Brown flour

Brown flour just ain't what is is cracked up to be.  Let me quote a paragraph or two from The Third Plate by Dan Barber (incidentally, highly recommended)

"The roller mill appeared in the late 1800's just in time to expand the divide between the wheat field and the table.  It was a technological breakthrough that revolutionized the wheat industry just as the cotton gin had done for the cotton industry a century earlier.  Until its widespread use, people used stone mills.  Stone mills like the one we use at Blue Hill work like molars, crushing the kernels between two large stones.  They are effective, but slow and tedious, and they do little to separate the kernel into its component parts, a key development in the drive to industrialize flour.
 


A few years ago, Klaas's wife, Mary-Howell showed me a picture of a wheat kernel in cross section.  It looked like an ultrasound image of a six-or seven week old human gestational sac, which isnt a bad comparison; a wheat kernel is a seed, after all.  The grain's embryo or 'germ' is surrounded by the starchy endosperm, - the stuff of refined white flour - which stores food for the germ.  Surrounding the endosperm is the seed coat or bran, which protects the germ until moisture and heat levels indicate it's time to germinate. 
 

Whereas stone mills had crushed the tiny germ, releasing oils that would turn the flour rancid within days, roller mills separated the germ and the bran from the endosperm.  This new ability to isolate the endosperm allowed for the production of self-stable white flour, able to be stored and transported long distances.  Overnight, flour became a commodity. 
 


It's hard to fathom that merely removing a temperamental little germ could revolutionize a staple grain, but that's just what happened.  The settling of the Great Plains and the advent of roller-mill technology meant that white flour was suddenly cheaper and more readily available.  Small wheat farms, including those in the former grain belt of New York, couldn't compete. Gristmills dotting the landscape became the stuff of folklore.  The homogenization of the US wheat industry had begun

The whiter flour became, the greater the demand.  To be fair, that's been the history of wheat for thousands of years.  But for all its efficiency, steel couldn't match the old-school grindstone in two key respects.  In fully removing the germ - that vital, living element of wheat - and the bran, the roller mill not only killed wheat but also sacrificed nearly all of its nutrition.  While the bran and the germ represent less than 20% of a wheat kernel's total weight, together they comprise 80% of it's fiber and other nutrients.  And studies show that the nutritional benefits of whole grains can be gained only when all the edible parts of the grain - bran, germ and endosperm - are consumed together*.  But that's exactly what was lost in the new milling process.

*this probably relates to the fact that you need to consume all the amino acids in protein at the same time.  The digestive system takes up amino acids as balanced proteins.  If there is an excess of one amino acid, the excess is rejected. Presumably there are different amino acids in the various components of the wheat seed and only by consuming the whole seed do you get the full nutrition.

There was another cost as well, just as devastating. Stone-milled flour retained a golden hue from the crushed germ's oil and was fragrant with bits of nutty bran.  The roller mills might have finally achieved a truly white flour, but the dead chalky powder no longer tasted of wheat - or really of anything at all.  We didn't just kill wheat,  We killed the flavor.

The Chinese Dilema

You may have wondered why there are so many Chinese in the world today.  The answer is surprisingly simple.  Many many years ago some Chinese genius worked out that in order to have sustainable soils, you have to return every bit of organic material you can to the soil.  This includes animal waste, human waste and all the inedible parts of your crops.  You can also supplement this with material from the sea since you are sending huge amounts of nutrients down your rivers from the land.  It has worked a treat and despite  mongol hoards, palace revolutions and wars, the Chinese have grown and prospered.'

It helped that they had rich deep loes soils gratis of the continental glaciers that ground rock into fine powder to be carried and deposited by the wind but so did America and they have gone through meters of this 'god given' bounty in a few centuries.

In the mean time other empires have prospered and declined as they mined their soils and the area they occupied had to wait for the slow process of building new soils from the bottom up before significant numbers of people could once more occupy the areas where empires once existed.

Back to the Chinese, they are now coming into the 'modern world' and it doesn't auger well for them.  On the nutrient front, they now have flush toilets and will be sending massive amounts of nutrients to sewage plants to be detoxified, denitrified and what is left, sent down to the sea.

It doesn't have to be this way.  For instance, in Seattle, they now have a sewage plant that is turning their 'feed stock' into valuable fertilizer, the sale of which covers half their running costs.  If this becomes the norm instead of the exception, perhaps us westerners can also have a sustainable future.

The Chinese are sinning against sustainability in another way now.  In their rush to industrialize. they are polluting their air to an extreme extent. It is so bad that they are negatively affecting their agriculture.  Never mind. there is light on the horizon.  At the same time they are working as hard as they can to replace coal energy with wind and solar energy and petrol vehicles with electrics.  With their command economy, they will most likely succeed and rather rapidly at that.

In the mean time the Chinese are buying up land all over the world to be able to feed their people.  If they adopt the western model of flushing nutrients down to the sea, they will have to buy up a lot more.

historical sea level

Time                         Level
 22000 years ago      Minus 120m
 15,000                                 -107
 10,000                                 -40
   9,000                                 -25
   8,000                                 -15
   7,000                                 -30cm

Electrical demand balancing

Electricity generating companies are facing a couple of problems which can be solved by demand balancing but first, what is demand balancing.

At present, most generating companies monitor the use of electricity and as demand goes up, bring on more generators and as demand goes down, reduce the power output of generators and even shed them.  All generators have a certain range of output so as power demand increases, smaller variations in demand can be met by increasing the amount of power produced by a given generator but beyond a certain level, more generators must be brought on line Power companies have a dilemma in that they must have sufficient generating capacity to meet peak loads.  This is expensive.  To build new generation capacity when it will only be used occasionally is a nightmare to their accountants.

There are peak generation periods such as in the morning when everyone is getting ready to go to work or school and more so in the evening when everyone is home, the TV is running, mom is making dinner in the oven, it is winter and all the lights are on.  What the generating companies don't need is, that at this peak load time you are also running the dish washer, cloths washer, cloths drier, water heater and so forth.  If these functions could be shifted to late at night when all the evening activity is over and the lights are out, then they could avoid having to build more 'peaker plants' that will only be needed in peak hours.

This is where demand balancing comes on.  The power company has to find a way to induce us to use power, whenever possible, in trough hours so that we don't need this power in peak hours.  The inducement is simple.  They must make power less expensive during times of low demand.

They could simply make power less expensive for all uses as demand goes down but what is really the holy grail for them is to be able to switch on and off some of your electrical devices as needed to balance their base generation.

We need some hardware and soft ware to make this happen.  Here is an idea of how it will work.

You have special little units that you plug into your wall socket and then plug your device into the unit.  It 'talks' to your smart meter you have installed.  You can set the unit to come on at different prices for electricity and, of course, the power company, when they have a little excess power, will send a message down their lines that now power is at 24c, 23c, 22c and so forth as they need more demand to balance the base power they are producing.

You are unlikely to put one of these devices on your TV or stand up lamp.  If you do, the TV and/or the lamp will go off if the price for power goes above what you have selected. For all these functions that are on demand,  ie that you can switch on and off as you want, you still pay the full power price of, let's say, 25c/kWh.  The only equipment you are likely to use these special plug in units for are your clothes and dish washer, any batteries you are charging (such as your car or wall unit), your hot water cylinder and so forth.  On the front of the device will be a dial that you turn to the price you are willing to pay for the function in question.  But all devices are not equal.

With your car battery or hot water cylinder, the power can go off and on as the power company adjusts the price to use their base generation.  Your washing machine is something else.  Once the cycle starts, you want it to finish.  Otherwise you may have food baked on to your dishes or a wet mess in your clothes washer.  So we have another wee switch on the device which you can put in either 'continue to the end' or 'intermittent'.    For your dish washer, you will set the 'continue' function so once it starts it will finish.

A battery or water heater is something else again.  You may have set your car battery charging unit to, say 10c since past experience shows that you are likely to get some power at this price during the night but here we have a different problem. You want to be able to get to work in the morning.  so we need one more function in our wall plug device..

We have a timer on the device which you set so that full power comes on, say, an hour before you go to work.  If the battery is fully charged, it will not take any more power but if the battery is only partially charged, it will fill up your battery at the full cost.  Not to worry.  Even at the full day time rate, it costs about a third as much in fuel to drive a km than with fossil fuel.

We could even go one step further.  Say you only need 50% charge in your car battery for what you do during the day or perhaps you can plug in at work and take advantage of low prices in the middle of the day.  You have checked the weather report and know that the wind turbines are going to be going gang busters from 10:00AM.  You might then program in, make sure my battery is 50% full by the time I head for work but keep charging if the price stays low.

Despite what you hear, power companies are more worried at present by the decrease in power demand.  People are putting in LED lights, factories are becoming more efficient and the power companies are seeing decreasing revenue.  The Electric car is a god-send to them.  But they don't want to have to build generating plants that only work to take care of peak demand.  By shifting demand to off periods, they solve this problem and make existing generators much more revenue efficient.  For instance, when there is lot's of water, they can send more of the water through the generator rather than over the spill way.

This is also a great way to help solve the problem of intermittent generation of renewable energy.  Say that during the day, the generation of wind energy is unusually good.  They can lower the price for these special functions such as heating the water in your cylinder even during the day.  You get cheaper power, they sell the excess instead of wasting it and over all, less fossil fuel is used.  Win win all around.

Wasted Effort

We are wasting our effort, dissipating our effectiveness, peeing against the wind and farting at thunder.  We are ensuring our failure.  I refer to our various  campaigns.  Save the flowers, save the bees, save the snails, save the trees.

 I could go on and on with:

  

*mitigating climate change, 

*re-wilding, 

*stopping all sorts of pollution, 

*getting control of trade agreements that shaft us, 

*stopping subsidies to fossil fuel companies, 

*adopting EVs, 

*saving our corals, 

*preserving our fisheries resources, 

*fixing the excessive and ever increasing costs of electricity

*slashing the egregious levels of corruption in politics, especially on the 'right'

*stopping getting into war after war that 'the west' looses.

*remaking the GOP into an effective, rational party that has the good of the American people as its primary purpose.

There is one ring that controls them all.

Nowhere is that old adage "Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune" more true than in politics.  We, the peasants,  think we are gaining some advantage by others paying for the election campaigns of our elected officials and then, we wonder why the elected officials do the bidding of the vested interests.  What a great investment for them.

They pay pennies and get back dollars, pay millions and get back billions.  For big business and the uber rich, this has to be one of the best investments they will ever make.  Businesses and rich individuals support politicians, often on both sides, just to hedge their bets and the politicians make sure that the legislation favors these big business and uber rich individuals and ensure that besides favorable legislation, they get tax breaks and subsidies.  Do you realize how many countries still give financial concessions to coal companies!!! not to mention oil companies.

Because of the system, many countries and especially America and Australia have socialism for big business and the rich and capitalism* for the poor.

*Incidentally there is nothing wrong in theory with Capitalism, Communism or any other 'ism'.  The problem is with uncontrolled capitalism;  what used to be called Laisse faire and now is called the New(neo) Liberalism.  As an individual, I am not allowed to kill by commission or omission, throw my garbage on the commons or the property of my neighbor, bear false witness, lie to the authorities and so forth and so on.  There are consequences for any of these transgressions.  Big business and the uber rich get away with all of these in both overt and covert ways.  We espouse everyone being equal before the law but it is just lip service.  It is similar to the way that various regimes have used religion to keep the peasants under control. 

Incidentally (once again) the only place I have seen true Communism is in the Kibutz system in Israel.  Kibutzim (plural of Kibutz) operated as a commune and hence was commune-ism.  The difference between this and the Russian or Chinese system or for that matter the Kibutz and various religious sects that operate as  communes was that the Kibutzim were fiercely   democratic.  No charismatic leader was tolerated,  leaders were changed often and democratically and all decisions  were discussed by the whole community. It was a beautiful system.  It has now collapsed for reasons that had little to do with the basic system. That's a story for a separate blog.

The politicians don't do the bidding of their financiers because they were supported in the last election.  They do their bidding because they know if they don't, they won't be supported in the next election.  They are also pretty well assured of a cushy job when they leave politics - often as a ""consultant"" or as a lobbyist.  Also, when you compare their wealth when they enter politics with their wealth when they leave politics, you can pretty well guarantee that there something else at going on here*.  Could it be insider trading tips.  They certainly don't get rich from their salaries.

*Here is the explanation.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/house-bipartisan-stock-trading-ban

The ultimate argument of politicians to explain their failure to fulfill their election promises is that, "if they aren't in office they can't do anything".  Nonsense.  Far better a one term MP that does what is necessary, sets an example and begins to steer the ship of state in the necessary direction than a 5 term MP that continually compromises to the point of total betrayal of the people who elected him.

This is costing us hugely in our day to day life and it is now clear that this system could bring down our civilization.

 

Clearly we can all, individually, do things to improve our world situation but our political representatives have to do the heavy lifting by setting the rules of the game so that positive actions are taken by us.  Politics at it's best doesn't actually do anything but rather sets the playing field so that we do things.  Look at how, for instance, Norway encouraged the public to take up electric cars.

Instead politicians are ensuring that we don't take effective action against climate change.  This feeds into the pockets of various vested interests and especially the fossil fuel industry.  Even if some of the milder scenarios from the scientists are correct with respect to the effects of climate change, we could  knock ourselves back into the dark ages or even the stone age.  The fringe scientists suggest we could trigger a run away green house effect that would turn us into a new Venus.  

 

 

And this is not some change that will occur in the far future.  Just look at Australia.  As of the beginning of 2020 it is disappearing in a cloud of smoke, and the ning nong of a PM* still denies climate change is real and promotes the massive sale of coal** 

* Scott, the stupid, also mocked the Hornsdale mega battery that has been installed by Elon Musk in a wind farm in Southern Australia.  He compared it to the mega banana and the mega peach that some towns display.  Well Scott, baby, this mega battery is making money hand over fist for the wind farm while reducing the cost of electricity to the people of the area and as an added benefit, stabilizing the frequency and voltage of the grid it is part of.  Oh and by the way, it acts as a peaker plant.

**Australia exports three times as much coal as she uses in Australia and in Australia, coal is the main source of electricity; this, in a country with, arguably the greatest renewable energy sources of wind and solar in the world***.   Fortunately the people and businesses of Australia are getting on with it and ignoring the government.  Oh...just the other day, the state of Victoria imposed an extra tax on electric vehicles.  What a bunch of losers.

 

***(June, 2021).  Here is a fun one for you.  It would appear that coal ash from some sources is rich in Rare Earth Metals which can be extracted.  Perhaps Australia sits on a great resource of these metals that are essential for building solar panels, wind turbines and batteries.

 


If some of the predicted tipping points are reached, climate will change faster than our very precariously balanced agriculture can cope with.  Even a single year of crop failure in the grain belts of the Northern Hemisphere and Australia will be disastrous.  This grain is shipped to countries all over the world.  Imagine a decade of such crop failure until we work out how to grow crops  under the new climate regime.

 

Note(April 2022).  We may see this in a reduced form.  With the war in the Ukraine, Ukrainian wheat production is unlikely to be significant this year and Russia has sanctions against her economic activity plus huge losses of soldiers, some of whom may have been part of the wheat producing system before they were drafted.  It will be interesting to see if there is a problem with world wheat production this year and what this results in. I just read an article that suggests that the Ukraine war will reduce world wheat production by 30%.

Or even more disastrous, it is a real possibility that our climate will flick-flack back and forth between the existing and the new climate regime before it settles down in the new regime.  This would be even more serious than a sudden change to a new climate. You would have no idea what crops would succeed from year to year.

At least by the end of the process, the world population would probably be down to the Lovelock Number*

*James Lovelock, the man who articulated the Gaia Hypothesis, suggested that within this century the population of the earth will have fallen to 1b (it is at present at 7b and predicted to go to 9b)

We have seen, in the 1930's and again, even more so, in 2008, how interconnected the world  is.  Back many centuries ago, if Europe crashed, America didn't even know Europe existed.  Now one country going down economically brings all down.  How much more disastrous would it be if our food supply suddenly crashed.  America, Canada, Russia, Ukraine and Australia provide most of the grain to a wide range of third world countries.

And consider this.  The higher you are the harder you fall. Many predictions say that the poor will suffer most under climate change and this could well be so.  But most cities in the so called civilized world have only enough food to feed their residents for three days.  Most large cities would take far longer than that to evacuate (and where would they go).  At some point in the future we may see internal migration in the so called first world to their rural areas with really nasty consequences.

Some commentators suggest that the Arab Spring was triggered (not caused)  by the rise in food prices caused by a poor grain harvest in Russia.  If so, that was just a wee warning shot across our bow.  A taste if things to come.

Consider, as well, the 2018 refugee problem, mainly in Europe.  It is just a tiny fore-taste of what will face us when climate change begins to get really serious.  Consider the social disruption this mini migration caused in many European countries.  Then multiply it by 10 and 10 again.

So what is the bottom line.  If we want politicians to do what is best for "we, the people", we must be the ones that pay for their election campaigns from the exchequer, and the first order of business after this is achieved is to pass legislation that anyone who pays money to any politicians for any reason what-so-ever gets mandatory jail time.  This, of course, also includes any non monetary bribes.  Note that it also includes paper jobs given to politicians when they leave office as a reward for their actions when they were in office. 

Campaign money must come from the exchequer.

And......It doesn't have to cost the ridiculous amounts that it costs now.  Politicians can be given a legislated amount of money and a legislated time on national radio and television.  They would get a legislated space on news papers.  Venues would be rented for them to hold town meetings where each candidate answers questions from each other, from the moderator and from the audience.  These meetings would be put in their entirety on Youtube and shown on Television channels.

We should also set up a standard web site for each of them
On their individual, standardized web site, they can express themselves as they please.   But there will also be a section, inaccessible to them, in which past promises are compared with their voting record and a second section comparing their voting record with any other politician one is interested in.    Of course, they can use the Internet to their hearts content.  It costs nothing.

If we want to call the tune, we have to pay the piper.  We should stop all our campaigns for various causes and concentrate a huge ground swell on this one alone.  Then, after we have succeeded,  we can return to our other extremely critical campaigns with a much better chance of success.  We are so smart individually but so dumb in the collective.  How hard is it to understand.

            Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

 

Postscripts:

1/  Jan 12, 2021 - In this kerfuffle regarding activating the 25th amendment or impeaching Donald J Trump for inciting insurrection,  a number of large corporations have announced that they will suspend any financing of the elections of any senators that oppose impeachment when it is sent from the House of Representatives to the Senate.  This will be interesting to watch.  If a bunch of GOP senators switch their allegiance to the cause and vote to impeach Trump it will prove the premise of this blog in spades.  Namely that maintaining their financing is the main motivation of Senators (and of course congressmen) ahead of all other considerations.  We'll see how this plays out.

 

2/  July 17, 2021  A major complaint will be 'Where is this money coming from'.  I'll give you just one example.  You can find your own.  Once the link between vested interests and politicians has been severed, all sorts of legislation will be possible.  One example is removing the tax breaks, subsidies, amortization allowances and so forth from fossil fuel companies.  I bet that this move alone would generate enough money for federal elections.    And remember, elections don't have to cost the obscene amounts that they cost at present.  Of course, this will also go some way toward saving us from our sorry selves with respect to our carbon emissions.  

June 2022

Just one final thought.  We might wonder where the money would come from to support the election campaign of the politicians.  It would have to come from the exchequer, of course and it would be a huge saving of money.  Let me run this by you. 

 

In order to get the contributions from rich individuals and companies with vested interests, the politicians have to give them all sorts of concessions which cost money.  These include such things as tax breaks, tariff barriers, sweet contracts from the government and so forth.  All these cost money which goes out or doesn't even come in to the government coffers in the first place.  And remember, the vested interests want a return on their contributions/investment.  Therefor, the cost to the governments will be greater than the amount the vested interests contribute.

  

In other words, if we the tax payer, supported the election campaigns of the politicians, it would actually save money.