Eskom’s fears about rising electricity demand in 2011 bring home a simple lesson: agitating for “services for all” usually means not getting the services in question. My latest Daily Maverick column explores this irony.

You may also have missed a few holiday-season columns. The new year started with a piece on How to hire a hitman in SA. Before that, I was talking about taxis, traffic and road safety, in The oppression of taxis, and Arrive alive and neurotic. Earlier in December, I wrote two columns about WikiLeaks which proved to be sufficiently controversial to spark the interest of a few radio stations: One day we’ll all hate WikiLeaks and Protection of Information Bill and why WikiLeaks is so dangerous.

Hope you’re settling into the new year well. It promises to be a good one.

The sOccketball is an invention by a bunch of American college kids, aimed squarely at the sub-Saharan African market. It just got a Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award. The problem? It’s useless, and the idea that Africans can’t look after themselves is supremely condescending. I explain why in today’s Daily Maverick column: Let’s return the beads

Last week, the Financial Mail led with a lengthy cover story on the oil price and its implications for the South African economy. It contains some very enlightening facts, such as a chart which shows that for every ten units of fuel South Africa uses for a unit of production, the United Stats uses only nine, and both China and the world average operate more efficiently, at eight units. Ours is a much more energy-intensive economy than even the United States. (So why exactly there’s a windmill on the graphic is beyond me.)

Our consumption of oil since 1980 is up by 60%, compared to 20% in the US, and minus 20% in many European countries. In an energy intensive economy that actually grows (unlike, say, Europe), this is to be expected, and in itself is a positive sign. But the article is right to point out that both of these facts put us at a comparative disadvantage when global oil prices rise.

What the article neglects, however, it to consider consumption as a function of price, which in South Africa is controlled by the state. Our fuel, like our electricity, has been kept cheap compared to competing economies, which means that we can — or could, until recently — afford to favour energy over other resources such as time, labour, or high-technology, to drive production. (Much of this is because our fuel tax is comparatively low. Still 27% too high, of course, as pointed out in a previous post, but much less than in many other economies.)

What is disappointing is that instead of a focus on how businesses can reduce fuel as a component in production, or a discussion of price, price controls and how they might affect both suppliers and consumers, the article spends much of its time talking up the alarmist scenarios of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, known as ASPO. Price deregulation is relegated to a short sidebar by a different writer, which predictably notes that lifting price controls in a steeply rising market is likely to be a political non-starter.

ASPO is an outfit born out of “Peak Oil” alarmism, a group of assorted environmentalists, socialists, economic illiterates and special-interest lobbyists, who have been whingeing for decades about a looming peak in oil production. I’m pleased to see at least one oil company CEO, Tony Hayward of BP, has taken on ASPO president Kjell Aleklett, in a wager reminiscent of the famous bet between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon, on a similar subject: the scarcity of natural resources. Simon won that bet handily, and I’d urge Hayward to take Aleklett’s complaint about the low prize pot (or rather, barrel) at face value. Double up. Go all in. Maybe set something up so others can buy shares in the bet too.

Fair enough, the ASPO alarmists, headed in South Africa by one Simon Ratcliffe, have been asked to inform the Thabo Mbeki presidency’s scenario planning exercise about their whacky, apocalyptic prophesies, so perhaps their arguments deserve to be better known, lest they become deluded government policy. But one would expect a finance publication to be a little more critical in its assessment of ASPO’s claims.

The Peak Oil paranoiacs say that much of what they predicted appears to be coming to pass. Well, that’s not quite true. They predicted that we’d run out of oil and have a crisis. Or more accurately, that we’d reach a production peak and then have a crisis. Price never really featured in Peak Oil alarmism until the oil price began its most recent run-up, when it became a convenient “told you so” data point.

The obvious response to their argument has always been: it doesn’t really matter if we’re running out of underground oil, if it becomes more costly to exploit, or if Americans are too stupid to use their own underground oil resources.

If scarcity does not increase, the case is trivial. There’s no problem. If it does increase, however, prices will simply rise. If prices rise, consumers will be forced to become more efficient, and more uneconomical resources such as tar sands and alternative forms of energy will become more profitable. Canada’s vast shale oil deposits, previously hard or impossible to mine, are being exploited at full steam (if you’ll excuse the pun). Even at the current meagre recovery rate of about 10%, they are second only to Saudi Arabia in their bounty. If the extraction technology improves, they could double proven global oil reserves. Their exploitation became economical only recently, so this kind of expensive production wasn’t even considered by the Peak Oil doomsayers at the time. Their simplistic argument, if I recall correctly, went something along the lines of “if it takes more than the equivalent of a barrel of oil to extract a barrel, it cannot be economically extracted”. Better technology, higher prices, economies of scale, or other forms of energy, never entered the static, linear systems in their muddled little heads. But then, perhaps that’s because they won’t profit from finding and producing energy. I sure hope they’ve sold their shares in the stupid companies that are flocking to Canada for a piece of the action.

So, the price mechanism works its magic once again, and the “crisis” is a non-event. Scarcity is the very reason the price mechanism exists; without scarcity, it couldn’t exist. Price has always managed to distribute scarce resources to where they are most productive. It has always motivated people to find alternatives, or find better, more efficient ways of doing things.

But that’s not what the ASPO people say. They posit two “scenarios”. The first is “business as usual”, in which all of us are complete idiots and sit around ignoring scarcity and rising prices until we starve or kill each other (or both). As if we aren’t smart enough to economise or seek alternatives. Every day, you can hear people talking of ways to save fuel, including fairly extreme measures like moving closer to work, or working from home. Why would fuel be something unique? Why would consumers be insensitive to price rises until there is “a big oil shock”?

Shocks are only likely to occur in regulated markets, where producers and consumers are not able to adjust to surpluses or shortages, because of artificial restrictions, prices, taxes or other market distortions imposed by the state. Last year, the oil price took a breather, to the consternation of market watchers, who found it hard to comprehend a market so badly distorted by regulation, subsidies and outright extortion by governments.

The other ASPO scenario is wholesale restructuring of the economy, central-planning style. A vast web of quotas, rations, subsidies and taxes should be created, all with draconian legislative force. Combined with “a huge investment” in energy austerity and alternative energy sources, this, ASPO says, will solve all our problems and make us live happily ever after. Why it considers expensive fuel a “crisis”, but shrugs off a “huge investment” as just some bitter medicine we’ll have to swallow, is never quite explained. And what happens if our “huge investment” turns out to be misdirected, is never considered. No, the socialist panacea prescribed by Dr ASPO will cure all our ills. After all, the government knows what is best, and can make our commercial choices for us, since we’re too stupid to look after ourselves.

Let’s assume the underlying assertion that supplies are on an irreversible, long-term, downward trend are true. They may well be (beyond the trivial fact that no resource is infinite), though that is far from the only reason prices are rising, and anyone who makes firm predictions on when critical depletion would make oil unviable as a source of energy is either brave or stupid or both. But that oil will one day be too expensive to profitably extract is not an unreasonable expectation. That this will inevitably be followed by “societal and economic disintegration”, however, as Ratcliffe once told MiningMX.com, does not follow.

The fact that ASPO’s preachers make only two prophesies is very revealing. Both are extreme. One is designed to put the fear of god into policy makers and the voting public, so they’ll buy the other as their only salvation. ASPO looks suspiciously like a lobby for all those companies that today can’t make an honest buck selling alternative energy solutions or more economical equipment. I hope the government treats them with as much skepticism as it would treat the oil industry: as just another pressure group, lobbying for preferential treatment for their vested interests.

If the presidency accepts ASPO’s doomsday scenarios as likely, and formulates policy accordingly, I sure hope you’re in on Tony Hayward’s bet. Spare cash will come in handy in a socialist utopia.

The fairest and surest way to resolve this “crisis” is simply to set the market free. Deregulate prices, even if they rise as a result, and even if they put inefficient companies out of business. People will make a plan. They always have. The world didn’t end when the horse became obsolete, or electricity replaced gas. It became better, healthier, more productive. Let alternative solutions to high-priced fuel fight it out on a level playing field, where nobody is forced to use anyone’s solution, no solution is unfairly advantaged or held back by subsidies or taxes, and no nanny-state restrictions are in play. May the best solution win.

If you really care about global warming, there are a whole bunch of things you probably think you shouldn’t be doing that you should, and vice versa. The environmental religion of the modern age, in which an angry Gaia will punish us for our sinful ways, but we can redeem ourselves by sacrifice and self-denial, has spawned a mythology of classical proportions. The problem is that many of those myths, spouted as accepted wisdom by an uncritical media and special-interest activists, appear to be just plain wrong.

Wired magazine goes to the actual science — remember science? — and makes some proposals for those who really care about climate change, and think not only that reducing carbon emissions will actually help, but delude themselves that it is possible to reduce them enough to make even a little dent in anticipated warming.

Here is its list, each of which is explored further in a separate article:

• Live in Cities: Urban Living Is Kinder to the Planet Than the Suburban Lifestyle
• A/C Is OK: Air-Conditioning Actually Emits Less C02 Than Heating
• Organics Are Not the Answer: Surprise! Conventional Agriculture Can Be Easier on the Planet
• Farm the Forests: Old-Growth Forests Can Actually Contribute to Global Warming
• China Is the Solution: The People’s Republic Leads the Way in Alternative-Energy Hardware
• Accept Genetic Engineering: Superefficient Frankencrops Could Put a Real Dent in Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Carbon Trading Doesn’t Work: Carbon Credits Were a Great Idea, But the Benefits Are Illusory
• Embrace Nuclear Power: Face It. Nukes Are the Most Climate-Friendly Industrial-Scale Form of Energy
• Used Cars — Not Hybrids: Don’t Buy That New Prius! Test-Drive a Used Car Instead
• Prepare for the Worst: Climate Change Is Inevitable. Get Used to It

It doesn’t say all of these are good ideas, of course. There are excellent reasons to slash-and-burn overgrown, bug-infested jungles, to plant more productive crops, sure. But there are also plenty excellent reasons not to cut down old-growth forests. However, if your policy goal is to reduce carbon emissions, which seems to be the sole fetish of environmentalists and policy makers, then all of these points, including razing the rainforests, are valid.

Meanwhile, the US Congress is about to debate a cap-and-trade scheme that will vastly expand government powers and revenue, cost consumers trillions in bureaucratic red tape, tax and lost economic growth, and achieve very little indeed. In welcoming an open floor debate on these mushy measures, the Wall Street Journal writes:

The vehicle is a bill that principal sponsors Joe Lieberman and John Warner are calling “landmark legislation.” They’re too modest. Warner-Lieberman would impose the most extensive government reorganization of the American economy since the 1930s.

Ouch. Nothing like a fat bureaucracy to infringe on the liberty and prosperity of the people. Nothing like a first-country moral crusade to give developing-country leaders ideas to foist upon their long-suffering people. Nothing like an overbearing state to hold down the development of the poor.

As if $130 oil isn’t reason enough to consider more fuel-efficient cars, reduce energy usage in industry and invest in alternative energy sources.

While we wait for this legislative disaster, however, would the disciples of St Al please report to the consistory, so they can get cracking on Wired’s measures?

(Hat tip: Climate Skeptic.)

The US government (and popular media) has a long history of blaming oil companies for “excessive profits” when the oil price is high. They don’t particularly care that when the oil price is low, oil companies risk huge losses, or that massive, long-term industrial investment projects can only be justified by future profits. No, every time Americans suffer at the pump, or think they do, oil companies are hauled before Congress to testify about their “price gouging”.

Turns out that they make less profit than you’d think, as Sterling T. Terrell shows eloquently in an article here. It’s a must-read, because it makes the price of fuel at the pump really, really simple. Taking into account inflation and tax, and despite higher demand from growing economies, higher demand from countries buying in currencies other than dollars, and restricted supply because of draconian environmental restrictions on exploiting domestic oil resources in the US, it turns out Americans aren’t paying all that much at all. Of the excess over base costs, two thirds goes to the government in the form of taxes. The “record profits” of billions of dollars that you hear about on TV might sound like a lot, but once you work it out in terms of the value of a typical oil company’s asset base, the volumes of product supplied, the cost base, and total revenues, they’re not “record profits” at all. Even water utilities make more profit, as do many other industries.

He argues, correctly, that price caps will lead, inevitably, to shortages. But that doesn’t stop politicians, here and abroad, from expressing grave concern about the impact of the high oil price on consumers. Smoothing the political path for intervention, no doubt.

I did a crude (haha) calculation myself, using various data obtained from Stats SA and the Department of Minerals and Energy Affairs. Starting with a 1998 base price of R2.28, which is what a litre of 91-octane unleaded used to cost inland, I compared the actual price to the inflation-adjusted price. For actual price I stuck to the highest octane available, as new levels (93 and 95) were introduced. If R2.28 is adjusted by inflation (average annual CPIX), the average fuel price in 2007 would have been R4.45. The average price in 2007 was actually R6.75. For the sake of simplicity, let’s put all of that disparity down to the steep oil price rise of recent years.

But we are a global leader in the production of synthetic fuel from coal. Sorry, says Sasol, we can’t give it to you cheaper than the government price. As a result, Sasol’s after-tax net profit margins, at 17%, are much higher than the 9.5% profit margin of US oil companies. Synfuel, however, accounts for only 30% or so of its business, but generates about 55% of the company’s profits. So the profit margin of the synfuels division alone is almost twice as high again, just because its costs are independent of the oil price, but its prices are determined by government and rise as the oil price goes up. So in reality, Sasol’s synfuel makes 3.3 times the profit that a typical US oil company makes. And the US companies are the ones being hauled before public hearings!

Profits would not be an issue in a free market, but they are an issue when they are made by a private monopoly in a highly-regulated, price-controlled sector. Worse than government-sponsored profits for Sasol, however, is that more than 20% of the fuel price goes towards unnecessary taxes (as opposed to the Road Accident Fund, which for all its bureaucratic chaos and mismanagement, is a more defensible levy). Take that arbitrary tax away, and the inflation-adjusted fuel price at the end of 2007 could have been R3.73, or if you account for the disparity between the inflation-adjusted price and the actual price — reflecting, in my simplification, the recent oil price rise — it could have been R5.29. (Disclaimer: So says the back of my envelope; corrections or refinements to this rough calculation would be welcome.)

Instead of R6.75 on average for 2007, we could have paid R5.29, and that’s without any change to the Sasol price policy or reduction in the price of oil. What effect might such a massive saving in transport cost have on food prices and general price inflation? Why does the government think it’s a good idea to tax fuel, and to keep raising those taxes?

Some might argue that fuel taxes discourage consumption, and therefore they are good for the environment. But fuel demand is notoriously inflexible. Face it, you’ve got to get to work, and producers have got to get bread and milk to the supermarket, no matter what the fuel price is. So the effect of taxation on demand is fractional. If you’re going to incur costs in the economy by using the fiscus to fund environmental improvement, almost any other investment would get you higher returns than fuel taxes.

So we have the absurd situation that on one hand, the US is holding hearings in populist efforts to claw back money from companies whose prices aren’t regulated, whose operations are bound by a myriad laws, and whose profits are by no means excessive. On the other, South Africa is doing nothing about sky-high monopoly profits that are a direct gift from the government, and which raise costs for every industry sector, limit economic growth, reduce our ability to alleviate poverty and create jobs, and limit our options in dealing with the energy crisis. And neither country has considered that of all the idiotic tax ideas a rapacious government can think of, slapping 20% taxes on fuel is possibly the worst. [Correction: that should read “27.2% taxes”. 27.2% tax results in a 21.4% share of tax in the final price, which I rounded to 20% here.]

Some economists say that South Africa is not headed for recession, despite the worldwide financial crisis, the weakening global economy, the critical shortage of electricity, and the rising oil price. I’m fairly pessimistic, however. I think the electricity crisis alone will be enough to cause a recession, because its effects permeate the economy. But even if the Bolt Effect, as I like to call it, is not as bad as I surmise, I’d be far more inclined to believe the optimists if the government were less keen to skim the cream off what’s left of the economy by taxing a basic commodity such as fuel.

Meanwhile, you have until this Friday, 25 April 2008, to comment on price cap proposals (Government Gazette link in PDF) on liquified petroleum gas. I’ve written about this before. If you want to know why you can’t find that nice cheap LPG at your local petrol station, look no further than government’s insistence on regulating every price in sight.

And every time we get shortages, or price inflation, or both, we wonder why. It’s because (and Mandy de Waal’s comment yesterday is a case in point) we simply don’t trust the profit motive as a driver of efficient capital allocation. We simply don’t trust the price mechanism to regulate supply and demand. In the end, we don’t trust our people with their freedom.

But really, do go read Terrell’s article. Evidence once more that Economics 101 is, well, elementary.

There’s a ton of hype over the crisis in food prices. Apparently, food is too expensive. One would think this constitutes a “price signal”, but no, whenever something is too expensive or too cheap, NGO activists, special-interest lobbyists and populist media argue that “government must do something”. This is untrue as often as it is true that “government must stop doing something”.

In this case, it could probably stop slashing and burning our food.

I argued some of the reasons for food inflation in a previous post, and noted in particular that biofuel subsidies are perverse incentives, and eliminating them is the first answer to the misguided, knee-jerk question about what government can do. (The second is to drop all other tariffs, levies and subsidies, first on agriculture, and then on fuel, which constitutes a major input cost for producers.)

South Africa has a national biofuels strategy that is barely out of its diapers, complete with taxpayer-funded subsidies, imminent fuel-composition mandates and government-owned shares in private companies. (The company I have in mind, in which the government took a 25% stake in 2005, has been too busy spending taxpayer money to bother constructing a website.) So that first answer will probably be the last to be considered by the motley crew of interventionists, statists, socialists and marxists that populate our government. Reflection, review and self-criticism aren’t among their strong points.

Let’s see how the rich US is faring with biofuel. Two Washington Post writers today write of what they call ethanol’s failed promise (via Blue Crab Boulevard, which also has news of, wait for it, food shortages and panic hoarding, right there in the rich ol’ US of A). Neither of the writers lack in green credentials, and in fact, they cite environmental concerns and energy use before noting the impact on food supply:

These “food-to-fuel” mandates [i.e. ethanol subsidies and fuel composition laws] were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis…..

[…] It is now abundantly clear that food-to-fuel mandates are leading to increased environmental damage. First, producing ethanol requires huge amounts of energy — most of which comes from coal. Second, the production process creates a number of hazardous byproducts, and some production facilities are reportedly dumping these in local water sources. Third, food-to-fuel mandates are helping drive up the price of agricultural staples, leading to significant changes in land use with major environmental harm.

If the United States can’t afford ethanol subsidies, why on earth is South Africa hell-bent on burning its food stocks for fuel? When the biofuels strategy was first adopted, maize prices were low, and a surplus was being produced. Biofuel, said the government, would “soak up” that surplus. I’m no expert on the state of our agricultural markets or on prices of specific farm produce, but elementary economics suggests that if a surplus causes low prices, but farmers are not induced by the price mechanism to switch to different, more profitable crops, because they can sell their surplus to the government’s pet biofuels makers instead, this might explain why the supply of food is now under pressure.

Not to mention this business of “requiring huge amounts of energy”. My electricity will probably be cut two hours from now, for four hours. This can happen two or three times a week. What for? To produce ethanol? So we can run our cars on biofuel while the poor go hungry? So we can bash SUV owners for driving environmentally-friendly food-guzzlers?

Meanwhile, the UN too is dithering, waffling about how the Green Revolution that has halved world hunger since the 1960s was actually a failure, and we should all switch to organic farming. Yeah, that’ll help. Let the poor eat boutique honey. Douglas Southgate, of the Free Market Foundation, has a more elaborate take on its latest sustainable agriculture report (the link might only work for a week). And South Africa’s policy makers simply swallow what the green lobby and the UN wonks feed us.

Sometimes, the depth of insanity among government bureaucrats, whether American, South African, or global, is truly amazing. Slash and burn, guys. Go ahead. Good intentions never fed anyone, but then, hunger victims don’t vote.

Pieter de Bruin, of 1* P***** Avenue, Ceres, may well be dead. If not, I munged his address because I fear for his safety. Big Oil will surely get him. His only hope of survival is to let them buy his silence with a few billion dollars, but he will have to live in the lap of luxury knowing the price is depriving thousands of ordinary South Africans not only of a money making opportunity, but also of a real chance to save the planet from imminent carbon doom.

While sitting in the dark, caused by an acute attack of global warming, I perused by candlelight an advertisement De Bruin placed in the latest issue of Popular Mechanics. This magazine has always been a rich source of entertainment, and De Bruin’s ad is a classic: alongside a photo of a bakkie with lots of signage, such as “test vehicle” added in Microsoft Paint, he’s flogging something he calls HHO. The letters stand for hydrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, and represent a “fuel saving technology”.

“This technology does not mean we are running on water, but introducing HHO, which simply and effectively creates the effect of using the same fuel in a more economical way. It supplements and CORRECTS the behaviour of fuel,” the advert claims, directing readers to a remarkably amateurish and painfully illiterate website at HHO4fuel.co.za.

Whoever wrote the copy didn’t actually read the website themselves, since it says quite clearly: “HHO = Oxyhydrogen = H2O = Water”

This, of course, is not true. Anyone who studied chemistry at school will know that there’s no way two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom will form a stable bond other than in the form it takes in water, and there’s no way that could be written other than H₂O, or HOH, at a push, because a hydrogen atom in the middle wouldn’t care much for the oxygen on its right once it had bonded with another hydrogen atom on its left. So what’s going on here?

Surprisingly, the notion is not entirely weird, though it does attract every shade of crackpot under the sun. It is also not new.

De Bruin (”the Brown”, in Dutch) is talking about Brown’s gas, which is simply a mixture of hydrogen (H₂) and oxygen (O₂). Water can be split into these molecular gases by electrolysis. Hydrogen is a flammable gas, and as such can be used as fuel. Hydrogen-powered cars are nothing new either. You’d make a lot more money if you can solve the high-pressure storage problem, or the high-volume distribution problem. You’d make a right fortune if you can figure out a way to produce hydrogen gas using less energy than just burning regular unleaded.

Blowtorches using “oxyhydrogen” or “oxy-gas” have been in use since Yull Brown (of Brown’s gas fame) patented it in the late 1970s. They use either a bottle of each gas, or an electrolysis unit plugged into the electricity mains. Research papers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (such as this 1974 paper and this one from 1976) describe how adding hydrogen to the fuel mixture of a car allows the engine to run leaner that it otherwise would. It stands to reason that a leaner-running engine might save fuel, provided its power output doesn’t drop by the same amount.

Of course the energy required to generate the hydrogen is a bit of a problem. It takes a lot of electricity to generate separately. De Bruin’s device electrolyses the water on board, and instead of running the engine on hydrogen, merely adds a little to the fuel or air inlet. So as not to bog your engine down with generating the power for this process, one shouldn’t expect a lot of hydrogen to be generated, so your fuel saving will probably be modest, and don’t expect to keep your warranty intact.

Though elaborately presented in fashionable magenta with lots of exclamation marks, De Bruin is only marginally more honest than other purveyors of this hyped stuff. He doesn’t claim 50% fuel savings, he claims 30%. He doesn’t have to explain why, if his car can run 100 miles on four ounces of water, he needs a hybrid engine, nor does he claim that an oxy-gas torch is a new invention and that its 2 000°C flame doesn’t feel very hot. All of these far-fetched claims are made by Denny Klein, of Hydrogen Technology Applications, who promptly hijacked Brown’s gas, renamed it Klein’s gas, and patented a trivial variation of a decades-old, perfectly obvious and previously patented process for generating the gas by electrolysis. A gullible television insert that includes the claims he makes can be seen here.

Not only the popular media, but fairly respectable science publications are taken in by the idea of running a car on water. Witness New Scientist, for example, claiming that, “Before long, you might be able to run your car with nothing more than water in its fuel tank. It would be the ultimate zero-emissions vehicle.”

Nothing more, in this case, except for 18kg of boron. The water is “reacted with” the boron, to produce the hydrogen on which the engine runs. This just happens to turns the boron into boron oxide, which needs to be reprocessed — using energy — in order to be used again as boron. So in reality, boron is the primary fuel, producing hydrogen and boron oxide, hydrogen is the secondary fuel or energy carrier, and water isn’t a fuel at all. The entire process is marginally less efficient than Freddy Flintstone’s ultimate zero-emissions vehicle. And even the Flintstone ZEV isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Contrary to the Flintstone Incorporated press release, it emits methane, which is a dangerous greenhouse gas — though admittedly a far less significant greenhouse gas than H₂O.

Either way, if De Bruin is still alive, he is in mortal danger. Doesn’t everyone know that when Big Oil fails to convince alternative fuel inventors to sell the patents to them for billions, instead of selling them for billions to car manufacturers, they send round the cleaners? There’s this guy, Stanley Meyer, who invented an HHO driven car. He figured out how to make it more efficient that the Flintstone ZEV, using a revolutionary fuel cell. First, the courts called him a fraud. Who controls the courts? You guessed it. And now he’s dead. Coincidence? Of course not. Another inventor died in prison. Another fell down stairs and broke his neck. Who built those stairs? Right. Who writes the building codes? Don’t you know it. Another guy mysteriously died of old age. I’m not kidding. These people are dangerous.

While De Bruin sells his $100 kits, he had better hope the men in dark glasses think Ceres is like Oros: not 100% real. After all, the water-fuelled car, discussed in whispered tones only on secret underground websites, are suppressed by the vast right wing conspiracy and the very same fossil fuel companies who blew up the twin towers and tried to make Jesus kill the Romans.

But there’s still time to accept the billion dollars from the Arabs that the late Stanley Meyer so foolishly turned down.

What better treatment for a prize-winning gravity-driven lamp concept than a take-down-and-send-up? Daniel Rutter, an Australian journalist and blogger, is the author of this cutting use of elementary physics to debunk a patent-pending floor lamp designed by a Virginia Tech masters student (!). It won the second prize in a green gadget competition (!!).

A sample of Rutter’s observations:

It’s a funky looking thing, which was widely reported around the gadget blogs, and was alleged by its designer, Clay Moulton, to give the equivalent light output of a 40-watt incandescent bulb for four hours from the energy of a weight dropping about four feet, or 122cm. When the weight gets to the bottom, you just lift it back to the top and away you go again.

Now, it stands to reason that a mere 1.2-metre drop isn’t going to give you forty actual watts for four hours unless the weight is incredibly heavy. Ignoring losses, it would by definition take forty watts of power over another four hours to lift the weight back up again, which is 160 watt-hours, which is quite a lot. A normal adult human in reasonable shape can manage about 75 watts of output when pedalling away on a bike connected to a generator; it’d take more than two hours of such pedalling to raise that weight back to the top of the Gravia light’s tube, if the weight were heavy enough to make a constant 40 watts on the way back down.

So I just assumed the lamp’s brightness was greatly overstated, and wasn’t even four-watts-of-LEDs-that-are-sort-of-equivalent-to-forty-watts-of-incandescent. But since they’d clearly actually made the thing and it’d won an award, I presumed it did work, if only as a night-light. Fair enough.

But neither Clay Moulton nor anybody else has, actually, built a Gravia. The damn thing doesn’t exist.

[…]

The original press release about the Gravia on the Virginia Tech site now also contains a disclaimer from Moulton, though without any mention of him giving back the prize. I think it’s worth mentioning one line he uses on both pages, though: “I was told it was not possible given current LED’s, but given the rapid pace of innovation in low powered lighting, it would be a conceptual challenge.”

Yes, Mr Moulton, it certainly bloody would be a “conceptual challenge” to make a lamp that produces more than thirty times as much light as the laws of physics say is possible from the energy you put into it. That would be a pretty damn impressive achievement. I propose Virginia Tech not permit you to graduate until you do it. How’s that grab you?

Ouch. Let’s see what the US Patent and Trademark Office makes of this thing. Bet they issue a patent.

(Hat tip: Kriek Jooste.)

I’ve been fairly quiet recently, partially because I’ve had a lot of work that took me out of the office, and partially because I’ve had trouble with my computer on the few occasions I wasn’t. If I hadn’t been so quiet, it’s fairly certain that the continuing South African power crisis would have been high on the agenda.

This morning, after days of by-elimination guesswork, made more challenging by not having internet access, I realised that a power surge caused by Eskom’s policy of random blackouts has fried important bits of my new computer. My decision last year — to replace the computer I lost to an armed robbery with a new desktop rather than a laptop, on the basis that mere convenience was an unaffordable luxury — proved to be woefully over-optimistic and ultimately mistaken. It now turns out that a notebook computer, with its ability to shrug off daily two-hour power failures, is a basic necessity for anyone who needs a PC to do their job. As if that blunder wasn’t serious enough, now comes the icing on the cake: the unproductive alternative has been rendered entirely non-productive, having become a terminal victim of the very reason it was unproductive in the first place. It’s like I was robbed twice.

I’d like to thank Eskom, with all my heart. I eagerly await a cheque with which I can buy a new laptop. I’d also like to thank my parents, for their understanding and support, my friend Brian for lending me an old box of his, and my dogs, who endured my frequent irritability and late nights while tracking this problem during a week that was crazy with conferences and meetings and functions and missed deadlines. I feel so special. Last, but not least, I’d like to thank Alec “The Bolt” Erwin, who deserves my gratitude for his unwavering reassurance that the loss of my contribution to South Africa’s gross national income will not affect economic growth. Thanks for picking up the slack, Alec. These tears are tears of joy. You can e-mail my overdue copy to slavedriver@poorhouse.co.za.

I would like to present the Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa (NIASA) with the Monty Burns PR Award for outstanding achievement in making the nuclear industry look dishonest, stupid, manipulative, and evil. Well done, fellows.

I know they say “fight fire with fire”, but the latest move by NIASA is just plain dumb. It has brought a complaint before the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) after M-Net’s Carte Blanche screened a programme called Uranium Road

One hopes the BCCSA throws this complaint out with the contempt it deserves.

I didn’t see the programme when it was broadcast in November last year, but would not be surprised if it indeed is a biased piece of work.

A glance at the transcript shows that it raises some important issues, especially around nuclear security, environmental risk, and the economic viability of nuclear energy. It also degenerates into sensationalism, however. At one point, the effects of radioactive waste are described in all their gory detail, as if it goes without saying that this waste will not to be rigorously contained, but will be spread around the local environment to cause cancer and grow cute little mutant kittens.

Throughout, the programme it quotes David Fig, who is identified as an “independent researcher”, but in fact is the chairman of a left-wing lobby group named Biowatch South Africa. That should have been disclosed, especially since the programme refers to “the powerful lobbies that support nuclear energy” — lobbies that remain as anonymous as they sound ominous. Worse, Fig is selling a book, called… you guessed it, Uranium Road. This pecuniary interest in the subject is also never disclosed.

I don’t want to go into the actual arguments presented in the programme, or those presented by the nuclear industry, but a cursory examination of the transcript certainly makes me willing to accept that the programme may have to be taken with a pinch of salt, and that it isn’t impossible that the nuclear industry representatives featured in the story have been selectively quoted to fit the programme’s storyline. After all, if it cribbed the title of Fig’s book, it probably cribbed a lot more from his anti-nuclear, anti-corporate arguments.

But taking Carte Blanche to the BCCSA? Is the NIASA insane?

Environmentalists are supposed to be the petty fascists who invoke the authoritarian fist of government to bar free commerce, silence free speech, and sue anyone who dares offend against their fearful, conservative world-view.

This kind of braindead PR by NIASA certainly doesn’t make the nuclear industry look very honest, or sympathetic towards widely held concerns about nuclear energy, be they valid or otherwise. In fact, it reinforces the fear and distrust with which many people — and especially environmentalists and green fashionistas — view the industry. It is certainly not making it any easier for proponents of nuclear energy to make their case.

NIASA should be ashamed of itself.

Update: As I wrapped up this post, I discovered that the NIASA has withdrawn its complaint, following a “settlement”. Settlement with whom? On what terms? Why? And if it isn’t going to go through with the complaint to score a victory on factual grounds, what does the NIASA think it has achieved with this stunt? It may only have been established in June 2007, but if I were a member, I’d move to fire the executive already. So much for “powerful lobbies”.

In 1979, Jerry Pournelle, a science fiction author famed for his columns in computer magazine, Byte, wrote a non-fiction book, titled A Step Farther Out. The book was a fascinating collection of essays, rich with ideas and ideals. It would probably bear re-reading even three decades on.

Pournelle decried the defunding of space exploration, arguing that the moon had become viewed as a destination, rather than merely a first step of man’s journey into space. Motivated, no doubt, by apocalyptic visions of the population explosion, his argument was that not only was this the first generation that had the resources to expand into space, but it might well be the last. Moreover, the solutions to the world’s energy crisis and resource shortage, lay in space.

I think this is what he had in mind:

My word, Jerry Pournelle turns 75 this year!

No plan to fix the power catastrophe in South Africa will work overnight. The crisis is deep and wide and will have grave impacts on economic growth, inflation, and poverty alleviation for many years to come. (I’m usually reluctant to bandy about terms like “catastrophe” and “crisis”, but they’re justified in this case.)

This proposal, relatively simple in principle, is from Advocate Hendrik Schmidt, a parliamentarian for the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. He makes a good, concise case, of which the essence is this:

Eskom’s monopoly over electricity supply is one of the main causes of South Africa’s electricity crisis. The permanent solution to our energy future lies in dismantling this monopoly. Until independent power producers (IPPs) are allowed to enter the market to expand and diversify the sources of power we have access to, and until we are relieved of the burden of having to rely on Eskom’s outdated and dilapidated processes and infrastructure, local demand for electricity will continue to exceed supply.

This should have happened ten years ago. Even at this late stage, however, combined with short-term market-based efficiency measures, it offers the best hope for as rapid and complete a recovery as possible.

A return to state-controlled insularity and an “emergency plan”, funded by billions of public money, could work too, of course. But it would be expensive, it would be far more risky, it would be wide open to corruption, and it would be implemented by people with a disproven track record. And even if it does work, it will likely leave the country worse off in the end (albeit without an alternative future with which to compare it).

Usually, pricing electricity for the poor is raised as the core objection to permitting the free market to prove its mettle. Capitalists will simply raise prices, they say, and profiteer from the crisis. For a while, that is probably true. FA Hayek wasn’t wrong when he noted that the cure for high prices is high prices. They attract competition by signalling that supply must rise to meet demand. In a free market, in which legislated monopolies do not control supply, this results in downward pressure on prices.

But those who think that the concern of high prices is justified should lobby for a simple subsidy for the first X kWH of electricity metered. Or call for a “progressive electricity pricing scale” that works just as progressive taxation does. I’m not saying those are great solutions. My fear would be that price regulation for poor consumers will discourage companies from serving markets that are expensive to serve. But to satisfy those in government and elsewhere who fail to grasp this logic, such policies will overcome the most common populist objections to liberating the market. And at least they won’t break the market mechanism entirely. At least they won’t leave us all critically dependent on a dysfunctional and inefficient state-run industry.