Author Archives: L J Furman, MBA

About L J Furman, MBA

Analyst here and Director of Information Technology with an MBA in Managing for Sustainability.

Ethics in the Workplace Improved During the Recession

Ethics in the Workplace Improved During the Recession,

“A national employee survey shows that like the Enron era, ethical conduct improves temporarily during periods of economic stress.

“Arlington, VA – Do Americans in the workplace behave better in a down economy?  Apparently yes, according to the Ethics Resource Center, which today announced the results of its sixth National Business Ethics Survey® (NBES). The full report, Ethics in the Recession, is available here.

“Seventy-eight percent of U.S. employees say they or their colleagues experienced the impact of the recession.  Yet key measures of ethical behavior – the amount of misconduct observed, the willingness to report misdeeds, the strength of ethical cultures and the pressure to cut corners – all improved since ERC’s last survey in 2007, shortly before the recession started. Only retaliation against those who reported misconduct ticked upward by 3 percentage points.

How do I interpret the data? People realize that there is more to life than money and material goods. Or –

  1. There is less money to steal.
  2. People watch more carefully.
  3. The smart crooks hide.
  4. Some of those who would steal if given the chance choose not to because they can’t afford the risk.

So if the crooks steal less and do so less brazenly then the general level of dishonesty is lower and the general level of ethical behavior is increased. But, an ethicist might say, for the wrong reasons. They don’t “sin” out of the fear of “Hell” not out of the joy of “Heaven.”

Green Energy: Our Future Depends On It

Back in February, 2009, Business Week published my article, Green Energy: Our Future Depends on It. They even asked for a picture – which I was happy to provide.  I just learned that it was picked up by other web-sites:

The article is reproduced below. Continue reading →

Clean Coal – Doesn't Exist But Promises to Be Expensive

mountaineer_coal

Mountaineer Coal Plant, New Haven, W. Virginia, Photo Copyright, NY Times.

According to Kevin Riddell, in the New York Times, (click here for article) the 20 MW carbon sequestration subsystem at the Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, West Virginia, will cost “well over $100 million.” Ridell says:

American Electric Power is spending $73 million on the capture and storage effort, which includes half the cost of the factory. Alstom, the manufacturer of the new equipment, paid for the other half of the factory, hoping to develop expertise that will win it a worldwide market. Alstom would not say what it spent, but public figures indicate that the two companies are jointly spending well over $100 million.

I pulled out my trusty pencil and paper, and did some calculations. If “half the cost” of the facility is $73 million, then the other half is also $73 million. That “well over $100 million” adds up to about $146 million. For a 20 mw facility, that means $7.3 million per mw. It’s not clear from the article whether this is the cost of the carbon sequestration facility or the costs of the turbine plus the carbon sequestration facility. The article also mentions that the energy costs of the carbon sequestration operation are projected at 15% to 30% of the plant’s output.  “More expensive than solar or nuclear.” Utility scale Solar is $6.5 billion per mw,  89.0% of the cost of this facility, even before you factor in the costs of fuel, mining, and clean-up.

Do We Need More Wilderness?

A poll in the Summit Daily News

, Colorado website asks if we need more wilderness areas. The questions:

“Yes, we need more wilderness area protection.”

“No, it’s too much land taken from other public use.”
“Don’t really know too much about it.”
“Need to know more about the plan, first.”

To add your voice, Summit Daily News

.

King Coal: Wise Monarch or Cruel and Ruthless Despot?

Chris Dorst, Charleston, WV Gazette.

Chris Dorst, Charleston, WV Gazette.

According to Mortality Rates in Appalachian Coal Mining Counties: 24 Years Behind the Nation, by Michael Hendryx, of the Department of Community Medicine, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV <pdf>, mortality is 10.21 % higher in Appalachia than elsewhere in the US, and 18.45 % higher in in coal mining counties where 4 million tons or more of coal are mined. (See also Coal Tattoo.)

Part of the problem is poverty, lack of education, smoking, and other factors, but these are all related to the coal economy.

Continue reading →

UnClean Coal

Industry Week reports a prototype carbon sequestration plant at the American Electric Mountaineer facility in New Haven, W. Virginia (full Article here). Let’s look further, and let’s look at the numbers. The article states: “the pilot facility captures and stores around 20 megawatts of carbon dioxide from West Virginia’s Mountaineer plant. The unit can handle only a fraction of Mountaineer’s 1,300 megawatt capacity”

I suppose it is reasonable to assume that they mean they have essentially created a 20 mw power plant inside the main 1,300 mw plant, and they can sequester the carbon for this 20 mw subplant.  That’s great. A 20 mw sub-plant in a 1,300 mw plant is 1.5385% of the total.  That’s like taking a Hummer that get’s 10 miles to the gallon, and tuning the engine and keeping the tires properly inflated so it gets another 812 feet 3.94 inches, for a total of 10.15385 miles to the gallon. You can do that. But you can’t do it and claim to be driving an efficient vehicle or conserving energy in a meaningful way.

My first question is “What’s a megawatt of carbon dioxide?” Carbon dioxide is measured in cubic feet, ounces, or metric tons. Megawatts don’t apply to quantities of solids, liquids, or gases; watts, kilowatts, and megawatts measure capacity to produce power. Watt-hours, kilowatt-hours, and megawatt-hours are measures of power.  If they don’t know what they’re talking about that doesn’t give me much confidence that they know what they’re doing.

The article goes on to say “Alstom aims to have a full-scale commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility operational by 2015.” It says says “We have a prototype.” That means that by the end 2015 – six years from now – they hope to be successful. Six years is a long time to keep a project on schedule. Phrased another way, six years is a long time for nothing to go wrong.

The article also states “burying the captured carbon dioxide 7200 feet underground.” That’s roughly 1.36364 miles underground. I have some questions:

  1. How much will it cost to run, in terms of 1) money and 2) energy to put the carbon dioxide down there, and keep it down there?
  2. How much does it cost to build?
  3. How long can we pump carbon dioxide down there? If the coal plant has a 30 year life expectancy, then don’t we will need to pump carbon dioxide 1.36364 miles down for 30 years?
  4. What happens if something goes wrong at 7200 feet? Or 5280 feet underground? Or even 528 feet underground? If something goes wrong close to the surface I expect we’ll see a geyser of ice cold carbon dioxide.

T. Boone Pickens says land based wind costs about $2.0 Billion per gigawatt of capacity.  Pickens has been called many things, but he’s never been called an environmentalist.

Solar is about $6.5 Billion per gigawatt, when you’re talking 100 to 500 kw systems in New Jersey.

According to Kevin Riddell, in the New York Times, (click here for article) this 20 MW carbon sequestration subsystem will cost “well over $100 million.”

American Electric Power is spending $73 million on the capture and storage effort, which includes half the cost of the factory. Alstom, the manufacturer of the new equipment, paid for the other half of the factory, hoping to develop expertise that will win it a worldwide market. Alstom would not say what it spent, but public figures indicate that the two companies are jointly spending well over $100 million.

If “half the cost” of the facility is $73 million, then the other half is also $73 million. That “well over $100 million” adds up to about $146 million. For a 20 mw facility, that’s $7.3 million per mw. Utility scale Solar is $6.5 billion per mw.  Solar costs less than coal, and that’s before you factor in the costs of fuel, mining, and cleaning up the mess.

Economics: NeoClassical v Ecological

2009 Lamborghini Gallardo LP560 Spyder

2009 Lamborghini Gallardo LP560 Spyder

“All this matters because economists thought, wrote, and prescribed as if nature did not.”

J. R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun.

“Global Warming is nonsense. Greenhouse gases mean growth, far as I can see. The Earth is one big resource, to exploit and consume, for the grand old party.”

L. J. Furman, Sunbathing In Siberia

Economics, according to Daly and Farley, in Ecological Economics, ISBN 1-55963-312-3, is “the science of allocation of scarce resources among alternative ends,” or  “what we want and what we have to give up to get it.”

Since the Great Depression economics has been about growth. Neo-Classical Economists measure the health of an economy by the growth of Gross Domestic Product, GDP, the sum of the goods an services produced in the market.

Ecological Economists think that the purpose of the economy is not simply to maximize and keep increasing the value of goods and services that are passed around. According to Robert Costanza, Director of the Gund Institute and Professor of Ecological Economics, University of Vermont, “The purpose of the economy should be to provide for the sustainable well-being of people.” Ecological Economics distinguishes growth from development. Growth, an increase in throughput, can waste resources. Development, a qualitative change for the better, results in realization of potential. Ecological Economists distinguish between costs and benefits, and subtract costs.  Rather than the Gross Domestic Product, GDP, Ecological Economists focus on the Genuine Progress Indicator, GPI,and distinguish economic goods from what Donella Meadows calls “economic bads.

Continue reading →

Obama and Holt on Health Care

President Obama

President Obama

Washington, DC, Nov. 7, 2009, 11:00 PM. The U. S. House of Representatives passed a health care bill that appears to profoundly change the system.

According to President Obama, (click here or  here)

Comprehensive health care reform can no longer wait. Rapidly escalating health care costs are crushing family, business, and government budgets. Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have doubled in the last 9 years, …. This forces families to sit around the kitchen table to make impossible choices between paying rent or paying health premiums. … The United States spent approximately $2.2 trillion on health care in 2007, or $7,421 per person – nearly twice the average of other developed nations. Americans spend more on health care than on housing or food. If rapid health cost growth persists, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2025, one out of every four dollars in our national economy will be tied up in the health system. This growing burden will limit other investments and priorities that are needed to grow our economy. Rising health care costs also affect our economic competitiveness in the global economy, as American companies compete against companies in other countries that have dramatically lower health care costs.

According to Rush Holt, D, NJ-12, (click here or here)

Rep. Rush Holt, D, NJ-12

Rep. Rush Holt, D, NJ-12

This bill would provide secure and stable health coverage regardless of whether you change jobs or are between jobs, ensure Americans will never be denied care if they get sick, and extend coverage to those not well served by the current system.

This is a historic vote and the furthest we have come toward providing affordable and quality health coverage to all Americans.

Once this bill becomes law, it immediately would eliminate cases where insurance benefits run out because of an expensive illness, would allow young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance through age 26, and would shrink the Medicare prescription doughnut hole.

The bill would strengthen and extend existing programs.  For example, those who have health insurance through their employers would benefit from caps on yearly out of pocket costs.  Under the legislation, Medicare would be intact, only better – recipients would benefit from free preventive care and better primary care.  Clickhere to read more about what the bill would do for you.

Reform would preserve the relationship between families and their doctors and shift to a focus on healthy outcomes and rewarding physicians for treating the whole patient.

Representative Rush Holt on Health Care Legislation

In an e-mail to supporters, Rush Holt, D, NJ-12 said,

Rep. Rush Holt, Ph.D.

Rep. Rush Holt, Ph.D.

I just now voted for the Affordable Health Care for America Act. I want you to know about this development and what the bill means for you. This bill would provide secure and stable health coverage regardless of whether you change jobs or are between jobs, ensure Americans will never be denied care if they get sick, and extend coverage to those not well served by the current system.

This is a historic vote and the furthest we have come toward providing affordable and quality health coverage to all Americans. Continue reading →

President Obama on Health Care Legislation and the Process

Washington, DC, Nov. 7, 11:15 p.m., the House of Representatives voted to pass their health insurance reform bill. Despite countless attempts over nearly a century, no chamber of Congress has ever before passed comprehensive health reform. This is history.

President Obama

President Obama

According to President Obama:
“… Each “yes” vote was a brave stand, backed up by countless hours of knocking on doors, outreach in town halls and town squares, millions of signatures, and hundreds of thousands of calls. You stood up. You spoke up. And you were heard.

So this is a night to celebrate — but not to rest. Those who voted for reform deserve our thanks, and the next phase of this fight has already begun.
Continue reading →

Systems Thinking on the Gross National Product

Robert F. Kennedy, in a speech at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968,  said:

Robert F. Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy

“Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

Thinking In Systems, by Donella H. Meadows

Thinking In Systems, by Donella H. Meadows

As Donella Meadows explains in Thinking In Systems, ISBN: 978-1-60358-055-7, “The GNP lumps together goods and bads. (If there are more car accidents and medical bills and repair bills, the GNP goes up.) It counts only marketed goods and services. (If all parents hired people to bring up their children, the GNP would go up.) … It measures effort rather than achievement, gross production and consumption rather than efficiency. New light bulbs that give the same light with one-eighth the electricity and that last ten times as long make the GNP go down.”

“GNP,” Professor Meadows said, “is a measure of throughput – flow of stuff made and purchased in a year – rather than capital stocks, the houses and cars and computers and stereos that are the source of real wealth and real pleasure. It could be argued that the best society would be one in which capital stocks can be maintained with the lowest possible throughput, rather than the highest.”

Popular Logistics Congratulates President Obama on the Nobel Prize for Peace, 2009

Popular Logistics Congratulates President Obama on the Nobel Prize for Peace, 2009.

Popular Logistics is a Policy Blog, not a Politics Blog. We don’t really have to answer “Why Obama?” We are not on the Nobel Committee, we don’t know anyone on the Nobel Committee, and the Nobel Committee does not answer to us.  However, since I’m diving into this head first, here’s how I see it.

People watching the election results in Athens, Greece

Watching the election results in Athens, Greece

No other world leaders come close. Not Gordon Brown, not Nicholas Sarkozy, not Angela Merkel, and not the Pope.  And certainly not Putin, Medvedev, Castro, Kim Jong-Il, Chavez, or Achmadinejad, altho I am sure that the Nobel Committee could have awarded the prize to a dissident or a journalist in Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, or Iran.

Step-Grandmother Sarah Obama in Kenya

Step-Grandmother Sarah Obama in Kenya

It has been speculated that the Nobel Committee wanted to influence Obama to de-escalate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If so, maybe that would be a good thing. If more world leaders act with history in mind, if they compete to make the world a better place for all, not only a better place for their friends and family, then the world would be a better place.

Israel

In Jerusalem, Israel

And look at these photos. These are Obama supporters around the world from the day after the election. This is why Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. With his focus and eloquence, his intelligence and education, his humble origins and demeanor, Barack Obama inspired a strong majority of American voters in the election of November, 2008. Prior to the election he inspired a small army of supporters, mostly volunteers, who took his campaign to the streets of all 50 states.

Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia

He has inspired people of good will all over the world who see in him, and in the America, and the Americans who nominated, elected, and inaugurated him the America and the Americans who climbed out of the Great Depression with public works not a military rebuilt for an invasion, who fought and won World War II, who put men on the moon, and brought them safely home.

At his school in Jakarta

At his school in Jakarta

We see an America in which, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, we are “judged by the content of our character not the color of our skin.”

The America in which President Kennedy said “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

“

Senator Robert F. Kennedy said: “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were and ask why not.“

And Senator Edward M. Kennedy said: “It is better to send in the Peace Corps than the Marine Corps.“

Business News That's Fit To Print

There’s a lot in these articles, and a lot to read between the lines in these articles from the New York Times

– Business Section. (Between the Lines Concept 1

– the Business Section, not the Science

section.)

From E.U. Plan to Curb Carbon Dioxide Would Favor Solar Power

By James Kanter.

07energy_190“The European Commission is expected to introduce a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that directs the largest slices of €50 billion available for research and development to solar power and capturing and burying emissions from coal plants.”

“But the plan also signals the need for a reordering of the bloc’s priorities by requiring governments to spend significantly greater sums of money on clean energy even as the world emerges from a deep financial crisis.”

  • 16 Billion Euros for Solar.
  • 13 Billion Euros for emissions capture and storage.
  • 11 billion Euros for enhanced urban efficiency.
  • 7 billion Euros for improving nuclear energy – produce less radioactive waste, minimize proliferation.

Between The Lines Concept 2: Euros 13 Billion for Emissions Capture and Storage – that’s a lot of money. Assuming they can make it work – Carbon Capture and Storage has never been done, and other coal waste storage is expensive and difficult. Kingston, Tennessee Coal Ash Spill – Nasa / National Geographic / Popular Logistics 1 / Popular Logistics 2

Continue reading →

Systems Thinking and Politics, or Rachel Carson and Donella Meadows meet The Frankenstein Monster

The Frankenstein Monster as interpreted by Boris Karloff may have been a big guy who didn’t know his own strength – again unbalanced reinforcing loops. As interpreted by Mel Brooks he was just misunderstood. Once those reinforcing loops were balanced – put the big lug in a tux – all hell didn’t break loose.

Frankenstein_monster_Boris_KarloffSystems Thinking

is a framework and a toolkit (check out Stella and i Think from I See Systems ) with which ecologists and ecological economists can model the real world of the carbon and hydrologic cycles, ecosystems and economic “bubbles.” But how do we model systems that are difficult to quantify? Is it science fiction, as in the psychohistorians of Asimov’s Foundation Series ( e-book )? The actions of the government of the United States have profound effects on this country and the world. Can we use Systems Thinking to model political movements? Did Bill Clinton and James Carville, George W. Bush and Karl Rove and Barack Obama, David Axelrod and Dan Plouffe use  Systems Thinking to create a balancing feedback mechanism and win an election? Could they have?

As we were taught in high school, the Constitution set up a system of government of three balanced branches. The “checks and balances” of the Executive enforcing the laws written by the Legislative and interpreted by the Judiciary. This is a system with balancing feedback mechanisms.

Continue reading →