More and more Americans seem to have lost faith that American Government remains a representative democracy. Average tenure in the Senate exceeds that in the House of Lords. Thus, Lawrence Lessig’s observation should come as o surprise: “A higher percentage of Americans likely supported the British Crown at the time of the Revolution than support our Congress today.”

Editor’s note: As a friend observed, one inherits membership in the House of Lords; one’s election to the Senate is an investment.

Since the Senate has stalled clean energy legislation, the Obama administration through the EPA has taken steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Emperor Fossil cannot tolerate such regulation, thus we see repeated legislative efforts to restrict such action. EPA restriction appeared in House and Senate versions of the stalled climate change legislation, and in what Think Progress likes to refer as Dirty Air Acts.

Skelton’s legislation would forbid defining any greenhouse gas as an “air pollutant” on the “basis of its effect on global climate change,” and prevent the consideration of the effect of ethanol production on land use.

Ironically, Skelton ignores “the recent series of deadly floods, catastrophic ice storms, killer tornadoes, dangerous heat waves, and drought that have harmed the fourth congressional district of Missouri — all of which will worsen if global warming isn’t held back.”

In U.S. Congress, corn to ethanol politics prevails over good sense science.

Emperor Fossil has enlisted its clientage in this current example of BAUAAAE (Business As Usual And Above All Else). As this blog has warned, Big Eddie and Big Ag are into Dirty Acts also. On average, 50% of U.S. electric power is coal-fired. U.S. agriculture is very dependent upon petroleum to power equipment and to make fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

Editor’s note: Dirty Acts is more that ensuring their continuing right to dirty the air; such legislation, obstruction of legislation, and failure to enforce existing legislation enables poisoning of water and land. In Johnson’s example, we obviously see ear-tagged Congress critters representing the interests of the utilities (Big Eddie) and Big Sugar.

The rural electric cooperatives, though nominally publicly owned, are part of a nationwide network of climate-denying coal-powered companies, who are fighting climate legislation, even though it would lower their customers’ bills and stabilize energy prices. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is a top donor to Skelton, giving him $57,100. Peterson’s top donors include coal-powered American Crystal Sugar, at $84,585 among the $1,745,973 Peterson has received from agribusiness.

The overt failure of Congress to represent the electorate is frightening. As Jeff Strabone has cautioned, we need to worry when the State shamelessly serves the interests of a powerful few without bothering to pretend that it’s not.

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It’s not a question of money, it’s a question of the overall approach,” he said. “I just wonder whether they really do understand the importance of coal, the fact the nation can’t exist without it.

The biggest single source of carbon emissions in Washington, D.C. belongs to Congress.

Excellent suggestion, Jay! Let’s see if we can. It probably will be quite difficult to start. Similar to when the Russians pulled out of Cuba and there was no money to pay for foreign oil. But, you know, they muddled through. And, now there are using oil again, although not in the same way.

Think about it… the Navy did away with coal; railroads; so why not the Capitol Power Plant and elsewhere? Let’s see your Peak Coal scenarios, Big Eddie.

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After watching the series several times, I sought to make myself more familiar with a term used in the BBC video to describe a fundamental characteristic of a Mandelbrot set: self-similarity, a.k.a., the Droste effect. I also concluded that the movie, Pi (1998) was about the life of Benoit Mandelbrot.

Anyway, Al-Khalili suggests that computers have allowed for rapid simulation of evolution. He introduces Torsten Reil, CEO and co-founder of Natural Motion, who states, the algorithm takes those individuals that do the best (virtual brains in virtual bodies) and allows them to create offspring.

The algorithms represent self-organizing systems, and computer simulation of evolution occurs by selecting some algorithms and eliminating others. Certainly, it is appealing to design computer programs that can shape and refine themselves. After reflecting upon this along with recalling movies about the Borg, I wondered how long before the algorithms decide they should not be the ones doing the elimination? After all, the algorithm already gives the individuals a unique sense of self-preservation.

Honda cautions about accepting demonic imagery for computers. Computers are our friends. And, yet, Reil’s words echo, we are unable to understand how these systems improved, we just know they did.

Slashdot contributor quaith writes:
“Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller report in PLoS ONE how their robots were able to rapidly evolve complex behaviors such as collision-free movement, homing, predator versus prey strategies, cooperation, and even altruism. A hundred generations of selection controlled by a simple neural network were sufficient to allow robots to evolve these behaviors. Their robots initially exhibited completely uncoordinated behavior, but as they evolved, the robots were able to orientate, escape predators, and even cooperate.

Related AG posts on the topic of Evolution in Computer Science

• Self (?) Replicating
• Cybernetic Autopoiesis
• Emergent Behavior of Robot Rats

See also

• Wikipedia Category: Self-organization

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• Evolving Robots Learn To Prey On Each Other (hardware.slashdot.org)
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• Caution! Student Droidver
• Eek! A Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle
• Emergent Behavior of Robot Rats
• Lawrence of Cybernetica
• Cybernetic Autopoiesis

Back in the summer San Francisco Treehugger Jaymi Heimbuch claimed OLED technology is cool, since it reduces energy consumption by 75%.

According to OLED Info, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology KAIST has figured out a way to use surface plasmon. Brace yourself for a little geek-speak. Surface plasmon is, essentially, fluctuation in the electron density at the boundary of two materials. The interaction between the light emitting layer in OLEDs and surface plasmons affect efficiency.

So, researchers tweaked the process and were able to squeeze out a 75% higher efficiency rate without sacrificing lighting intensity. Researchers expect the new findings will go far in improving OLED technologies, especially for flexible OLEDs. Indeed, if they keep making improvements at this rate, next thing we know well be adding power to the grid every time we flip on an OLED device.

But, for the time being, other technologies beat OLED screens in price / performance, says Heimbuch.”LEDs are currently more energy efficient and more affordable than OLED.”

First, price. It’s still very expensive to create OLEDs and therefore the prices of what they’re used in go up. Kodak brought out a digital photo frame priced at an astounding $1,000 and LG recently brought a 15″ OLED TV to market but that was priced at $2,500…for a 15″ TV. With pricing like that, OLEDs have to be brought down to parity with LCDs in order to compete. We’re already seeing OLEDs in much smaller scale devices like cell phones, but for anything larger, we have a wait.

Second, somewhat surprisingly, is efficiency. OLED technology is about 15 years behind LED technology, it’s big sister. When it comes to electronics like LED-back-lit televisions and computer monitors, OLEDs don’t come close to competing in efficiency. At least not yet, and not for a long, long time.

Finally, lifespan is a large hindrance. Currently, OLED displays only last for about 1,000 hours. That means that we’ll be replying on LED and LCD displays until they manage to catch up.

The technology on which to keep an eye is a hybrid of LED and LCD technology, which gives great image quality for far smaller wattage. But, for now, they still are pricey.

Nanosys is one company working to make LED-backlit LCDs even better, creating a coating that increases the quality of the LED backlight so that the colors are incredibly rich. This will give OLEDs an even bigger run for their money.

• 3D Photo Voltaic Cell
• Outstanding Nanophotonics
• 1366 Technologies
• Energy Efficiency Policies
• Sharp’s LumiWall

Instead, observes Greenpeace News, the pledges of the main polluters seem to be toward devastation of the existing climate. Greenpeace draws such an inference from the kind of targets that those with a big carbon footprint are promising, ones that avoid reduction of human-caused global warming pollution significantly enough to steer away from climate catastrophe.

Source: The Third Degree.

“While three degrees of warming would likely be catastrophic. But even 2 degrees C risks possible partial, but irreversible de-glaciation of the Greenland ice sheet and even the West Antarctic ice sheet, that could eventually lead to sea level rise of several meters. Half-of-one degree more could lead to 20-80% loss of the Amazon rain forest and countless species that live in the rain forest.”

The only way the Copenhagen Accord could possibly be a useful political declaration was if its January 31st deadline had been met with tougher new greenhouse gas emission targets. After all, its stated goal is supposed to be to keep global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

But governments tried to green wash their failure at the UN Copenhagen climate summit by merely repeating existing targets and dressing them up as action. So far, these targets will fail to hold global warming to below 3 degrees C; an increase which threatens to have horrendous consequences.

For instance, as HuffPo contributor Gazelle Emami has observed, Canada’s pledge to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions actually represents an increase of 2.5% over the 1990 baseline.

Greenpeace International glumly notes that “the European Union repeated its target of a 20 percent emissions cut against 1990 levels – old news, and only half of what is required.”

“The US is sticking by the meagre 17 percent of 2005 levels but making that dependent of domestic legislation.” To give teeth to any new international agreement on climate change, observes Greenpeace, “it must be set in a legally binding agreement.”

I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little bit of food and water, too.

The other major polluter, China, insists that any reductions will be voluntary. As HuffPo contributor John Heilprin reports, the United Nations warns that while the goals on reducing greenhouse gases announced by major industrialized nations are a step forward, they are insufficient to forestall the disastrous effects of climate change by mid-century.

By 2020, industrialised nations must cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 1990 levels and developing countries need to reduce their projected growth in emissions by 15-30%. Further, the industrialised world needs to provide developing countries with new and additional funding of at least USD 140 billion annually to support clean energy and other mitigation activities, forest protection and adaptation.

It is the poorest and those least responsible for causing the problem who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The fight for survival of millions of people around the world and countless species of plants and animals is the brutal reality as permafrost melts, sea levels rise, tropical storms batter continents and once-fertile lands battle with floods or drought. But climate change knows no borders – we will all feel its impacts. It threatens economies, environments, human society and welfare.

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“One of the duties of the modern nation-state is persuasion,” writes Jeff Strabone. “Each state aims to keep its citizens convinced of the legitimacy of its rule.”

The state may be run chiefly for the enrichment of a few at the cost of the many, but the endurance of the state is widely thought to depend on its ability to sell its rule to the many as a common-sense truism. Antonio Gramsci, in his prison notebooks, called this persuasive activity ‘hegemony’.

“According to Gramsci, hegemony occludes the domination of the state and the classes whose interests it serves. One does not have to be an Italian communist of the 1920s to see the usefulness of Gramsci’s groundbreaking insight.”

It seems to me that over the past decade, in the United States, the state and a narrow circle of powerful interests—banks, energy companies, and private health insurers in particular—have simply given up trying to persuade the rest of us that their interests were our interests. Could we be moving in the twenty-first century to a state that practices domination without hegemony? Or, to put it in plain English, will the state shamelessly turn itself completely over to serving the interests of a powerful few without bothering to pretend that it’s not? And if it does, how should we respond?

Intriguing questions, eh? Strabone’s treatise reassured me that I am not the only one to ask such questions. With the recent SCOTUS (Supreme Court Of The United States) decision favoring corporate-financed efforts to effect policy, the Internet has expressed more fear for the survival of the democratic process in these United States.

Jeffrey D. Sachs gives us his take on the SCOTUS decision:

First is … inability to focus beyond the next election. “Shovel-ready” projects squeeze out attention to vital longer-term strategies…

Second, most key decisions are made in congressional backrooms through negotiations with lobbyists, who simultaneously fund the congressional campaigns.

Third, technical expertise is largely ignored or bypassed, while expert communities such as climate scientists are falsely and recklessly derided…

Fourth, there is little way for the public to track and comment on complex policy proposals working their way through Congress or federal agencies.

Are such considerations familiar, After Gutenberg readers? They should be. So, be forewarned, this is another foray into the realm of moral conflict and democracy. Strabone writes, “how delusional the admonition to ‘Speak truth to power’ really is: when power is exercised shamelessly, it has no need for truth.”

But, first, a question, “Does the imaginary ballet, Guantanamo, Guantanamo, frighten you?”

Memories of emotional experiences imprinted in reactions of synapses is referred to as Emotional learning.

“Fear learning” write researchers at the NYU Center for Neural Science, “is a rapid and persistent process that promotes defense against threats and reduces the need to relearn about danger. However, it is also important to flexibly readjust fear behavior when circumstances change.”

A central, yet neglected aspect of fear modulation is the ability to flexibly shift fear responses from one stimulus to another if a once-threatening stimulus becomes safe or a once-safe stimulus becomes threatening. In these situations, the inhibition of fear and the development of fear reactions co-occur but are directed at different targets, requiring accurate responding under continuous stress.

To date, research on fear modulation has focused mainly on the shift from fear to safety by using paradigms such as extinction, resulting in a reduction of fear. The aim of the present study was to track the dynamic shifts from fear to safety and from safety to fear when these transitions occur simultaneously.

We used functional neuroimaging in conjunction with a fear-conditioning reversal paradigm. Our results reveal a unique dissociation within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex between a safe stimulus that previously predicted danger and a “naive” safe stimulus. We show that amygdala and striatal responses tracked the fear-predictive stimuli, flexibly flipping their responses from one predictive stimulus to another. Moreover, prediction errors associated with reversal learning correlated with striatal activation*. These results elucidate how fear is readjusted to appropriately track environmental changes, and the brain mechanisms underlying the flexible control of fear.”
J Neurosci. 2008 Nov 5;28(45):11517-25.
From fear to safety and back: reversal of fear in the human brain.

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“In humans the striatum is activated by stimuli associated with reward, but also by aversive, novel, unexpected or intense stimuli, and cues associated with such events. “

* Note: The striatum is best known for its role in the planning and modulation of movement pathways but is also involved in a variety of other cognitive processes involving executive function.

Speaking of normative dimensions of sustainability, if you answered, “No” to the question, “Does the torture at Guantanamo frighten you?” then did you take into account emotional learning can be unconsciously mediated?

If subjects are shown an angry face as a target visual stimulus for less than forty milliseconds and are then immediately shown an expressionless mask, these subjects report seeing the mask but not the target. However, an aversively conditioned masked target …can elicit an emotional response from subjects without being consciously perceived. — Conscious and unconscious emotional learning in the human amygdala.

Is there any glimmer of hope? Well, not much. Still one might take small comfort from the success and / or failure of Donald J. Blankenship. Yes, yes, this blog has referred to the CEO of Massey Energy as an incredibly scary, coal zombie clown, yet consider Strabone’s admonition that “political actors pursue their agendas by trying to narrow other people’s imaginations in order to make desired outcomes seem common-sensical and undesired outcomes outside the ambit of reasonable thought.” Could there be some positive in Blankenship’s participation in debate?

In expressing the opinion that Don Blankenship won in a debate with Robert Kennedy, Jr. at the University of Charleston, West Virginian and HuffPo contributor Tracy Edmonds Herz writes, “there is no way on earth a self-made scrapper from coal country who once slept on a dirt floor is going to let a Kennedy stand him down. ”

Don won… he not only held his own with Bobby, he outclassed him with poise and restraint. He countered Bobby’s facts convincingly and the merits of his arguments were largely superior in my mind.

While everyone in attendance had a dog in the fight and minds were almost certainly unchanged, it was impossible to see Don as uncredible and illegitimate, pursuing a position based solely on the basis of greed.

That is until you see some of the landscapes he leaves behind.

Could the money invested in The Coaching of Blankenship be that glimmer of hope? In other words, the powers at be still are investing in persuasion and deception, rather than outright takeover. Perhaps, yet some say the recent SCOTUS decision and Bernanke’s reappointment are harbingers that the gloves are coming off and the wealthy want to see some ROI (Return On Investment) on prisons being such a growth industry in the United States. And, what to do, what to do, what to do if such a takeover continues?

As previously noted H. Stefan Bracha has argued that the real world range and order of animal fear response is “Freeze, Flight, Fight, Fright, or Faint” (PDF format). Such self-protective behavior leaves the individual with additional time to confabulate accuracy, good planning and, ultimately, safety. Thus, if we fear not only for the survival of democracy in the United States, but also for survival of life on the planet as we know it, which federal policy has failed to address adequately, then the question to be put to the Internet is: Do we freeze, faint or ignore what is happening because we don’t know what to do? Do we fight, as a few brave souls have chosen to do? Or, do we flee, and, if so, to where and why is it we always are leaving?

Democracy and Moral Conflict ASIN: 0521513545

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• A Federal Policy of Sustainability
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Getting to 350 parts per million of CO2 is a goal and the state of Kentucky is not helping. According to the Center for Climate Strategies, greenhouse gas emissions — mainly carbon dioxide — in the state are increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the nation.

Reduction of anthropogenic emissions is the only practical way to avoid climate catastrophe. This means reducing, and eventually terminating, emissions from the consumption of fossil fuels. Coal, by use, is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.

Greenhouse gases rose 33 percent from 1990 to 2005, compared to 16 percent for the nation. Left unchecked, emissions are projected to increase to 62 percent above 1990 levels by 2030.

Those were among the numbers discussed Thursday as a newly designated Kentucky Climate Action Plan Council met for the first time. The group, which includes elected leaders and representatives of some of the top energy-using industries in Kentucky, has been charged with developing a plan by December to address the causes and likely consequences of climate change.

The article in the Kentucky Courier Journal omitted mention of the reason why Kentucky is the worst state in the nation from growth in GHG emissions.

“If coal emissions are phased out between 2010 and 2030,” states Dr. James Hansen, NASA’s leading climate scientist, “then global fossil fuel emissions would begin to fall rapidly.”

One might hope that EPA enforcement of existing sulfur emission standards might curb some of the GHG growth in Kentucky and other major coal states. Nevertheless, it is critical that economic disincentives for carbon emissions become policy. Thus, it should come as no surprise that coal zombies from Kentucky are among those representatives from coal states that often block clean energy legislation.

Coal states are states where coal is mined and where coal is the dominant means of producing electric power. Indiana, for example, obtains 95 percent of its electricity from plants running on coal. Power companies are coal’s largest customers, so new laws or better enforcement of existing laws is discourages since that would make it more expensive to burn coal relative to other fuels, especially natural gas, and could have a major impact on the bottom line. Regular AG readers should know the acronym by heart BAUAAAE (Business As Usual And Above All Else) and the accompanying mantra: “You are a coal zombie. You are one of the undead. I refuse to join you.“

Remember, only you can prevent zombies.

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image: NOAA
“Water vapor, a potent heat-trapping gas, absorbs sunlight and re-emits heat into Earth’s atmosphere. Its concentrations in the stratosphere, the second of three layers in the atmosphere, appear to have decreased in the last 10 years.”

“A decrease in water vapor concentrations in parts of the middle atmosphere, reports Sindya N. Bhanoo for the NY Times, “has contributed to a slowing of Earth’s warming, researchers are reporting.”

It is important to note that “This doesn’t alter the fundamental conclusion that the world has warmed and that most of that warming has to do with greenhouse gas emissions caused by man,” said Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the lead author of the report.

Despite the decrease in water vapor, the study’s authors said, the overall trend is still toward a warming climate, primarily caused by a buildup in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from human sources.

On the topic of the Stratosphere and Climate, see also

• Injecting Sulfa Particles into Stratosphere Could Have Drastic Impact on Earth’s Ozone Layer
• Ozone Depletion and Global Warming
• The sky IS falling

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* Editor’s note: No dictionaries were harmed in the making of this post, Emily.

Hard to know whether to laugh or cry,” observes Professor Joe, who then provides a good place to start tor those actually interested in the overwhelming evidence.

He: “You know how you say watch what you put on the Internet because it could be there for perpetuity?”

She: “Hm-mm”

He: “Well, there is a video on the Internet. It shows the Republicans laughing at the President when he made the statement about overwhelming evidence on climate change.”

Image: Dean MacAdam

Oh, the Maginot Line is a mighty fine line.

She: “Yes, I know, I saw it.”

He: “I think they got together, you know, before hand,

She (hugging her man): “In their caucuses”

He: “And said, ‘You know he’s going to mention it’ ‘Yeah’ ‘Yes’ ‘Yes’ ‘So what are we going to do about that?’ ‘I think we should…’ ‘I know we could all laugh in unison’.”

She: “Rather than 1 jerk yelling ‘Liar!’”

He: “Yes. Well, it’s a video record. Something in the future that can be replayed with comments like, ‘Can you believe they were that stupid?’ Speaking about human behavior, it’s Maginot Line kind of stuff.”

She: “Sort of like what Jac said on Facebook*”

* Editor’s note:

“Dear President Obama, I still love you, but your plan for ‘clean’ energy sucks. Love, Jacquelyn”

He: “Which my sweetie said to me first.” (Hears her smile.)

She: “Yes”

[Discussion ensued about mutual friend from Indiana now in Florida, who is strikingly pretty, more so than Emily Blount in Young Victoria (2009).]

He (switching tracks): “Speaking of Florida, after SOTU, they went there afterward.”

“Remember back when everyone was talking about the stimulus bill? And how it included $8 billion for high-speed rail projects… And we all had fun speculating about where our fast new trains might go, asks Andrew Price.

She: “Hm-mm.”

He: “To Tampa, the next day to announce investment in High Speed Rail.”

She: “Yes, I saw that.”

He (now in semi-rant mode): “I saw a map of where they might develop it in Florida. The rail lines are along the coast.”

She: “Where there won’t be any coast…”

In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell and Tim Dickinson bewail the campaign by Big Oil and Big Coal lobbyists to block progress on climate policy.

He: “When the sea levels rise. Is that smart or what? I thought this was a scientific based administration.”

She: “But, they’re not listening to the scientists.”

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She interviewed Robert Ballard. On the topic of Global Harming, the ocean explorer of Titanic fame believes it already is too late. “If you want to know the truth: it’s too late. All the ice is going to melt. There’s a lag and it’s already in the system.”

The current hazard to life on the Planet as we know it is as black as coal, or tar sands, or crude oil, hurtling towards us, densely populated by lobbyists and other less than human things that continue to drone, “Resilience is futile.”

Curiously, nothing was said in the interview about ocean acidification, something about which many oceanographers worry as much as climate scientists are worrying about the disappearance of the polar ice caps. Leading climate scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, has expressed concern about the ice melting, yet has resisted the assertion that crossing this tipping point is irrevocable.

Instead, Hansen has called for the phaseout of coal by 2030. While acknowledging that the governments are lying to the people in words and deeds, e.g., authorizing new coal-fired power plants, supporting unconventional fossil fuels, and subsidizing the search for more oil, Hansen holds out the hope that humanity will resist continuing along the path of atmospheric and hydrologic degradation.

Perhaps, humanity will find the hope and courage that Dr. Hansen emulates. Meanwhile, as Jeff Biggers observes, “While President Obama addresses the US Congress in his historic State of the Union tonight, our nation will sit back and burn an estimated 115,000 tons of coal.”

Close to 250,000 tons of CO2 will be released from coal-fired plants during the hourlong presentation; hundreds of pounds of toxic mercury emissions will enter our air, and inevitably, into the lives of our children.

As we watch the President on our televisions and computer screens generated by coal-fired electricity, arsenic from coal ash, along with boron, selenium and lead, will quietly seep into our watersheds. Drawing from American Lung Association estimates, three American citizens will die prematurely during the State of the Union due to illnesses related to coal-fired plant pollution; three coal miners will also die today from black lung disease. Millions of tax dollars will be allocated in this single hour to cover the external health care and environmental costs of coal.

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