Lightbulbs, TVs, ovens, baseboard heaters–whatever–draw energy from alternating current with varying degrees of efficiency, due to the funkiness of alternating current.

Allow me to explain, by taking us all bowling. Kinda.

We want to pump up a tire with a foot bicycle pump down on the far end of the bowling lane. We screw the pump down on its side, and aim with our bowling ball. We hit it, and it shatters into pieces. No good. Marbles would be safe for the pump, but getting them all the way down the alley is next to impossible. They slow down and stop due to friction almost immediately, where the heavy bowling balls have enough momentum to make it all the way to the end. Now what?

We get a clever idea: Let’s line up a whole bunch of bowling balls in the gutter, placing the last one on the handle of the pump. On our side of the lane, we put a spring on the end of the line of bowling balls. We pull back our spring, a little bit, with the first ball and then let it go. The energy is transferred to the far end through each ball. The last ball at the end of the line presses down on the handle. Some of the energy transferred goes to pump up our tire; the rest goes to compress the pump’s spring. Eventually, the pump spring gives back most of this stored energy, sending the bowling balls back to our spring. Since some of the energy was used up, we pull our spring back a bit more, and release it again. We now have waves of energy successfully transmitting from our end of the lane to the pump’s end: Alternating current.

(If this doesn’t make sense to you, you should feel really thankful for Nikola Tesla. Without his genius, you would be cold and hungry right now.)

What the power company is doing is constantly adding energy back into the spring at their end of the chain of bowling balls (electrons, unpacking our metaphor). A/C devices with a perfect power factor of 1.0 act as perfect springs: all of the leftover energy delivered is returned in phase back to the power plant. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs mess up the line of bowling balls like an obnoxious kid. When the wave is outgoing, they push in on the chain a little bit; when incoming, they push outward. CFLs make a portion of the alternating current go out of phase. The bowling ball waves still work, but it takes the power company more effort to keep each wave going.

About half the energy used up by a CFL goes to this naughty out of phase game. While there are ways of designing well-behaved CFLs, most companies making them (typically in China, with factory workers twisting hot glass filled with mercury powder by hand) don’t exactly seem interested. As per Better Off Ted, the corporate motto is, “Money before people. It’s engraved right there in the lobby floor. It just looks more heroic in Latin.”

A landmark Energy Department project to bury carbon dioxide produced by humans has begun as workers sunk a huge drill bit into Illinois ground this week, signaling continued support for a climate change mitigation strategy that has fallen out of favor in many circles.

The start of drilling marks the launch a geological sequestration project that will deposit a million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the ground by 2012.

While that’s nothing compared to the several billion tons of CO2 that humans emit yearly, it’s the geology of the site that makes the development exciting. The CO2 will be piped into a geological formation that underlies parts of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky that could eventually hold more than 100 billion tons of CO2.

While I find the term ‘clean coal‘ to be absurd, I still think this sort of technical investment is critical for the future health of the climate. Thanks to years of foot-dragging on alternatives, the entire world has gone on a fossil-fueled power plant building spree. Carbon sequestration may never pan out. It’s, sadly, one of our few remaining shots at averting environmental catastrophe.

Take Shell’s move today, as a portent:

Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.
….
The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of using fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. It hoped to use CCS to reduce emissions from Shell’s controversial and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.

Well, what of the alternatives? Wind is going to be a challenge, particularly in the context of climate change. Biofuels–at least fuels from bioengineered organisms–are intriguing, but we’ll have to get around our discomfort of genetic modification of organisms.

And then, there is nuclear power. (For a primer, I suggest my series on nuclear power, written a bit ago.) The Obama administration paused work on the Yucca mountain waste repository, exacerbating the waste problem (perhaps in a good way, for the long term.)

A growing consensus of scientists, however, are recognizing nuclear power as one of our better shots out of this mess:

Nuclear power is safe, affordable, and the waste problems are much more manageable than the public realizes. That was the take-home message from this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, where a group of experts from the US and EU participated in a session called “Keeping the Lights On: The Revival of Nuclear Energy for Our Future.”

My personal impression is slightly less rosy–with a deeper concern about waste management–but I still believe we should be investing massively in nuclear technologies.

We’re well past the point of being able to consider only the most pleasant energy sources. Looking at the number of people on the planet, and the increasingly dire reports of damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels, we need to be realistic. These steps, by the scientific community and the Obama administration, are heartening steps in what seems the right direction.

Dear Science,

Is reading The Stranger online actually any greener than reading the printed-in-Yakima hard copy? Doesn’t it take a shitload of electricity to run the servers and keep them cool? How would one even figure out how to compare the carbon footprint of, say, going to the coffee shop once a week and reading the print version versus reading it online, as well as checking in with Slog on a regular basis? Folks talk about the internet as being green, but part of me suspects that all it does is put its pollution somewhere out of sight.

Usually, when I get a question like this, I do a search to see if anyone else–particularly in the scientific literature–has done an analysis. All I could find was a high-on-sensation, low-on-content article from a Harvard professor touting his company.

It was time to roll up my sleeves and do some real, primary, research on the question. (If you just want the answer, go read the column for the condensed answer.) Allow me to show my work.

For print on paper, I assumed the two major carbon impacts would be the manufacturing of the paper itself, and the physical distribution of the printed copies.

The EPA maintains a fantastic online calculator intended to help manufactures figure out ways of reducing their carbon impact by using recycled materials. Newsprint is one of the categories. Kevin (at The Stranger) was kind enough to tell me the amount of recycled paper (pre- and post-) consumer: 40% pre-consumer, 40% post-consumer recycled and 20% pulp from freshly cut down trees. As my column notes, only the use of post-consumer recycled paper reduces the carbon impact. Both pre-consumer recycled paper and pulp require the cutting down of trees. As I noted in another column, trees actively sequester carbon. Cutting them down, if you’re accounting properly, has a really nastly net impact on the atmosphere.

I independently calculated the tons of paper needed each week by weighing a single copy (150 grams) and multiplying by the total circulation. The total weekly weight was about 13,500 kg (about 30,000 pounds) of paper. Kevin confirmed this was about right. For the mix of recycled paper used, that worked out to 5.2 metric tons of carbon equivalent (MTCE) released into the atmosphere each week for just the paper. If The Stranger used (much more expensive) 100% post-consumer recycled paper, this would drop to a mere 0.30 MTCE per week–17.5 fold less than currently emitted.

For the distribution, I first started with the semi-truck from Yakima to Seattle–140 miles at about 5 miles per gallon, or about 28 gallons of diesel fuel consumed per trip. Burning a gallon of diesel fuel releases about 2.8 kg of carbon into the atmosphere, so 28 gallons is about 0.08 MTCE emitted.

The in-town distribution consumes another 76 gallons of gasoline per week. Burning gasoline releases about 2.4 kg of carbon per gallon, making the total emissions from the in-town distribution 0.19 MTCE per week.

The total for the physical delivery of the paper? 0.26 MTCE per week. The overall total (paper + distribution) carbon impact for the paper each week worked out to about 5.5 MTCE per week, almost all of which coming from the newsprint itself. Divide by the current circulation of The Stranger, and that works out to about 71g of carbon equivalent per printed paper: 67.4 g for the paper itself, 3.4g for distribution.

Were my assumptions valid? I’m ignoring the energy costs of running the printing presses, figuring they are probably predominantly powered by non-carbon emitting hydroelectric and wind power. I’m also ignoring the carbon impact of manufacturing the soy-based ink, assuming it’s a small contributor. That might be dangerous, as farms are massive contributors to atmospheric carbon emissions. I couldn’t find a good source for the MTCE per gallon of soy-based ink. If anyone knows, I’ll be glad to incorporate it into my analysis.

For online, we have a few things to consider: how much energy does it take to serve, deliver and read the content.

A nicely done study figured it takes about 12.5kWh per gigabyte of data served and delivered on the internet. On average in the US, generating one kWh of electricity emits 0.00012 MTCE into the atmosphere.

Anthony was kind enough to provide me with hard numbers for the number of visitors and views on The Stranger‘s website in a week. I measured a bunch of pages to calculate the average pageview on The Stranger‘s website weighs in at about one megabyte. The total weekly carbon imact of serving and delivering the content on The Stranger‘s website is about 1.7 MTCE; interestingly, that’s more than the weekly carbon impact of distributing the physical paper. Per unique visitor, that works out to 9.4 grams of carbon equivalent each just on the delivery.

The carbon impact of reading things on the internet really is dependent upon which computer you are using–and how many watts the computer uses. A relatively modern laptop, consuming 45 watts, emits 5.4 grams of carbon equivalent per hour to operate. A big honking desktop PC, weighing in at 250 watts, emits 30g per hour.

I have no clue how many hours a week people spend reading and commenting on The Stranger‘s website, nor the mixture of computers. So, I cannot make an honest estimate of the total carbon impact of the online presence of the paper. I can tell you about 11.4 hours of online reading on a laptop, per week, has about the same carbon impact as a single paper copy. Reading on a desktop PC? Only two hours equals the carbon impact of the paper.

Want to calculate for your own PC? Here’s the formula:

(Watts of your PC) * 0.00012 * 1000 = your grams of carbon emitted per hour.

For the number of hours until reading online on your PC equals the carbon impact of a single paper:

61.6 / (grams of carbon per hour from your PC) = number of hours.

How are my assumptions here? I’m not considering the carbon impact of manufacturing the laptops and computers. But, I’m not considering the carbon impact of manufacturing the roads, trucks either.

And, as I end my column noting, reading isn’t even close to your biggest carbon impact. A single cheeseburger emits the equivalent of a kilogram of carbon. Driving the average car on the road today one mile emits more carbon equivalent into the atmosphere than a single paper.

The optimistic among us assume that, eventually, new technology or new political movements will stop carbon release into the atmosphere. One of the comforting assumptions about climate change is that the effects of humans putting carbon into the atmosphere can be reversed. Plants remove carbon from the atmosphere, right? So, if we just stop adding more, eventually carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere should drop, and the adverse climate changes should reverse.

Nope, at least not according to Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions in this week’s PNAS.

Now, that’s a provocative title. The authors made such a claim very carefully. (I suggest reading the paper in whole, I’ll just summarize it here.)

First, they only considered climate changes that are:

1. going on now–not predicted for the future in a computer model, but instead directly observable today.

2. by direct evidence, caused by human activities.

3. caused by a basic physical process that is well understood by science.

4. projected by multiple and reliable computer models to worsen with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

That is a very strict set of criteria. As far as irreversible, the authors considered effects that would remain around until at least the year 3000, even if humans totally stopped adding new greenhouse gases into the atmosphere today.

Well, what made the cut?

1. Atmospheric CO2 levels are staying high, no matter what.

When CO2 is dumped into the atmosphere, only about 20% remains in the air. About 80% dissolves into the oceans, becoming carbonic acid in the process.

CO2 (carbon dioxide) + H20 (water) <--> H2CO3 (Carbonic Acid) <--> H+ + HCO3-

This absorption of carbon dioxide into the oceans is reversible, but only in the surface water. Since the deep waters of the ocean are only rarely overturned to the surface, this happens very slowly. How slow can be observed by comparing the ratio of radioactive carbon-14 CO2 to non-radioactive carbon-12 CO2 in the air versus the ocean water, giving us a very good sense of the pace.

The results:
If we stopped adding carbon to the atmosphere right now, even a thousand years from now we still wouldn’t return back to pre-industrial levels. In fact, we can expect that carbon levels would only drop by about 60% from the peak. Since human carbon emissions have been growing by about 2% a year since the industrial revolution, this peak is still rocketing upwards.

This is nasty business.

Acidification of the oceans causes a whole mess of problems, including the potential collapse of the entire aquatic food chain, or the loss of all shelled ocean life forms (as acidic ocean water dissolves away shells.)

2. Global surface temperatures are going up.

The persistence of the carbon means global average surface temperatures will remain elevated for millennium after the last bit of human-produced carbon is added. All that carbon keeps trapping solar energy. If you recall from my earlier writing, increased temperatures alone are going to cause serious problems for food crops, regardless of water supply.

3. Ocean levels are going persistently higher

Ocean levels are rising will stay that way, not just by melting of glaciers but just by simple thermal expansion of the existing oceans. Warm water takes up more volume than cold. The expansion in ocean volume we can expect from even very modest increases in average surface temperature are likely to cause serious problems for coastal areas worldwide, with ocean levels staying about 1-2 meters higher long after we’ve stopped adding CO2 to the atmosphere.

4. Precipitation patterns are going to change.

Rainfall is going to go down in the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and parts of southwestern North America and become less predictable everywhere.

This is a damning and bleak report–made all the more so by the obvious care and caution that went into the analysis. I’m taking it seriously. You should too.

University of Washington climate scientist David Battisti looked at 23 of the best computational models of the climate available to predict the effect of climate change on global crop yields by the end of this century.

The results?

Our results show that it is highly likely (greater than 90% chance) that growing season temperatures by the end of the 21st century will exceed even the most extreme seasonal temperatures recorded from 1900 to 2006 for most of the tropics and subtropics. Presently there are more than 3 billion people living in the tropics and subtropics, many of whom live on under $2 per day and depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihoods (4). With growing season temperatures rising beyond historical bounds, the inevitable question arises: Will people in these regions have sufficient access to food to meet population- and income-driven growth in demand in the future, and thus to achieve food security?

So what? We’re (humanity) totally doomed.

Their conclusions with regard to agriculture are sobering. “In the past, heat waves, drought, and food shortages have hit particular regions,” says Battisti. But the future will be different: “Yields are going to be down every place.” Heat will be the main culprit. “If you look at extreme high temperatures so far observed–basically since agriculture started–the worst summers on record have been mostly because of heat,” not drought, he says.

The models predict that by 2090, the average summer temperature in France will be 3.7°C above the 20th century average. Elevated temperatures not only cause excess evaporation but also speed up plant growth with consequent reductions in crop yields, the authors note. Although rising temperatures may initially boost food production in temperate latitudes by prolonging the growing season, Battisti and Naylor say crops will eventually suffer unless growers develop heat-resistant versions that don’t need a lot of water. “You have to go back at least several million years before you find … temperatures” comparable to those being predicted, Battisti says.

Developing such crops, even with genetic engineering let alone just with ‘organic’ selective breeding, is far from certain. And then, there’s this:

A major lesson from this case and the recent food crisis is that regional disruptions can easily become global in character. Countries often respond to production and price volatility by restricting trade or pursuing large grain purchases in international markets—both of which can have destabilizing effects on world prices and global food security. In the future, heat stress on crops and livestock will occur in an environment of steadily rising demand for food and animal feed worldwide, making markets more vulnerable to sharp price swings. High and variable prices are most damaging to poor households that spend the majority of their incomes on staple foods

Doomed.

And remember, according to some of the best observations, climate change isn’t something we can prevent. Climate change already occurring.

AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING LIKE A BROKEN RECORD…THE INTENSITY
FORECAST REMAINS PROBLEMATIC. ANALYSES FROM CIMSS AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SHOWS THAT GUSTAV REMAINS IN 15 TO 20 KT OF
SOUTHERLY VERTICAL SHEAR….AND THE LARGE-SCALE MODELS FORECAST AT
LEAST SOME SOUTHERLY TO SOUTHWESTERLY SHEAR TO PERSIST UNTIL
LANDFALL. THAT…COMBINED WITH THE CURRENT RAGGED STORM STRUCTURE
AND THE MID-LEVEL DRY AIR TRYING TO WRAP AROUND THE STORM IN WATER
VAPOR IMAGERY…SUGGESTS ANY INTENSIFICATION SHOULD BE SLOW.
ADDITIONALLY..GUSTAV IS OVER A WARM EDDY IN THE LOOP CURRENT
NOW…AND SHOULD PASS OVER WATERS WITH LOWER OCEANIC HEAT CONTENT
BETWEEN NOW AND LANDFALL. THE GUIDANCE RESPONDS TO THESE FACTORS
BY FORECASTING MODEST STRENGTHENING DURING THE NEXT 12 TO 24
HR…WITH THE GFDL FORECASTING A PEAK INTENSITY OF 120 KT AND THE
OTHER MODELS ABOUT 110 KT. BASED ON THIS…THE INTENSITY FORECAST
WILL CALL FOR GUSTAV TO RE-INTENSIFY TO 115 KT IN 12 TO 24 HR…AND
MAKE LANDFALL ON THE NORTHERN GULF COAST AS A MAJOR HURRICANE.
GUSTAV SHOULD STEADILY WEAKEN AFTER LANDFALL.

Right now, this is what constitutes good news for New Orleans.

Given the projected strengthening–to a category IV hurricane–and the predicted track that will take the storm’s landfall near to New Orleans–where the levees are either weak or uncompleted, and thus totally unequal to the projected huge 10 to 20ft storm surges–this might be it for the crescent city. Again.

There will be no more “shelters of last resort,” that fig leaf expended during Katrina when the rest of us learned astonishing numbers of our fellow Americans have no choice but the last resort. Some of the poorest people in the country–let’s be honest with ourselves, some of the poorest people in North America–are being asked to evacuate, with no resources to do so. Again.

Frankly, this should be exactly why we pay taxes–to help people without any means to follow mandatory evacuation orders. Of course, after eight years of Bush and even longer under Republican dominance, such public assistance will be woefully unequal to the task. Again.

Consider donating to charity. The American Red Cross has started a fund. It’s an ugly way to deal with this, but the only way with which we’ve been left.

The second storm of the century is about to hit New Orleans, the second storm of the century within five years. That should make you wonder.

Storms like Gustav and Katrina used to be once-in-a-century storms. If you’re a civil engineer designing levees to protect New Orleans, you have to consider that a levee only lasts for a few decades before it has to be rebuilt. Should you design for a once-in-a-century storm every few years, or for the more typical storm? Remember, you have a tight budget.

The levees protecting New Orleans were designed for category III storms, not these category IV monsters. The climate changed; the levees haven’t.

Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have been increasing. Warmer water means hurricanes become, on average, stronger. While there is plenty of public debate as to why these changes are occurring, there is no credible scientific debate–the addition of carbon to the atmosphere by human beings is contributing to these changes.

So, with all the discussion of the political ramifications of hurricane Gustav, I’m a bit more concerned over what this means for us trying to live on the planet.

The “mercury vapor” that fluorescent bulbs require is quite toxic. While new compact fluorescent bulbs are voluntarily limited to five milligrams of mercury each, as little as a tenth of a milligram per square yard will make you seriously ill. Shaking hands, drooling, irritability, memory loss, depression, weakness—sounds like fun. And that’s what happens to adults; kids can be permanently injured by mercury exposure. If you break one of these bulbs in your house—and think of all the times a bulb breaks—the current advice is to open a window and run, not to return for at least 15 minutes. Whereas if it’s a traditional bulb, you grab a broom and screw in a new one.

And even if you manage to not accidentally dump hazardous waste in your living room, what do you do with a fluorescent bulb when it just plain wears out? Most places cannot recycle fluorescent tubes.

There is another. LED (light emitting diodes) have a similar energy efficiency to fluorescent bulbs with a far friendlier environmental impact. In the least, they involve no mercury.

Great! Why not use them everywhere? Huge expense. Most LEDs are based upon a substrate of sapphire. Urk. Requiring a precious stone means LED lightbulbs are about twenty times more expensive than traditional lightbulbs.

Enter some clever researchers at Purdue University:

The Purdue researchers have solved this problem by developing a technique to create LEDs on low-cost, metal-coated silicon wafers, said Mark H. Oliver, a graduate student in materials engineering who is working with Sands.

(Who would think something good could come from Indiana?)

Replacing the sapphire with silicon (made from sand) makes the bulbs fantastically cheaper. Good work people. Expect the cheaper, environmentally sound and energy efficient bulbs in stores in about two years.

* Switching from a Dodge Ram at 13 MPG to a Toyota Tundra at 15 MPG

* Switching from a Honda Fit at 32 MPG to a Toyota Prius at 44 MPG.

(Mileage figures are from Consumer Reports.)

Have your answer? Ok, next question.

Assuming you drive the same miles per year, which change will save more gas in a given year:

* Switching from a Dodge Ram that needs 770 gallons per 10,000 miles, to a Toyota Tundra that needs 667 gallons per 10,000 miles.

* Switching from a Honda Fit that needs 313 gallons per 10,000 miles, to a Toyota Prius that needs 238 gallons per 10,000 miles.

Did your answer change?

As a measure of fuel economy, miles-per-gallon is incredibly unintuitive. One must consider both the change and the starting point when deciding the significance of an increase in MPG. Nasty.

How nasty? Richard P. Larrick and Jack B. Soll collected data to discover just how confused people become when considering changes in miles-per-gallon. Their work was just published in the Journal Science.

The most telling passage from the study:

The study was presented in an online survey to 171 participants who were drawn from a national subject pool. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 75, with a median age of 35. All participants were given the following scenario (5): “A town maintains a fleet of vehicles for town employee use. It has two types of vehicles. Type A gets 15 miles per gallon. Type B gets 34 miles per gallon. The town has 100 Type A vehicles and 100 Type B vehicles. Each car in the fleet is driven 10,000 miles per year.” They were then asked to choose a plan for replacing the original vehicles with corresponding hybrid models if the “overriding goal is to reduce gas consumption of the fleet and thereby reduce harmful environmental consequences.”

One group of 78 participants was randomly assigned to a policy choice framed in terms of MPG. They were asked to choose between two options: (option 1) replace the 100 vehicles that get 15 MPG with vehicles that get 19 MPG and (option 2) replace the 100 vehicles that get 34 MPG with vehicles that get 44 MPG. Note that town fuel efficiency is improved more in option 1 (by 14,035 gallons) than in option 2 (by 6,684 gallons). As expected, the majority (75%) of participants in the MPG condition chose option 2, which offers a large gain in MPG but less fuel savings [95% confidence interval (CI) = 65 to 85%].

Participants in the GPM condition (n = 93) were given the same instructions as those in the MPG condition. In addition, they were told that the town “translates miles per gallon into how many gallons are used per 100 miles. Type A vehicles use 6.67 gallons per 100 miles. Type B vehicles use 2.94 gallons per 100 miles.” They read the same choice options as used in the MPG condition, including the MPG information, but with an additional stem that translated outcomes into GPM for the hybrid vehicles [(option 1) replace the 100 vehicles that get 6.67 gallons per 100 miles with vehicles that get 5.26 GPM and (option 2) replace the 100 vehicles that get 2.94 gallons per 100 miles with vehicles that get 2.27 GPM]. As expected, the majority of participants (64%) in the GPM frame chose option 1, which offers a small gain in MPG but more fuel savings (CI = 54 to 74%). Overall, the percentage choosing the more fuel-efficient option increased from 25% in the MPG frame to 64% in the GPM frame (P < 0.01).

When talking about fuel efficiency in terms of gallons per mile, people were nearly three-times as likely to make the rational choice as compared to the same numbers in miles-per-gallon. Remember this when making your next car purchase.

Or, for the graphically minded, like me:

Wilkins Ice Shelf, a broad plate of floating ice south of South America on the Antarctic Peninsula, is connected to two islands, Charcot and Latady. In February 2008, an area of about 400 km² broke off from the ice shelf, narrowing the connection down to a 6 km strip; this latest event in May has further reduced the strip to just 2.7 km.

This animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) between 30 May and 9 June, highlights the rapidly dwindling strip of ice that is protecting thousands of kilometres of the ice shelf from further break-up…

Wilkins Ice Shelf has experienced further break-up with an area of about 160 km² breaking off from 30 May to 31 May 2008. ESA’s Envisat satellite captured the event – the first ever-documented episode to occur in winter.

Excellent! The jury might be coming back on climate change. Perhaps this would be a good time to remind you of my posts and introduce you to a new podcast on nuclear power .

These frauds are not accidents, slips of care, but rather deliberate attempts to game tests of quality, to turn garbage into gold.

The toxic wheat gluten was doped with melamine, in a brilliant gambit to fix the protein content tests and make filler look like high quality protein. Overcompensated financial wizards, thanks to deregulation, managed to sell aggregates of dubious mortgages as high quality investments, cleverly bypassing all of the financial tests.

In the case of the fake Heparin, the actual drug was replaced with cheaper Chondroitin sulfate, aggressively modified chemically to fake quality control tests. At least nineteen people have died from this clever gambit, thousands made ill.

Such trickery requires canny chemistry or shrewed accounting–deft minds deriving novel solutions to their problems, rather than the actual, deeper and more pervasive problems leading to shortages of protein, of drug or worthy investments.

In a world that can sustain, at most, about two billion people in the voracious Western lifestyle–in a world of nearly eight billion, all of whom promised the Western middle class lifestyle–a thin veneer of success, of false protein and medicine, of false wealth and material growth, must obligately coat a massive, deep and dark well of exaggerations, lies and despairing intelligence.