How to Set A Deadline On Global Warming

Friends, colleagues, I have just published GEO-X: How 10 Big Firms Can Lead Us to End Global Warming. You can get it free through July 2023 on Apple Books, https://books.apple.com/book/id6450712229.

I ask for your help in distributing it to business executives, especially to executives of environmental sustainability.

“GEO-X” examines the political obstacles to ending global warming and concludes that governments will probably never overcome them. The book describes the weaknesses of existing regulatory systems, how they slow emissions but fail to incentivize true net zero operations, much less the enormous carbon removal required to reverse global warming. The book explains the failures of the carbon removal markets, especially the moral hazard so often resulting in fraud.

To solve all of these problems simultaneously, “GEO-X” proposes a bold three-part solution.

First, a coalition of willing firms could start a Global Emissions and Offset Exchange (GEO-X) to trade emissions permits and carbon removal contracts. Participating firms would end business with non-participating firms. The result would likely be a rush to join through the global supply chain.

Second, GEO-X would strengthen the carbon removal market with contracts backed up by modern data and biological simulation. GEO-X would not pay for reducing emissions, but only for removing carbon from the air.

Third, GEO-X would clear the carbon market with a state-of-art auction mechanism which prices a hard deadline on global warming. This auction mechanism appears to be the most efficient emissions trading system ever designed.

GEO-X would not need government to start, but would benefit from government cooperation. Governments could require businesses within their jurisdiction to participate in GEO-X, accelerating global participation.

“GEO-X” calls senior business executives to tackle global warming head-on.

Get it now and send it to your boss! And please re-post to your own networks.

#climateaction #climatechange #ClimateLeadership #ClimateSolutions #ClimatePolicy #corporatesustainability #environmental #globalwarming #markets #supplychain #sustainability

First diet from FNDDS

To start my study on the economic value of nutrients, I've created the first minimum cost diet based on data from the USDA Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies.

Unfortunately, their cost data is years out of date. If you wish, you can multiply the costs by some appropriate inflation factor, say, 2. Even then, I suspect that typical prices have changed with respect to each other. Still, this should be an inexpensive diet.

Only 2,000 kilocalories in this computer-generated diet. It meets all the nutritional requirements for a male, 30 to 50 years old. No warranty on palatability.

• 153.6 grams, $1.5/kg, Milk, dry, whole, with added vitamin D.
• 0.8 grams, $6.8/kg, Cereals ready-to-eat, KELLOGG, KELLOGG'S ALL-BRAN COMPLETE Wheat Flakes.
• 26 grams, $3.2/kg, Tomatoes, sun-dried.
• 190.3 grams, $0.2/kg, Mixed vegetable and fruit juice drink, with added nutrients.
• 49.7 grams, $0.3/kg, Rolls, dinner, rye.
• 445.6 grams, $0.2/kg, Tortillas, ready-to-bake or -fry, corn.
• 1.1 grams, $3/kg, Chicken liver, braised.
• 189.8 grams, $0.4/kg, Pinto, calico, or red Mexican beans, dry, cooked, fat not added in cooking.
• 21 grams, $3.4/kg, Peanut butter, vitamin and mineral fortified.

Editorial comments. If you drop the All-Bran and liver, you haven't lost much nutritionally. The sundried tomatoes and tortillas look way too cheap, like a factor of 20.

I'll post more diets, as I get them. Bon apétit!

Why I like operations research

Google is quoting Abraham Maslow, "If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." If you only have a pneumatic hammer, then you tend to be alert for big problems, and you aren't be put off by them. Of course, if you only have a computer-controlled high-precision 3-dimensional milling machine, you might see a lot of problems as potential opportunities.

My main tools are all in operations research. The training has taught me to look at the possibilities, and how the world could be, and then find the best route there.

O.R. in the news, and, apologetically, also economics

An operations researcher, Yuko Hatoyama, becomes prime minister of Japan! That is so cool! (Gotta fast forward some of my crazy ideas for a sci fi novel.) Hatoyama did a doctorate in "managerial engineering" at Stanford. If he can get his wife to stop talking, I think he'll be fine. To the extent that he does well, Japan will produce a bumper crop of operations researchers, as the discipline will receive a higher profile.

Some British scientists have improved the practicability of quantum computing somewhat. Have a look at Shor's algorithm on Wikipedia, and here, if you want to test the limits of your ability to pay attention. This stuff is wonderfully abstruse, and fantastically important. People are creating new ways to solve problems, and problem-solving is good.

Paul Krugman wrote a fascinating article in the NY Times about the state of economics. I have to say that I'm a Keynesian. Society generally prohibits a person from entering another's house and taking the contents without permission. But we do not prohibit a person from promising absurd investment returns, and we do not prohibit a person from gaining money through poisoning public water, and we should. Markets require regulation, because people require regulation. Even with regulation, something as simple as pair-wise trading is provably sub-optimal. The "invisible hand" has imperfect aim.

Another great food plan from Wagmu

Breakfast

• Bread, whole-wheat, toasted, 50 grams.
• Coffee with milk, three 282-gram servings.
• Milk, nonfat, fluid, 1 cup.

Lunch

• Cabbage, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt, 200 grams.
• Seeds, sunflower seed kernels, dry roasted, without salt, 75 grams.
• Peas, green, frozen, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt, 280 grams.
• Milk, nonfat, fluid, 2 cups.

Dinner

• Cheese, cheddar, 30 grams
• Carrots, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt, 20 grams
• New Zealand spinach, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt, 120 grams
• Broccoli, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt, 90 grams
• Milk, nonfat, fluid, 1 cup.
• Alcoholic Beverage, wine, table, red, Merlot 6 fl oz

This has about 7,060 kjoules (1,690 kcals), so you'll probably lose weight on this. This plan is naturally vegetarian (depending on whether you include cheese and milk as vegetarian). And it's cheap! The expensive bits are the wine and coffee, of course.

This has all required nutrients for a middle-aged guy (like me), except it's short choline. A few years ago, the U.S. government specified an adequate intake for choline, but it's got me scratching my head, because I don't see how my diet can have enough choline, unless I'm willing to eat a lot of lecithin, liver, eggs, or broccoli. So I'm disclosing the choline deficiency in this diet. This is not a fault of Wagmu, but rather what appears to be an overly high Adequate Intake set by the U.S. government.

First Food Plan from Wagmu Suggest

Hello, friends!. I have done quite a labour of love on my diet web site, Wagmu. You can log your diet and work out whether you're getting all your nutrients, and whether you're exceeding your calorie limits.

The feature I'm working on now, Wagmu Suggest, will allow you to optimize your daily food plan. It provides simple controls that will help you create a daily food plan, ensuring that you get all your nutrients without exceeding your calorie limits. If Wagmu Suggest proposes something you don't like, it's easy to put limits on foods.

Wagmu Suggest is not yet available, as we're still working on it. But I couldn't wait to show off an early result. So here is my first food plan, which I ate today!

Breakfast

• Egg, whole, cooked, fried 2 large
• Bread, whole-wheat, commercially prepared, toasted 50 grams
• Coffee with milk 1 282 g serving
• Parsley, raw 20 grams

Lunch

• Pumpkin, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 250 grams
• Seeds, sunflower seed kernels, dry roasted, without salt 45 grams
• Corn, sweet, yellow, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 150 grams

Snack

• Bananas, raw 1 medium (7" to 7-7/8" long)
• Coffee with milk 2 282 g serving

Dinner

• New Zealand spinach, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 120 grams
• Bread, whole-wheat, commercially prepared 50 grams
• Cauliflower, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 100 grams
• Broccoli, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 10 grams
• Carrots, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 100 grams
• Alcoholic Beverage, wine, table, red, Pinot Noir 6 fl oz
• Milk, reduced fat, fluid, 2% milkfat, with added nonfat milk solids, without added vitamin A 1.5 cup
• Candies, semisweet chocolate 10 grams

I'm trying to lose a little weight, so this is only 1,600 calories (6,700 kJ). You'll note that I included some wine and chocolate - I'm not a masochistic ascetic. Even so, this diet will not be for everyone. It won't satisfy everyone's dietary needs. But it was just about perfect for me. I found it filling and satisfying.

One other thing: it was designed taking cost into account. The most expensive bit is the wine, of course, which is pretty much a complete waste nutritionally. Except for that, most people should find that this is an inexpensive food plan.

The complete nutritional profile is available on request, but you could just type it into Wagmu yourself and see!

Car use in the future

I bought a used 1996 Prius back in August 2005. It is the first generation hybrid which Toyota didn't intend for export. I bought it here in Christchurch from a fellow who imported it. He owned a Toyota parts importing business.

To help us keep some kind of internal discipline on costs, my family has maintained a system of "internal charges" to use the car. If any family member wants to use the car, he or she has to put $4 pocket money into the "Taxi" box. When the car needs petrol, we have the cash on hand. The $4 doesn't cover the full cost per ride, which by my calculations is about NZ$6.60, but the $4 does make us think about taking a bike instead.

Much of the cost of a ride is tied up in the capital cost of the car, which incentives greater use of the car, to lower the cost per ride. It's strange to take a bike, with this expensive car sitting in the drive.

The solution is to spread the use of the vehicle over more people. The NY Times has a lovely article which explains that some new businesses are putting shared cars in neighbourhoods, and charging per use. People who use these systems drive much less, use public transportation more, and save a lot of money. It is something I've always wished we had. Time-shared vehicles will work in big cities, where most people live.

What are the implications for society? First, we're going to need far fewer cars - Zipcar has 50 members per car. That means the car industry is going to shrink. Second, we'll need fewer parking spaces. That means that city living will become denser, as garages are turned into living space. Cities will also have more green space, as some parking lots are turned to parks. Third, cars will be nicer, because the capital cost is spread over more people.

As a fourth impact, since we will have fewer cars on the road, we won't need such big roads. That would be great, but as these effects occur only at the margin, it will take decades for such changes to occur. Too bad! At least we're going in the right direction.

There is an interesting implication for operations research. The NYT article points out that people who use shared vehicles plan their travel much more carefully. That suggests that people will want GPS units with better routing algorithms.

Balintfy made the world better with OR.

Joseph Balintfy has died. He was a professor of Management Science and Operations Research at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. What did Balintfy do that was so cool? Balintfy studied using O.R. to improve nutrition.

Back in 1945, George Stigler tried to calculate the minimum cost of subsistence. He found a good low-cost diet, but he could not prove that it was the cheapest, which also satisfied all nutritional requirements. A couple years later, George Dantzig set about solving this problem, inventing the simplex algorithm to so. This is all well-worn history to the legion of operations researchers.

What is also well known is that Dantzig's solution was awful: liver, cabbage, corn meal, evaporated milk, lard, peanut butter, potatoes, spinach, and wheat flour. And if we update all the nutritional information, Garille and Gass showed that it's not going to get much better.

Balintfy added palatability. Rather than finding the minimum cost of substistence, Balintfy studied the cost of decent subsistence, with considerable implications for national policy. Balintfy wasn't the first person to study this, as Benson at Rutgers was also researching this as early as 1960. (Balintfy even gave credit to Benson for this.) But Balintfy did a great job of it, studying computerized menu planning, food preference over time, and even subtle issues like the food mix for best bioavailability of nutrients, and the probability of satisfying nutritional constraints, given a random distribution of nutrients in a given food. He also studied food price indices, noting that existing fixed weight indices do not allow for substitutions as relative prices change.

Balintfy wrote a complete menu planning system called CAMP. With regal foresight and generosity, he put his program in the public domain. He saw that his program could help the world eat more nutritiously and more cheaply, so he gave it away! How cool is that! How cool is that! (In stark contrast to the breath-taking chutzpah and greed of Anjan Ghose.) According to Balintfy's 1975 article, the program has been used to feed over a million people, and that was 34 years ago. Because he put it in the public domain, others have picked it up and put it in a variety of commercial programs, and the number of people who have benefited is now countless.

However, I am not aware of it being used anywhere now. Also, I haven't been able to find Balintfy's code, but have started to ask colleagues about it. It might be a nice addition to the open source COIN-OR initiative, which was started by IBM; all the more elegant as Balintfy released his code through IBM's Contributed Program Library. It must have been one of the very earliest "open source" programs!

I've been studying problems of nutrition and diet for some years, and my nascent Wagmu site is part of the result. It doesn't have all the tricks that Balintfy implemented, and may never. I'm simply not as clever (nor as well funded) as Balintfy was.

Free Excel-to-Outlook task scheduler!

Life got you overwhelmed? Don't know what to do next? Like playing around with obtuse spreadsheets? Try my Task_Scheduler.xls. This spreadsheet is designed to help you use Excel and Outlook to (1) schedule your long-term work, to ensure that you have enough time to meet your deadlines, and (2) schedule your current week.

Briefly, you type in your tasks, how long you think they'll take, some kind of value for importance, and optional "Start after" date and an optional "Due date". The spreadsheet then creates a schedule, trying to meet your deadlines, and schedule work with highest value/hour first. You can then optionally import the next week of tasks into Outlook, and rearrange further.

So you can be reasonably sure that you can get your work done over the next three months or so, without having to enter all of that into Outlook, and you can import into Outlook the next week of tasks that you plan to do.

No support whatever is provided and use at your own risk.

Update 23 Feb 2014 - I changed the link from my defunct University website to my personal website.

How to solve the world water crisis

With my colleagues at the University of Canterbury's Water Markets Research Group, we've worked out a way to solve this horrible problem. I've put it on my academic web site: Why and how to set up a water market that is physically, economically, and environmentally correct.

This work depends on operations research, hydrology, economics, and basic information technology. Thus the title for my blog.

We've named this approach the Forever Fair Water Market System. I created a logo for this work that is meant to look both like an infinity symbol and two waves sharing water.

Plant, Krauss, and ... Toth.

Whoa! Cool video. Maybe the world can still make cool music.



More importantly, here's another lurch toward saving the world with O.R.: my smart colleague Sandor Toth at University of Washington won the "Best Presentation" prize in forestry for "Optimal Reserve Selection Subject to Contiguous Habitat Requirements." The work aims to find the best way to connect plots of land into larger contiguous regions in order to improve ecological functions. Hard stuff - graph theory, economics, computer programming, algorithms, but this work and similar research will eventually show us how to improve ecology on a continental scale, and at least cost.

Here we are, nerds plodding along with our computers and algorithms, and few people see the impending revolution in the environment. Engineers and scientists don't get the visibility of the rock stars. Saving the world won't be easy, and undoing all the environmental damage we've done will take the best talent we can find to solve these problems, and political will, too. These problems are solvable, and the political will is starting to be there. But, again, we do need talented folk to help us. Then we have to raise the profile of these solutions sufficiently high that society can buy into them.