Randomly Selected Article or Link

The architect that put the windmill on Cameron's Notting Hill pad is proposing an idea to build artificial islands in the tropics to harness the natural energy that exists in those latitudes to produce electricity.  For a while now I've been interested in something similar, but subtly different - the idea that if we could harness just a tiny proportion of the solar energy that reaches the earth we could solve all our energy needs.

From a distance it looks like an island paradise, but get closer and those tall structures that could be palm trees turn out to be wind turbines - and the surf laps against wave barrages instead of sandy beaches. Welcome to "Energy Island", a vision of how humans could help meet our future needs for energy, food and water using the power of nature in the tropics.

Alex Michaelis, the architect who gave David Cameron's west London home a green makeover - complete with miniature wind turbine, solar panels and water recycling system - will launch the concept this year with a bid for funding worth $25m (£12.6m) from Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Earth Prize.

His proposal, which is dramatically more ambitious than the work he did on the Conservative leader's semi-detached house, is to build archipelagos of artificial islands that will produce electricity, clean water and even food in the belt of warm water that passes from the Caribbean across to the south China Sea, the Indian Ocean and west Africa.

When I suggested using giant solar power stations to produce electricity in the Sahara the most common objection was the transmission losses that would incur transporting that power to where it was needed.  So I developed my idea a bit.  My solar power stations would not produce electricity, but take sea water and turn it into hydrogen for fuel cells.  This hydrogen would be the thing that was transported to power hungry parts of the world, probably by ships themselves powered by fuel cells, and there used in its raw form for motor engines, but also turned into electricity for the grid closer to its destination and so with less transmission loss.

Maybe I should apply for the Branson money? 

I don't suppose young Jonathan Matondo will make as much of a national stir in death as the even younger Rhys Jones a couple of months ago, but it appears the "thoroughly repugnant moralistic stance" on drugs prohibition to quote from Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales, last week, has claimed yet another innocent victim.

Sheffield boy, 16, shot dead in play area - Times Online:

Local resident Douglas Johnson, an advice worker, said everybody in the area thought the death was related to drug dealing.

“This is what happens when drug dealing activity goes on. Kids get involved and start playing with guns,” he said. “It’s a very sad case. It’s very shocking. It’s quite a good area really. It’s had its bad reputation, and obviously something like this does not help, but it’s really not typical.”

You have one more day to help put an end to this murder directly caused by the approach the world's governments take on the failed "war on drugs" in the Home Office consultation on their review of the drugs laws here. Please, do the right thing to prevent more young lives lost and ruined, of users, innocent kids, poverty stricken "mules". All these deaths can be traced right back to the steps of the Home Office and the populist, moralising, interfering politicians, accessories to murder all of them, who occupy it.

Matt Sellwood in Peak Oil claims that:

The fact that only the Green Party is talking about this problem is extremely worrying...politicians of all new parties need to be planning for our 'energy descent'.

Technorati Tags: lib dems, climate change, oxford, greens

I've just spent a fantastic weekend in the hallowed halls of the National Liberal Club at the annual Libertarian Alliance conference. If, like me, you see yourself as more of a theoretical policy wonk doing the background stuff of coming up with ideas, rather than the rather more practical work of debating actual proposals and then selling them on the doorstep, this was the perfect sort of a conference. A little like spending an entire party conference in the various fringe events where hand picked speakers with great ideas to sell challenge the little gray cells rather than in the sort of "win or lose" arguments over specific policy proposals of the main conference debates.

Yes, since going to Lib Dem conferences over the past few years, I have found the latter enjoyable, I don't think I've been on the winning side of a controversial debate yet, but this sort of event is where, I think, policies are incubated and born out of ideas presented by people with brains the size of several planets each or you gain the intellectual ammunition with which to turn that losing streak in policy debates into winning arguments.

I've come away from it with both many new acquaintances, a reading list that will probably take me till doomsday to get through and enough controversial ideas to keep my many sceptical Lib Dem friends arguing till, oh, next year's LA conference. I shall work up several ideas into blog posts of their own in the forthcoming weeks and months but to start with I thought I'd give a quick overview of the sessions and speakers. All the sessions were being filmed and will eventually appear on the LA website to refer to so if I fail miserably to pass the essential detail on, you'll be able to watch the originals should you wish...

Session 1 - The Defeat of of Aging: Our Ultimate Freedom? by Dr Aubrey de Gray
Session 2 - Future Shock: Three Perspectives on Freedom in the Twenty First Century with James Panton, Sean Gabb and Martin Summers
Session 3 - "The Global Rise of Private Education for the Poor: A Libertarian Perspective" by James Stansfield
Session 4 - Future Imperfect: Tech Revolutions That Might Happen and Their Consequences by David Friedman

Session 1 - The Defeat of of Aging: Our Ultimate Freedom? by Dr Aubrey de Gray

Aubrey is a fun, and at times controversial, biologist at Cambridge University working on the science of "fixing" the aging process. There are, apparently, two conventional approaches to dealing with the problems of aging. Basically, at the moment, from the moment we are created we start storing up the means of our own death. The very processes that keep us alive, metabolism, causes damage in our cells and throughout our bodies. That damage builds up until the body can no longer prevent it becoming one of the many illnesses associated with aging and that eventually, if we are not killed first by an external event, it will kill us. Globally, 100,000 out of the 150,000 people who die each day die of these conditions, which can be and usually are extremely unpleasant, often very painful and upsetting both for the sufferers and those who witness it - loved ones and carers.

One "school" of dealing with aging, "geriatrics" focuses on trying to prevent that damage becoming pathology ie developing the illnesses that will kill us. But it is ultimately futile. It is not repairing or removing the damage, just holding back the time it takes to become dangerous to us. And we cannot do that indefinitely.

The other traditional approach, "gerontology", focusses on trying to stop metabolism creating the damage in the first place. It sounds more promising, until you realise how little we actually know about metabolism. There is just so much that we cannot yet understand enough to prevent it causing damage, and therefore eventually pathology.

But there is a third, emerging approach that focuses on maintenance. De Gray made the analogy of a car - if you maintain it rigourously you can make it last more or less forever. And so this approach to aging focuses on repairing and eradicating the damage and maintaining cells. Repairing the damage means it does not build up enough to become pathology. As science, mostly microbiology, is constantly evolving, the types of damage we can repair increase. And because we are acting on the observable damage, there are a finite number of types of damage to focus on. We can see the damage metabolism creates much better than we understand the processes that lead to the damage.

De Gray and his team believe that at a very conservative estimate of the rate of development of the techniques required to repair various types of damage (some are easier, some still distant dreams of course) within 42 years we could have the ability to extend life by thirty years by repairing half of the types of damage we observe. So the current assumption is that the first person who will be able to live to 150 years old is already alive today and people currently in their thirties may be in time to have their lives extended by about thirty years over heir current life expectancy.

But as we move forward and discover mechanisms to deal with more types of damage, so we can repeat the "full body service" and begin to extend life out beyond the 150 years, indeed almost indefinitely. Again, given the rate of discovery, De Gray calculates that the first person to be able to live to 1,000 years will only be twenty years younger than the first person that will live to 150.

Such a prospect of course raises all sorts of issues, ethical, cost, policy and so on. But De Gray's conclusion was that given the amount of suffering that aging causes, and the costs to society of dealing with that suffering, we should not be put off from pursuing it. If, eventually, we have to answer some of the more difficult questions - what will the world's population look like if we can live effectively forever, and should we create ways in which someone can choose to end their otherwise perfectly healthy lives, that's something for the future.

And the cost of developing these techniques would appear to be minimal compared with even the cost of health care currently just in the UK. You can find out more, and importantly about how to help, financially and otherwise, at the "Methuselah Foundation" website.

Session 2 - Future Shock: Three Perspectives on Freedom in the Twenty First Century with James Panton, Sean Gabb and Martin Summers

I'm rather afraid that my relying on memory rather than taking copious notes will not do this session justice and it will be best to get the full picture from the recording of the session when it comes online. The speakers focussed on the many new ways in which our freedoms are being attacked and compromised, but more importantly on our apparent willingness to allow it to happen and unwillingness to protest against it. Even though theoretically, in a democracy, we are, sheep like in most cases, simply obeying and finding reasons to excuse the actions of those who would curtail our freedoms.

As I say, watch the video when it comes out.

After a very pleasant lunch with Tristan in the fascinating Ship & Shovell Pub just up the road in Craven Passage I'm afraid I was a few minutes late for the start of the session after lunch, "The Global Rise of Private Education for the Poor: A Libertarian Perspective" by James Stansfield , and decided to sit it out rather than disturb the room clattering in late, so both you and I will need to wait for the video! Or, there's a very good synopsis courtesy of the Oxford Libertarian Society blog .

Session 4 - Future Imperfect: Tech Revolutions That Might Happen and Their Consequences by David Friedman

Then came one of the great highlights of the whole weekend, a hugely entertaining session of futurology and technological ideas by David Friedman, son of Milton and Rose, and professor of Law at Santa Clara University. I just cannot do this fast paced entertaining session the justice it deserves in a few lines. It was based on the ideas in his new book, Future Imperfect, which you can get at Amazon, or if you are too mean, or just plain penurious, he has put it all online.

He covered areas I will probably blog about individually (when I have read the book), including privacy technology, law enforcement technology and how to get around it, reproductive technology (think Gattaca) and, most indelibly etched in my mind, nano technology. The main thought I came away with out of a myriad of interesting possibilities was "should we actually be worried about climate change if, within a few decades, we will have produced nanobots and artificial intelligence such that we will have obsoleted the human race!" - as Friedman put it, turned us into gerbils in the laboratories or even the Matrix, of self-aware super intelligent 'droids.

I chose to miss out the final, additional session of the day to meet up with Lib Dem activist from Ealing Toran Shaw for a drink before we all went into the dinner, but I will definately want to watch the video of the session and the Libertarian Alliance DVD on the subject of "The Great British Road Pricing Debate: Free Market Incrementalism or Just More State Control?" which is obviously currently a hugely important policy issue that has caused a lot of debate within the Lib Dems.

And so ended the main business of day one. I shall return to cover the very sociable dinner and day two, including such controversial issues as Hans-Hermann Hoppe on the idea of the "Private Law society" and Guy Herbert from NO2ID soon.

I note with interest today a story that a company whose shareholders are 3000 dairy farmers accounting for primary production of 16% of the UK milk output is buying the cheese businesses of Dairy Crest.

What goes around comes around perhaps? Remember that company Associated Dairies, now known as ASDA. It was of course once upon a time a co-operative of dairy farmers. I hope they succeed in taking some market influence back from the supermarkets.