Clothes for a cleaner future

One thing that all seven billion people possess is clothing. If this could be made to perform some function which helps the environment it could significantly compensate for the damage we do as human beings.

 

Moves in this direction are currently underway and not too far from the shops.

 

Denim which absorbs Nox

 

Nitrogen mono-oxide and nitrogen dioxide are atmospheric pollutants produced by traffic and factories. Generically they are known as NOx and they damage both health (nausea, irritated eyes, respiratory problems) and the environment (acid rain, global warming, inhibition of plant growth). They can also react with aerosols from cans in a harmful way.

 Since over half the world population live in cities it is becoming increasingly important to remove them from the air.

 

The natural world provides us with the means: titanium dioxide, which is found mainly in two kinds of ore – ilmenite and rutile – and is used in catalytic converters to remove NOx from engine exhaust gases, as well as in paving stones, glass and sun cream. A small company in the UK called Catalytic Clothing discovered that by spraying nanometric titanium dioxide particles onto denim they had invented a form of clothing which absorbs NOx from the air. The more the clothing is subjected to movement while being worn the more NOx is absorbed and converted into harmless water soluble nitrates. Presumably, someone jogging in titanium oxide coated denim clothes would extract more NOx the faster they jogged.

The most encouraging thing about this development is that it is not far from market. ‘Field of Jeans’ has just been exhibited at the Manchester Science Festival, UK (27 Oct – 4 November, 2012).

 

As well as making new clothes with the specially coated denim (and other materials?) the same company is working with the detergent company Ecover to produce a washing powder additive called CatClo. If this became universally available and could work on other fabrics as well as denim the benefit to city air quality could be considerable and in the near future.

 

Converting pressure, heat and sunlight into electricity

These products could be on the market within 2-3 years. If they took off it might speed up the manufacture and marketing of piezoelectric clothing and shoes. A lot of research is going on in this area. The idea is to utilise the piezoelectric effect by which pressure on a material is converted into electricity. When a person moves it causes pressure to build up in parts of the clothes worn and this pressure can be used to power small electronic devices such as mobile phones or batteries. Pressure in the soles of shoes can also be used to generate electrical power as the person walks. See, for example, http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111038

This would indirectly benefit the environment by reducing the need to make batteries, a very energy intensive process which generates waste and global warming emissions.  The pioezoelectric effect is already being incorporated into fashion designs.

 

The thermoelectric effect could also be used. This is the conversion of differences in temperature across the interface between two different materials into an electric voltage. E.g. the inside of a shoe being worn is hotter than the outside. The same principle of deriving electricity from heat  could be used wherever otherwise wasted heat is available - a hot water pipe for instance. The solar voltaic effect – by which sunlight is converted into electricity, is another possibility.

 

Hydrophobic clothing

There have been startling developments in spray-on technology to make fabric able to completely repel water. The same method can be used to make all sorts of equipment fully water proof e.g. by applying hydrophobic coatings to the outside and inside of a mobile phone it will still work underwater as long as the signal is strong enough. Hydrophic clothes  help the environment by reducing, if not eliminating, the need to clean them.

John
author of  the novel 2077 AD which is now being revised and expanded
Reach me at cosmik.jo@gmail.com

Accounting for truth

It is essential in running a business, public service or charity to have sound annual accounts reflecting financial reality. Only with these is it possible to effectively and fairly

 

• Invest in research and development

• Allocate money to loan repayment, shareholders, salaries and recruitment

• Raise money from investors and donors

• Buy materials, goods and services for the organisation

• Distribute, sell and promote the outputs (e.g. clothes, energy or medical services)

• Levy taxes

 

Trying to guide and take forward an organisation without good accounting is like driving in a fog.

Yet there seems to be a growing tendency to lose sight of this basic reality. Balance sheets, profit-and-loss accounts, cash flow statements and projections of these which accurately reflect the financial state of an organisation are, I suspect, but can’t prove, becoming less rigorous.  There is growing pressure from the financial derivates industry and financial journalists to make money or cut costs quickly to the exclusion of anything long term or intangible and this puts pressure on the company to make the accounts, including short term projections, look good  rather than reflect the real cost structure, business environment and sales trends. Even departments within a given company are constantly trying to hide information from the directors when things go wrong. Charities and public services are also subject to these pressures.

 

Not all distortions of financial truth derive from overt dishonesty. In the western world this is still mercifully rare (especially N Europe and N America). More insidious is the growing pressure for the individual to assert himself or herself, advance his or her career, make an impact, impress the boss, gain wealth for its own sake and status to impress his or her peers. It runs through secular society and conflicts with the ideals on which social and economic advances have been built: truthfulness, mutual trust throughout a hierarchy and recognition that there is a dimension to reality beyond the market economy or the models and equations of science and engineering. Not that the ideals were always followed in practice but they were at least recognised as ideals that it would be good to live up to - good for everyone. My fear is that the ideals themselves are beginning to disappear in a fog of self-obsession and postmodernism.

 

In other posts I’ve lamented the damage being done to science by those scientists who are oblivious to the epistemological limitations of science and fail to regard the search for truth as sacred within a  reality  greater than it can ever encompass. If peer-reviewed science loses its way it will have dire consequences for civilisation in the long term. But if people in the institutions of society, be they  wealth generating, or providing a tax- or charity-financed service, continue to lose respect for truth the effects could be more immediate as reality catches up with practice based on financial illusion.

 

The kinds of distortions I have referred to above are within conventional accounting systems used by chartered accountants. For instance, company X may be able to boost its share capital by transferring a capital appreciation such as a rise in value of a property owned by X, from the balance sheet to the profit-and-loss account. This would be dishonest and give an illusory picture of the profitability of X.

 

However, the accounting conventions themselves need to be revised because even when done with rigorous honesty they fail to reflect reality. When a factory producing small family saloons switches to manufacturing large 4x4 vehicles it is incurring extra costs which do not appear on any accounts. Material and energy have definite prices and can be quantified. What does not appear is the drain on resources which have always been regarded as free and limitless, such as air, water and minerals. These, and the destruction of them (e.g. in the case of air, carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere during manufacture of a car dwarf those produced by its operation over the lifetime of the vehicle)  are not easily quantifiable financially but there are definite moves in this direction.

 

Essentially what I’m trying to say is that to improve the real world we need to be realistic. Recognising reality depends on values not so highly venerated as they should be: honesty, integrity and devotion to the pursuit of truth. And given the importance of money to the functioning of society these values need to be fundamental to the ethos of chartered accountants.

 John
Author 2077 AD
reach me at cosmik.jo@gmail.com

The moral argument for God's existence

The structure of the argument is as follows:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist

3. Therefore God exists.

 I am using Aristotle’s definition of God as ‘a first uncaused cause, intelligent, immaterial, eternal and most good being who is the source of order in the universe.’  ‘Objective’ means what is independent of people’s opinion, like the laws of physics. It must transcend all races, cultures, religions and situations. Moral value refers to the worth of a person or action, while moral duty refers to our obligation to act in a certain way.

 In a purely natural, materialistic universe, moral values and duties emerge simply to facilitate survival of the people in charge, whether they be rulers of the Third Reich or the elected politicians of a parliamentary democracy. They are not objective in any sense. What is right for one society is wrong for another. People within a given society can make up their own rules of right and wrong in defiance of the legally enshrined laws as long as they don’t get caught. In principle, nothing is ruled out – genocide, eugenics, rape, murder, greed, lust for power are not objectively wrong. It’s all just social convention, either forced by the ruling class or agreed by the majority for what they perceive to be their own individual or collective interest (e.g. give work  and purpose to the unemployed, as did Hitler in 1930s Germany).

In such a universe there is no reason to regard a human being as having any sacred value. He or she is valued only according to how useful he or she is to society, or to neighbours, friends and relatives. His or her life is worth no more than that of a blade of grass, a bacterium or a dog. All are the products or by-products of a purely mechanical evolutionary process in a pointless universe. The concept of morality is just an illusion manufactured by the brain, along with justice, love, truth and beauty. Even altruism is dismissed as an evolutionary device.  A philosophical materialist talking about morals is deluded if he thinks he has the authority to pronounce any of the Ten Commandments right or wrong. Which is not to say he can’t act morally. Most do; but they can’t do so without contradicting their godless worldview.

Neither are moral duties objective under this materialistic worldview. Animals do not have moral duties: animals kill for food but they don’t murder or act with gratuitous cruelty; neither are they expected to protect other animals with animal rights. On the naturalistic view animals are no different from humans other than by degree. If humans are not qualitatively different from animals there is no  qualitative difference between refraining from harming another human being and eating with bad table manners.

And yet we know this is not true. Objective moral values and duties do exist. We feel bad or apprehensive when transgressions occur: e.g. when a person is murdered or tortured.   We know this intuitively and they exist throughout humanity in all its manifestations. They are not illusions. So where does objective morality come from? It can only be God. It is God’s own nature which is good. It is from God that the commandments for living come and they flow out of his nature.

 Is moral behaviour restricted to believers in God? No. Moral behaviour does not require belief in God but it does require the existence of God to make any kind of sense.


I am no theologian but it is my understanding that in the case of Christianity at least Jesus specifically says that the Holy Spirit 'will convict/convince the (unbelieving) world concerning sin and righteousness'  See John 16:7-11.  And Romans 2:14-16 speaks of God's law being written on the hearts of gentiles (non-Jews). The non-believer who wilfully and knowingly rejects God, however good to his fellow man or woman, does, unfortunately,  commit a cosmically important sin, setting himself or herself up as judge and too proud to submit to his or her Creator, and therfeore at risk of submitting to a self-appointed god on Earth (e.g. the current leader of North Korea is one of thousands of examples that rear their heads through human history).

For an academic exposition on the existence of God by W.L.Craig (a brillliant Christian philosopher who is also an expert on cosmology, quantum mechanics and elementary particle physics) listen to the podcasts on this website. The students ask searching questions, ones which you may ask yourself, and he attempts to deal with them.

John

Author 2077 AD

 Reach me at cosmik.jo@gmail.com