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The Independent has an article on "radical gardening" (as opposed to "guerilla gardening) - Radical plots: The politics of gardening. Watch out for those old folk pottering around their back yards...

Notions of utopia, of community, of activism for progressive social change, of peace, of environmentalism, of identity politics, are practically worked through in the garden, in floriculture and through what art historian Paul Gough has called "planting as a form of protest". But not all – some are sobering, or frightening, for within the territory of the politically "radical" there have been, and continue to be, social experiments that invert our positive expectations of the human exchange that occurs in the green open space of a garden. There are fascist gardens (for the Nazis the land and its planting were pivotal to their ideology): the notorious herb garden at Dachau concentration camp (run on the biodynamic principles of Rudolf Steiner which were favoured by many senior Nazis); the SS "village" at Auschwitz, as recalled by Primo Levi, with its domestic normality of houses, gardens, children and pets – and the garden paths paved with human bones.

There are also contemporary troubles: the British National Party, for example, has a campaign website entitled Land and People (not such a distant echo in its title of the Nazi Blood and Soil doctrine): "Land and People say the choice between allocating land for locals – utilise as allotments – or for development – building to house migrants – as they say, a no brainer... only British Nationalists will put the engine of immigration into reverse and, in so doing, save our countryside."

The BNP has also argued for the planting of old English varieties of apple trees as part of its campaign to preserve a pure and rustic national culture. In spite of being neither English nor a nationalist, I have planted a "lost" local heritage apple tree in my Lancashire garden (it doesnt fruit as much as the Bramley bought end-of-season from B&Q for a fiver, thus probably explaining why it was lost). But nonetheless, can we say that the discourse of horticultural purity and nativism – and even more so of native vs invasive species – maps uncomfortably on the politics of extreme nationalism and xenophobia?

Any notions of a horti-countercultural politics (I agree that they probably dont called them horti-countercultural politics) that gardeners may have imagined were in their earthy practice and pleasure have a rich and challenging tradition, a significance and a trajectory of energy and import that makes them matter for our future. "Why," asks writer-gardener Jamaica Kincaid, "must people insist that the garden is a place of rest and repose, a place to forget the cares of the world, a place in which to distance yourself from the painful responsibility with being a human being?"

Kincaid and other writers – like Gough, Martin Hoyles and Kenneth Helphand – have helped shape my own understanding of the garden as a place that actually confronts and addresses the cares of the world. Helphands Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime in particular, a study of gardens in the most unlikely of wartime settings (such as planted by troops in First World War trenches or in Jewish ghettos), with a stunning set of archive images from military and holocaust museums, made me completely rethink what might be definable as a garden.

This isnt a forced juxtaposition of plant and ideology. Think only of the English radical writer William Cobbett, who declared in 1819 that "if I sowed, planted or dealt in seeds, whatever I did had first in view the destruction of infamous tyrants". Or the early 20th-century revolutionary playwright Bertolt Brecht, who observed, with startling accusatory power, that "famines do not occur, they are organised by the grain trade". Or the Peace Pledge Unions white anti-war poppy, or the 1960s hippie placing a flower down the barrel of the National Guardsmans rifle. Or the female Colombian activist speaking recently to Western buyers on behalf of the 40,000 women working in the pesticidal Colombian flower industry: "Behind every beautiful flower is a death. Flowers grow beautiful while women wither away." Or street artist Banksy, whose most famous images include the masked rioter throwing not a petrol bomb, but a bunch of flowers. These horticultural snapshots illustrate a compelling and enduring connection between plant and politic, a radical gardening.

In his recent book, Nowtopia, Chris Carlsson writes of a politics inscribed in the very act of "slowing down the gardener, making her pay attention to natural cycles that only make sense in the full unfolding of seasons and years. In a shared garden [especially], time opens up for conversation, debate and a wider view than that provided by the univocal, self-referential spectacle promoted by the mass media".

Climate change, peak oil transition, community cohesion, the environment, genetic modification and food policy, diet, health and disability – the garden is the local patch which touches and is touched by all of these kinds of major global concerns, whether it wants that kind of attention or not. In a sparkling collection of autonomous essays from a decade ago called Avant Gardening, Peter Lamborn Wilson comments wryly that "cultivate your own garden sounds today like hot radical rhetoric. Growing a garden has become – at least potentially – an act of resistance. But its not simply a gesture of refusal. Its a positive act".

The American Chemical Society has a post on the possible use of hemp in creating supercapacitors - Could hemp nanosheets topple graphene for making the ideal supercapacitor?

David Mitlin, Ph.D., explains that supercapacitors are energy storage devices that have huge potential to transform the way future electronics are powered. Unlike today’s rechargeable batteries, which sip up energy over several hours, supercapacitors can charge and discharge within seconds. But they normally can’t store nearly as much energy as batteries, an important property known as energy density. One approach researchers are taking to boost supercapacitors’ energy density is to design better electrodes. Mitlin’s team has figured out how to make them from certain hemp fibers — and they can hold as much energy as the current top contender: graphene.

“Our device’s electrochemical performance is on par with or better than graphene-based devices,” Mitlin says. “The key advantage is that our electrodes are made from biowaste using a simple process, and therefore, are much cheaper than graphene.”

The race toward the ideal supercapacitor has largely focused on graphene — a strong, light material made of atom-thick layers of carbon, which when stacked, can be made into electrodes. Scientists are investigating how they can take advantage of graphene’s unique properties to build better solar cells, water filtration systems, touch-screen technology, as well as batteries and supercapacitors. The problem is it’s expensive.

Mitlin’s group decided to see if they could make graphene-like carbons from hemp bast fibers. The fibers come from the inner bark of the plant and often are discarded from Canada’s fast-growing industries that use hemp for clothing, construction materials and other products. The U.S. could soon become another supplier of bast. It now allows limited cultivation of hemp, which unlike its close cousin, does not induce highs.

Grist reports that french nuclear power company EDF has decided that it is better to pursue renewable energy in the US rather than bating a dead horse - Big nuke company decides renewables are a better bet in the U.S..

The world’s largest operator of nuclear power plants is dumping its stake in American reactors, turning its focus instead to wind and solar power. French utility company EDF announced this week that it will sell its stake in Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG), which operates five nuclear reactors in New York and Maryland.

EDF cited cheap power produced by fracked natural gas as the big reason why it’s abandoning its American nuclear facilities. But the company said it will now focus its American business strategy not on fossil fuels but on renewable energy.

The ABCs "Fact Check" has a look at claims from the new energy minister that Australia could be the worlds leading exporter of LNG from natural gas and coal seam gas - Can Australia become the worlds leading LNG exporter ?.

The LNG industry claims to be Australias fastest growing export sector.

Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane shares the rosy outlook. "Australia will shortly become the second largest - or optimistically, the largest - exporter of LNG and that is nothing short of amazing," Mr Macfarlane said during the Australian National Conference on Resource and Energy on October 3.

Is that a reasonable prediction?

Mr Macfarlanes office told ABC Fact Check he based his comments on advice from the Department of Industry and research by the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics, the national energy forecaster. The bureau says Australia will produce 83.0 million tonnes of LNG by 2017. How does this compare with the rest of the world?

According to statistics from the International Energy Agency, whose 28 member countries from the developed world are large users of energy, Australia is currently the third largest LNG producer in the world, behind Qatar and Malaysia.

The agency says Australia has the capacity to produce 33 billion cubic metres of LNG a year. In tonnes, the measurement used commonly in Australia, that converts to 24.4 million tonnes.

While Australia is in third place, the agency says Australia has more new LNG plants under construction than any other country.

On completion, the new projects will add a further 61.4 million tonnes of LNG capacity, bringing Australias total to 85.8 million tonnes. These are due to be completed by June 2018.

Not many other LNG exporting countries have new projects underway, according to the agency. The closest is the United States, constructing plants capable of producing 17.8 million tonnes.

When plants under construction are added to current capacity, Australia will lead the way with 85.8 million tonnes. Qatar, the current leader in LNG exports, will be next at 77.7 million tonnes and Indonesia third at 36.3 million tonnes.

Kevin Kelly has an article on the Long Now Foundation’s clock project - The Clock In The Mountain.

There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy form a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan.

The Clock is real. It is now being built inside a mountain in western Texas. This Clock is the first of many millennial Clocks the designers hope will be built around the world and throughout time. There is a second site for another Clock already purchased at the top of a mountain in eastern Nevada, a site surrounded by a very large grove of 5,000-year-old bristlecone pines.

Appropriately, bristlecone pines are among the longest-lived organisms on the planet. The designers of the Clock in Texas expect its chimes will keep ringing twice as long as the oldest 5 millennia-old bristlecone pine. Ten thousand years is about the age of civilization, so a 10K-year Clock would measure out a future of civilization equal to its past. That assumes we are in the middle of whatever journey we are on – an implicit statement of optimism.

The Clock is now being machined and assembled in California and Seattle. Meantime the mountain in Texas is being readied. Why would anyone build a Clock inside a mountain with the hope that it will ring for 10,000 years? Part of the answer: just so people will ask this question, and having asked it, prompt themselves to conjure with notions of generations and millennia. If you have a Clock ticking for 10,000 years what kinds of generational-scale questions and projects will it suggest? If a Clock can keep going for ten millennia, shouldn’t we make sure our civilization does as well? If the Clock keeps going after we are personally long dead, why not attempt other projects that require future generations to finish? The larger question is, as virologist Jonas Salk once asked, “Are we being good ancestors?"

The New York Times has an article on improving the economics of electric car battereis - A Second Life for the Electric Car Battery.

As I wrote in a recent Times article on electric car batteries, scientists are expecting big breakthroughs in battery technology over the next five years that will increase the range of electric cars while reducing their cost. But even with these advances, researchers acknowledge that any rechargeable battery will gradually lose its capacity to store energy after repeated cycles of charging and discharging.

Once storage capacity falls below a certain level, the battery can no longer provide the range that electric car owners will expect, according to Micky Bly, the executive director of global battery, electric vehicle and hybrid engineering at General Motors. For its new Chevy Volt, GM expects that level to be around 60 to 65 percent of the battery’s original capacity, he said in a telephone interview.

At the same time, with most of a battery’s useful life still intact, automakers anticipate that it could serve other, less demanding purposes than powering a few thousand pounds of car.

A number of projects and new ventures are already under way to explore second-life applications for lithium-ion batteries. G.M. has announced a cooperative agreement with ABB, an energy technology company. And Nissan has formed a joint venture called 4R Energy with the Sumitomo Corporation.

This month, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, financed by the Department of Energy, announced their own initiative in this area, a collaboration with academic and industry partners.

From a technical perspective, a special area of focus for the laboratory’s research will be repurposing these batteries for Community Energy Storage systems on the electric utility grid, according to Jeremy Neubauer, a senior engineer in the lab’s energy storage group. If all goes as planned, in the smart grid of the future electric utilities would distribute thousands of these Community Energy Storage packs throughout the grid to help them manage power flow, especially during peak times or outages.

One pack would store 25 to 50 kilowatt hours of electricity, which could provide power for a few hours to four or five homes. Packs of this size would require stringing together two or three electric car batteries, and the compact size of these batteries lends itself to this purpose, Mr. Neubauer said. He also expects that using second-life batteries would be cheaper for the utilities than buying new ones.

But beyond the technical feasibility, what’s new about the lab’s research will be the focus on testing new financial and ownership models for the car batteries. Ahmad Pesaran, principal engineer on the lab’s study, said, “We want to prove the battery has value beyond its use in the car, and by creating business models, to realize this added value, ultimately lowering the cost of owning the car for the consumer.”

The Climate Spectator has a report on Softbank’s interest in the Japanese energy sector in the wake of the Fukushima meltdowns - Utilities beware: here come the telcos.

There may never have been a more rapid and dramatic conversion to the green economy than that of Japanese billionaire businessman Masayoshi Son. The CEO and president of the telecoms giant Softbank, and rated by Forbes as the richest man in Japan, has become an evangelist for renewable energy since the tsunami and nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant in March.

The 53-year-old Son wants Japan to dump its nuclear plans and instead triple the amount of renewable energy to 30 per cent of its electricity supply by 2020, and he will invest some of his own money rolling out a series of 10 large-scale solar PV plants, totaling around 200MW and costing some $1 billion, which will be constructed in some of the land rendered useless by the twin disasters.

But his most influential move may be his decision to take on the country’s national and regional energy monopolies, demanding the networks be freed up to new participants. His first target is the owner of Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power. In short, he wants to do to the power industry what he did to the telecommunications industry a decade ago, when he successfully dismantled the monopoly held by the venerable NTT. His progress will be closely watched elsewhere in the world.

The privileged position enjoyed by power utilities in many of the world’s energy markets has been fiercely protected by political indulgence (much of it is state-owned) and regulation for nearly a century.

This privileged position was expected to come under gradual assault over the coming decade with the rapid development of new and smart technologies, and the growing need to control soaring energy demand and reduce emissions development. But while the changes were expected to be gradual, the ambition and influence of Son may be a game-changer, and will be closely observed by other commercial giants that also have ambitions in this area – such as Google, Amazon and Johnston Controls, who are fighting their own war against protectionist energy regulation in the US so that they too can enter the energy market.

Son says the initial solar power project could lead to bigger opportunities for Softbank, and he expects that experience from his telecommunication business can be combined with that of power-distribution systems, and help cash in on the demand for more efficient power grids using information technology. This is the same opportunity being eyed by Google and a host of other software and IT developers.

“The question is how this nation is going to survive after cutting nuclear power," Son said at a government panel meeting this week. “A framework should be designed in a way to make the power business open for anyone who has the will to start it."

The Business Spectator has an article on French plans to wind down nuclear power in favour of renewables - French carbon tax, feed-in tariff reform and CCS on horizon.

Germany’s neighbour France is also looking to shake up how it supports renewables as the country begins its “energy transition” away from nuclear.

France will introduce a carbon tax and a law to cap nuclear-power capacity as part of a new energy bill next year to boost renewable generation, President Francois Hollande told an environment conference last week. Hollande has vowed to reduce reliance on nuclear to half of total output by about 2025 while also keeping down consumers’ bills.

Among other things, the energy law in 2014 will define how renewables are financed. Hollande said last week that the above-market guaranteed prices currently paid to green energy producers “can lead to a waste of public funds, profit-taking and speculative behaviour.” Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects the shift in renewable support may move towards a greater use of tenders to keep costs low.

Energy Bulletin has a transcript of a speech by James Schlesinger at the recent ASPO USA conference - The peak oil debate is over.

May I start with a bromide: a resource which is finite is not inexhaustible. If you think that over, it should not be a revelation. That was a bromide… some people think a keynote should never rise above a bromide….

Some five years ago in Italy I concluded a talk by saying that like the inhabitants of Pompeii, who ignored the neighboring volcano, Vesuvius, until it detonated, the world ignores the possibility of peak oil at its peril.

Two years ago in addressing ASPO in Cork, Ireland, I argued that the peakists had won the intellectual argument, except for some minor details about precise timing, but that by and large everyone recognized that there were limits on our capacity to increase the production of crude oil as we have steadily since World War Two.

[I also argued] that peakists were no longer a beleaguered minority, that they had won, and that consequently they should be gracious in victory.

There’s an old spiritual that is relevant here. The walls of those who doubted the peak seemed to be impregnable. Nonetheless, you marched around the walls seven times and then blew the trumpets and the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.

But acceptance by knowledgeable people is not enough. The political order should respond. Nonetheless, our willingness, let alone our ability, to do anything serious about the impending inability to increase oil output is still a long way off.

The political order responds to what the public believes today, not to what it may come to believe tomorrow. It is also resistant to any action that inflicts pain or sacrifice on those who vote. The payoff in politics comes from reassurance, perhaps precluded by a rhetorical challenge.

Still, the challenge is clear in both logic and in the evidence. Let me start briefly with the logic,

If something cannot be sustained, it will eventually not be sustained… ultimately it will shrink.

Secondly, you cannot produce oil unless you first discover it (a contribution by Colin Campbell).

Third, a resource that is finite cannot continually have its production increased.

What is the evidence?

First, we remain heavily dependent on super-giant and giant oilfields discovered in the 50s and 60s of the last century… I might add, of the last millennium. Only rarely in recent decades have discoveries equaled production. Mostly, it’s been one barrel discovered for every three barrels produced.

Second, old super-giants like Burgan in Kuwait and [Cantarell] in Mexico have gone into decline earlier than had been anticipated… and going into decline have been Alaska, the North Sea, western Siberia and the like.

Third, while it is not yet “Twilight in the Desert” (as you may have read) still we are well into the afternoon, even in Saudi Arabia. Even the Ghawar oilfield is increasingly hard to sustain.

Fourth, in 2004 we experienced our first demand-driven price spike, as opposed to the previous price spikes driven by supply interruptions. We still operate at about the level of production capacity of 2004.

Next, given projected decline curves running from 4 to 6 percent, and the projected increase in demand during the next quarter century, we shall require the new capacity equivalence of five Saudi Arabias.

Even the International Energy Agency, which previously had been sanguine, now suggests that we can no longer increase production of conventional oil in the course of this decade.

Note that it is conventional oil: that is all that Hubbert talked about. Somewhat disingenuously, the debate has been turned on him by talking about fuel liquids in general, throwing in tar sands, heavy oil, coal liquids, oil shale and so on.

But clearly, large conventional oil production is increasingly no longer part of the future unless there is a technological breakthrough, which Mr. Gilbert talked about just a few moments ago, raising the ultimate recovery rate from existing fields, which at this moment we cannot expect.

Of course, there are uncertainties which make timing predictions with regard to the peak risky. Iraq, which has been held back for a variety of reasons, may come along as one of those five new needed Saudi Arabias.

Offshore Brazil and offshore oil elsewhere are promising. Shale gas, which is apparently coming in abundance (but is not, of course, oil) may somewhat alleviate the pressures on liquid fuels.

But in general we must expect to get along without what has been our critical energy source in expanding the world’s economy for more than half a century.

Can the political order face up to the challenge? There is no reason for optimism.

We are likely to see pseudo-solutions, misleading alternatives and sheer sloganeering: “energy independence,” “getting off foreign oil” and the like. All of that sheer sloganeering we have seen to this point.

The political order (which abhors political risk) tends to rely on the Biblical prescription, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

The ABC has a look at the coal seam gas industry - Water, salt and carbon in the coal seam gas future.

An ABC investigative report into coal seam gas extraction, suggests the industry will bring about a massive redirection of the water system in Australia.

The ABC has launched Coal Seam Gas: By the Numbers, a website that maps the coal seam gas industry and explores its impact on water resources into the future.

The project calculates the amount of water which will be drawn from the ground as a result of gas extraction from the coal seam, considers waste materials collected and approaches to managing that waste.

ABC investigative reporters have used data and information from many sources, including environmental impact studies commissioned by mining companies at the request of Governments.

Investigative reporter Wendy Carlisle says "the research shows a large number of coal seam gas leases coincide with major underground water supplies used by farmers."

"What it shows is in broad terms coal seam gas will engineer a massive redirection of the water system in Australia.

"Landholders and governments dont yet know the impact this will have. It is the great coal seam gas experiment."

There will be as many as 40,000 gas wells in Australia in less than 20 years.

The article refers to this background piece -Coal Seam Gas - By The Numbers.

Coal seam gas has emerged as a major industry in Australia in little more than a decade.

The scale and speed of its growth has been nothing short of astonishing: billions of dollars have poured into regional areas; new jobs have been created; state and national coffers have swelled; export contracts have been signed and sealed; massive liquefied natural gas facilities have been approved for construction at regional ports.

Farmers fear they are losing control of their land. Miners and some politicians say coal seam gas offers a much greener energy choice. Environmentalists and other politicians have cast doubt on those claims.

The ABCs data journalism project has pulled together information from dozens of sources to provide an insight into the promise and the dangers inherent in the coal seam gas rush.

Did you know:

- it is estimated there will be at least 40,000 coal seam gas wells in Australia by 2030?
- conservative estimates suggest coal seam gas wells could draw 300 gigalitres of water from the ground each year?
- the industry could produce as much greenhouse gas as all the cars on the road in Australia?
- modelling suggests the industry could produce 31 million tonnes of waste salt over the next 30 years? ...

Over the next 20 years coal seam gas operations are expected to continue expanding.

The Queensland Government has approved up to 40,000 wells, and as more gas is discovered it is likely that number will rise. ...



How much water will the CSG industry use?

Australias Great Artesian Basin and its underground aquifers are a vital source of water; farmers and other bore users are given allocations for their use.

By 2014, the Commonwealth will have spent nearly $150 million under the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative, capping bores and fixing pipes to conserve water.

The coal seam gas industry is entitled to remove massive amounts of water from groundwater systems.

The Queensland Government says that if CSG mining causes groundwater levels to drop below specified "trigger" points then companies must "make good" to affected water users. The trigger points are:

- a five-metre drop in the level of agriculture bores; and
- a 0.2 of a metre drop in the water table surrounding naturally occurring springs, creeks and rivers.

The make-good arrangements have not yet been fully spelt out by government.

In addition to these provisions, the forthcoming Murray Basin Plan will set limits on groundwater extraction, including by the CSG industry. The states must enact these limits by 2019.

There is a fierce debate about the amount of water the coal seam gas industry will extract from underground, and what impact it may have on the sustainability of the Great Artesian Basin.

The industry suggests it will pull out somewhere between 126 gigalitres and 280 gigalitres a year, while the National Water Commission puts the figure above 300 gigalitres a year. Others, including the Water Group advising the Federal Government, suggest it is higher still.

While I dont normally quote ideologoues from conservative thinktanks, this bit of history highlighted in The Business Spectator caught my eye - it seems the Greeks quite enjoy milking a monetary union - Unravelling the Greek basket case.

You may agree or disagree with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s deterministic world view, but it is hard to argue with the philosopher’s grim assessment of governments’ ability to learn: “What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.”

Since these words were written 180 years ago Europe’s dealings with Greece have proved Hegel right time and again. Greece is not a country with temporary economic, fiscal and monetary problems. It is a permanent basket case. Despite this, Europe has never found a way to deal with it.

Since Greece gained independence from Turkey after its war of independence (1821-29), the country has been plagued by recurrent budget crises, frequent state defaults and long periods of being cut off from international capital markets. There was no shortage of attempts to put Greece on a more stable trajectory by integrating it into international monetary arrangements. And yet they all failed eventually.

The first attempt to give modern Greece a convertible silver currency was in 1828. It was suspended only four years later when the budget deficit was so high that the government resorted to printing paper money to pay for the ongoing conflict with Turkey. A return to the silver standard began a few years later but the Greek government continued to borrow heavily from the central bank for its expenditure – hardly a sustainable fiscal arrangement.

After more tumultuous years with yet another departure from silver to paper and back, Greece in 1867 sought refuge in the Latin Monetary Union, one of the forerunners of today’s euro currency.

Effectively, LMU was a gold and silver-backed monetary union with the French franc at the centre, and Greece hoped to benefit from the monetary stability it offered. Being part of a big monetary union with many other European nations also gave it access to deeper capital markets.

From a Greek point of view, it was perfectly understandable why they were so keen to join the club. The only question is why the other members of LMU admitted Greece despite its poor economic structures.

Not even observers closer to the historic events could see the point of Greek membership. In his ‘History of the Latin Monetary Union’ report, University of Chicago economist Henry Parker Willis summed it up nicely, and it is worth quoting at length:

“It is hard to see why the admission of Greece to the Latin Union should have been desired or allowed by that body. In no sense was she a desirable member of the league. Economically unsound, convulsed by political struggles, and financially rotten, her condition was pitiable. Struggling with a burden of debt, Greece was also endeavouring to maintain in circulation a large amount of inconvertible paper. She was not territorially a desirable adjunct to the Latin Union, and her commercial and financial importance was small. Nevertheless her nominal admission was secured, and we may credit the obscure political influences … with being able to effect what economic and financial considerations could not. Certainly it would be hard to understand on what other grounds her membership was attained.”

Replace ‘Latin Union’ with ‘European Monetary Union’ and the paragraph quoted above could have been published today. In fact, it was published in 1901. Already back then, Willis came to the conclusion that monetary union in Europe did not work, which again sounds like a prophecy of things to come:

“The Latin Union as an experiment in international monetary action has proved a failure. Its history serves merely to throw some light upon the difficulties which are likely to be encountered in any international attempt to regulate monetary systems in common. From whatever point of view the Latin Union is studied, it will be seen that it has resulted only in loss to the countries involved.”

One of LMU’s problems was Greece. The country had introduced paper money that was only valid domestically and it also reduced the gold and silver content of its coins in violation of international agreements. No wonder that other LMU members became increasingly frustrated by Greece’s refusal to play by the rules.

The Swiss ambassador to Paris allegedly once complained that monetary union with Greece was an ‘unhappy marriage’ from which there was no easy escape. Eventually, however, the other LMU countries lost patience and ordered Greek coins retired in 1908. Effectively, they kicked Greece out of the union because they were fed up with it.

Greece then had to readjust its monetary policy and managed to return to LMU in 1910 under a gold standard, but by then the LMU was already fragile. Four years later, the union was effectively abandoned at the start of World War I and formally dissolved in 1927.

After LMU, Greece’s monetary history remained a roller-coaster. The drachma devalued and became pegged to the sterling in 1928. It devalued again before being pegged to the US dollar in 1953. In 1975 it was floated and devalued immediately, followed by big devaluations in 1983 and 1985. Only in preparation for the euro did the Bank of Greece eventually announce a ‘hard drachma’ policy in 1995, but its entry into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism required yet another devaluation.

The UK Daily Telegraph has a jaundiced look at the shale boom - Shale gas: The dotcom bubble of our times.

Rather oddly, hardly anyone seems to have asked the one question which is surely fundamental: does shale development make economic sense?

My conclusion is that it does not.

That Britain needs new energy sources is surely beyond dispute. Between 2003 and 2013, domestic production of oil and gas slumped by 62pc and 65pc respectively, while coal output decreased by 55pc. Despite sharp increases in the output of renewables, overall energy production has fallen by more than half. A net exporter of energy as recently as 2003, Britain now buys almost half of its energy from abroad, and this gap seems certain to widen. ...

We now have more than enough data to know what has really happened in America. Shale has been hyped ("Saudi America") and investors have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the shale sector. If you invest this much, you get a lot of wells, even though shale wells cost about twice as much as ordinary ones.

If a huge number of wells come on stream in a short time, you get a lot of initial production. This is exactly what has happened in the US. The key word here, though, is "initial". The big snag with shale wells is that output falls away very quickly indeed after production begins. Compared with “normal” oil and gas wells, where output typically decreases by 7pc-10pc annually, rates of decline for shale wells are dramatically worse. It is by no means unusual for production from each well to fall by 60pc or more in the first 12 months of operations alone.

Faced with such rates of decline, the only way to keep production rates up (and to keep investors on side) is to drill yet more wells. This puts operators on a "drilling treadmill", which should worry local residents just as much as investors. Net cash flow from US shale has been negative year after year, and some of the industry’s biggest names have already walked away.

The seemingly inevitable outcome for the US shale industry is that, once investors wise up, and once the drilling sweet spots have been used, production will slump, probably peaking in 2017-18 and falling precipitously after that. The US is already littered with wells that have been abandoned, often without the site being cleaned up. Meanwhile, recoverable reserves estimates for the Monterey shale – supposedly the biggest shale liquids play in the US – have been revised downwards by 96pc. In Poland, drilling 30-40 wells has so far produced virtually no worthwhile production.

In the future, shale will be recognised as this decades version of the dotcom bubble. In the shorter term, its a counsel of despair as an energy supply squeeze draws ever nearer. While policymakers and investors should favour solar, waste conversion and conservation over the chimera of shale riches, opponents would be well advised to promote the economic case against the shale fad.

The NYT has an article on electric bike riding in Switzerland - Over the Alps on a Bike With a Boost. I had one of these things overtake me (startlingly quietly) as I was riding up a hill last week - they are looking quite sleek nowadays.

THE road east out of Sörenberg rears up into a series of steep turns that climb the Glaubenbielen Pass, the high point of a road the Swiss Army punched through the Alps more than 60 years ago. Though the occasional car and bus make the journey to the top, these days much of the road belongs to cyclists.

On a cool afternoon in mid-July I was one of them. I hadn’t ridden much all season, yet something primordial kicked in when I spied another biker just ahead. His calf muscles were swollen like Salamanca hams, and he was stooped over the bars, sweat dripping onto the pavement.

Easy pickings, I thought, as I tore after him. Within moments I’d reeled him in. He, gasping; me, hardly out of breath: I felt, well, guilty. “You’re cheating!” he panted in German as I sped by. “You’ll be out of power soon!”

He was right: I was cheating. With the mash of a button on my handlebars, a 250-watt electric motor had spun to life and increased the power of my pedal strokes by 150 percent. Suddenly I had my own domestique, a 26-volt brute that seemed to grab the saddle and shove me onward every time I pedaled. In a few minutes, I had reached the summit, taken a short walk and realized that cycling big Alpine passes with some breath to spare might not be such a bad way to cheat.

Here in the United States electric bikes are slowly becoming more popular — you can, for instance, take e-bike tours in San Francisco and Napa Valley. In Europe, the trend is more developed with robust rental schemes in places like Britain’s Lake District, Versailles and Amsterdam. But it is the Swiss who have embraced the concept with the most imagination.

For 50 Swiss francs a day, about $62 at $1.25 to the franc (with discounts for multiple days), you can rent an electric bike from one of 400 rental stations around the country and then set out on some 5,600 miles of well-marked bike paths. With hundreds of places along the way to obtain fresh batteries free, you don’t need to be a whippet-thin racer to roll for days through the spectacular Swiss hinterlands — up steep mountain passes and past soft meadows, burbling creeks and curious cows. You’re free from unforgiving train schedules and away from the tourist hordes but still have access to all the traditional Swissness you can take at inns and restaurants along the way. And since sweating is cheap, a famously expensive country just became a little more affordable.

The Long Now has a post noting that the Long Bet about peak travel in the US has been won by Glen Raphael, who bet that there would be more passenger miles travelled in 2010 than there were in 2005 - Long Bet on Peak Travel.

The challenger - me - appears to have won the bet. But it was a real squeaker! The total was roughly 3 trillion miles for both years and there was a period of decline (associated with war and financial crash) in between that gave me a scare but 2010 finished slightly ahead.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/10dectvt/page2.cfm (the december 2010 report) gives total vehicle miles traveled for the year as:

2005: 2,989,395
2010: 2,999,634

So 2010 was more, but it was very very close. See also this press release:

http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2011/fhwa0311.html

"Nation’s Highway Traffic Reaches Highest Level Since 2007"

Once upon a time when the universe was very young, before there were even galaxies that could be "far, far away", the first stars were born.

The story of how this probably happened, which astrophysicists have been trying to figure out for decades, is rather interesting. Only with results announced at the end of July has the story begun to come into good focus.

The main reason is has taken so long to understand how the first stars formed is that it is quite impossible to see individual stars from the earliest era. Indeed, some of the earliest galaxies we can see (consisting of billions of stars), even with our best telescopes, are about 13 billion light-years away, as they looked about 700 million years after the big bang. This corresponds to a redshift of about 7.5. (See here.)

It follows that the first stars had to have formed some time before that, but as of now we have no way to observationally verify an approximate date. Since it takes time for a galaxy to form out of individual stars, the first star probably formed within the first 500 million years or so after the big bang.

The only way, currently, we can even guess when the first star formed is by starting from what we know – the laws of physics and information we have about the composition of the universe in that time period – in order to do computer calculations (simulations) of the process that should have led to formation of the first stars. Results from the best simulation yet performed have recently been announced.

Although we cannot (yet) directly observe conditions or objects existing within the time period in question, we can infer a variety of facts about them. Some of the direct data we have is based on observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This is radiation that is now observed in the microwave part of the spectrum, although it was much more energetic when it originated approximately 380,000 years after the big bang. Additional data came from observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope, announced in 2005, involving diffuse infrared light that began as ultraviolet light emitted by the first stars. (See here.)

What we know of that period is encompassed in what is called the cold dark matter model (CDM) of the universe. Very good evidence from a variety of sources exists for the overall parameters of this model. The parameters include an overall density of matter (both ordinary and dark matter) that is – at the present time – 30% of the total energy density (with the balance being dark energy). Of that 30%, 26% is dark matter and the remaining 4% is ordinary baryonic matter.

These fractions vary with time, because the density of matter is always decreasing as the universe expands. However, since dark energy (in the form of a cosmological constant) is proportional to volume, the amount of dark energy is always increasing, while its density (per unit volume) remains constant. What this means is that in the early universe during the time were concerned with, the energy density due to matter was a much larger percentage. However, the ratio of dark matter to baryonic matter remained constant, at 6.5 to 1.

In the big bang model, the earliest chemical elements formed, just a few minutes after the big bang, were hydrogen, helium, and a little bit of lithium. (See here.) By mass, about 75% of this matter was hydrogen, and most of the rest was helium. Since these elements are stable, these proportions did not change for hundreds of millions of years – until the first stars formed.

Another thing we know from the CMB is that there were slight variations from place to place in the average density of matter. Over time, the regions which were slightly more dense than average tended to contract under the force of gravity, and these regions continued to grow denser, relative to everything else.

Eventually there were distinct, though rather diffuse, clouds consisting of dark matter, hydrogen atoms, hydrogen molecules (H₂), and a little helium. The rate of collapse at this point is very much driven by the dark matter, since theres 6 times as much of it as of ordinary matter. In these low-density clouds, the pressure due to kinetic energy of gas particles was low compared to the force of gravitation.

You may be wondering why star formation at this early time is such a mystery. After all, stars are forming all the time in the present day. The process is more complex than might at first be supposed, but we have reasonable, albeit incomplete, models of how it happens, and there isnt any great mystery. We can, for example, predict that unless a gas cloud is sufficiently massive, it wont collapse to form a star at all. That is, the gas cloud will never become hot enough and dense enough for thermonuclear reactions to start, so that there is a sustainable source of energy (other than gravitational) to enable the star to shine. Instead, what you get from a cloud thats too small is a brown dwarf, essentially just a ball of gas where there is equilibrium between gravitational force and gas pressure.

But what stellar models show is that even if you start with a sufficiently large cloud of gas, in order that it can collapse far enough to begin thermonuclear reactions it is necessary, paradoxically, that at some point along the way the cloud can dispose of some of its internal kinetic energy. Unless this happens, the cloud has too much internal energy, so its pressure is too high, and equilibrium is reached before the cloud is dense enough to go thermonuclear.

The models further show that the factor which allows energy to be radiated away at the right time is the presence of enough heavy elements. But the kicker is that there were no heavy elements in the early universe – only hydrogen and helium. All other elements up to iron in atomic weight were formed in the first stars from internal thermonuclear reactions. And these elements were only distributed into the interstellar medium when stars of the first generation that were sufficiently large exploded as supernovae, and in the process created all other, heavier chemical elements as well.

But what hasnt been clear, until now, is whether stars could form at all without elements heavier than helium. Perhaps the most that could happen, unless individual clouds were extremely massive, is that contraction would stall, as it does in brown dwarfs. On the other hand, if a gas cloud is too massive, it might be unstable and explode before entering a star-like state that is stable for some significant length of time. In the present universe, the largest known stars have masses around 100 times the mass of our sun, and such stars live only a million years or so before going supernova.

Fortunately, the new simulations now show how stars could form from sufficiently large clouds, even in the absence of heavy elements.

The set of simulations reported on here starts with conditions as they were about 300 million years after the big bang (corresponding to a redshift of 14). One example starts with a gravitationally bound gas cloud of 500,000 solar masses (M_⊙), mostly dark matter. This cloud had a temperature of 1000 K, hydrogen and helium atoms, and a small fraction of molecular hydrogen, which enabled efficient radiative cooling to begin with.

The simulation proceeded through a range of 20 orders of magnitude in density, covering about 100,000 years. In the process, the gas became mostly opaque to radiation, so radiative cooling ceased. This means that from then on, the process was "adiabatic", unable to dissipate internal kinetic energy, so that temperature rose quickly. At a certain point in the simulation, a flattened disk-like structure of .1 M_⊙ formed. Because the disk was thin, radiation could escape in a perpendicular direction, allowing further cooling. The final outcome, after several other stages, was a .01 M_⊙ protostar – defined as a pressure-supported, constant-density atomic gas core.

The temperature of this protostar was 10,000 K, far short of what is needed for thermonuclear reactions. And the protostar was not especially dense – about the same as ordinary water. At this point, however, the simulation exhibited strong shock waves in the hot gas. The simulation stopped here because of the complexity of the protostar. So there is definitely further work to be done. The simulation did not reach the point where thermonuclear reactions would start, but its a big step anyway, roughly halfway to the final goal.

At the point where the simulation ended, gas was accreting from the surrounding cloud rapidly enough to allow growth to 10 M_⊙ in just 1000 years. This could continue to 100 M_⊙ or more, which is the expected size of the largest initial stars. However, growth might stop short of that figure, if radiation pressure from thermonuclear reactions rises too fast. On the other hand, if the star grows to much more than 100 M_⊙, it could collapse into a black hole, taking the heavy elements with it. Only further simulations can clarify what might happen.

Several lines of evidence show that extremely massive (~100 M_⊙) stars existed in the first generation. For instance, there were stars large enough and hot enough to emit photons with enough energy to ionize hydrogen atoms. We know that before stars existed, all hydrogen must have been in the form of an unionized gas – yet before a billion years after the big bang, most of the hydrogen was ionized again. In addition, studies of the CMB indicate a large contribution of light from very bright stars and galaxies in that early time.

There are several other important results from these simulations. One is that it is actually much easier to simulate in detail the formation of the earliest stars than of later generations. This is because in the present universe there are a number of complicating factors, such as relatively abundant heavy elements, strong magnetic fields, and significant turbulence, that raise large obstacles to simulation. Being able to simulate star formation under simpler conditions is an important step to making good simulations under present conditions.

Another valuable result of full simulation of the earliest stars is the ability to predict what galaxies composed of such stars will look like (in terms of color, size, and luminosity) when we are eventually able to detect them with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope after its projected launch in 2013. Having the predictions available beforehand will help increase confidence in the validity of the whole model.

Further reading:

Protostar Formation in the Early Universe – research article published 8/1/08 in Science

The Cosmic Rosetta Stone – commentary on the research, published 8/1/08 in Science

New simulation accurately tracks seeds of first stars – 7/31/08 news article in Science News

Filling the Gap in Stellar History – 7/31/08 news article in ScienceNOW

Universes first stars bulk up in new simulation – 7/31/08 New Scientist news article

The first stars – 7/31/08 press release

Additional news reports:

• New Simulation Shows How Seeds of First Stars Formed – 8/1/08 Scientific American news article
  
• Simulation points to lightweight first stars – 7/31/08 Physics World news article
  
• How The First Stars In The Universe Came Into Existence – 7/31/08 press release
  
• Big Bang Ripples Formed Universes First Stars – 7/31/08 National Geographic news article
  
• How the First Stars Were Born – 7/31/08 Space.com news article
  
• Universes first star born tiny, grew huge: study – 7/31/08 Reuters news article
  
• Researchers may have found cosmic Rosetta stone – 7/31/08 Associated Press news article
  
• Simulating the universes first stars – 8/6/08 blog post
  

N. Yoshida, K. Omukai, L. Hernquist (2008). Protostar Formation in the Early Universe Science, 321 (5889), 669-671 DOI: 10.1126/science.1160259

Tags: star formation

SmartMeters.com has a post on the progress of smart grids in Denmark - Denmark Embraces the Smart Grid.

Denmark has quietly become one of the world’s smart grid leaders. With nearly twice the variable energy on the grid than any other country, Denmark has developed the prototype for a flexible, intelligent electricity system, thanks to the work of Danish technology companies, investors, system integrators, utilities, and researchers. Denmark currently integrates 34 percent renewables into the grid. …

The high penetration of wind power in the electric grid makes Denmark an ideal testing ground for optimizing power consumption of intermittent power sources. This has resulted in several projects and partnerships, such as Danish utility DONG Energy’s equity participation in California based Project Better Place’s franchise in Denmark, the first in Europe. In late 2011, the partners will launch a commercial, nationwide network of EV charging and battery swap stations.

DONG Energy consultant Torben V. Holm, explains, “We can now combine the existing electric infrastructure with batteries in electric vehicles to harvest and store wind-generated power when it is in excess supply and have it available for value creating transportation purposes when needed."

EcoGrid EU, also launching in 2001, is the largest European smart grid demonstration project, which is being implemented on the Danish island of Bornholm, where 10 percent of households will participate. By changing load pattern, the households will participate in keeping the power system stable, even though more than 50 percent of power is produced from decentralized and renewable sources. ...

Denmark’s goal is to incorporate 50 percent of electricity from wind by 2025, and to be completely fossil fuel free by 2050.

Technology review has a look at research into how to increase the penetration of renewable energy into national electricity grids - A Sneak Peek of the National Grid on Renewables.

A new $135 million research facility aims to solve a puzzle: how can countries prepare for an energy system that relies heavily on renewable energy? It can also test ways to improve reliability under stress, for example when demand soars in the summer as the air-conditioning load taxes the grid.

Because wind and solar energy supply power intermittently, they create challenges for grid operators. Other new energy technologies are coming online, too, including electric vehicles, energy storage, efficient buildings that cut power use during peak times, and small-scale natural-gas generators and fuel cells. Integrating these technologies on a large scale presents challenges to grid operators.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, created the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) to understand how to best operate the pieces of a more diverse energy system. Drawing on a supercomputer and power equipment that can create a megawatt-scale mini-grid within the facility, product engineers and utilities can simulate the impact of new technologies without causing problems to functioning grids.

Regions with a high percentage of wind and solar now rely on daily forecasts and stand-by fossil-fuel power plants to maintain reliable service. But once renewable energy is more than 20 percent of capacity, grid planners need more sophisticated tools, says Benjamin Kroposki, director of energy systems integration at NREL. “We saw this big shift. If we are successful in reaching cost targets for individual technologies, then what? You need to start doing systems integration,” he says.

An NREL analysis published last year found that, with a more flexible system, the U.S. could get 80 percent of its electricity from existing renewable energy technologies by 2050 (see “The U.S. Could Run on 80 Percent Renewable Electricity by 2050”). Germany and Denmark already have about 20 percent renewable electricity and Germany plans to achieve around 80 percent renewable energy, in both electric power and transportation, by 2050.

The ABC has a look at some of the campaigning over the carbon tax - Carbons Bill.

CHRIS CLARK: But a $26 carbon price has been welcomed by some.

JOHN CONNOR, CLIMATE INSTITUTE: Not a bad starting point. It will drive changes in the way in which generation - energy generation - is delivered right now.

CHRIS CLARK: But its not enough for others.

SIMON OCONNOR, ACF: If Australias serious about tackling climate change $26 is not enough and were really going need to see the price at a much higher level.

CHRIS CLARK: As for managing the transition to a low-carbon economy, Professor Garnaut wants the politics taken out of the decision making and three independent bodies set up: A committee to establish emissions-reduction targets; an agency to oversee the carve-up of compensation; and a carbon bank to regulate the emissions trading scheme.

MATTHEW WARREN, CLEAN ENERGY COUNCIL: Weve seen independent bodies like the Reserve Bank handle very difficult decisions like setting interest rates. We think theres real merit in going down this path and looking at that for a carbon price.

Pro tax groups held rallies around the country today - the SMH has a report on the 8000 people at the SYdney rally (apparently Melbourne had over 10,000 as well - Thousands rally in support of carbon price.

As many as 8000 people have rallied in Sydney to urge the federal government to set a price on carbon, as part of a national climate change campaign in cities across the country.

Holding placards with slogans such as "cut carbon pollution, unlock clean energy" and "say yes to cutting carbon pollution", they gathered at Sydneys Prince Alfred Park this morning to deliver a message: climate change is happening, and something needs to be done.

"What people are asking for is an ambitious price (on carbon), an investment in renewable energy," rally organiser and national director of GetUp, Simon Sheik, said. "Today is a big day, because today Australians will ask their government for a price on carbon."

Simultaneous rallies were being held in most capital cities as the second stage of the "Say Yes" campaign launched late last week by actors Cate Blanchett and Michael Caton.

The advertisement, which urges Australians to say yes to the federal governments proposed carbon emissions tax, stirred controversy among some sections of the media.

Community climate advocate Ramya Krishnan slammed the controversy surrounding Ms Blanchetts contribution to the campaign. "I hear about families who are struggling just like everyone else who want to live in a better world for their children to grow up. The shock jocks dont speak for Western Sydney, and neither does Tony Abbott."

Police said the Sydney crowd numbered between 7500 and 8000.