Another go at recycling

The bins outside our flats are multiplying. Originally we had 3 big black bins, then 3 black and one purple for recycled rubbish. Then 2 black bins and 2 purple. Now 2 black, 2 purple and one small brown bucket marked food waste. Apart from the stupidity of the local authority leaving an unsecured small brown bucket for food waste (it will be gone within a week from the front of our east end flats) the issue of recycling as a practical reality has not been addressed well.

For example, we have already had a warning sticker put on the purple recycle bins saying non recyclable stuff had been put in and we should not do it again. Really! Our bins are outside the flat on a busy road. Anyone can and does put their rubbish in there. At best we can but hope that the fines start to come.

What I am unable to work out as of yet is why the government does not sort out this problem at source. It is simple. There is enough packing and materials now that can be recycled to warrant the government giving industry 5 years to change all packaging and goods to use recyclable materials only. There is little that goes into our bins which is not sourced from the supermarket. There is little in the supermarket which cannot be packaged in recyclable materials.

Take away the issue of having to work out what to recycle and what cannot be recycled and hey presto your landfill drops to almost zero. Maybe it is to simplistic, maybe naive but I would be happy to hear the reasons why this cannot be done if anyone has them.

Price of oil

Long before the carbon debate began (at any rate, long before the masses became involved) one of the key concerns was how long the oil would last. Figures ranged from years to decades (a common figure was about 50 years if I recall). I never used to consider what this actually meant. There are two aspects to oil availability simplistically. The first is the physical availability. There seems to be no clear consensus on the remaining oil reserves around the planet. Each time estimates are made they are based upon the financial viability of extractable oil rather than actual physical amounts.

What this means is that over time, new fields are discovered and old ones, through more modern extraction techniques and technology, are able to extract more. Add to that the increase in the price of oil and then the amount of exploitable oil goes up considerably.

But at some point the second of the aspects of oil availability kicks in. At what price level to the consumer for retail oil products and indirect product costs does the oil supply become irrelevant? To put it another way, when, as a consumer, will oil be an irrelevance to me because of cost.

The consequences of the latest oil price increases to $200 plus per barrel were an eye opener. The reality has started to hit home to the masses that oil availability is not the key issue here (i.e. we will not run out of oil) but we will very rapidly meet the point where oil is simply to uneconomical to rely on for its current applications.

In the UK with petrol currently at about 1.14 pounds per litre we are already seeing the rumbles of dissatisfaction. To fill up my tank now costs me over 70 pounds. I think twice about taking the car (great I hear all the green amongst you shout). I could buy a smaller car, more fuel efficient, and that delay the problem a little more. But it is not the answer. At some point the cost of oil and petrol will reach the point where many people simply will find it impossible to run cars on economic grounds only. Now add to that the people in the country whose heating systems run on oil (significant numbers) and they will be forced to reduce heating their house.

Oil prices have more far reaching effects though. Reducing the amount we drive (easy for me to say living in London) is one thing, but goods have to be moved and manufactured and oil will have a direct cost on that. For example, trans oceanic logistics. Oil represented about 20% of the cost of shipping. At $200 dollars a barrel it represents about 80%. To move a 40ft from China to the US used to cost about $2000 and at oil prices we are starting to see could be as much as $8000 with further increases (potentially double) in the next 5 years.

It is now estimated that the cost of fuel makes up roughly the same amount in transport costs as labour does.

The effects will echo around the globe. China's dominance in manufacturing may come to an abrupt end. Labour costs and general production costs are lower in China but these savings can rapidly be overtaken when the transport costs over that distance are swallowed by fuel costs. While transport is so heavily reliant on oil it will mean a radical change to the current economy of the globe. Those developing countries hoping to follow in the footsteps of China and India for growth may be disappointed on two counts. The first is the inability to leverage their cheaper labour and the second will be the cost of importing goods to support their industries.

What that clearly means is that the cost of all goods is going up. Every price for nearly everything we buy is connected to some extent to oil. To avoid inflationary explosions (i.e. wages following oil price increases) we will simply have to do without.

So how long will the oil last? If the physical oil has 50 years left at current prices and rates of consumption the we may see the oil effectively run out in as little as 10 to 20 years. Obviously the drop in demand from price increases will ensure that oil does not run out but the physical amount left is not relevant above a certain price point.

The current focus on the carbon problem of global warming causing us major problems over the next 50 years is going to be nothing compared to the issues and consequences of oil availability. We can hope that one might help balance out the other but with the entire global economy based upon oil at some level (direct or otherwise) the planet is simply not prepared for this eventuality. The reality will be that both will hit and largely over the same time period. Without this even being on the agenda of any government at the moment the likelihood of the sweeping change needed to mitigate this issue is slim.

WWI Statistics

I was shooting last weekend at a military range. I was shooting my WWII Lee Enfield No 4. Having done a lot of practice at home (using a deactivated rifle) I shot a 4 inch group at 100 yards. The best I have ever done. It got me thinking. I know that with a WWI SMLE (the service rifle for the British) I can reliably hit a man sized target at about 300 yards.

This gives you some idea of the potential losses at war. The record for number of shots hitting a target with a service rifle of this type is 37. That includes 2 full reloads of the magazine. I won't use that as the basis of my calcs as that is the upper end of capability but I can reliably shoot every 4 seconds say.

If you have an enemy charge at 100 yards I would guess it would take about 16 seconds to cover the 100 yards under fire and in battle gear etc. Ignoring the effects of artillery and machine guns I would estimate that I would be able to hit 3 or 4 enemy soldiers in that time. Lets stick with the 3. What that means is that for every 100 yards of distance between your trench and the enemy trench you would need 4 men to leave to get one to you. At 300 yards you would need 10 men to leave the trench for each one that would make it to the other trench to fight. It means you need a 10 to 1 number advantage to actually even reach the enemy. This may explain the mass over the top charges used by the ignorant generals in WWI. Purely a numbers game.

Obviously there are lots of other factors, visibility, smoke, weather, firing under fire etc. But it does give a real view of why so many died. Now just add in the machine guns and hey presto you have the devastation of WWI. But even without them, the odds were not great.

Now of course we have more accurate semi-automatic and automatic rifles. These are more accurate but probably do not, under WWI circumstances, help much as you typically need 2 shots to take down a enemy with modern smaller caliber weapons. You still have to move targets and shoot again. In Vietnam the stats for a US sniper were 1.2 shots per kill. For the rest the average was around 50,000 rounds per kill.

It is hard to make any judgments about such statistics as it is impossible to imagine what it is to actually like to fight for your life in those situations. But the glimpse of how easy it is to take down a man at 200 or 300 yards with a rifle which is over 50 years old is a real eye opener. Perhaps if more people had a go and thought about things in this light we would have more respect for our armed forces and be less likely to jump to combat so readily.

With my Nagant sniper rifle I could probably be hitting a man at 500 to 600 yards ever 5 seconds. Work out those statistics for yourself. Not pleasant.

Past Reality

How much of what we experience everyday of our lives is actually real and how much is an illusion created by our own minds is heavily debated. The debates about epistemology have been raging for hundreds if not thousands of years. The skeptics will makes claims about our grounds for any belief in truth or knowledge, the idealists will claim everything is internal to your mind, the realists will accept that there is independence between experience and that which is experienced. All very interesting in its own right but, as usual with these debates, what is this to do with anything?

Lets simplify the world. Lets work with the assumption that everything is either past, present or future (there are other models). We can accept that what is past is not real, that the record and consequences of past actions is merely stored in our minds in the form of a model of the world. As we go through life the model of the world in our head is adapted. We cannot go back, we cannot alter the past. We experience a continuum of cause and effect (or constant change).

All we have is the present and depending on where your views sit, some expectation of controlling the direction of our futures (again, determinism, free will etc could be debated here but for simplicity lets assume we have non deterministic futures and free will).

The issue at hand is how we make our decisions about current and future actions is actually flawed and leads to a lot of trouble. What do I mean by this? It is how we look at the time line. If we consider that each moment of the 'present' is the only time we actually exist in. We do not yet exist in the future, the past does not exist. So we could easily argue that we only exist in the present with the model of the world in our mind as it is as a snapshot of everything we have learned and experienced in previous 'present moments'.

Here is the crux of the matter. Imagine we remove all memory and previous state. We have all the skills we have today (rules etc) but none of the memories. Imagine that you simply existed now. Look at your life, what you have and think what would you do next? The old cliche that today is the first day of the rest of your life is just about sums it up. Again, so what?

The point I am getting to is that we do not think in this way. Our decisions and actions are based upon a trailing set of past experiences. Do a thought experiment. Imagine you popped into existence this moment. Let me demonstrate. I exist now. I live in a nice flat, I appear to have a reasonable amount of money in the bank, I have a nice wife, some good possessions and a contract for the next 6 months and a relatively healthy business. Things look pretty good if I had just popped into existence and had been given this life.

But, I also know that on the whole, this is not how I think. I base my decisions for the future not on what I see around me now but on what has gone on before to a huge extent. I am concerned that my business will not recover the money invested in the past, I am worried about my wife and whether the 10 years of training will pay off and many more things. But this money, this investment in time and money does not exist. It is in the past and the past, we have agreed, is not real.

In other words, we make decisions about our future, not on the present which is real but on the past which is not real. If I think 'real' I will look at my business and how to grow it based upon where it is today and make the right decisions. If I base my decisions on recovery of money previously spent I am bound to make riskier decisions to recover this lost money.

We all understand cause and effect but we build models of effects in our world view which are not required. We struggle to differentiate real from unreal. This leads to poor decision making and in many cases unhappiness and stress.

I am not suggesting that we should not learn from the past or that past deeds should be ignored (locking up killers is one example and a complex debate of punishment vs threat of reoffending) but we should think about the decisions we make at work and plan the future from where we are now and not, as is often the case, where we wished we were if only... Continually evaluating the now and how we reach our goals from here in the most optimum way is a far more effective strategy to get us to where we want to be.