest of many studies that have shown absolutely no relationship between cell phones and cancer.  Wikipedia has a great list of these studies, each costing thousands to millions of dollars.

And because there are real diseases out there. Real problems that require real work to solve.  I feel sad that the MDA, March of Dimes, American Cancer Society and many others are missing out and research for real cures are left unfunded.   Real people with real problems are not getting the help they need.  This is why I am irritated.

Laws should be there to protect us from real dangers, but protecting us from nonsense just makes all protection useless. What’s the Harm” is a cop-out.  For more examples of harm in “what’s the harm”, please visit this web site.

Something I say a lot is “there is no such thing as green energy”. This is one of the reasons I created this blog. When I first learned about wind power, I had heard that they were real bird killers. The article I read oh-so-many years ago, was referring to one of the first experimental wind farms. “Hundreds of birds” were scattered around the base of the wind mills, including many large raptors. Since then, I have heard about windmills becoming “bird friendly”, and now that they are mainstream, I haven’t heard a peep about the birds.

Wind power has a lot of pros over fossil fuels. But there are also cons: local weather patterns are changed, they are not very economical*, not very aesthetic, a waste of land/habitat, etc. I am taking “bird killers” off of the list of cons though.  This site has the following estimates on the sources for bird mortality:

• Buildings: 100 million to 1 Billion birds per year
• House cats: “hundreds of millions” of birds per year
• Towers: 5-50 million birds per year
• Windmills 10-40 thousand birds per year
  

Even if the number of windmills goes up by tenfold, which I fully expect it will soon, the number of birds killed will still be less than the minimum number of bird deaths caused by stationary towers.

Now don’t get me wrong, having a single bird killed is not good. However, we have so screwed up the natural ecology that we have no way of knowing if this number is statistically significant. How many birds would have died by coyote, if coyotes numbers were not drastically reduced? How many birds are saved by a reduction in smoke from coal plants?

For a long time, I was a mediocre fan of windmills, and bird killing was one reason. I have learned that this reason is invalid, and my opinion on windmills is now more favorable. I will study this issue some more. I suspect that when you eliminate the subsidies and calculate the true costs, windmills may not be worthwhile. However, being a skeptic, I will reserve judgment on this until the numbers come in.

–Dave

* I’ve had many people argue that windmills are very economical after various governments subsidize them. Well, to be economical, they need to be at least self-sustaining. We are using the cheapness of oil to sustain the windmills. I agree with this as a temporary measure— I just want to acknowledge that this is what is really happening.

In that order.

I have long been bugged by something. During the evening news, or the news magazine shows, they very often show some artist who is using trash to create art. Each artist is presented as “new” and “unique”. The commenter makes some comment about how “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Then of course everyone feels great about the increase in recycling.

I’m thinking “Where’s the recycling?”

To me, I usually just see a big pile of trash. Eventually, this piece of art will find it’s way to the landfill. Most art does, eventually. How is this recycling? I will grant it is reusing, but it is not recycling.

The best example of recycling is Aluminum, or steel. Aluminum cans can be remelted and turned into more aluminum cans or airplanes. Steel cans can be turned into cars, which can be turned into bridges, which can be turned into steel cans again. Recycling means to complete a cycle. This cannot be said for most substances.

Plastic water bottles can be mixed into lower grade shampoo bottles, which can be turned into artificial fleece, which must be tossed. This is not recycling, it’s reusing. Turning a 2-liter pop bottle into a bird feeder is not recycling. To be recycled, it would need to be made back into a 2-liter pop bottle eventually, and the technology to do this does not exist yet.

If you really want to help the environment, make recycling your third priority. Your first priority, though the  most uncomfortable, should be to reduce. Don’t buy a 2-liter bottle of pop or make your own pop in recyclable glass bottles. Buy things in metal, glass or paper containers, even if it costs a little more. Bring your own coffee cup into Starbucks, etc.  The web is filled with great ideas.

Your second priority should be to reuse. Bread bags can be turned into vegetable or bulk food bags at the grocery store. (Just cross out the UPC bars!) Plastic grocery bags can be used 2-5 times before they wear out and also make good garbage bags. (Have you ever thought about explaining the concept of grocery bags to a child? “Mommy, what are these for?”  ”After we buy these, I’m going to throw them away!”)

Some stores will allow you to reuse old deli containers; some states actually ban this. For another option, see page 7. After a few dozen uses, the old deli container is broken. Now is the time to place it in the recycle bin. This is most likely the first option when it comes to aluminum cans and glass bottles. There actually are some good reasons not to recycle paper and plastic — to be discussed later.

Please comment below, and stay tuned for more recycling myths, and why I say Reduce, Reuse, Recycle— In that order!

–Dave

If someone dumped a bunch of used tea bags on the side of the road, would people complain as much? Yes, tobacco does contain thousands of chemicals, but like tea— it’s just leaves. Apple seeds and almonds contain trace amount of cyanide, but who would complain about a few of these lying around?

Just because Brian Williams said it in an ominous tone, does not mean its anything more than just trace amounts of burned leaves.

I don’t subscribe to cable, satellite, or even broadcast television. I know that it’s Earth day, but I am unaware of what most people are doing on this day. It’s not a holiday I’ve ever really celebrated. For me, there are so many similar themed holidays that I’m often confused. Walk to Work Day, Bike to Work Day, Buy Nothing Day, No Smoking Day, Buy Local Day, Don’t Buy Gas Day, Plant a Tree day, and even Nude Bike Day.

How else would you celebrate Earth Day? We could exchange gifts, but they should to be hand made ones. After all, consumerism is generally not an environmentalist theme. We could all go to a park or hike in the woods, except we don’t have the day off.

It may not seem like it, but I am in favor of Earth Day. However there seems to be no cohesive element to bring us all together. Earth Day needs something totally unrelated, and magical to make it special. For example, Christmas has Santa Claus; Easter has a magical rabbit; Halloween has costumes and monsters and Independence Day (America) has fireworks.

People celebrate Earth day in 500 different ways and this does not do too much to bring us all together. Earth Day needs a focus. Not having had my coffee yet today, I suggest a giant Earth Day Worm mascot. It could be in parades like done with a Chinese dragon. We could make up all sorts of tales to entertain our children how the worm nibbles on the seeds to make them grow into flowers, trees, and food.

Earth Day also needs time. Many people celebrate Earth Day in different ways, but it’s only 40 years old. Humans have been celebrating the winter solstice since before recorded history. Realize, it’s only recently that the idea of Santa Claus has come to dominate Christmas. Forty years is simply not long enough for traditions to get filtered through. Though, in the current information age, the internet can spread traditions so it may take a lot less time.

I will celebrate Earth Day the same way I do every day. I will think about what I purchase, walk when I can, reuse instead of dispose, etc. But if I do this everyday, then today is not very special. I will write my representatives and ask that Earth Day be considered a holiday— a day off for all workers. Maybe then the country as a whole can come up with a special united way to celebrate it.

–Dave