The post Size Matters quoted Herb Gintis discussing why humans often hold grossly irrational and false, yet somehow plausible, beliefs. One of the reasons he cites is excessive present orientation.

. . . humans, like all other animals, do not maximize fitness, but rather an objective function (which may be called a preference function) based on immediate costs and benefits, that has evolved to correspond to fitness enhancement. . .

. . . humans (like other animals, although much less so) tend to have preference functions that are excessively present-oriented, and so undervalue behaviors with long-term payoffs (Google Ainslie, Laibson, and Loewenstein for documentation). Cultural beliefs and values that counter this tendency (e.g., be slow to anger, invest in good hunting skills) are fitness enhancing but will be judged to be welfare reducing by the sociopath who assesses them according to his own preference function.

There are some interesting consequences to this evolved tendency to undervalue behaviors with long-term payoffs. In addition to individual tendencies to seek immediate gratifications, judgements about trends and debates about policies are skewed.

Over the longer term, however, one tends to get unpredictable and fundamental improvements in technological systems. Thus, for example, if the flow in the Colorado River shrinks, there will be a point - more expensive, but not technologically infeasible - when Arizona can build desalinization plants, either in California or Mexico, and treat all the water it needs.

Expensive? Of course. Political quagmire? Water in the West always is. But will we "run out of water" as some scientists fear? Not unless we choose to.

Global climate change plays the same tune. A major theme of that debate is the need to reduce fossil fuel use to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, bolstered by the 200 year projections that are routinely used in climate change debates.

But such projections are far more speculative than they appear and than their adherents frequently claim because they systemically underestimate the unpredictability and power of technological evolution. For one thing, the focus on emissions presupposes a technological stasis that is historically questionable. For example, recent work at Carnegie Mellon University and elsewhere, including development of pilot scale technology, suggests that extracting carbon dioxide from the ambient atmosphere, liquefying it, and injecting it into geologic formations, is both economically and energetically feasible.

This research is in prepublication stage, but if it, or any similar technology, is developed, it obsoletes our current understanding of, and approaches to, the "climate change problem." The question shifts from fossil fuel use and emissions, to the much more profound one of what atmospheric chemistry, and dynamics, we as a species choose to have – and who gets to make that choice.

This case also illustrates another fundamental weakness in current approaches, the tendency to project current trends into the future without assuming adjustment by other components of these complex human/built/natural integrated systems. Thus, it is quite simply wrong to view computer projections of states well into the future as somehow "real," for one thing we know for sure is that current rate of social and technological change makes them worthwhile warnings at best. Valuable thought experiments, perhaps; probable in any sense, no.

In part, we cling to such projections, wrong though we know them to be, because we fundamentally don’t understand technology and technological systems. Moreover, we have a very human tendency to privilege the present, resulting in strong aversion to even the idea of technological evolution.

It's true. We often hear derisive dismissal of "techno-fixes" for seemingly intractable problems. The idea of technological evolution not only doesn't compute for those particularly prone to present orientation, it's unpleasant for them to contemplate. Yet a more dispassionate appraisal must recognize that technology will evolve, and do so to such a degree that 100 or 200 year projections are of vanishingly small utility. That we can't predict how technology will evolve doesn't reduce confidence that it will do so. But this discomfort isn't the only reason that the present value of future technologies is discounted.

Additionally, the agenda of proponents of particular policies may only in part be one of environmental quality; in many cases, it includes the more implicit social engineering goal of reducing consumption and restructuring capitalism, especially in America. Thus, one concern expressed by environmentalists about ambient atmospheric carbon dioxide capture technologies is that because they enable continued use of fossil fuels they don’t adequately constrain economic growth.

Green is the new red. This isn't news, many have commented before about how greens were recycled, reborn communists who took up environmental advocacy as class warfare ceased to be a useful method to advance their agenda, and that their advocacy was instrumental, an indirect way to attack their old opponents and so achieve their old objectives. The environment itself is irrelevant to them and they are disappointed when seemingly intractable environmental problems are relieved by technological evolution. The worst thing that could happen to these retreaded reds is for climate change to be eliminated as a threat. They don't even want us to investigate the possibilities.

A more rational stance is to expect evolution. Extrapolation of present trends for many decades to yield horror scenarios is an empty exercise suitable to sophomores just learning to use their minds, not something on which to base policy. It is also well to remember that this blade cuts both ways: there will likely be new threats as well as solutions for old ones. We won't run out of things to whinge about. We can't predict the arrival of black swans, but we can expect them. Sensible risk analysis must include such outliers, unknown unknowns. It is amusing to consider that technological evolution and the discovery of ways to eliminate old threats is a catastrophic risk for those who seek to change the world. While most of us worry about the arrival of new threats, they worry about the resolution of old ones. The same risk analysis techniques can be used by both groups. One worries that we might die, the other worries that we might live.

Update:

The agenda:

I'm here at the annual meeting of the Balaton Group (named after the Hungarian lake on whose shores we're gathered), watching teams of people from five continents argue about how best to transform a nation with an economy and social indicators similar to Nicaragua into a nation more like Sweden without destroying the environment.

Sweden? The place where those who aren't unemployed are ditching work claiming to be sick? The place that is spiraling into socio-economic collapse, ditching life itself? Little chance for the environment under those conditions.

Stratagem is a hybrid board game/ computer simulation designed entirely to teach (the basics of the game are available as a PDF here). The purpose of Stratagem is to force you to learn 15 fundamental principles relating to systems dynamics in the real world, including issues like capital depreciation, diminishing returns on investment and the value of ecological services.

But, no mention of technological evolution. The game prides itself on not allowing any exogenous factors to come into play so that there is strict accountability for plans. It has little or nothing to do with reality so it's not clear just what this "learning game" is teaching. It's a Dennis Meadows hustle so this is par.

In real life things happen.

The EU provided €875,246 ((US$1.1 million) in funding for ELCAT—electrocatalytic gas-phase conversion of CO2 in confined catalysts—a three-year project under the Sixth Framework Program (6FP) to focus on the gas-phase electrocatalysis of CO2 to Fischer-Tropsch (FT)-like products (C1-C10 hydrocarbons and alcohols). Work began in 2004.

The project was born from the observation that with carbon dioxide confined inside carbon micropores, and electrons and protons allowed to flow to an active catalyst of noble metal nanoclusters, that gaseous carbon dioxide was reduced to a series of hydrocarbons and alcohols. The reaction products were remarkably similar to those of the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process in which synthetic gas is converted to a series of hydrocarbons (alkanes, alkenes and so on) and water.

Three organizations are involved in addition to the University of Messina, Italy: Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany; Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France; and University of Patras in Patras, Greece.

The ELCAT approach confines the catalyst particles within carbon nanotubes. The catalyst particles need to be quite small, due to the fact of the high number of electrons that must be transferred to generate the higher hydrocarbons. The number of electrons required is quite high—on the order of 24 for a butanol product, and an average of 46 for C8 to C9.

There is no evolution of hydrogen in this process.

The ELCAT team has found that it is possible to produce higher carbon hydrocarbons (C8 to C9), with productivity depending upon a number of factors such as catalyst, electrolyte and flow rates.

As a closing note, Prof. Centi observed that in addition to its utility on Earth, such a process would be of use for Mars missions that could use Martian resources (CO2 and water) to produce propellant for Earth return as well as life-support consumables.

It's always been a bit of a mystery to me why we fear carbon, given that we are carbon. I guess I've read too many SF novels where humans scour the solar system for carbon, which is the primary feedstock for everything from building materials to food. The danger is that they will use too much of the earth's atmosphere for feedstock, not that they spew those valuable carbon compounds into the air and overheat the joint.

That won't happen tomorrow but it will happen. It's when, not if. Couple catalyzed nano fabrication of higher carbon hydrocarbons with "extracting carbon dioxide from the ambient atmosphere, liquefying it, and injecting it into geologic formations" in a way that "is both economically and energetically feasible." Technological evolution of this sort, in what seems to be the very near future, makes the teaching game obsolete not just in its particulars but in its structure and basic assumptions.

Update:

More technological evolution.

The basic process, electrolysis, is nothing new: Combine water with an electrolyte, and run current through the solution, forcing the water molecules to split into hydrogen and oxygen gases. But electrolysis-formed hydrogen has long been hampered by the high capital cost of the metals used in the process, around “thousands of dollars per kilowatt,” says Richard Bourgeois, GE’s electrolysis project leader. GE’s breakthrough comes from a proprietary material called Noryl, a highly chemical- and temperature-resistant plastic developed by the GE labs, that lowers the cost of hydrogen production to hundreds of dollars per kilowatt, according to Bourgeois.

Although GE has only built a prototype in their lab, Bourgeois believes that demonstrations can come as soon as the end of next year, and commercialization will follow that. The goal of the project, according to Bourgeois, is to bring down equipment costs enough to take the cost of hydrogen from $8 per kilogram to $3 per kilogram—comparable in energy and price to a gallon of gasoline.

Currently, Hydrogen production is also limited to industrial refineries and agricultural areas, where the gas is produced on-site using methane, says Bourgeois. GE’s system—which, at approximately 10’ x 20’, can fit in a small trailer—could be marketed to smaller-scale industries. And one day, Bourgeois sees a future when drivers fill their hydrogen-fuel-cell powered cars from pumps with built-in electrolyzers. If electricity needed to produce the hydrogen is wind- or solar-generated, the entire process is, essentially, emissions-free.

Nuclear, geothermal, gravity and hydro energy would be even better since they are less intermittent, but this is also a good way to salvage wind and solar from their more serious limitations, intermittence.

Update:

More on Dennis Meadows agenda (and that of the confederacy of dunces) which seeks to use planning type games to "transform a nation with an economy and social indicators similar to Nicaragua into a nation more like Sweden". Like Sweden?

Unemployed you say? We can't really offer you a job... but we could classify you as mentally disabled to improve our labor market statistics! . . .

The state unemployment agency is constantly attempting to force people to "admit" to being disabled. Today 19.3 percent of those seeking jobs at the unemployment office are being classified as disabled. . .

most of these people are in fact not disabled at all. They have been lured or threatened into agreeing to become classified as such. The reason for this is simply that if you are disabled you are removed from the statistics of open unemployment, something that the current Social Democratic government greatly appreciates.

It is bad enough that the Swedish government hides the country's true unemployment rate by hiring people through various state projects and by manipulating official statistics. But classifying healthy young people as disabled is truly a shameful exercise. If the Social Democrats lose this weekend's election the protest votes the young people humiliated by the unemployment agencies might play an important part.

They did lose, but it isn't clear why, or if it will make any difference. I somehow doubt that it will mean much.