As California heads toward spending another 3.5 billion on new prisons, with hundreds of new positions for members of the guards union, the social costs of this authoritarian approach mount, and the fiscal burden staggers the folks who have to earn their living, there isn't much public conversation about how to improve our system.

Sanity in sentencing would have a huge effect on the California economy, and would even increase our security. California should adopt the measures tried and proven in other states to ensure that prison capacity is used to house violent and preditory criminals, while others are sent to less expensive alternative programs such as community service, home detention, "the farm", and so on.

When our California prison conditions become so over crowded that all immates are deprived of basic rights, all are brutalized and the self-fulfilling cycle is perpetuated as these people recycle into our society. If we reduce our prison population through the development of alternative programs including diversion and treatment, provide more flexibility in sentencing for some crimes, then our society will free up resources for economic development that are way more productive than the few prison jobs that won't be added.

It will take some time for changes in parole, changes in sentencing, changes in family support to produce the beneficial effects on society that will be recognized widely. Shifting the use of capital from prisons to education, medical care for the uninsured, etc. and a lower tax burden will produce jobs in our communities and address some of the misery that breeds crime.

I don't advocate eliminating prisons, just bringing the benefits and costs into line, understanding that many of the people in California prisons wouldn't be there for that crime if they were in Ohio, Colorado, or even New Hampshire. Clearly immigration issues are involved, so it's not only a California, not only a Federal issue, it involves our neighboors to the south, the influx of illegal aliens from Asia, and won't be solved by building a few more prisons. The three billion program wouldn't be the end of it unless our population shrinks or the policy changes.

Measures could include changes to the three strikes law to focus it on the violent preditors, changes in our support for community programs for parolees, more rational sentencing, wider use of home detention, work-release programs, support for the families of incarcerated people to reduce the collateral damage caused by the criminal, improved medical care for prisoners, even reform in classifying prisoners to reduce the brutalization of otherwise normal people caught in the system. There are hundreds of alternatives that deserve implementation, hundreds more that we must evaluate in order to shift our resources to a more effective policy.

Key to this shift is the prison guards union. Unless this union supports a more rational approach, there is little hope for change. Neither the legislators nor the Govenor will change policy unless the prison guards union supports the change.

I believe that the prison guards union members know better than the rest of us how much the system needs change, but it's not clear that the present union leadership sees a reduction in prison jobs ( resulting from a shift in policy) as part of the solution. I think that guard members have an interest in working in less crowded conditions, an interest in better medical care in prisons, and in living in a society that isn't so burdened by the huge cost of supporting such a large incarcerated population. Union membership voices haven't been leading the discussion on change, and I'd like to hear more from them. I'd like to see more reporting on what goes on in our system. We need to ensure that these changes don't compromise our security of course, but there is plenty that needs to change that would only increase our security.

My hope is that guards union members will use their considerable political capital to push for reform, for the sort of system that will reenforce respect for our system of laws, that will allow our society to be knowingly responsible for what goes on in our name behind bars. Unions pushing for more jobs is understandable, but as responsible members of society, these Unions could do more with their knowledge and influence to help Californians make smart choices.

The economy of California could easily benefit more from the effect of shifting the jobs created by public employment from new guards to new nurses, new educators, new foster care and disabled care workers. These jobs are not quite so concentrated in one politicians district, and the benefit isn't easy to fit into the ledger.

Our society more easily measures the growth of prisons than the growth of wellness,but the productivity growth from a healthier population will show in GDP. We also don't easily measure environmental quality as a social benefit, but the improvements in public health and the declining cost of care from pollution related health problems is well understood. Environmental laws have improved our country overall, and a similar shift in our social climate would follow if we implement the reforms I discuss here.

the best space ship is the earth, doesn't get much better than what we had. now the question is are we condeming our decendents to a hell created out of greed? what will we do when the polar caps are gone? (move to higher ground if we can). Sounds as if we as a species aren't quite as smart as we tell each other. I'd like to know if the global climate modelers can give us a hint about what we must do if we are to mitigate the comming warming, if we are to avoid some chaotic transition to a climate mode more like venus than our present earth. More likely is a long term reduction in diversity, the loss of entire eco systems, and the eventual reduction in human population to a level less injurious to the rest of the life forms on earth. Maybe we could learn to do the Moses thing, to help species survive the blast of heat that is the delayed response to digging up the dynasaures and their forests and burning them......maybe we better help the forests move north and south, pay more attention to basic watershed management, start moving away from the coasts. What about Bangladesh? What about much of the tropical coral reefs? It's one thing to think about a rise of a foot or two, but 20' would change the california coastline by miles in some places. China is about to release a blast of coal and oil derived co2 that will dwarf the entire world output to date, sealing the wave of heating that's breaking our climate cycle and pushing us into a world that humans haven't experienced since we learned to talk.

We humans should be using the climate modeling to do further studies of how Austrailia could modify the climate, following up on the discovery that a few hundred square miles of forest in the center of the contenient could double the rainflall across the entire land mass..... modeling how we could get there perhaps.

In a similar way folks better begin to cope with what we must do to care for the Pacific forests, the sierra's, the coastal area. I'd plant redwoods as a base activity, millions of acres of new redwood forest, millions of acres of pine and fir, moving species north to adapt to the comming change. Time to get to work to learn how to generate power without co2, how to live in a more sustainable way.

December 2005

A scientist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory working on greenhouse warming recently pointed out that if the only thing you want to do is sequester c02, then forest is not the long term answer. He is right in the narrow sense, but very wrong in the most important sense.

Our response to Global Warming must include vigorous efforts to plant more forests in critical locations. Climate modelers have determined that a fairly small forest in the center of the Austrailian outback could double the rainfall over the whole contenant. So a new forest as small as 100 square miles could make a huge difference, yet it would be a project larger than we've done as a civilization, and it's just the sort of thing that could make a long term difference.

In a similar way, forest ecosystems must move toward the poles faster than ever before except in astrophysical events, and if we want to have a recovery time on the order of hundreds of years instead of hundreds of thousands of years. then we need to help forests grow in new zones, we need the trees to modify the hydrology, the weather changes, to form the basis of a more sustainable economy.

In the short term, planting forests would counter the spread of deserts, especially when done in conjunction with climate modeling to guide the efforts for best ecosystem effect.

The changes in glaciers will change rivers, and expose new land for tree growth. There is only a short time during which the trees must become established if the soil newly exposed is to be nurtured, or it may be eroded and deposited under the oceans. So Humans must shift what we spend our time doing.

We will also have to move out of low lying area's as the sea rises, and rather than push against the sea, we better become adept at moving, at conserving our marine resources like fish....

Bruce Bagnoli


We need to develop flywheels, fusion, tidal power, hydropower, safe nuclear power, wind power, and learn how to save enough genetic material, genomic information, from species that may be going extinct.

We need to develop alternatives to coal burning , and find ways to make our microprocessor and RAM industries sustainable.

A stable population on the earth at levels of 1-2billion would seem to be one factor that would help if we didn't have to do it suddenly. If through changes in living conditions and standards we could flatten the growth curve, it would undoubtably restrain the rate of growth from this point on.

What I fear is that the

Fairness demands that societies value the ecosystem, and put resources into both the nourishment and protection of the treasured primordial ecosystems, and that the costs be borne by the larger society and not dumped on the rural folks who, for example, used to be dependent on logging. Present law seems to fall on one side or the other, weakening the mechanism that could protect the ecological legacy.

Here in California, down near Moro Bay, the seashore used to be miles out to sea. This was during the time that modern Humans lived in California. Those humans adjusted to the sea level increase, some dozens of feet, so I imagine our descendents will adjust to the changes brought about by the melting of so many glaciers, so much of the polar ice caps.

I hope that desertification is not allowed to proceed the way it appears to be spreading now, I hope that it is arrested and reversed through the terra-forming here. Desertification is almost irreversible within generations, but climate modeling can guide us to use our efforts in the most intelligent way, the most effective way.

An example is the discovery that a chunk of forest at roughly the center of the continent would double the rainfall across the whole continent (from almost none to some), a very amazing way to influence climate, and to encourage plant growth across a huge area, a lot of biomass. I'm a long way away from believing that a model is enough to start a huge civil engineering effort, but it is time to start thinking along those lines, learning to protect the species left. I fear that the next 300 years will challenge a significant fraction of the species as the disruptions from climate change are worked through.

Anyway, time to feed the cats.

In a recent review of high power density systems, the "Z" pinch work done by Sandians in New Mexico was described. These folks have made a huge amount of progress, adapting as they go along and learning to make small devices that surely rival the work done at NIF in California on the road to Fusion in the lab.

The "Z"-pinch machine that they are now upgrading started out as a light ion device, PBFA, and during the experimental campaign it was learned that the light ion approach would be less useful, and that the machine could do some amazing tricks useful in their own right using the basic setup, forgetting the light ions and using the driver alone.

Scientists learned to produce an incredibly bright X-ray source by zapping a ring of tiny wires with a huge current. This donut of wires is vaporized in an instant forming a plasma donut that collapses on itself. The resulting flash is as bright as a nuclear weapon's X-ray pulse and thus useful for lab studies, and practical effects testing. The huge magnetic fields generated by the plasma and it's subsequent collapse are also useful in their own right.

Sandia has driven a tiny flyer plate to over 30Km/Sec, which would be faster than escape velocity from earth ( ignoring aerodynamic effects that would tear the plate up if launched in air at the ground.....) for use in material property testing experiments. Sandia scientists have been able to tailor the acceleration so that the material stays intact long enough to do experiments on the properties of various materials at a high degree of pressure.

The X-rays generated by the Z process can be harnessed in a tiny gold cylinder configured as a hohlraum, a cavity where the surfaces are heated by the X-rays, and surround a capsule target that may contain fusion fuel such as deuterium. The uniform bath of X-rays evaporates the surface of the capsule and the ablated material rockets the remaining material into a pinpoint of highly compressed material.

Utilizing the pettawatt laser technology developed at Lawrence Livermore Labs, the "Z" machine will be able to zap the compressed pellets with a "spark" that may ignite fusion, producing the elusive "star in the lab".

While I appreciate the many tricky physics issues remaining, it's clear that the progress made since 1995 is huge, and that the program could produce a working device soon if supported with a sufficient budget and staffed with enough bright scientists and engineers. This program should be pushed and supported by our government, indeed by the world community and not forced to compete with magnetic fusion and laser fusion programs, simply on the merits of the case, and because it is too soon to tell which approach will be the most useful.

I think that given the geopolitical situation, it is wise for a nation to persue the sort of energy system that could free us from dependency on oil, that could power our flight to the planets, that could help us to understand the high energy densityphysics.

These exciting developments are mostly shielded from public view behind a secret curtain, parted now and then as either scientific developments are published ( thanks to the American Instutite of Physics), or as the developers seek funding. The military applications are driving the funding at this point, though I believe that our nation would benefit from a much broader and better financed program. There are certainly proliferation concerns, but it's a very technically difficult process and unlikely to be attractive to the sort of folks who want instant political power so any concerns are way down the line from a practical point of view.

The Bush administration should immediately increase support for this area of research, broadening the work from NRL and Sandia to include various university programs, and to train the next generation of scientists, engineers, and technicians in this vital area.

The recent disclosure that the Veterans Administration budget requests have not recognized the 80,000 new patients in the system from the Afganistan and Iraq wars and thus are some 3 Billion per year low, is shameful from an administration that professes respect for our men and women in Uniform who sacrifice so much for our country. The Congress should immediately demand the firing of the VA top official, and should increase the budget authorization, and require that the VA immediately take steps to address the special needs of this war.

The Bush administration doesn't want to admit the toll we pay for this foreign policy, but that is of no account to me. Our government having made the decision to go to war must also prepare for the inevitable effects of war. Nevermind the cheerleading shouts about how easy it will be, the propaganda about how our system can handle it without challenges.

The reality is that the 1800 killed are the tip of the mountain, with some 20000 serious disabilities, four times that number who are VA patients from these wars. We need to invest in treatment for psychological trauma, for rehab, and for the many more who will surely need this care as the war evolves over the next decade.

It's one more cost that was hidden in the effort to mislead the public about the real costs of this war here at home. Naturally we also know that the Iraqi people are bearning a cost that is many times these numbers, and their medical and rehab infrastructure is less sophisticated, plus they have public health challenges absent from the VA situation.

Our nation owes this care nomatter what the propaganda cost. Keeping our social contract is expensive, but it also keeps us able to recruit and retain our forces, and it surely helps our society as we embrace returned injured and handicapped soldiers. You judge a democracy largely by how it treats it's most vulnerable. Here we see clearly how our society feels about the sacrifices made in our name.

At this point there are thankfully a few who stand up for our vets, and I hope that the Congress can come together to bring the needed resources to bear, to openly admit the need, and to commit to increase the capacity of the system to ensure that we care for our own. This would restore some integrity and balance to our national conversation about how we will conduct this war, how we prepare for peace.