Cyreenik Says
Fracking is an example of a technology picking up The Curse of Being Important. This 25 Jun 11 WSJ editorial, The Facts About Fracking, discusses the highlights of this transformation from obscure to cursed. Here are some highlights:
o "Only a decade ago Texas oil engineers hit upon the idea of combining two established technologies to release natural gas trapped in shale formations. Horizontal drilling—in which wells turn sideways after a certain depth—opens up big new production areas. Producers then use a 60-year-old technique called hydraulic fracturing—in which water, sand and chemicals are injected into the well at high pressure—to loosen the shale and release gas (and increasingly, oil)."
This is a surprise use of an existing pair of technologies. It has proved quite effective, and use has taken off like wildfire, so much so that it has become a game-changer in US energy.
o "The resulting boom is transforming America's energy landscape. As recently as 2000, shale gas was 1% of America's gas supplies; today it is 25%. Prior to the shale breakthrough, U.S. natural gas reserves were in decline, prices exceeded $15 per million British thermal units, and investors were building ports to import liquid natural gas. Today, proven reserves are the highest since 1971, prices have fallen close to $4 and ports are being retrofitted for LNG exports."
But while natural gas is greener than coal, this technology is not politically correct green the way wind, solar and ethanol are, and so it has come under heavy fire from environmentalists and other supporting wind, solar and ethanol. Part of the response of the opposition has been to promote lots of emotion-based worries about the technology. They are invoking The Curse.
This response, invoking The Curse, is expensive for Americans. This final paragraph from the editorial outlines why.
o "Amid this political scrutiny, the industry will have to take great drilling care while better making its public case. In this age of saturation media, a single serious example of water contamination could lead to a political panic that would jeopardize tens of billions of dollars of investment. The industry needs to establish best practices and blow the whistle on drillers that dodge the rules."
In other words, instead of welcoming a needed energy bonanza, The Curse says, "Let's make this process extra safe, extra expensive, and extra slow to implement."
Making choices such as this one are why America is moving so slowly out of its economic malaise. We as Americans need to recognize... The Cost of The Curse ...and be doubly sure we want to be paying it.
This month we have headlines about stress building in the US, Europe and China. China is going through a belt-tightening to rein-in inflation. Europe's banking establishment and governments are getting deeply scared over Greek Contagion and its effect on banking and bonds. And the US is fighting over debt limits and a worrisome double dip in housing prices that could be presaging a double dip in the economy. Here are two example articles from the 15/16 Jun 11 WSJ, The Dangers of a Default Position and Beware Contagion From Greeks Baring Rifts both by Richard Barley.
Stress is rising. This is Step One of the three steps in having a Blunder. Step Two is having something novel and scary happen. Step Three is the Blunder.
Right now we are at a similar point in popular feeling to what GW Bush and administration was experiencing in 2001 as he attempted a "soft landing" for the economy after the Dotcom Bust. That effort was dramatically interrupted by 9-11, and the Blunder of the Decade (at least) followed.
So... watch out for Step Two: something strange and scary.
One indication that the stress in the US is ready to produce non-linear outcomes is Wienergate. Wiener's actions were boorish, and the high-tech twist made them novel, which is attention-getting, but this should not have become a weeks-long center of national attention.
An example of how important novelty is to the Blunder-making process is to note that the US has been experiencing record-breaking violent weather this spring, but that has not produced the call for a Blunder. Bad weather is something mankind has a lot of experience with. It's scary, but not new.
So watch for new and scary, then watch out!!!
Update: More underlying stress: A 21 Jun 11 WSJ opinion on why the Chinese economic situation could be more perilous than it seems, Beijing's Financial Day of Reckoning Is Near by Carl E. Walter and Fraser J.T. Howie, "A large part of China's economic miracle was built on dodgy loans, the bill for which is now coming due." And a 22 Jun 11 article on contagion stress, Money Funds' Euro Risk by David Reilly.
Update: Another stress indicator, Obama is publicly getting nostalgic. He's thinking like the liberals of the 1930's who blamed the Great Depression on too much productivity. This 22 Jun 11 article, Obama vs. ATMs: Why Technology Doesn't Destroy Jobs by Russell Roberts, discusses Obama's claim and refutes it.
Update: The Time of Nutcases is coming to the Euro-zone over stress caused by the Greek Contagion issue. This 12 Jul 11 WSJ editorial, Ratings Gag is no Laughing Matter by Richard Barley, tells of "European Commissioner Michel Barnier suggested Monday that ratings on countries receiving financial aid should be banned." In other words, he's suggesting solving the problem by shooting the messenger. Shooting the messenger a classic symptom of stress caused by a problem that can't be solved by conventional methods.
Every baby grows up to become a distinctly different adult.
Likewise, every social revolution matures in its own way to become a distinctly different chunk of history.
But humans have many things in common, and so do revolutions.
One disturbing feature that is common to many social revolutions is the bloodbath phase. This phase comes after the revolution has gone through its increasingly chaotic phase of glorious experimentation and the community now backs a leader who promises a return to stability. That leader first puts a veneer of order on the community, but that veneer is thin, there is still a lot of discontentment among both losers and winners of the revolution as it has progressed to this point.
The common next step is for the "I'm bringing stability" leader is to engage in an external war. Fighting this war provides a unifying goal for all members of the community -- it is something discontented members of all the different advocacy groups can get behind in the name of carrying on the revolution.
Here are some examples
Revolution -- Leader who brings order -- bloodbath war
French --------- Napoleon -------------- Napoleonic Wars
Russian/German - Stalin/Hitler --------- World War Two
Chinese -------- Mao Zedong ------------ Korean War
Iran/Iraq ------ Khomeini/Hussein ------ Iran/Iraq War
What these bloodbath wars have in common is that they run for years and kill lots of enthusiastic revolutionaries.
So... now we have an Arab Spring revolution cycle beginning in North Africa and the Near East. <shudder> When will the bloodbath wars begin?
Let's look at our list again:
Revolution ----- "Beginning" ----------- Bloodbath War starts
French --------- 1789 Bastille --------- 1796 Napoleonic Wars
Russian/German - 1917/18 End WWI ------- 1939 World War Two
Chinese -------- Wuchang Uprising 1911 - 1950 Korean War
Iran/Iraq ------ 1979 Shah leaves ------ 1980 Iran/Iraq War
(Beginning is in quotes because the revolutionary chaos always predates the point history selects as the beginning of a revolution.) The time between the beginning of the revolution and the beginning of the bloodbath war varies enormously -- from one year in the case of the Iranian Revolution to forty years in the case of the Chinese Revolution. In the case of the French Revolution, the bloodbath wars actually began before the restore-order-leader came to power -- Napoleon was not declared leader until 1799.
Who the war is taken up with is not completely predictable, but a nearby powerful neighbor who is a traditional rival is a common choice. The French took on traditional rival Austria, the Russians and Germans took on each other, as did the Iranians and Iraqis -- dual neighboring revolutions are a nearly sure bet because both leaders need the bloodbath.
The odd case was the Chinese taking on the far-away Americans as their bloodbath opponents -- much more likely opponents would have been Russia, Japan or Vietnam. But the Americans blundered into that role because of a different year-earlier blunder: That of Kim Il-Sung believing he could unify Korea in a quick war with Russia backing him up. (Truly the Korean War was odd, odd, odd.)
The above is the bad news. The good news is that modern communication technologies -- on-site TV reporting, fax, Twitter, Internet -- dramatically reduced the violence associated with second half 20th century revolutions such as those of The Philippines, the East Block nations breaking up, and Haiti. (Most of them, but Iran/Iraq proved that this lessening of violence was not universal.) So, as the Arab Spring revolutions progress, they may evolve quite differently, and more peacefully than their forebearers.
If they don't, if they evolve with as much violence as their earlier predecessors, then when they produce their "I'm bringing stability" leader, nearby powerful nations need to brace themselves for the prospect of fighting a long bloodbath war. The traditional rival for many of these Arab Spring nations is Israel, so Israel is now in the crosshairs for a new style of violence coming up in a few years -- helping deeply frustrated revolutionaries shed lots of blood in a long bloodbath war. This will be a quite different role for them, and not pleasant for anyone involved.
-- The End --