Keeping the lights on

The best thing to pull people together is a common enemy, and we, the Russians, China and India all have that in this Islamist Caliphate movement. My hope is that we can work together, all the non-failed states of the world, on something more constructive. Space travel would be great, and it's one of the few remaining "frontiers". There are others, such as computing, biotechnology, energy, and materials.

So, time for a new direction to this rambling set of observations. Technology is always interesting, even if most of it is a "black box" to arts types like myself. The dabbling of science I took in high school and university does however give me enough of a clue of many basic concepts so that I can grasp what is likely and possible.

Well, it's 2007, and we've not been to Jupiter yet, so there remain a lot of "flying car" type predictions to come true, or not. I'm making this up as I go along, but it seems to me that the hope of maintaining some sort of decent civilization depends to a large extent on energy, so there's an area that needs some real progress.

Nuclear fusion has always been may favourites for the future, but there's a part of me thinking that if we were pushed hard enough it'd be here already. There is a lot of stuff starting to shake loose due to the persistently high oil prices, but we'll see if it's absorbed as an inflationary item and we just make more efficient internal combustion engines. We're not about to run out of oil any time soon, but high prices mimic scarcity for planning and research purposes.

There are lots of solutions for our forecast energy problems; most of them technically feasible today, and some of them renewable. Nuclear fission can replace a lot (or all) of the fossil fuel generation plants for a long time, and pretty-much indefinitely if you use breeder reactors.

Anything containing the words "atomic" or "nuclear" makes people nervous, but energy is energy, and getting it has some side effects however you slice (or split!) it. Solar power is viewed as nice and safe, but the most efficient use of that, as it stands, would be to put the collectors in orbit or on the moon and beam it back. You'd get a crapload of energy from that, and all free after the initial investment, albeit it'd be a hefty one.

Now, who exactly would pay for it and manage/control such a thing is likely to be a sticky issue, as I can see the weapon potential of gigawatt microwave beams from orbit, but I'm sure the same thing was said about satellites when Sputnik first started beeping across the skies.

The way I see things, there's more energy available to us than we could ever use (mostly that bright thing in the daytime sky), but tapping it and managing it are the challenges. Batteries in one form or another are a huge advance still barely on its' feet. With actually efficient storage cells, electric cars are a practical reality. Hybrids and fuel cells be damned, real batteries are what we need to push the rest of the energy revolution.

We need the hydrocarbons for plastics and stuff, so burning it is wasteful at best when we have much better and cleaner ways of powering our houses and gadgets. It's also a good way to reduce the leverage that various unpleasant or dysfunctional countries have over our foreign and domestic policy. Cheap, clean, abundant energy allows you to do anything you need to do.

I like trees and green stuff as much as any rational person, but I'm not a tree-spiking radical by any stretch. People seem to want to reproduce far beyond the planet's natural carrying capacity, and unless something happens to knock our numbers back (never count Nature out...) we have to keep advancing our technology. If the West and associates don't do it, who will? All the terminally buggered countries of Africa? Al-Qaeda’s Wahhabist paradise? The civilized hope for humanity rests with maintaining a high level of technology, and at least a modest rate of innovation.

Western civilization got us this far (the oil in Arabia etc. would be worthless without Western technology) and it's the only thing (with local variations) that can keep us from lapsing into some sort of Dark Age. That Dark Age may be historically inevitable, or not; I have no way to be sure, nor does anyone else. Personally I vote that we do everything we can to preserve what got us were we are, because it's the only thing that will get us past here.

If this means cracking heads in various places, so be it. Exporting democracy has failed ignominiously in Iraq, and is in the process of failing in Afghanistan. So what? We have it and we( mostly) like it, it doesn't matter if most of the world doesn't. WE DON'T NEED THEM TO HAVE IT. I hope that was plain enough to be understood.

The enemy of our enemy is our friend; that's as old as the hills, and like the Gods of the Copybook Headings, that sort of knowledge goes out of style but is never rendered untrue.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

So, I want to keep hold of my ice-field and you likely do too. Technology and (sustainable) progress are the keys, and none of the pin-prick threats that are represented by various brand of Luddite (internal or external) can knock us off of it, or put out the lights, AS LONG AS WE DON'T LET THEM. Hit them hard, hit them fast and don't get bogged down. This means backing local players whose interests correspond with ours (however temporarily) and then letting them all sort themselves out. If they get the hint, good. If not, we're ready to do it again.

These last two posts need some serious editing, being just stream-of-consciousness, but until I get around to doing that I hope this has made some sense. If not, hey, what do you expect for free? As always, comments are appreciated, since I need some feedback to keep me honest; otherwise I might say any damned thing that comes into my head. Oh, wait...