Showing posts with label china. Show all posts
Showing posts with label china. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Global Poverty





We have posted in the past on the fact that global poverty is falling.  This work helps quantize it rather well.  This also tells us that the ideological debate is long over.  Everyone knows what needs to be done and it looks as if progress is taking place almost everywhere.  At worst we are waiting for a few bad actors to get out of the way.

 

The big changes took place in south Asia and Latin America and accounted for most change.  In fairness, the next big wave of economic improvement will be visibly in Africa.  The cell phone is empowering the people hugely.

 

The remaining laggards are mostly in the Islamic Middle East but not the Islamic Far East.  They are determined to proceed slowly it seems.

 

It really informs us just how massively the world has changed in just the past thirty five years.  1970 was the end of the recovery stroke from the Second World War.  The next decade saw consolidation and minor liberalization.  The last twenty five years saw the adoption of modern methods by both China first and then India and Brazil with many others getting on board along the way.

 

China has now entered consolidation and India will also begin consolidation in another decade.  That does not mean a lack of growth so much as that everyone who is able to actively participate is.  Their strength will strongly accelerate Africa’s response.

 

The hard thing to get used to is that the US economy is continuing to fade proportionally and to have less an less impact on the global economy.  When you have spent your entire life checking US numbers as the present best case, you have a habit to break.  China is now our largest car maker having grown fifty percent this past year.  Those percentage jumps are still hard to accept.  Yet the reality is there while we drift.

 

 

 

Global Poverty Progress - Model Income Past, Present and Future

January 22,2010

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/01/global-poverty-progress-model-income.html

 

There is an analysis of the model income of the world from 1970 and 2006. Model income is the level of income that is most common in the world. The graphs show on the left vertical the population with a particular income level and the bottom horizontal shows the income level. In 1970 about 50 million people had $500 of income per year. In 2006, About 100 million had $5000 of income per year.

World poverty is falling. Between 1970 and 2006, the global poverty rate has been cut by nearly three quarters. The percentage of the world population living on less than $1 a day (in PPP-adjusted 2000 dollars) went from 26.8% in 1970 to 5.4% in 2006. 1970 to 2006, poverty fell by 86% in South Asia, 73% in Latin America, 39% in the Middle East, and 20% in Africa.




An Attempt to Project Foreward 40 Years on Model Income


Goldmans Sachs had a forecast of GDP for the top 22 countries until 2050 and this was used to approximate world GDP growth. Using wikipedia estimates of future population the mean average GDP per capita was calculated. This was used to approximate the shift in modal income into the future. 



There are several ways that this method could be off. 


1) The Goldman Sachs estimates could be wrong. In particular China's GDP is projected by some to be 20% of Goldmans estimate and some have it 200% of Goldman Sachs. Disruptive technology such as molecular nanotechnology, super robotics, cheap nuclear fusion or AGI could arrive and alter the economic picture.


2) The World GDP may not track proportionally with the GDP of the top 22.


3) The modal income may not shift exactly in proportion to the mean income.


4) The population projection could be off


The biggest source of error is the first and the degree of possible error shrinks for the factors listed.







Projected Modal Income is on the last line of the table.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Giant Carp Threaten Great Lakes






It is a pretty good bet that the carp will be in the Great Lakes, if not already, very soon.  My attitude is to get over it.  We eat catfish and I suspect carp is a lot better.  Besides it is a staple in China.  Obviously they have been unable to fish them out either.

If anything we need to investigate what else may be added to the mix to enhance production and perhaps also give other species a chance.

The Great Lakes can produce thousands of tons of carp, all of which will have a ready market.

I have recently observed that the lakes of the boreal forest are also natural pens for the fresh water production of Coho.  Escapement will end up in the Arctic or the Great Lakes.

In time, these will be the two greatest single commercial fisheries on earth likely employing millions.

Giant, leaping Asian carp threaten US Great Lakes

by Staff Writers

Chicago (AFP) Jan 19, 2010




Asian carp were originally imported to the southern United States in the 1970s to help keep retention ponds clean at fish farms and waste water treatment plants. Heavy flooding helped them escape into the Mississippi in the 1990's and they have since migrated into the Missouri and Illinois rivers. Should they make it into Lake Michigan in large numbers it would be extremely difficult to stop their spread throughout the five interconnected Great Lakes and up into the St. Lawrence Seaway.


Huge Asian carp, which act like "aquatic vacuum cleaners" and leap into the air when spooked by motorboats, may have invaded the US Great Lakes despite a massive effort to block them, officials said Tuesday.



Researchers analyzing water samples have discovered fragments of Asian carp DNA in Lake Michigan, although there is still no evidence that that fast-breeding fish have breached electric barriers set up along Chicago-area waterways.


"Clearly this is not good news," said Major General John Peabody, commanding general of the US Army Corps of Engineers' Great Lakes and Ohio River division.


The Corps is one of a host of state and federal agencies working to stop the spread of the voracious carp which can grow up to seven feet long (2.1 meters) and weigh 150 pounds (68 kilos).


Federal officials have warned that Asian carp - which have no natural predators - could have a "devastating effect on the Great Lakes ecosystem and a significant economic impact" on the seven-billion-dollar sport and commercial fishing industry.


"From what we have seen in other parts of the country, Asian carp could out-compete our native, sport and commercial fish in southern Lake Michigan," Charlie Wooley, deputy regional director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), said in a statement.


"We call them an aquatic vacuum cleaner because they filter important food resources out of the water and turn it into carp biomass."


It's possible that the DNA discovered in two different samples could come from a decomposed carp which was carried through the electric barriers, officials said.


Or it could come from eggs that were transported on the belly of a bird. Another possibility is that flooding may have allowed the carp may to swim around the barriers.


"The short answer is we just don't know," said FWS spokeswoman Ashley Spratt.


"We have not actually seen live carp above the barrier," she told AFP. "The information we currently have does not suggest they're there in sustainable populations."


Teams will set out on boats as soon as weather allows to search the lake for signs of live carp, and the regional coordinating committee will accelerate its efforts to block their spread, she said.


Officials are considering a number of options including another mass kill through poisoning, sterilizing males to slow breeding, building new electrical barriers and researching other "biological controls."


The test results were released hours after the fight to block the carp was dealt a blow by the US Supreme Court, which refused to force the closure of the Chicago shipping canal system as an emergency measure to stop the invasion.


"The motion of Michigan for preliminary injunction is denied," the Supreme Court wrote in a single line ruling.


Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox called upon President Barack Obama to use his executive powers to close the locks and said he hoped the Supreme Court would consider the issue more carefully in another pending case.


"I am extremely disappointed the Supreme Court did not push the pause button on this crisis until an effective plan is in place," Cox said in a statement.


"While the injunction would have been an extraordinary step by the court, Michigan and the other Great Lakes states are facing an extraordinary crisis that could forever alter the lakes, permanently killing thousands of jobs at a time when families can least afford it.


Asian carp were originally imported to the southern United States in the 1970s to help keep retention ponds clean at fish farms and waste water treatment plants.


Heavy flooding helped them escape into the Mississippi in the 1990's and they have since migrated into the Missouri and Illinois rivers.


Should they make it into Lake Michigan in large numbers it would be extremely difficult to stop their spread throughout the five interconnected Great Lakes and up into the St. Lawrence Seaway.

A Carp Recipe
Ingredients

2 pounds carp fillets

1 cup milk
 
1 cup biscuit mix or pancake mix
 
2 teaspoonss 
salt
lemon wedges
 
 
  paration

Remove the skin of the carp and take out all the brownish-redish-colored part of the meat, the "mud vein"; discard.

Chunk up the rest of the carp fillets. Place fillet pieces in a shallow dish. Pour the milk over them and let it stand for half an hour, turning the fillets over once during that time.  Stir the
salt into the biscuit mix. 
 
Take fillets out of the milk and pat them into the biscuit mix, covering both sides. Fry fillets in deep fryer or in medium hot oil in fry-pan for 5 - 10 minutes until cooked through and browned on both sides. Use tongs or slotted spoon to turn them. 
 
Drain on paper towels. Serve with lemon wedges if available. 
Serves 4-6

Monday, October 5, 2009

High Speed Rail



I have to thank Chris Nelder again for waking me up to the present emerging reality of high speed rail transport success throughout the developed world in particular. This is his newsletter report.



Because we in North America have dragged our feet on this, we are at best largely ignorant of the fact that a number of jurisdictions elsewhere have fully embraced it with outstanding success.



Like the Wind turbine industry, there was a long period of technology proofing that was needed and bluntly unavoidable. Geothermal in the Americas is now passing through just such a period.



Two hundred MPH trains were a scary proposition thirty years ago. Today they are an extremely mature technology with an unbeatable track record. They turn out to be perfect for point to point trips taking up to four or more hours. At 200 mph this means travelling almost a thousand miles. Few routes are yet that long and most of the important ones are usually a couple of hundred miles to five hundred miles. This somewhat reflects the original slower train passenger system that induced the urban center building originally.



What is immediately clear is that such a train is superior to air transport over those distances. It is competitive on energy costs, ticket cost, and traveler comfort and on time usage. Even more important, the end points can and are built into the city’s central transport system rather than outside the city because of land needs.



The immediate result is that these rails immediately outrun expectations in terms of passenger miles. For that reason, there is now a building boom of these systems as governments pick off the low hanging fruit. They actually pay for themselves.



We went through a similar experience in Vancouver. Twenty five years ago we built a normal speed elevated track from Vancouver center out into the valley about twenty some miles. There were few obvious centers along the route and it was completely new technology. It went immediately to ridership levels well beyond original hopes and over the past years high rise development at the stations has reshaped city and suburb development completely. This has led to further additions and the recent opening of the Canada Line which connects the growing suburb of Richmond and the airport to the city center again. Again, it has been well received and related bridge traffic has been sharply curtailed. The trip now takes perhaps a total of thirty minutes at max and more likely for most riders about half that.



Again, all this is through normal speed systems over short hauls but its influence on the shape of a city is exceptional. These systems work because it allows the traveler to bypass bottlenecks and traffic jams.



For example, there is nothing wrong with the LA traffic system that a network of elevated trains would easily cure. The city already has a freeway based grid, since there is no other way to build for the haulage trade and for necessary automobile traffic. Within each such grid, there is a natural center of gravity towards which internal bus service moves. Linking those points with trains that pass traffic to the other grid squares is obvious. As a result, a huge fraction of your commuter population would be able to comfortably shift.



The natural progression is toward high speed links between large cities. In Canada we have natural pairings between Montreal and Toronto that could be easily linked the cities of Guelph, Kitchener, London, Windsor and on to the Detroit – Chicago pairing. The whole trip might be done under six hours. In Alberta, Calgary to Edmonton is again low hanging fruit. It is just a bit too long to drive it too often unless you really need your vehicle there. On the West coast, a Vancouver to Seattle and on to Portland is also a natural option if it is high speed.



Nelder’s report provides a map laying out the obvious options in the USA.



We have already posted on the huge expansion taking place in the wind business because it is mature and easy to finance and its job creation potential. Chris points out the same arguments for rail links.



As I have also maintained, the oil industry needs to be displaced as fast as possible. Right now, it is maintaining production status quo. It is plausible that this level could be maintained until such time as we have major field failure such has happened at Cantrel in Mexico.



Rail technology is proving itself to be one of the best ways to divert a large chunk of the problem, both internally in cities and to mid range distances.



The best markets today on the basis of population density are China India, and Europe and the US Northeast. The next decade will see much of this been built out because it can be done quickly.



The High Speed Rail Boondoggle



By Chris Nelder Friday, October 2nd, 2009


"'Boondoggle‘, 'Loss-making whim‘, ‘Monument to bad territorial planning'. . .


Such are the arguments of high speed rail critics, as the United States finally gets on board the passenger rail revolution that is sweeping the world.


But that quote wasn't about the U.S., and it wasn't about today's debate.


It came from an essay by José Blanco López, Spain's minister of transport and public works, which was published in a new pamphlet from SERA, a sustainability activist organization within the government Labour party. He was talking about the two decades of opposition that conservatives had mounted against the country's progress in building a high speed rail system.


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Starting with a line from Madrid to Seville in 1989, Spain pursued an aggressive and determined commitment to high speed rail that, by 2012, will produce the longest system in Europe. This year alone, most of the country's €19 billion development budget will be invested in high speed rail. By 2020, López says, more than 90% of the country's total population will be within 31 miles of a high speed train station.


Here he put his country's achievement in perspective:


Shielded behind overly simple, short sighted cost-benefit analysis, critics complained with those arguments against high speed projects over years, until the success of each one of the new corridors proved them wrong and showed that in troubled economic times, the best investments for a society are the ones which improve equality.


History has proved rail's critics wrong in Spain, as economic development and rider enthusiasm followed it everywhere it went.


Cretinous Shortsightedness


Even so, ever unwilling to learn from the successes of the rest of the world, the U.S. is now starting the same effort at about the same place as Spain was 20 years ago.


The president of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, Andy Kunz, appeared on Fox Business last Friday to make his pitch. And what argument did the show's overcoiffed co-host raise? "Amtrak has been in the red for years and years and years, and nobody in charge over there seems to be able to turn a profit, despite the fact that everybody I know takes the train from New York to Washington D.C., the Acela. It's just not working though financially," she whined.


After Kunz explained that that the Acela leg (with a maximum speed of only about 100 mph) was in fact profitable, and that the rest of the system needed to be upgraded so that it was equally attractive and profitable and capable of speeds over 200 mph, the host pressed on: "How do you get people to ride it?" Kunz patiently explained his point again, and pointed out that when Europe opened its new high speed lines, they filled up with riders immediately. The hosts then tossed off a quick wisecrack about the Chunnel and muttered about the need for profitability, but assured the audience that "Nobody more than Fox Business wants to see new ventures succeed."


Be that as it may, one wonders why Europe's success would not convince them that high speed rail would be a good thing for this country. A projection from rail proponents FourBillion.com indicates that building the 9,000 miles of high speed corridors identified by the U.S. Department of Transportation would create 4.5 million permanent jobs and 1.6 million construction jobs, save 125 million barrels of oil, eliminate 20 million pounds of CO2 per mile per year, reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing, and generate $23 billion in economic benefits in the Midwest alone — all alongside a long list of intangible side benefits.


Putting aside the cretinous shortsightedness and obstinacy of conservative media, let's take a look at what the rest of the world is doing.


A Global High Speed Rail Explosion


The UK's Labour party is also pursuing an expansion of high speed rail, having commissioned a study on building a new line from London to the West Midlands and extensions to the north. Currently, Britain has only one high speed line, the 69-mile-long "High Speed 1" link from London to the aforementioned Channel Tunnel ("Chunnel") to France. The Tories have offered their own £15.6 billion plan, so it seems likely that Britain will soon have a new high speed project.


France, as I mentioned last year, already has the wonderful 200 mph high speed TGV network, with 1,100 miles of track, more than 400 trains and the third-highest ranking of rail passengers per year, behind Switzerland and Japan. Personally, I found it to be the most enjoyable travel experience I have ever had.


This week, the Chinese government awarded a $4 billion contract to build 80 high speed (236 mph maximum) electric train sets for the new 3,700-mile-long high speed train network it is building. Half of the contract went to Bombardier Sifang, a Chinese joint venture with Berlin-based rail giant Bombardier Transportation (TSE: BBD.A). The company will begin delivering the trains in 2012 and finish by 2014— boom, done.


Bombardier is already building 20 sleeper trains for China and another 20 passenger trains, in addition to the 500 high-power electric freight locomotives that it contracted to build for China in 2007.


Russia is taking the plunge into high speed rail as well, spending nearly $1.5 billion to upgrade 401 miles of track between Moscow and downtown St. Petersburg, and buy eight electric Sapsan trains made by German conglomerate Siemens (ETR: SIE) with a top operating speed of 217 mph. Four runs a day will make the trip in less than four hours, compared with an average five hours to make the trip by airplane, including the time wasted getting to and from the airport and running the check-in and security gauntlets.


Meanwhile, Back in the States. . .


Calling the U.S. "a developing country in terms of rail," a Siemens representative told the New York Times last week that his company was a candidate for a proposed high speed link between San Francisco and Los Angeles, along with Bombardier and Japanese bullet train manufacturer Hitachi.


The California line is on the short list of high speed rail priorities prepared by the America 2050 group, ranking it fifth nationally in terms of ridership demand behind four other lines for the Northeast.


http://images.angelpub.com/2009/40/3055/chart-1-us-map.png





High Speed Rail Phasing Map by America 2050. Source.


SCNF, the French company that runs the TGV network, has submitted its own plan to the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for four 220 mph corridors in California, Florida, Texas, and the Chicago-Midwest area. The company believes it could open the first line from Milwaukee to Detroit by 2018 and be in full operation by 2023. The costs would be recouped quickly, according to SNCF, returning triple the $69 billion cost of the Midwest corridor within 15 years in environmental and other benefits.


All Costs Considered


Building America's high speed rail network will be expensive — about that, there is no disagreement. The $8 billion appropriated for high speed rail in the stimulus plan was dwarfed by the $103 billion in applications the FRA received for the funds, and is a small fraction of what the total network will cost. The California run alone will probably cost over $40 billion to construct, and that's after the state's existing commitments to building support networks and light rail links.


On the other hand, as the director of the BART light rail system pointed out this week in a his testimony to San Francisco city supervisors with the city's Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force, the U.S. currently spends as much on parking as it does on national defense. I haven't run the numbers, but it seems within reason that if that is the case, spending that money instead on high speed and light rail would cover a very large part of the total cost.


Indeed, all of the cost arguments I have heard against rail are incomplete and wrong.



The true costs of remaining committed to our current road and air infrastructure are never taken into full account. . . like the health care costs of polluted air; the cost of continuously maintaining roads, bridges and tunnels; the availability of materials (remember, several cities in America literally could not buy asphalt during the oil frenzy of last year, because refiners were cracking every last lighter molecule they could from the crude); the trillions of dollars we are spending on oil imports and defense operations in oil producing regions of the world; the billions' worth of damage that our current ways do to the environment; the insurance costs of keeping up 240 million cars and light trucks; the damage and death that those millions of drivers cause; and so on, ad infinitum.


Rail is cheaper, safer, and better on every single count.


When the boundaries are properly defined, the entire transformation of transportation from liquid fuels to renewable electricity would create millions of permanent jobs, and could probably pay for itself.


But the cost isn't really the point anyway.


The Future: A No-Fly Zone


America still has no energy plan, let alone a plan to address the looming threat of peak oil. With the decline of global oil production starting around 2012 already "baked in," due to a lack of sufficient oil megaprojects, we desperately need to start making tracks toward a high speed rail infrastructure. . . or face a painful future of fuel shortages and economic dislocation (at best).


No part of our transportation system is as vulnerable to volatile fuel prices as the airline industry. It was built on the expectation that oil would rarely cost more than $40 a barrel, and it is completely dead if oil stays over $100 a barrel. Last year's oil price spikes put many smaller carriers out of business and cost the major carriers billions. Then the operators who had the largest hedges against rising prices last year got whacked again as prices plummeted.


For my money, the airline industry may as well be dead. Not just because of the damage that oil price volatility has done and will continue to do — and not just because the experience of air travel has become a painful routine of delays and personal insults — but because it's so inferior in every way to high speed rail travel for distances under 500 miles. The TGV line from Paris and Lyons virtually eliminated air travel between those cities, and the high speed line from Madrid to Barcelona cut air travel in half in the first year of its operation.


Forward-looking investors would be wise to accumulate long positions in some of the major players in high speed rail, which have enjoyed a very nice rally over the last three months, as the next wave of investments in it began to hit the press:


I continue to believe that rail — particularly high speed rail — is the longest safe bet one can possibly make. As I have explained in this column over the last several years, we simply cannot replace enough gasoline- and diesel-burning cars with ones that run on electricity to address the peak oil challenge in the time we have left.


Like compressed natural gas vehicles, PHEVs and EVs are "silver BBs" that will help cushion the blow, but in the long term and for the majority of miles traveled, rail is truly the only answer. Rail is by far the cheapest and most fuel-efficient form of transport, requiring about a third less fuel than air for personal travel, and as little as 3% of the energy for freight.


The serious pursuit of high speed rail would also make a real and significant dent in CO2 emissions, and enable part of the urgent transformation we must accomplish from liquid fuels to renewably generated electricity. As Lord Andrew Adonis, Britain's transport secretary, put it in the SERA publication: "High speed rail is now pretty well a ‘no-brainer' transport strategy for the 21st century."


The rest of the world is already kicking our butts in deploying renewable energy. China is running circles around us in long term resource planning and buying up every hard asset under the sun. And compared with the rest of the developed (and developing) world, we're bringing up the rear in rail.


But it doesn't have to be that way.


It's Go Time


If you've watched any of the new Ken Burns series on America's national parks, you know that protecting the common good has always been a struggle against vested interests and conservatives resistant to change. It took strong-willed men of vision like Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and Stephen Mather to override the opposition and do the right thing for the future. We need that kind of leadership now.


If I were President Obama, I would direct the Department of Transportation to immediately begin transforming America's infrastructure to one based on electric rail, regardless of the long-term cost, starting with the highest potential traffic and fuel savings and working our way down the list from there. I would do as the French did when they created the TGV: Declare eminent domain and lay in the high speed rails where they make the most sense. I would restrict federal funding for roads and bridges to critical maintenance projects where rail can't take over the load in time — with not a penny more spent on new car-based infrastructure. I would forbid any subsidies for cars and trucks with a fuel economy of less than 30 mpg. I would move all subsidies for fossil fuels into renewable energy — then double or triple them — to ensure that we can run that new electric infrastructure cleanly. I would bind Congress to my purpose and ride roughshod over the objectors, making it my number-one priority.


I know it may seem hard to believe, with oil holding steady around $70 and gasoline around $3. . . but if you haven't studied the data, then take the word of a guy who has: We're in serious trouble, folks. The Armageddon of transportation is dead ahead and we need to move aggressively and determinedly to head off the peak oil challenge. Rail is hands-down our best and biggest shot.


Until next time,


Tuesday, September 29, 2009

G20 to Phase out fossil Fuel Subsidies


This is one step that I can agree with and that every country can enable as a common action. If all are doing this, there is no lobby argument that stands at all.



Now if we could now do the same thing with agricultural subsidies world wide making it a condition for maintaining the right to trade a given commodity. The subsidy game has been a way to play beggar my neighbor and has merely led to mutual damage unless you think free trade in agricultural goods between Europe and north America is unsustainable.



In fact the developed countries have all subsidized their agriculture to a huge degree an a competition to the bottom. This has meant that we have a form of consumer subsidy going on that is distortive. It has made it difficult for everyone else to break into our markets.



The good news is that developing countries are getting wise to the game and are starting to create working offsets to move their product and their own subsidies of course. In time, it will all sort itself out.



In the meantime, China and India have robust agricultural sectors whose expansion in output is easily keeping up with demand. A famine threatens in India and it is easy to divert global reserves to the Indian market.



Anyway, the simple application of a price guarantee for wind power and geothermal power will swiftly see the carbon based industry replaced though simple replacement as plants cycle to the end of their lives. Even early windmills are now been replaced with better gear.



As I have posted, we are going to see the oil supply drop from 85 million barrels per day to a stable 50 million barrels per day or less over the next decade or so. That is why the explorers are finally tackling the likes of politically volatile West Africa and just about any place with a hope in an attempt to sustain present levels. The shoe really has not dropped yet but it will take very little to expose our vulnerability and force the globe into oil rationing.



G20 leaders agree to phase out fossil fuel subsidies



by Staff Writers



Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (AFP) Sept 23, 2009



http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/G20_leaders_agree_to_phase_out_fossil_fuel_subsidies_999.html




Leaders of emerging and developed nations agreed Friday to a US plan to phase out government subsidies for fossil fuel blamed for global warming, a joint statement said.


"We commit to rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption," the leaders said after a two-day Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh.


The leaders asked their energy and finance ministers to "develop implementation strategies and time frames" for the phasing out of the subsidies.


"We call on all nations to adopt policies that will phase out such subsidies worldwide," the statement said.


The leaders however underlined "the importance of providing those in need with essential energy services, including through the use of targeted cash transfers and other appropriate mechanisms."


The US plan was part of efforts to combat climate change, enhance energy security, improve public health and the environment, promote faster economic growth and support more effective targeting of government resources for the poor, officials said.


Key G20 nations China, India, Russia and Brazil reportedly are among the top spenders of fossil fuel subsidies and are unlikely to easily agree to any plans to slash them.


Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Plastic Bag Bans




Plastic bags and waste plastic are a serious problem that must be addressed. These are all helpful at least. I find it completely amusing that local entrepreneurs are producing black market bags in China. I wonder how the glorious Chinese communist central government enjoys dealing with a citizenry with attitude?



It is time to make all plastic subject to a recycling charge on a per pound basis as we do with glass product. This has worked well for glass and has created a pool of dedicated scavengers collecting this type of trash as well as metal. Otherwise, all that glass would be lying about on the street.



That will also keep a lot from going directly to any landfill.



It is also time to end landfills. Any number of protocols exists that are superior and surely no more costly. Even a proper double lung incinerator is a fine solution as compared to the land fill. It also immediately scavenges the glass and metal for resale. The carbon is converted directly into CO2 without nasty intermediate steps as occurs in the landfill over decades. You may think this is a dumb solution, but our present use of landfills is dumber. It makes the problem pregnant for centuries.



I suspect that the double lung incinerator is also able to keep most municipalities quite happy and it will eliminate with a plastics charge, all such waste problems. The point I am making is that solutions are available and fairly easy. Our problem is both political and technical skill. The skill and authority of the buyer is typically modest and it is career damaging to make a bad call.



The point is we want all waste to be properly collected and destroyed if it cannot be recycled into new product.




The combination of 600 degree incineration with metal and glass recovery solves this problem nicely. If it becomes universal, the plastic disaster at sea eventually dissipates.

Does Banning Plastic Bags Work?



One year later, plastic bag use is down--but by no means gonein China. David Biello reports.



http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=does-banning-plastic-bags-work-09-08-13&sc=CAT_INNO_20090814

Thin plastic bags are the ultimate throwaway item. Used once to tote groceries, the thin white bags often go on to second lives as permanent pollution and an eyesore. So a host of countries, cities and other governments have banned them or forced consumers to pay for them. The largest such country, by far, was China.



The
regulations went into effect last June before the Olympics and the track record is mixed. Bai si wu ran or "white pollution" seems to have visibly declined but that may have more to do with tidying up garbage than any ban.



Even government officials admit the thinnest plastic bags, which were banned outright, are still in use, particularly in remote areas. Small workshops that churn out the contraband bags are easy to set up and hard to police. Small vendors, for their part, seem to think that the rule is no longer enforced and hand them out even in Beijing.



Yet, a survey by the International Food Packaging Association found that the number of plastic bags making their way into garbage had declined by 10 percent over the last year and the
Chinese government claimed that supermarkets alone reduced such bag use by 66 percent—some 40 billion fewer plastic bags to get caught in trees, riverbanks or elsewhere. The ultimate hope of the Chinese authorities is for the bags that are used to be recycled.



Plastic bags may not disappear anytime soon but they're getting harder to spot.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Magplane Technology for Freight and People

This article catches us up on developments in China on Maglev technology. Maglev has always been a promising exotic that has been forced to follow the path of slow development. The sheer weight of capital requirements makes it that way. Imagine Space exploration without a government crash program. We are still dining on the rewards of that crash program.

I used to explain to those who could not understand that the USA had failed to land a single dollar bill on the moon, unlike Vietnam and Iraq for that matter.

I have also posted on the prospects of putting rail freight on air pads. This is a similar problem but has the advantage of not needing a dedicated rail bed if done right.

In the event we have a concerted costing effort making maglev technology completely competitive with truck transportation for what appears to be dedicated tasks such as bulk haulage. This is an optimal solution not likely to be replicated in real life.

However, once any commercial solutions are implemented, the cost of additional build outs will drop and may make the technology competitive. I think air pads could do it faster and easier and certainly cheaper, but it may turn out that in the end that Maglev is the superior solution and will in time meet the price points.

The joint venture in China is developing a facility to produce up to 100km/year of MagPipe. The pipe maglev coal transportation system is trying to get all costs over 40% lower than truck transportation.
Magplane Proposed Transportation for Passengers

The vehicles are supported resiliently on a magnetic cushion, and are free to roll ten degrees in either direction from the bank angle of the magway. This enables them to negotiate horizontal curves of 2 km radius at 360 km/h with airplane comfort. Coordinated self-banking also permits vehicles to negotiate vertical curves typical of highway alignments without passenger discomfort by a "chandelle" type of maneuver in which negative vertical gee-forces are canceled by horizontal curvature. The maximum size vehicle weighs 45 tonnes gross, and carries 175 passengers, three and two abreast. Minimum headway at 500 km/h is 20 seconds, which permits a maximum single vehicle operation capacity of 25,000 seats/hour in each direction, as compared to about 10,000 for light rail and about 3,000 for a highway lane. With headways of 60 seconds in keeping with current state-of-the-art automatic controllers, three coupled intercity vehicles would be used to achieve the 25,000 seats/hour intercity capacity.

Levitation forces, guidance forces, and righting moments are exerted by currents induced in the magway surface by the motion of the vehicle magnets. Propulsion forces are produced by AC current in the guideway propulsion windings which generate a traveling wave. The vehicle rides this wave like a surfboard. Wayside power conditioning units spaced at 2 km intervals, synchronize the traveling wave with the vehicle, and generate active damping forces on the basis of position and acceleration information transmitted from vehicle sensors. Vehicles can leave and re-enter the magway at full speed to stop at off-line magports. The Magplane system thus achieves continuous traffic flow similar to highways, rather than the batch flow process of railroads with on-line stations.

Because magways carry only vehicles with low footprint pressure they can be significantly lighter and less expensive to build and maintain than railroad tracks. They need to carry only 1/20th the live load and provide 1/10th the wayside power (6 MW instead of 60), and can be compatible with the curves, grades, overpass, and right-of-way requirements of highways. Because of the large clearances possible with the Magplane concept, magways do not require high stiffness and accuracy of alignment or of banking.

China Will Be Testing Two Maglev Systems to Transport Freight: Up to Three Times Cheaper than Trucks or Rail

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China is installing two prototype magnetically levitated (maglev) systems for transporting coal in Inner Mongolia in an attempt to increase transport speeds and efficiencies, and to reduce pollution.

Cost studies show $0.13 to 0.017 per ton-mile depending upon the length of magnetic pipe. Rail and truck costs are in the $0.35 to 0.05 per ton-mile cost range.


The first system is being co-developed by the Chinese motor manufacturer Harbin Electric and a domestic Maglev (magnetic levitation) technology specialist. The first phase of the project – to build a 850m-long linear motor-driven freight test track at a coal mine – is already underway.

Once the test track has been validated, the project is expected to expand to a 32km-long coal transportation line in Inner Mongolia, with Harbin providing the linear motor drive systems.

The second maglev system is being developed by a joint venture between US-based Magplane Technology, and Chinese partners. This will use a tubular maglev system called MagPipes to move coal from Mongolian mines. A 32-acre (12.9ha) facility (shown above) is being built at Baotou in Inner Mongolia, which will be able to build up 200km of MagPipes a year. Production of components has been sub-contracted to Chinese suppliers.

Magplane Magpipes

Magplane Technology designs and fabricates pipeline transport systems using the linear synchronous motor technology developed for the Magplane system. Typical applications for pipeline transport range from priority mail packages to ore transport. A typical ore application would have an underground pair of 60 cm diameter pipes for outbound and returning capsules, and typically carry 10 millions tons per year over a distance of 50 km.

  Electromagnetic drives for pipeline systems are intended to replace pneumatic capsules. Pneumatic capsule pipelines have a long history, and there are several large scale systems in current use. Conventional pneumatic systems use external blowers to move the column of air together with the capsules in the pipe. Full-diameter valves are used to control the injection, removal and subsequent return of capsules. Various practical limits constrain the throughput of these systems and limit their cost effectiveness.

A demonstration project which uses a linear synchronous motor to move vehicles has been constructed at the IMC-Agrico Company in Lakeland, FL. The demonstration utilizes 200 m of 60 cm diameter cylindrical cast "waste water" fiberglass tube, and includes a 60 m long accelerator/decelerator section, a switch, and load and unload stations. The test vehicle traverses back and forth at a peak speed of 65 km/hr. The 1.8 m long wheelbase vehicle uses six-wheel assemblies at each end of a rotating hopper, and has a payload capacity of 270 kg. The vehicle carries an array of neodymium-iron boron permanent magnets which interact with the linear motor mounted on the outside of the tube to provide propulsion, and with external coils to provide an electromagnetic switch function.

A 15 page pdf "Capsule Pipeline Transport Using An Electromagnetic Drive"






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Truck and Rail Freight Statistics Updated

Treehugger reports on the latest efforts to increase the efficiency of rail and truck freight transportation costs.


State-of-the-art trucks can begin to approach the ton-miles per gallon of trains (350+ ton-miles for trucks vs. 400 to 450 ton-miles for rail).

RMI's [Rocky Mountain Institute - energy efficiency evangilists] 2008 peer-reviewed analysis, based on tested science, found a combination of improved aerodynamics, low rolling resisitance tires, and more efficient engines could more than double the ton-mileage of the average class 8 truck from 130 ton-mile per gallon to 275 ton-mile/gallon.

This is mostly theoretical improvements which have not been implemented even in a real life test trial.

Air 82 cents per ton mile
Truck 26 cents per ton mile
Rail 2.9 cents per ton mile
Barge 0.72 cents per ton mile (2001)
Pipeline 1.49 cents per ton mile (2001)

Magnetic pipelines on a large scale seem to approach the cost of shipping oil via pipeline.
Magnetic pipelines would have lower external costs as well as lower energy costs. Only barges would have lower costs. Barges have more pollution and barges need to have a sufficiently deep waterway to allow for transportation. The magnetic pipeline is faster than a barge.

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2008 Canadian Railway study of rail trends. (38 page pdf)
Energy use by mode of freight transportation according to the CBO (Congressional Budget Office.)

Oil pipelines use only 500 BTUs (British Thermal Units) per ton-mile (280 ton-miles per gallon of diesel fuel), but they are limited by their very specialized function. The efficiency of inland barges (990 BTUs per ton-mile or 140 ton-miles per gallon on average), is likewise offset by the roundaboutness or circuity of most rivers. Also, significant amounts of energy may be required to bring cargo to a waterway system: grain and other farm products are sometimes trucked 200 miles to a river, increasing energy use per ton-mile by 50 percent or more.

The efficiency of rail transportation varies considerably depending on the commodity and the level of service provided; at one extreme, unit trains designed to carry only coal typically require less than 900 BTUs per ton-mile of cargo (155 ton-miles per gallon), while at the other extreme high-speed short trailer-on-flat-car (TOFC) trains use about 2,000 BTUs per ton-mile of cargo (68 ton-miles per gallon).
Intercity trucks require on average about 3,400 BTUs per ton-mile of cargo (41 ton-miles per gallon), twice the rail average and 1.7 times that for rail TOFC. It is not surprising that trucks require more energy since they provide a generally higher level of service than rail.

An even higher level of service, and hence greater energy need, is characteristic of air freight. In planes devoted to air freight, over 28,000 BTUs per ton-mile of cargo may be required (5 ton-miles per gallon), although freight carried in the belly of a passenger plane may require only 3,900 BTUs per ton-mile of cargo (35 ton-miles per gallon).

A specialized new mode of freight transportation is the coal slurry pipeline; this appears to require about 1,270 BTUs per ton-mile of coal--although this conclusion is based largely on engineering studies
.