tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99670502024-03-08T22:15:45.278+00:00Tim JervisPersonal notesAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-86590361137211423042007-08-12T22:42:00.000+01:002007-08-12T23:47:46.627+01:00All the news that's fit to burn<a href="http://www.newspaperinnovation.com/index.php/2007/08/10/london-battlefield-one-year-later/#more-680">Newspaper Innovation claims</a> that in London every weekday, <a href="http://www.newspaperinnovation.com/index.php/2007/08/10/london-battlefield-one-year-later/#more-680"></a> 400,000 copies of the London Lite and 500,000 copies of The London Paper hit the streets, almost literally as they are discarded on the floor. Have you ever wondered what that flow of newspapers would be worth as a source of energy?<br /><br />My friend weighed an typical London paper and came up with 100 grammes. So we have just short of 65 tonnes of newspapers per day, every day, on average (i.e. averaging the weekdays over the weekend too).<br /><br />What is a kilogramme of newspaper worth, in energy terms? <a href="http://www.p2pays.org/ref/11/10059.pdf">Aysen Ucuncu at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University</a> comes up with a figure of 7540 BTU/lb, or 4.9 kWh/kg. So we can calculate 13 MW of potential thermal power flows onto London's streets, embodied in the carbon bonds of those free newspapers.<br /><br />What could that potential be worth? Imagine you could collect all the newspapers up, without expending a single Joule of energy in the process, and burn them in a biomass boiler. Let's say you attached the boiler to a generator to make electricity at maybe 27% efficiency and sold it for £32/MWh, a typical long-term contract price for electricity from a waste-to-energy plant in London. You'd get £1m per year, or roughly 0.4 pence/newspaper.<br /><br />Are the newspapers a significant source of energy? No. Burning them would supply only 0.04% of the average UK primary energy demand per person (13 MW of power over a readership of 7 million Londoners is 0.04 kWh/day/person, while average UK demand is 120 kWh/day/person).<br /><br />Funnily enough, if you were to ever read one of these papers, it wouldn't be long before you read that you should unplug your mobile phone charger, for the sake of climate and energy security. But leaving a phone charger plugged in these days typically draws less than 1 W of electricity, or less than 0.02 kWh/day. You could generate electricity at more than five times that rate by burning your daily paper in the scheme above. Whether you thought it was worth reading first is up to you. All I can say is unplugging your mobile phone charger isn't going to save the planet.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-70839945334758993602007-05-15T11:48:00.001+01:002008-05-20T09:32:05.806+01:00CO2 pollution from nuclear construction is irrelevantNuclear power is often cited as part of the solution of a low-carbon future, but detractors sometimes cite the CO2 pollution that would result from the concrete and steel needed for construction as a reason to hold back. While there may be other reasons for holding back, this particular one is spurious.<br /><br />A way to measure the pollution performance of different energy sources is to divide the amount of CO2 pollution by the energy produced. For fossil fuels, looking at the fuel and not the plant cost (which we assume to be irrelevant), this number is between 300 and 900 g CO2/kWh, depending on whether you use gas, oil or coal, and how efficient your plant is. The CO2 involved with constructing (<span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>operating or decommissioning, mind) is only 1 g CO2/kWh.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The calculation</span><br /><br />How much concrete and steel in a nuclear power station? The Nuclear Energy Institute claim (<a href="http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=3&catid=1525">http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=3&catid=1525</a>) 400,000 cubic yards (306,000 cubic meters) of concrete and 60,000 tons (67,000 tonnes) of steel in a 1 GW rated nuclear power station. Let's work out how much CO2 this means, then divide by the energy generated over the productive life of the plant.<br /><br />Notice our input figures are rough, so we're really only looking at one significant figure accuracy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CO2 from concrete</span><br /><br />How much CO2 is produced when making 520,000 cubic meters of concrete? That depends on the kind of concrete. There are different types and different figures. One way - take the density of concrete (2,300 kg/m^3 from the Physics Factbook), the CO2 to make cement (0.8 kg CO2/kg cement), the cement in concrete (10% from cement.org). This makes a figure of around 100 million kg of CO2 in our nuclear plant.<br /><br />However, the Danish Technology Institute report (<a href="http://www.danishtechnology.dk/_root/media/21047_769203_Task%204_CO2%20Balance_final%20report_DTI_31-01-2006.pdf">http://www.danishtechnology.dk/</a>) is probably more authoritative. They claim that a cubic meter of concrete requires the production of 100 kg CO2, giving us 50 million kg of CO2 in our nuclear power station.<br /><br />Comparing the figures, the order of magnitude matches. To be harsh, though, let's take the bigger figure - 100 million kg of CO2 for the concrete in a 1 GW power station.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CO2 from steel</span><br /><br />How much CO2 is produced when 67,000 tonnes of steel is made?<br /><br />Blue Scope Steel (<a href="http://csereport2005.bluescopesteel.com/">http://csereport2005.bluescopesteel.com/</a>) claim they put out 14.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent gasses in 2004/2005 to produce 5.72 million tonnes of steel product, which suggests around 2.5 kg CO2 per kg of steel.<br /><br />Azom.com materials suggests around 2 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel, and Tata Steel claim (<a href="http://www.tatasteel.com/webzine/tatatech39/page14.htm">http://www.tatasteel.com/webzine/tatatech39/page14.htm</a>) between 1.2 and 1.9 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel, depending on the process.<br /><br />Let's be harsh again and pick 3 tonnes of CO2 for a tonne of steel. So we have another 200,000 tonnes of CO2 from the steel, or 200 million kg of CO2 from the steel to make a 1 GW nuclear power station.<br /><br />Sum the steel and concrete CO2 figures: 300 million kg of CO2. If we had been conservative, that would have been 100 million kg CO2.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Energy from a 1 GW nuclear power station</span><br /><br />If the power station produces power for a conservative 40 years, and runs for a pathetic 60% of the time (thus we're allowing for maintenance periods), the plant will deliver 210,000 million kWh of electricity.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The ratio is nearly zero<br /><br /></span>The simple ratio is 300,000,000 kg CO2 / 210,000,000,000 kWh - nearly 0.001 kg CO2 / kWh. Irrelevant.<br /><br />This ignores the pollution from getting the fuel and running the plant. Also remember the CO2 is largely produced up front, which is bad news for quick CO2 reduction, but even building 10 GW of capacity to replace the UK's ageing plants will only produce 3 million tonnes of CO2 during construction - less than 1% of UK CO2 pollution in one year.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-83048132125499619642007-03-28T13:52:00.000+01:002007-03-28T14:18:46.627+01:00How not to support low carbon innovationYesterday the Carbon Trust held a debate on how to innovate towards a low carbon economy debates. During the discussion, the need to make money, engage with investors and encourage investment came up. It was suggested that carbon dioxide pollution would be reduced as a welcome by-product of investors' greed. Meanwhile, in the audience we wrung our hands, wondering about how business and the government could encourage innovation with a little investment here or some market intervention there.<br /><br />Yet there is one clear, simple answer to address this issue. The mother of invention is necessity. The government should foster innovation by regulating the amount of carbon dioxide with which we pollute the atmosphere. The regulation will have to be introduced carefully and will require significant public involvement and education to avoid the cure being worse than the disease. Nevertheless, with a pollution limit in place, there will be no end to our innovation.<br /><br />Note also we must turn the relationship with investors on its head. Society must first proscribe the requirements, then their inventive and tireless pursuit of the best return on capital can optimise a solution.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-79751344465004900222007-02-28T12:45:00.000+00:002007-03-01T07:27:50.638+00:00Smoke and mirrors - a tax on your jet fuel?A <a href="http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/CarbonTaxation/">new petition</a> has appeared on the Downing Street website this month urging the Prime Minister to introduce a tax on jet fuel. While no doubt well intentioned, could such a tax make matters worse, if it is not accompanied by comprehensive pollution regulation?<br /><br />One possible, presumably intended consequence of the tax would be to deter people from flying. Unless the tax is set at a high enough level it is doubtful that it will reduce the amount we fly by any significant amount. How high is high enough? It would be a brave Government which imposed a fuel tax of as much as 100%. Yet fuel costs already rose by more than this in the past four years and flying is as popular as ever. Setting a politically acceptable tax is therefore unlikely to raise the cost of flying to the point where people choose not to fly. For many, as long as alternatives remain relatively costly and slower, flying will remain the popular choice, even with the additional financial burden of a fuel tax. The reality is that people benefit from the ability to fly too much to care about relatively small changes in price.<br /><br />Worse, there are other, less visible side effects of a fuel tax. Imagine the tax is imposed and the cost of flying goes up a little, perhaps by as much as the difference between booking a few days later on a low-cost airline. You have already decided to fly because there aren't any good alternatives, but you intend to compensate by saving a little elsewhere. Herein lies the second problem.<br /><br />Squeezing people's purses will drive them away from "green" goods, which are frequently more expensive. The local organic produce starts to lose out to the cheaper, polluting alternatives. That "green" energy provider that is a bit more expensive than the others starts to look less attractive. In this scenario, the fuel tax could have the perverse effect of increasing the pollution rate.<br /><br />Finally, consider what the government is likely to do with the new tax. Governments like to generate growth. Growth correlates very closely with CO2 pollution. Without some care, the tax could well be spent on growth activities and with a concomitant increase in pollution.<br /><br />So what is the solution to these unintended consequences? The answer lies in better regulation. The Government ultimately needs to limit the overall level of pollution, capturing all its sources. Without this, otherwise well-meaning pollution initiatives are in danger of back-firing in a cloud of smoke and CO2.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-23331852815298181452007-01-31T08:01:00.000+00:002007-02-26T23:00:33.024+00:00Omit the emissions euphemism<span style="font-weight: bold;">The first step to addressing the problem of climate change is to use the correct language - <span style="font-style: italic;">pollution</span>, not emissions. The term pollution is logically correct. Moreover, using it immediately shows up some otherwise well-meaning solutions as false, and it prepares the ground for what is really needed: a regulated cap on acceptable levels of pollution.</span><br /><br />Crude oil and CO2 are both natural substances. Both have valuable properties: one powers our society and the other helps plants grow. Both can be deadly: components of crude oil are carcinogenic; fill your lungs with CO2 and you'll suffocate. The distribution of both, in time, can be managed by natural processes. Among the important differences, however, is the following. Whereas crude oil can be naturally broken down relatively quickly (indeed it's likely that the best thing to do with an oil spill is to leave it alone and not spray with chemicals), the rate at which these natural processes work on CO2 is too slow for our current population. This presents a problem of <span style="font-style: italic;">pollution</span>.<br /><br />Crude oil is not normally pollution. It naturally bubbles up from the ground, albeit in small quantities, in some places of the world. When you put a lot of it into a tanker, you're managing a valuable commodity. However, when the same oil is no longer in the tanker but spilled onto the surface of the sea or shore, it's a liability. Just like industrial solvents that are valuable in the factory but costly when flushed untreated into a river, otherwise precious molecules can be transformed into <span>pollution</span> just by being in the wrong place and in the wrong quantity. <span style="font-style: italic;">Emission </span>is an unacceptable euphemism. In the same context, pollution is the right word to use when talking about our influence of CO2 in the atmosphere.<br /><br />Accepting this word <span style="font-style: italic;">pollution </span>is the first step towards averting long-term climatic disaster. It clarifies the problem and even helps to immediately assess the relative merit of some candidate solutions.<br /><br />Would you like a personal CO2 pollution credit, as advocated by the Royal Society of Arts and echoed by the UK government's David Miliband? No. I don't want personal pollution credits for mercury, lead, CFC or SO2 either. I certainly don't want personal pollution credit cards filling up my wallet.<br /><br />Should CO2 pollution be regulated? Yes. Should CO2 pollution be regulated at source? Yes. It is conveniently easy to identify the source of the pollution. Oil and gas wells, coal mines and cement factories are difficult to hide, both financially and physically. You could even use Google Earth to help.<br /><br />As consumers, we must do what we always do and make our choices based on the value and cost of the products and services available to us. Remember we are all addicted to the processes that produce CO2 pollution and that coming off these processes "cold turkey" could lead to political unrest and a cure worse than the disease. We need to take some of the responsibility ourselves to reduce consumption and be prepared for strong price signals that will induce different behaviour.<br /><br />As people in business, we must clean up the pollution for our consumers and pass on our costs through the economy. There is only one great technological fix available at present - the capability to modify power stations to capture the CO2 they produce. Otherwise, the options are limited and unsatisfactory. We must take CO2 out of the atmosphere more quickly, using plants and trees. Sadly, the final, uncomfortable truth is that we must use the polluting processes less (which brings a concomitant risk of societal failure, but then there are no guarantees that we will survive this challenge.)<br /><br />The effect on the economy will be significant, but will be less if the rate at which we need to change is minimised. So we need to start as soon as possible.<br /><br />Governments must create a process which measures absolute pollution levels. It must be aware that increased efficiency can often lead to the rebound effect - an increase in overall consumption. Measuring absolute levels of pollution will help avoid this trap and the problems of well-meaning but flawed "sustainable development" projects which do not even measure how much pollution they have produced or removed from circulation.<br /><br />Call CO2 pollution what it is, then regulate it to cap it. Regulate it at source (and at the border of your country if it is not regulated in the country of origin.) Regulate to manage the absolute amount in the atmosphere. This means caps are more important than trades. You don't reduce the number of slaves just by creating an international slave trade. Concentrate on the cap, then the mechanism.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-52230172286182032322007-01-23T08:53:00.000+00:002007-01-23T09:06:16.454+00:00Economist podcast musicThe music used by <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.economist.com/">The Economist</a> newspaper to open and close a podcast is by the <span style="font-style: italic;">Penguin Cafe Orchestra</span>, called <span style="font-style: italic;">Perpetuum Mobile</span>. It's on several albums, one of which is <span style="font-style: italic;">Preludes Airs and Yodels (A Penguin Cafe primer)</span>.<br /><br />Why post this? Because I couldn't find this information when searching the web and never got a response from the Economist when I wrote to ask them the answer. Many thanks to David MacKay for identifying the track.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1156179406689442372006-08-21T17:50:00.000+01:002007-01-23T08:57:11.135+00:00CO2 Capture and Storage doesn't always add up<a href="http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/publications/frontiers/STAGING/local_assets/do5p18-25climatechg.pdfwnloads/bpf1">BP's Frontiers magazine, April 2006, contains an interview with BP Chief Scientist Steve Koonin and a discussion on carbon capture and storage</a>. BP are to develop a 350 MW combined cycle gas turbine to be fueled from hydrogen. A special process will convert natural gas into the clean-burning hydrogen fuel and CO2. BP announced with some environmental enthusiasm that the CO2 will be captured and pumped underneath the North Sea into the Miller field, safely separated from the atmosphere. Unfortunately, while the project is technically impressive, financially responsible and socially valuable for securing our future energy supplies, it is highly doubtful that this development is environmentally positive.<br /><br />BP tells us that pumping some 1.3 million tonnes each year of CO2 into the old Miller field will have an "added bonus" of increasing the amount of crude oil produced from the reservoir. The additional production will be "up to" 40 million additional barrels of crude. These additional barrels are barrels that would otherwise have been stuck underground.<br /><br />Perhaps the additional 40 million barrels from Miller will mean that 40 million barrels from elsewhere will not be produced. If so, we can relax and join in BP's environmental enthusiasm. But what if not? What if all other production will continue anyway, and instead BP just added 40 million barrels of oil to the total amount of crude that will ultimately have been produced, most of which to end up as CO2 in the atmosphere?<br /><br />This second (I feel safe in saying more likely) scenario means that the CO2 cost of the "added bonus" of "up to" 40 million additional barrels must be taken away from the atmospheric benefit of capturing the CO2 in the first place. How does the overall balance look?<br /><br />Roughly, one barrel of oil, after refining into components and the various parts combusted in air, equates to around 400 kg of CO2. This is a rough figure and depends on the kind of crude, refinery efficiency and fractions, but we're not an order of magnitude out. So up to 40 million additional barrels of crude gives us, roughly, up to 16 million additional tonnes of CO2 .<br /><br />BP tell us that they expect to pump around 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 each year into Miller. That means for more than the first 12 years of operation, the CO2 capture operation will have put more CO2 into the atmosphere than if it had never been built. It could have vented the CO2 to the atmosphere, saved the cost of the additional equipment and the energy required to run it, and left the extra crude in the ground.<br /><br />It could be that all the oil comes out after 12 years, or at some complicated rate relative to the CO2. Perhaps so, although the economics are likely to mean that one would engineer the extra oil to come out as quickly as possible to generate revenue (see below). Also, to be fair, BP did say the figure was "up to" 40 million barrels. They could get less, in which case the CO2 payback will be that bit sooner. But how soon? In fact, how long will the plant run? For longer than 12 years one would hope. Surely this depends on the economics - how do they look?<br /><br />The article inevitably takes the opportunity to importune governments to step in to address the additional costs of sequestration. Somewhat odd, then, that this project is going ahead already and others are in the CO2 CCS pipeline. Perhaps BP's share of the value of 40 million additional barrels of oil, around US$3 billion at today's prices, might help to offset the sequestration costs? That might keep the plant going, at least while the additional production flows. After that, perhaps it would be financially wiser to turn off the plant.<br /><br />Shame about the atmosphere.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1153998562390689052006-07-27T12:00:00.000+01:002006-07-27T18:55:42.846+01:00Energy efficiency is a false targetYou don't need to read much about energy or climate change before the goal of greater energy efficiency is stated, usually without any further analysis or justification. The United Kingdom's long-awaited and much researched <a href="http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/review/">Energy Review</a>, published July 14th 2006, asserts the same goal. Unfortunately, the goal might have the opposite effect on climate change to that intended.<br /><br />The only figure that will affect climate change is our absolute rate of greenhouse gas emissions. How many people it took to put the molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere, or where they were living at the time, is entirely irrelevant. We will get no points for reducing our per-capita use of energy if there are simply more of us, and no points for merely reducing the rate at which our emissions increase.<br /><br />If we are to avoid explicit population controls and rationing, then surely improved efficiency is to be welcomed as a way to reduce emissions? Not necessarily. The problem is that efficiencies can drive down costs and thereby increase consumption. The net effect of efficiency is not always obvious. In very general terms, as a society our industrial and domestic efficiencies have never been higher - along with our consumption.<br /><br />This effect is well-known in economics as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox">Jevon's paradox</a>.<br /><br />As an example, consider the efficiency of the airline industry. As it improves, the price per seat falls. Those that flew before notice a cost saving and the industry uses fewer resources servicing them, but soon a slew of new customers arrive who find the price affordable. Consumption rises. In the same vein, as we improve the performance of battery-powered devices, electric cars, lighting and so forth, expect new applications to appear that will help us reach new heights of consumption.<br /><br />Should we target overall consumption instead? Yes, but we must be aware of another potential problem, ultimately that of social unrest. How should a finite resource be rationed and distributed among a population? We want it all - a stable climate, with the lights on and freedom from the fear that a disgruntled neighbour with fewer rations doesn't overthrow society and break those lights we worked so hard to keep glowing.<br /><br />Sadly, the call for efficiency repeated by the Energy Review and governments around the world could backfire. More consideration to other effects is needed. Although the treacherous rocks of inadequate energy supplies, climate change and social unrest have been charted by many, no-one appears yet to have understood how to navigate our civilization safely past all three.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1147621869723495512006-05-14T16:14:00.000+01:002006-05-14T16:51:09.736+01:00Energy prices: a cure as painful as the diseaseEva Sprunt, President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, writes in the <a href="http://www.spe.org/spe/jpt/jsp/jptmonthlysection/0,2440,1104_11038_5137544_5140259,00.html">April 2006 edition of JPT</a> that the cure for high oil prices is high oil prices. She debunks the idea that oil is running out and welcomes the high oil price as a way to ensure that more marginal fields will be produced and that alternatives will be found.<br /><br />It is not right that we should berate our energy industry. It is vital to our lives; we are all a part of the demand side, the supply side, or both. We depend on hydrocarbons to grow and transport our food, move us (or our friends, colleagues, suppliers or customers) about the planet and in myriad other ways. However, this short-sightedness by a senior member of the oil and gas industry (and similar comments by Exxon-Mobil) is not helpful.<br /><br />Whether there is any oil left in the ground or not is not the issue. The problem is the price of getting it. If the cure is also high prices, that is a reason not to rejoice but to be dismayed.<br /><br />Higher prices will no doubt help develop alternative energy sources in a way that no amount of government coaxing could. We may well leave half the oil in the ground as we find a better fuel or feedstock. However, if the price rises are too fast and we blight the lives of people unable to change their economic situation quickly enough, the battle is already lost. Our property prices, industry, service businesses and transport infrastructure have evolved under relatively stable energy prices for too long. Our co-dependencies are too great for a significant and rapid price increase to go un-noticed.<br /><br />Higher prices might also help mitigate pollution and climate change. This will be, at best, a happy side-effect. The oil industry is busy developing heavy oil, shale and tar sand sources that produce more CO2 than lighter oils per unit of energy. The will to mitigate climate change is too weak and the evidence not widely accepted. Our efforts should be in learning how to live with higher sea levels and perhaps more extreme weather - whether naturally or un-naturally occurring, both seem more likely in the future. Raise the Thames Barrier and don't buy property seaward of it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1152107796502405012006-04-28T19:00:00.000+01:002006-08-09T15:02:42.370+01:00Russia must change course to maximize her returnsRussia is fortunate to have 5% of the world's oil and a third of the world's gas. Nevertheless, her future is murky. The market is changing and requires investment and innovation - two areas in which the Russian oil and gas sector has a poor track record. Russia must invest in technology and improve its business environment if she is to maximize her returns.<br /><br />The demand for oil and gas has never been higher. In spite of oil prices more than doubling in the last three years, demand has risen, not least from the high-growth economies. China continues to grow at around 10% a year and recently overtook the UK to become the fourth largest economy in the world. China is motoring, figuratively and literally, and as Chinese cyclists take to cars the demand for oil will rise yet higher.<br /><br />As this demand strengthens, supply is tightening. Downstream spare capacity is low and plant has been offline, putting into question the availability of finished products. In addition, at the peak of the "Peak Oil" debate, Jeroen Van Der Veer, Chief Executive of Royal Dutch/Shell conceded in the last few weeks that easy oil production may well have reached its maximum.<br /><br />As well as problems with raw energy supply, there is now a further premium on energy security. Alternatives are being sought not only to overcome the depletion of traditional sources, but to build in protection against political disturbances.<br /><br />Amid rising demand, tightening supply and the need for increased energy security, there is a dearth of industry talent. The industry has clearly been caught short. Its response is to innovate - as must Russia if she is to avoid damaging her interests.<br /><br />Leaders recently concluded at Davos that there is no shortage of energy, albeit that the new sources are unconventional and more costly. The industry is busy gearing up to exploit new sources such as heavy oil, shale oil, tar sands, remote gas and renewables.<br /><br />The market has shown little hesitation in bearing the cost of innovation and there is major investment already in place. Large capital projects are underway in Canada's Alberta tar sands (a large high-security source for North America) and LNG projects are myriad, with new and existing facilities from the Adriatic to Zeebrugge.<br /><br />These changes increase the likelihood that in the coming years there will be a large, diversified energy market. This market will be built up from multiple alternative sources, fossil and renewable, with greenhouse gas pollution addressed through technology such as carbon capture and storage. A global LNG market will be served by multiple suppliers. Participation in this market will require significant technical capability and a secure business environment.<br /><br />The levels of investment needed to create and operate within this market will be high and in stark contrast to the levels seen in recent years, especially in Russia. There have been notable exceptions, such as Sakhalin, but in general more investment is needed. There is only so long that the over-engineered, but now old and failing, Russian infrastructure can last - both oil and gas production fell in Russia during the 1990s, in part through poor reservoir management and poor equipment. Investment is also needed in supporting industries, especially power and transport.<br /><br />This necessary investment will be helped by the right business environment. It is here where most of the innovation needs to happen. Russia is eroding trust in her ability, or willingness, to supply and thereby helping to stimulate a competitive market better able to supply world demand.<br /><br />As Russia adjusts her contracts with her CIS customers, her heavy-handed use of the gas supply taps will not be forgotten in Europe. As well as the problems in the Ukraine at the beginning of the year, Georgia's supply problems have also not helped.<br /><br />Whether the cause is terrorism, political manipulation, contractual dispute or mechanical failure, the West mistrusts the flow of energy from Russia. Europe and America are redoubling their efforts to improve their energy security accordingly. The UK is re-assessing its energy options with renewed concern, revisiting a 2003 white paper on energy security. Europe has already re-focused attention on its LNG plans for the Adriatic in direct response to Russia's dispute with the Ukraine. Iran has recently been limiting supplies through the Ukraine to Turkey, adding to the impetus of customers to find alternatives.<br /><br />LNG and GTL will both play a significant part in this drive for diversification. LNG offers the promise to turn gas into a fungible commodity like oil and to create a significant spot market. Aside from releasing customers from the tyranny of a fixed pipeline, GTL could also make large quantities of stranded gas economic, some estimates of which have been as high as 2,500 TCF, a volume even greater than that of Russia's recorded reserves.<br /><br />The market, however, will not change quickly. LNG requires long-term contracts to support its significant capital cost and new capacity takes time to construct. The development of a spot market must also take place in the gaps between these contracts, which will dominate at least the next decade of development. Then there are technical requirements for LNG at compatible calorific value for gasification, which will limit the effective market capacity in the short term before the appropriate plant is in place.<br /><br />Alternatives are not straightforward and there is some muddled thinking going on. For all the talk of nuclear power, it can only displace gas used for electricity generation. Nuclear power cannot be used as a petrochemical feedstock, nor can it be fed into domestic boilers or car petrol tanks. The time spent creating a viable alternative hydrogen economy is measured not in years but in decades, assuming the technological hurdles can be overcome.<br /><br />In short, there is obviously a significant opportunity for Russia to take advantage of higher hydrocarbon costs. She has a wealth of assets and access to technology, both home-grown and from abroad, through existing relationships with the super-majors and service companies.<br /><br />Russia risks, however, failing to realise her full potential by creating an adverse business environment and being blind to competition from an expanded, diversified energy market. She must act to secure trust, put in place a clear tax regime and act against corruption, or risk diminished future returns by reduced participation in the new energy market.<br /><br />This opinion piece first appeared in <a href="http://www.cisoilgas.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">CIS Oil and Gas</span></a>, April 2006Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1137570677184399122006-01-22T13:25:00.000+00:002006-01-22T13:53:00.400+00:00Who cares about climate change?We talk a lot about climate change but in reality even what little we are doing to mitigate the problem could well be making it worse. We should be more honest in our intent.<br /><br />The clearest exposition I have found on the argument that climate change is occurring and that there is a human component is presented by the Royal Society <a href="http://www.royalsoc.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=1630">here</a>.<br /><br />Imagine you wanted to put as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as possible. How would you do it? Scavenge as much oil, coal and natural gas out of the ground as you could? Strive to keep the price low? Encourage industrial growth and consumption worldwide? All of the above?<br /><br />Now imagine you want to do the opposite. Extend the use of nuclear power, encourage renewable energy sources, attempt to reduce demand and trade in carbon credits?<br /><br />If you really meant it, then you'd also add in the opposite actions of your first list. Sadly, when it comes to our collective actions, we don't really mean it.<br /><br />Our economy doesn't really care about climate change or emissions reductions. We tinker here and there. Nuclear power, renewables or demand reduction could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but these are secondary effects to the real reason we pursue these options. What we really care about is energy price and security of supply.<br /><br />What about carbon credits? Are they, at least, part of climate change mitigation? No. The tax insufficient to stop demand, and I doubt if we would ever stomach the price levels that would affect demand. <a href="http://news.ft.com/cms/s/da6888fc-6b7c-11da-8aee-0000779e2340.html">Recent gas price increases have already called for a reduction in emissions controls</a>. Worse yet, <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article332163.ece">much of the tax take is simply sitting in the coffers of government</a>, whose objective is economic growth. Economic growth increases greenhouse gas emissions. Perversely, the carbon tax could therefore be spent putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.<br /><br />We can either create economic growth or address climate change. We are not ready to harm the former for the sake of the latter. In turning to technology, we might be able to do the former and the latter together. But we should stop pretending to ourselves that we really yet care, let alone have a plan.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1129706549675302522005-10-19T10:22:00.000+01:002005-10-19T08:22:29.710+01:00UK vs high-growth energy economies and CO2China's current rate of energy sector growth is equivalent to the whole of the UK's energy sector per year. What is the point, therefore, of a UK effort to reduce CO2 emissions if the focus is not on exporting technology and knowledge to China (and India)? The UK could switch off its entire CO2 production immediately, a goal far beyond the aspirations of the most ardent environmentalist, and merely shift the CO2 timeline by 12 months.<br /><br />Instead, if they want to make a difference, the UK and others must concentrate on global technology and market solutions that the high-growth world will adopt.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1128253028508200592005-10-02T12:18:00.000+01:002005-10-02T12:37:08.540+01:00Go-oogleI wish there was one place to go to plan a route. You could call it go-oogle.<br /><br />You'd say "I want to go from 23 Acacia Avenue to Rijswijk" and it would give you a route optimised for time, cost, CO2 or Ozone profile, as you wished, covering taxis, trains, flights, boats, subways and so on. Maybe it could search interesting events and suggest a lay-over at a hotel for a concert the night before.<br /><br />I'd like it to know things like it takes 2 hours to check into an international flight and 45 minutes between a domestic landing at London Stansted to get to the train platform for London. I could tell it that but the database would build up even more quickly if people shared this kind of knowledge.<br /><br />Another way of looking at it is an expanded Expedia or Transport for London (which does a reasonable job of integrating buses, trains and the Underground metro).<br /><br />It would get the bulk of it's data from online sources, much like the way I imagine Froogle works. A table and a bit of dynamic programming would work wonders.<br /><br />You could improve your company's costs by understanding the implications of flying to the outskirts of a city and taking a cab, as opposed to taking a train to the centre.<br /><br />Revenue from online advertising of travel services in the normal Google style, as well as local services at either end or along the route. It could sell tickets or link to ticket vendors. It could suggest lay-overs to take in concerts.<br /><br />I wish the future would happen sooner.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1126663949356771502005-09-14T03:10:00.000+01:002005-09-14T03:12:29.356+01:00Energy knowledgeEnergy is crucial to almost every aspect of our economy. Our current use of energy is predicated on the idea of an abundance of cheap sources. Now, the prices are rising. We should prepare to behave differently and knowledge is going to help.<br /><br />We have not yet reached peak oil production, the significant point at which supply will no longer be able to grow to reach an increasing demand. Nevertheless, fossil fuel prices at present are high, due in part to low investment in the last ten years. Demand is rising, especially in China, which has only just begun to motorize in significant volume. Chinese motorization is significant not just because of the size of the growth, but also because of the lack of an alternative fuel for cars.<br /><br />Economists assure us that GDP in the US and Europe is less dependent on oil than it once was and that therefore we are better prepared than we once were for increased energy costs. Sadly, the laws of physics haven't changed. Our imports, once manufactured domestically, still require energy. We will pay additional import costs one way or another.<br /><br />This is no bad thing. Higher fossil fuel costs will do more to mitigate climate change than any amount of imploring from well-intentioned commentators. Innovation in energy might provide greater political stability, too.<br /><br />Information will be critical to energy innovation, to support decisions to reduce demand, improve efficiency, make new investments in breakthrough technologies and undertake fundamental research and science.<br /><br />There is a socially important and profitable future in energy and knowledge.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1126663821318920772005-09-14T03:09:00.000+01:002005-09-14T03:10:21.323+01:00Do better by being informed'Knowledge Management' is a hateful phrase, despised for failing to deliver or failing to define itself. This is a shame, because the original idea - do better by being informed - is a good one. What happened?<br /><br />Do better - waste less, spend less, sell more, charge more, make a greater margin - by making good decisions. Your decisions are more likely to deliver results if you are well informed. Knowledge management was meant to support such decisions by delivering answers to the right people at the right time and place. It was to do this by recording, measuring, instrumenting, institutionalising journalism, creating searchable archives of electronic data and promoting knowledge sharing between people.<br /><br />The technical difficulty is the first hurdle. Assuming you can capture all this information, to make a difference you need to use it to build a landscape and plot a profitable course through that landscape. The scientific method of recording data, hypothesizing and inferring correct causal relationships is not easy. But then, try doing it without the data in the first place.<br /><br />The second hurdle is that at a management level the big picture is easily missed and it loses priority. People latch on to a component - a search engine, a web page, the idea of having meetings - and equate knowledge management to just that. It's then easy to reduce its priority. Other things take over, such as the urgent need to make a decision, and the knowledge management effort is lost while everyone scrabbles around for the information needed to make that decision.<br /><br />If the phrase 'knowledge management' isn't working in your environment, drop it. But don't lose sight of the value of being informed when you need to make a decision.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1123840696316782242005-08-12T10:38:00.000+01:002005-08-12T10:58:16.320+01:00Manage knowledge in your workflowA frequent response to the need to manage knowledge is to create another database, define a file-naming convention or a new directory in which to store data. It doesn't work. Instead, integrate knowledge management into your workflow using a search engine over your message archives.<br /><br />The traditional filing approaches to knowledge management usually start in a flurry of activity. They are accompanied with the great relief of the person charged with finding a solution as having found one. The additional effort required then grates with the normal way of doing things and inevitably things get left out. The new repository is no longer (or never was) a worthwhile place to go to get the answers. People fall back into emailing or talking on the phone, more information bypasses the system, new initiatives start up and the data is as fragmented as ever it was.<br /><br />Search engines acknowledge that information comes from multiple sources. No need for a central repository in which to put things. The need is for a central source from which to get things. In addition, search engines acknowledge that you want to pivot your data. This means sometimes you want the information by date, sometimes by subject, sometimes by who it was sent from or to. Any filing convention that uses just one of these is inevitably less than ideal.<br /><br />Coupling search to messaging gives you a knowledge management system with minimal effort, a source of current and historical information that gets more valuable with time, without the problems of where or how to file information.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1118986167118066342005-06-17T06:28:00.000+01:002005-06-17T06:34:32.736+01:00Email your way to managed knowledge<a href="http://timjervis.com/2005/05/knowledge-management-is-link.html">Knowledge Management is link management</a>, but how do you manage these links? With messages.<br /><br />Messages create links. They link the sender, the recipients, a point in time and a set of keywords. Sometimes they also link a document via an attachment.<br /><br />Messages are a valuable way to manage knowledge because they are easy and cheap to send, they embody a security and confidentiality model based on the sender and receivers and they can be easily indexed and searched.<br /><br />A quick win to manage group or corporate knowledge comes from seeing messages as a rich, up to date and integrated knowledge repository. It is easy to create, store and search message archives and exploit the links implied by the messages.<br /><br />Emails can be created at the desktop and on the move with a plethora of tools. Storage is cheap, although not free, especially if you have an old Microsoft Exchange server and need to upgrade. Index and search is supported at the enterprise and desktop levels, thanks to <a href="http://www.x1.com/">X1</a>, <a href="http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/download.html">Lookout</a>, <a href="http://desktop.google.com/">Google Desktop</a> and <a href="http://toolbar.msn.com/">MSN Desktop</a>, the last three of which are free of charge at the desktop.<br /><br />A quick knowledge management win is to index your own email and any public folders you can find.<br /><br />Want to know who knows what? Enter a few keywords against an email search. Pick the person whose name appears most often in the results.<br /><br />If you share your win with others, they might see the value of using messages to create links and send some more of their own to shared email addresses. Sharing messages like this not only creates a store of knowledge, but also gives people the chance to promote their interests and capabilities, increasing their value.<br /><br />An email group around a project becomes a store of knowledge. It makes it easier to answer the question "here's a new person on the team - how can I get them up to speed quickly"? "Where's that email about X?"<br /><br />Email can even be used to version-control documents. Send a message with an attached document and you have created a snapshot of a version of a document, probably with an annotation about the document in the body of the message. When you created the distribution list you also made an implicit statement about confidentiality.<br /><br />Using an email store as a file store like this also makes it easy to answer the question "where's the latest version of X?" without troubling others busy on the work, especially valuable if the others are unavailable and you want the answer quickly.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1116390561894586572005-05-18T05:28:00.000+01:002005-05-18T05:29:21.896+01:00Knowledge is MoneyMoney, security and trust are intimately connected. So it is with knowledge. We treat knowledge and money in similar ways. We give trivial knowledge away without much thought, much like one might choose to spend small change. We will invest our most important know-how carefully, in a trusted relationship, as we would our life savings. Knowledge will not be shared openly by everyone; a choice to share knowledge is an investment decision by the source.<br /><br />A knowledge management system, either as a business process, a technology, or both, will fail unless this aspect of knowledge is taken to heart. The system must act as a trusted investment vehicle appropriate to the value of the knowledge, or it will suffer from a lack of market players.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1115415178884734822005-05-06T22:27:00.000+01:002005-05-06T22:32:58.896+01:00Getting Things DoneTo clear your head, relax and yet be more productive, I suggest you take a look at <a href="http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0142000280">Getting Things Done</a>, by David Allen. The book collects a set of processes and tricks to, well, get things done. Some of the tricks you will likely already know - make lists, for example. I had not appreciated, however, the value of making quite so many lists or seen all the components brought together in such a nice way before. <a href="http://www.statusq.org/archives/2005/01/21/581/">Thanks for the tip, Quentin!</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1115332134413748782005-05-05T23:27:00.000+01:002005-05-05T23:28:54.420+01:00Knowledge Management is link managementWhat is Knowledge Management? Knowledge Management is link management and it is the elephant that has sat in the middle of businesses since business began. Link two different ideas and you have innovation. Link a prospect to a product or service and you have a sale. Link a product to a market and you have a business.<br /><br />Not every link is good. The value of a secret may be eroded if it is linked to too many people. A product linked to the wrong market might be an expensive mistake. A search linked to too many results might be as useless as a search linked to none.<br /><br />We must forge useful links and break poor ones. Knowledge Management is about creating a set of good links. It is about good salesmanship, clever marketing and making valuable innovations. We create links and break links to optimise our performance.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1113763196570910292005-04-17T21:36:00.000+01:002005-04-17T22:31:59.206+01:00Knowledge ManagementKnowledge Management starts by collecting experiences, observations, thoughts, meeting notes, conversations, experimental results and anything else that comes along and recording it. It's easier if you have a system that's always near at hand. That often means it needs to be small. I've posted this note using an HP iPaq hx4700, connected to a bluetooth folding keyboard, through to the Internet via a bluetooth mobile phone. PocketBlogger v1.1 nicely posts this note up to the blog.<br /><br />The result is that the note is given a URL, and indexed by the Internet's search engines, ready for the information to be collated into more structured data or communicated to the places and times when it might be useful. That's Knowledge Management.<br /><br />Note that I'm using the HP Bluetooth keyboard. I tried at first the Stowaway bluetooth keyboard, which allegedly carries the Bluetooth v1.2 standard. However, I was unable to connect to the keyboard and the mobile phone at the same time. I switched the keyboard for the slightly larger HP version, with v1.1 bluetooth, and found I was able to use both the keyboard and the bluetooth phone link at the same time. That's a piece of information right there that could have saved me several hours of time and 50% of the purchase cost of the devices.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1112282564493085962005-03-31T16:11:00.000+01:002005-03-31T16:22:44.496+01:00PDAs and mobile phonesI'm in the "Knowledge Management is important" camp, without explicitly stating what Knowledge Management is beyond improving through creating and using knowledge efficiently. To this end, I'm looking for devices that support this goal. I see a PDA (personal digital assistant) and mobile phone as knowledge management tools.<br /><br />I've recently tried two approaches. The first is an all-in-one smartphone, a phone and a PDA in the same unit. The second is to have a separate phone and PDA connected with Bluetooth.<br /><br />For all in one units, I looked at the Sony p910, Nokia 9500, Treo 600, O2 XDA IIs and O2 XDA IIi. I wanted ListPro, an outlining list program that I make heavy use of on my old Palm PDA, and I thought WiFi would be important. These two requirements knocked out the Sony, Nokia and Treo. Of the XDAs, I tried the IIi but was disappointed with the speed (allegedly faster than the IIs but appeared in use to suffer from occasional pauses and no faster than the IIs) and the camera (no flash and no zoom make it relatively useless anyway) and quickly switched to the IIs, which is 5mm shorter and has a built-in keyboard.<br /><br />The disadvantages of the IIs are relatively low battery life (expect to carry a spare battery on a day trip, and a charger for overnight or more), and a relatively bulky unit that you need to keep in your pocket if you're going to be alerted to incoming calls by a vibrate signal. The advantages are a built-in keyboard, a vibrate mode for things like timed task alarms (you're meeting someone but need to be reminded to hand them something or other, a task I can regularly forget without a separate prompt), the all-in-one advtanges of only one charger and one battery, and good integration between the phone and the PDA functions. Any incoming call is matched against your full contact list, although oddly some text messages from a number already in my contacts list didn't show up with the senders name (I have since come across <a href=":%20http://pocket-pc-software.penreader.com/SMS_Name.html">a program that claims to fix this</a>). The keyboard is still the fastest way to write an email or take a note, in spite of clever input systems like fitaly or MessagEase (which are themselves better than tapping on a picture of a keyboard, or using block-style input, or the transcriber which I found too slow and frustratingly inaccurate on even a 600Mhz+ HP hx4700 PDA). The external keyboard also frees up a good 1/3 of the screen from the alternative of an on-screen input method and works on trains and subways with rickety track.<br /><br />The two problems, size and battery life, are quite serious. It's easy to look at the unit in the store and think it's relatively small and forget that it needs to be in your pocket all the time if you're going to notice an incoming call by vibrate. The battery life is so poor that you could run out of juice before the end of a day-trip if you use the PDA and phone for something like house-hunting (as my wife and I recently did). With those considerations together, you might say, well, it's too early for SmartPhones, wait a while longer and try a Bluetooth connected two-unit solution.<br /><br />So I left behind the XDA IIs and took up a cheap-and-cheerful SonyEricsson T630 and HP's hx4700 PDA, thinking I might be able to emulate the all-in-one solution with Bluetooth, but gain a smaller in-pocket device and longer battery life. Sadly, it was not to be. Bluetooth appears to drain batteries. An average day of use with a bluetooth earpiece and making calls drained the phone's batteries to half capacity. A PPC program like Informant will dial via Bluetooth from a Bluetooth PDA, but only if the handsfree is not already connected to the phone. The upshot is you can tap on an address in your PDA, dial the number once via bluetooth to the phone, but not a second time without resetting the phone-to-handsfree bluetooth link. So, for me, I don't use it and the integration has failed.<br /><br />Another idea I hoped would work was to send tasks with reminders to the phone to generate a vibrate alert, simulating the XDA vibrate alert. Ignoring the issue of synchronisation and collecting redundant tasks on your phone, there appears to be a bug on my system since the reminder times got mangled in the process (e.g. 29th March turned into 11th February). The phone only holds 510 addresses, insufficient for my full contact list, so synchronisation between the desktop, phone and PDA isn't going to work, unless I can work out a category-style solution. And you're carrying around three devices - handsfree, phone and PDA.<br /><br />I find tapping on the PDA screen is maddening, having tried the keyboard of the XDA IIs, and its certainly not the way to capture observations or send polite or friendly texts or emails. I shorten the text to limit the pain of tapping out the message. The screen on the hx4700 is stunning and a pleasure to read. However, with the goal of capturing and reviewing knowledge and information, the IIs is good at capturing and reviewing, while the hx4700 is much poorer at capturing information. I also find the synaptics touchpad on the hx4700 more difficult to steer than the XDA's navigation button.<br /><br />I did find that Pocket PC appears to be in better shape than PalmOS, as a platform. I like Acrobat for PDFs on the PPC, and Pocket Informant, which one could compare to DateBk.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1109624789481212412005-02-28T21:05:00.000+00:002005-02-28T21:10:54.583+00:00UK Government's special terrorist measuresOn the balance of probabilities, detention without trial might reduce the ability of some terrorists to commit a major attack. Rather less happily, it might also mistakenly curtail the freedoms of others, thereby sowing the seeds of dissent and increasing the likelihood of a terrorist finding a sympathetic ear. Incarceration without a defence has been a great recruiter for subversives throughout the world over centuries. America revolted in large part due to heavy-handed disrespectful treatment.<br /><br />The world, and its population, are large compared to me. It's highly unlikely I'll be blown up, or locked up by the British government by mistake. What is certain, however, is that the proposed measures will change the environment in which I live irrevocably and for the worse. I will spend every minute of every day living in a state in which I might be detained without knowledge of my alleged misdemeanor or the right of representation.<br /><br />Some argue that the present system needs to be changed because it needs to reduce the likelihood of failing to stop an act of terrorism. Whether these measures pass or fail, I am quite sure the government, ministers and the judiciary will continue to miss-classify the guilty as innocent and the innocent as guilty, as happens from time to time. As recently as last month our Prime Minister apologised for a particularly egregious miscarriage of justice. Unfortunate as these events are, they are inevitable. A critical component of our acceptance of them, however, is the opportunity we are given to have a hand in the game. We must be given the right of reply.<br /><br />The right approach to new terrorist threats is not to replace or circumvent the judicial process but to consider and debate new laws as required.<br /><br />The Government claims that it needs special powers to detain suspects with evidence that cannot be shared with the courts. Even were this to be correct in principle, in practice this government in particular has a wholly inadequate track record in the administration of terrorist intelligence. It is an appalling travesty that we should have gone to war on a false pretext, and for the leader of the government to simply say that while he was wrong about weapons of mass destruction, he acted nevertheless in "good faith". Not good enough. For us to be asked to trust this same government, or a future one, with ever more draconian powers beggars belief. I heard the Prime Minister today making the same arguments for breaking our legal process as he used to fight a war in Iraq. He has a terrible record of assessing intelligence.<br /><br />Governments cannot be trusted to act in our best interests, never mind act competently. What is lacking here is the realisation that a presumption of innocence is not a blind faith in the character of the subject, but an invaluable protection against the ability of power to corrupt.<br /><br />The government is blinded by the need to apprehend the criminal before she commits her crime, as though this is a special consideration that has never before required our attention. Nonsense. Every speeding fine is to avoid the ultimate problem of an accident. We have invented a rule, speeding, that in itself is not actually bad but because it often leads to a bad outcome has become a line in the sand that the law deems we must not cross. So it must be with terrorism.<br /><br />The government needs to find a way of creating better laws that would mitigate the terrorist threat, laws that can be tested in court, a process that can act as a better test of paranoia on behalf of the government than a BBC breakfast current affairs wireless programme.<br /><br />I am very concerned that the greatest threat to the British way of life appears to be not the Soviet army, the IRA or religious terrorism, but the British government and its lack of opposition.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1109601314033182662005-02-28T12:42:00.000+00:002005-02-28T15:27:51.420+00:00Knowledge ManagementAfter our headlong rush towards the Internet in the 1990's and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, we are now able to pick through the spoils and build the future that the Internet originally envisaged.<br /><br />Empowering people to edit and create is a critical factor. This is what HTML offered to many technicians. The anarchic Internet allows anyone with minimal technical knowledge to publish their thoughts to anyone interested in reading. The result is an extraordinary resource of knowledge that the next generations will rightly take for granted.<br /><br />As technology continues to make the act of editing and publishing easier, so the technical barriers to publication will fall. We can continue to reap greater rewards from shared editing. Blogging trivialises the process of making a website. With the help of advertising models like Google's, its even possible to gain micro-payment revenue for providing resources that are invaluable to small markets. Previously, reaching such markets would have been prohibitively expensive and those resources would never have been created.<br /><br />Technology provides the capability, and the market takes advantage. We're able to store and retrieve a much large fraction of the experience we gather as thinking beings than ever before. This is the age of knowledge management - a quantitive change in our ability to work with information that leads to a qualitative change in our ability to understand and progress.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9967050.post-1106223568734568092005-01-20T13:16:00.000+00:002007-02-04T16:42:18.752+00:00Tim and Claire JervisClaire and I were married 17th December 2004 in Cambridge. Claire has her own site at <a href="http://clairejervis.com/">http://clairejervis.com/</a>. We live in London, with a PC and a Mac.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17611897410053818517noreply@blogger.com0