Month: May 2022

Considering the complexity of space travel and the current development of increasingly aware AI systems (its no longer Sci Fi) our thinking of the possible should shift when we consider deep space travel. Even considering the near future of Earth which is undergoing rapid warming and destruction of its ecosystems.

Space travel to Mars is already a super risky undertaking. The route is straightforward, and in theory every challenge can be met with sufficient engineering once all the real factors are known, but landing and keeping all the essential materials available for the human crew will still make any tiny colony highly vulnerable.

Moving deeper in space this gets to the point where the ship must provide everything without fail and do so for many years. Speeding up and slowing down the ship will take many years, and the scary part is that if there’s even a small space rock floating in the way on the billion mile journey it will go through the ship like a bullet through a melon.

Where journeys through space make for a narrative which grabs our imagination for the essential love and mutual support among the crew necessary, they are not too realistic if you consider AI systems could do it with much more survivability. An electronic AI system can be shot at any destination and shut down for centuries to wake up at the destination. There it could observe or seek contact with possible life.

AI probes can be lost to accidents, many can be launched to the same destination to ensure some arrive

We could at least say that humanity will -also- shoot AI probes at distant galaxies. If we think about that for a minute, a new Voyager mission but now with AI (Voyager-AI), a bunch of Telsa Optimus descendants with a mission, to sleep through the trip to Alpha Centauri (just to choose a cool star name) and then what? Of course SpaceX/NASA will make it a peace offering, a helping hand from the sky, because what can the AI do? Observe, maybe report (it takes 4,37 years for any signal to get back to Earth), maybe the mission is to scout for habitable planets, then the AIs could start preparing to spread biological awareness. Maybe it gets discovered and then it has to know whether to share the existence of Earth or pretend to come from another direction.

The funny thing is that we on Earth are as likely to be visited by AIs from alien origin. It is also likely that the nature of such AI will be similar to what we would send. The reason is that intelligence is tested against reality, in our case our intelligence was tested against reality competitively for millions of years, and there’s only one reality (per observer). At the same time you could argue there’s many ways to electronics, but when build by an AIs for deep space missions (cause why should you hurt the biobrains with such a challenge if you have AI) the result is likely to be similar. They might also be next level, as our civilization can’t yet fathom the effects of understanding the discoveries of Thad Roberts (who is definitely on to something next level). It might be that we look back on current technology as we do now at bakelite telephones, even though we’re close to building aware walking robots.

So following this reasoning most civilizations will send similar AI probes through space, if they let AI determine the optimal design. If there’s some alpha creature or team to think of the best idea the result may vary. It is at least not unreasonable to expect alien visitors to come in the form of a team of AI agents that will initially try to remain invisible, both to not disturb and to not become targeted or lead us to their home planet.

What do you think?

It sounds ok, a ‘fuel crunch’, a crunchy fuel situation, like potato chips on the couch, but its going to be a disaster. It will happen too. The fossil fuel distribution system has gotten a beating by Putin’s stupid war, and the reoganization is just keeping parts of the West running, albeit with higher fuel prices. However the nr of refinieries for the US is just enough to serve the country at the higher prices. The US is one refinery fire away from disruption, or maybe two.

Fuel prices are not elastic, which is an economic term for ‘if there is less we just make it more expensive and the economy will adjust’. The slight variations we see now mean people drive less, essential services become more expensive. But in countries like France, the US, Canada you can’t live without fuel in a certain range. If prices move up more things stop happening, soceity falls apart. Germans army in the past made analysis that showed only a tiny fuel shortage could cause serious disruption. Fuel delivery strikes in France and the US made places grind to a halt.

Now this is still playing around, most people don’t think about the economy as being based on a fuel supply, like a diver with an oxygen tank. Most people think its a matter of money, but money only makes it possible to get the fuel to where it is used. This is why a slight fuel crunch as we see now expresses itself in higher fuel prices. A serious fuel crunch is something we should have started to avoid from the moment we realized fossil fuels are a danger to life on Earth, or maybe when we realized the reserves where not endless, at any time after ~1912, instead we have had a century of assholes selling oil at all cost to everyone, even driving a hard fight against anyone who was serious about a plan B (Elon Musk but others before him). The economy has never been about creating a safe society, but only about one thing : Cashflow for banks.

I think the discussion to prepare for a real fuel crunch should be public. It is like a war situation if it happens, because wars are won by the armies with the most fuel (ok, advanced chips and morale and brainpower also play a major role). The quest should be to remove any fossil fuel need in essential services first. So replace all ambulances with EVs, secure solar/wind energy for hospitals, fire services, police stations, then schools. Farmers can’t switch to no fuel but should, there’s already an electric revolution going on on farms. However fertilizer which is running short now because of the gas crunch, can not be easily replaced. So imagine the worst case cruch : No fertilizer, no farming, no food and above all no fuel to make what we need to do all the above.

To any future historian the genocidal path our leaders keep us on and the mental monoculture promoted by the economistic media will look totally insane. The banks do not want to disrupt their cashflow and work hard to lock us into obligations that fix our behaviour and prevent us from preparing. If you work a day job at a gas station for example, and you rent a crappy appartment without garden, how are you going to prepare for anything? If you are homeless because banks have stopped building to drive up home prices how are you going to prepare? If you worked hard (complied with economism) to earn the best spot at Lake Como with a view, are you going to destroy that life by being a prepper? Even then you probably can’t afford it.

Still the realization will come, and it seems the strategy of banks to make us realize slowely, make us not care about people that are hurtning, make us give up as soon as it is our turn, all the while not changing the path of society, while of course there are all kinds of cool things you can do to be ‘green’. Bottom line is if you won’t need banks for something (so driving an EV charging it yourself) banks are not jumping for joy to help you.

The formula for preparation is simple : If your community doesn’t need fossil fuels anymore you’re done. You will find it will also not need a lot of money anymore. Better start now, because without fossil fuels or plenty of renewables there will be no production and distribution of goods and services, and so you won’t be able to deal with the problesm you face. Good luck!

The fight against rising global average temperatures has two approaches. One is to try to stop adding heat trapping gasses, CO2 and Methane to the atmosphere. The other is to try to reduce the heat that can accumulate in our atmosphere by reflecting it back into space.

As long as solar energy is travelling as light and not absorbed by a greenhouse gas or other material and converted into molecular movement (heat), there is an opportunity to bounce it back to where
it came from. The term for this reflection of Earth of solar energy is called Albedo, and it is part of climate models.

We are seeing significant warming at the moment because sea ice on the poles has been reduced and the ocean absorbs most solar heat. Oceans also radiate heat at night, so they cool down, but some of it is mixed to lower layers and is slowly warming the oceans. On land dark features will absorb a lot of sunlight and warm the air, deserts are lighter so reflect more heat back. Deserts also lose heat fast at night making them quite cold. Clear skies are important for reflecting heat back, we already know that because nights are warmer when there are clouds overhead.

Many groups are involved in albedo enhancement, but many also lack the funds to take serious action. This while albedo enhancement seems the only way to keep land and oceans cool enough for life to survive in the near term. India and Spain and Niger are being baked, people can barely survive, water is disappearing in California, all because of heat being trapped by CO2. We need to reduce the heat that can ‘stick’ to our planet, and increase albedo/reflection.

There are questions that I can’t find answers too, which are related to actualy climate profit from albedo.

1. If light is reflected and passes through the atmosphere twice, does it still cause less heating/warming compared say zero reflection (blackbody absorbtion). How much extra warming does reflecting cause?
2. Can I cool a landzone reliably with mirrors, what is the effect on warming in a warm region, how much effect does air temperature have? Can we develop a model to predict the effect of reflection?

The above questions may be answerable by specialists, scientists, and I will try to find them. But the second question may be answered by a real world experiment by Google at Ivanpah.

Google could run a number of experiments where local ground and air temperatures are measured as the mirrors of its enormous solar power plant are tilted in different directions, mainly being aligned with the sun or perpendicular to it to see the difference between optimal and minimal reflection. By taking the ground abledo, the surface covered by the mirrors, the air temperature at different altitudes, a lot can be learned about abledo enhancement. Of course this comes at the cost of some energy production, however a more ready laboratory is hard to imagine, and its in line with Google’s attempts to contribute to the climate fight.

To do this one would need to create a team of modellers and meterological experts to weed out the possible ways the results can be wrong, then plan a sequence of mirror movements on specific days. Then over the course of a few weeks it should be possible to make enough measurements to build a model for morrir based albedo enhancement effect. If you think this is a good idea and want to contribute to the effort, or you are Google and agree this should be tried (or has been tried and you can send me a link), please get in touch with me at info@greencheck.nl. I am aware of some scientists and projects regarding Albedo, but maybe its best to keep this out of the academic sphere as it tends to slow things down. Treat it like R&D for climate solutions. Hope to hear from you!

We live in a competitive world, but this makes little sense. It is true consumers like choices, but ultimately they only spend on one of the products. Banks however are incentivised to sell more loans and thus try to load debt on all players in the economy, egging on competition.

Companies

If you say a company tries to provide a product or service to people who want it, you can also be open on how this is happening. If the product or service is vanilla, ‘OEM’ then only cost matter, and one can be open about everything that goes on. If the product is unique based on a group of skilled, motivated individuals, you can also just open up about what goes on. Even patents can be opened to anyone for use, only banks care which company workers get hired into, because bigger companies justify bigger loans.

Politics

In politics the same is true. The secrecy is about wheeling and dealing often against the interest of voters. Usually for the interest of banks and fossil fuel companies, industrial corporations that have again concentrated power. This is not what politics should be about, it should be about making laws to secure a happy healthy and safe society.

Science

Scientific institutes are often caught in financial concerns that make them do immoral things. They can get funding for researching and perfecting a technology that should actually just be marketed, but banks don’t want them to (several RE technologies are stuck that way). They should be hypertransparent about their finances, about the supporters, about actualy progress if their research is not fundamental. Internet was invented to make information better available. Twitter is the most unobstructed way to broadcast timestamped information on it.

Citizen

Citizen meanwhile should have total privacy. There is no need to share bank data , health data etc. with anyone we do not chose to share it with. This ensures a check on whatever goes on. You would not accept a stranger approaching you in the street that asks about what’s in your wallet or where you where yesterday. No insurere needs to know your ailments if its going to not insure you for them or just throw you out. Again banks are the main drivers behind hash treatment and privacy infringement.

Basic premise : Companies and politics need to be 100% transparent, individuals have to have 100% privacy.

Method : Use twitter to report company transactions that are to be transparent.

Politics : All communications of individual politicians run over twitter (without the need to respond to comments). all communications of groups run via a group twitter account. Links to documents included.

Corporations : All financial activities over a certain sum are reported through Twitter. There must be XML formats and data stores accesible.

Oil & gas companies and the GOP are blaming Biden for this round of inflation, which is largely caused by rising fossil-fuel prices, & Biden's so locked into fossil fuels that he can't mount a counter-narrative to vilify the actual villains.

It's climate politics in a nutshell.

— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) May 12, 2022

The above analysis is not correct, Biden only has to point out how wealth is created, but he can’t stay within economistic limits, he has to start from the ground up, first principles if you wish, the roboeconomic first principles of wealth creation. The formula is simple :

Wealth = Energy X Skills X Raw materials

So any product or service is a consequence of some combination of the three factors where you can replace energy with fossil energy, sunlight, nuclear energy, human effort, robots. Skills can be brain power, computer power (AI), some mechanism (like a watch) or specific software for example. The Raw materials are whatever is bein manipulated into something that represents wealth, or is closer to representing it.

Biden has to say that because fossil energy is in short supply, there is not enough to go around, which resolves itself in competitive buying and countries no longer selling them abroad. The solution is not to blame oil companies but to add more renewable energy sources, to prioritize production of wind turbines, (thin film) solar panels, solar thermal panels, EVs etc. All part of the Roboeconomy, because in the Roboeconomy everything runs on renewable energy.

If Biden did that, with a stimulus package to support rapid increase of energy production (prioritized over reducing energy consumption!), he would cause a drop in energy prices, which would give more producers access to energy to produce, which would result in more product being made, moved, processed, and more wealth created at a lower price.

It is amazing that at this time though the Commerce department is picking a fight with Asian solar panel producers who offer their panels at a lower price than the CoC likes, resulting in a reduction of imports and installations. That is exactly the opposite of what should happen.

Energy is a fundamental factor in wealth creation, and the more you have at your disposal the better. If a country wants to dump their solar panels in your country you take them and say thank you. Prepare to make them yourself and recycle/repair them, make them lower EROEI, do all the things to optimize the amount of energy for maximum wealth creation.

The Republicans don’t want you to be smart, if a Republican talks to you he/she hopes you are dumb. But as you can see Skills are an important factor in Wealth creation, so the more educated people there are, the bigger the chance they become skilled and able to help produce Wealth (or invent something clever to replace their involvement, AI for example). So education should be the second priority, preferably technical. People need to learn how stuff works around them. This is not an absolute requirement for the Roboeconomy, but it is in the transition away from the fossil credit economy the fossil companies want us to believe we are stuck in..