Getting Green Wrong

So, let’s suppose that there is a blue wave, the Democratic Party sweeps the Presidency and the Senate, and the Democratic-controlled government legislates an end to fracking and fossil fuel subsidies. What happens? To begin with, coal mining stops almost completely. The price of natural gas perhaps quintuples, while US domestic petroleum stops being a marketable product. Ten million aggrieved suburban homeowners descend on Washington DC with trowels.

If we’re going to do this properly, we have to have subsidies to convert our heating systems away from fossil fuels.

But it doesn’t stop there. Natural gas is used for other things than heating. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is used as a maritime fuel, where it is preferable to the incredibly dirty marine diesel oil (MDO) that ships burn. (The whole merchant marine is a huge pollution problem, but that is for another post.) Ethane from “wet” natural gas is used as a plastics feedstock. Propane is used as a ground transportation fuel, and everything heavier goes into the various petroleum industries.

We need to plan for all this. We need to be thinking about it. Is there anyone planning?

Decarbonizing: Running the Numbers and Economic Modeling

(This is a reply to a Twitter question from a retired OECD energy policy expert on what numbers I would like to see run when thinking about decarbonization.)

When I wrote “if anyone has actually run the numbers, I haven't seen their work” I was thinking “built an economic model of the transformation required to move the world away from fossil fuels.” It seems to me direly important that we do so.

We’ve been talking about natural gas. We know that as various subsidies are removed the price of natural gas will rise. (By the way, the USA has a production subsidy, the depletion allowance.) Ideally, users of natural gas as fuel will, therefore, replace their systems with some combination of heat pumps and electric furnaces. Many furnace owners quite literally cannot afford to upgrade their systems. Others may be able to afford the change but will be adversely affected by it. All businesses in this area will be in competition with international businesses that have not converted their systems. So subsidies and, probably, tariffs will be needed for this change to be carried out in an equitable way.

Natural gas is also used for transportation, and natural gas liquids are used as a chemical feedstock for plastics manufacture. DOE’s Energy Information Agency does not even know the amount of NGLs that are used in plastics manufacture; probably no-one does.

The scale of this problem is vast. In the USA, there are tens of millions of single-family homes with gas furnaces. If fuel prices spike sufficiently, there is likely to be a voter backlash against the conversion. There is going to be resistance in any event.

The scale of the mobilization required to decarbonize the economy will be vast and it must be done very quickly. Back in 1991, Al Gore said we needed the equivalent of a Manhattan Project to guide the change. Time has gone by, and the urgency is much great. Now we need a mobilization equivalent to that required for a total war.

If this is going to be done at all, we need the best planning possible. Hence, we need models, and I am not aware of anyone who has built even the prototypes of those models.

Enough of an answer?

Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and the Zeitgeist

🎶
I’ve come down from the upper class
to mend your rotten ways
🎶

Where did we get Boris Johnson from, for heaven’s sake? The man is an obvious grifter. And why Donald Trump?

Be afraid, there is an answer.

Time are hard. And when times are hard, people of most nations look back to the Olde Days when things were better. This was where Afghanistan got the Taliban from: godly men from the days of the Caliphs. Donald Trump is an image (entirely an image, he is apparently actually a failure as anything but a television personality) of the American entrepreneur. Boris Johnson plays the noble.

It’s all bosh. The Taliban were not godly, Donald Trump is a failure as an entrepreneur, and Boris Johnson is a fake noble with a fake name and a fake accent. But “Mundus vult decepi, ergo decipiatur” (“The world wishes to be deceived, so let it be deceived”) and enough of the public believes. (Lying, character assassination, and a press dominated by the far right helped.)

The world, truly, stands on the edge of a new age. Humanity either will change and prosper, learning to master its numbers and its use of resources, or its numbers will collapse and it will sink into poverty in an ecologically impoverished world. And so humanity stands, as Rome once did, on the edge of vast change, and there are purges and the reinstatement of state gods. In utter panic, the world turns to the values of its past, failing to recognize that these either never were honored in their own times and often never were even valid. And so we get the grifters and the ethnic cleansing.

If humanity is to thrive, it must live in the present looking towards the future. It must look to the future and listen to visionaries like Greta Thunberg and Bill McKibben.

All the major media firms, old and new, support Trump

(My lump of coal for the day.)

The support ranges from lukewarm (MSNBC) to full-throated (Fox), but they all support him. Facebook allows any lie to distributed to any identifiable group for a price. Twitter refuses to ban white supremacists because its software has trouble telling the difference between white supremacists and Republicans.

How the devil are we supposed to win this election? It may be possible; we won in 2018, we might, I suppose, win in 2020. But it's going to be work.

Taxes in Washington State

(In answer to someone objecting that taxes in Washington State are too high.)

Washington state gas taxes are higher than the national average, but that's 10¢ a gallon. There's 8 states higher and our climate is pretty hard on roads. (Source: http://www.gaspricewatch.com/web_gas_taxes.php.)

Here, here's a table of revenues from 2016: https://ofm.wa.gov/washington-data-research/statewide-data/washington-trends/revenue-expenditures-trends/state-local-government-revenue-sources. The biggest chunk are the sales and the B&O tax, the next largest is the property tax. That's over 50%. All the other taxes are less than 10%.

Here's a pie chart of expenditures: https://ofm.wa.gov/washington-data-research/statewide-data/washington-trends/revenue-expenditures-trends/state-local-government-expenditures-function. Highways are7%. Local roads aren't even a separate category; I think they fall in the 9.2% “other” wedge.

We know where the money goes and it isn't being wasted. This isn't New Jersey.

And look, I get that you hate paying high car tabs. You know something? So do I. When my family was broke, the sales and B+O taxes hurt a lot and car tabs were a rotten cherry on top. But we have to pay somehow or we have no roads, we have no schools, we have no … Washington is not a poor state. It's a very rich one. And yet we cannot agree to fund infrastructure and education.

Bullying and Character Assassination, Corbyn and Sanders.

I wrote this about possible Republican opposition to Bernie Sanders two years ago:

The Republicans would have dug up his 1972 alternative press essay on sexuality and gender roles and spun it as rapey. They'd have dragged out his support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and said he was a Communist and a traitor. They'd have dog-whistled the white supremacists, painting Sanders as a race traitor, and spun up the anti-semitism, all the while claiming he was a bad Jew and a traitor to Israel. They'd have told the African-Americans he was racist, and told the white folk he was too soft on African-American criminals. They'd have leaned on his atheism.

Consider this on Corbyn's defeat, just now written:

They said he was a Communist and a traitor. They dog-whistled the white supremacists, painting him as a race traitor, and spun up the antisemitism, all the while claiming he was a bad Jew and a traitor to Israel. They told the Muslims he was Islamophobic, and told the non-Muslims he was soft on terrorism. They leaned on his atheism.

We need to think carefully about our response to bullying and character assassination. Sanders, I think, is exceptionally vulnerable to these attacks, but none of the non-fascist US Presidential candidates are immune.

Character Assassination and Bullying: On the vote in the UK

I take two lessons away:

1. Character assassination works. Jeremy Corbyn is not a racist antisemite. Boris Johnson is. Corbyn lost votes because of well-publicized lies; Johnson did not.
2. Bullies are popular, even among the people they are bullying.

I look at this loss, and I see ghosts of the losses of Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, John Kerry to W. Bush, and Al Gore to W. Bush. The exact same pattern: minor failings of a liberal candidate of good character are blown up, falsified, and endlessly reported, while major failings of conservative candidate of foul character are glossed over and buried. Those liberal candidates never knew what hit them.

Time to change our strategies. We need to fight bullying and character assassination, and that will be the subject of at least one more post.

And, 100 years after the failure of the Second International to unify against World War I,  nationalism still trumps class consciousness. Many people don't vote for bread and butter, even when they're starving.

Pelosi, impeachment, trade agreements

I think that making a deal on the USMCA was probably the price for impeachment.
Some of us are blaming Pelosi for the problems of her caucus. 

Just how deep does the rot run on the Democratic side?

Democratic Nomination Shambles

So Harris is out, and Steyer is still in. The faces in the next Democratic debate will all be light-skinned and male. I did not and do not love Harris. But why is she out, and why is Castro out, and why is Booker out, and Steyer still in?

The Democratic Party's Presidential nomination process is a shambles. And a shout-out to the Supreme Court Justices who made sure that the only way to become a Presidential candidate is to buy your way in.

Bemused Observations on Washington State Initiative 976

Small minority of Washington State voters in an off year: property taxes are too high, we must limit them.

City departments of transportation: we cannot afford to repair and expand our streets.

Transit agencies: we can't afford to run buses, let alone actually build the rail system we need.

State legislature: let us allow the cities and transit agencies to add taxes to car tabs.

Small minority of Washington state voters in an off-year: car tabs are too expensive. we must limit them.

Self: I think we need to change our motto to "The Evergreen Pothole State” and the state song to “The Tim Eyman Memorial Bridge.”

Bitter Environmental Croaks: Things We Cannot Say

(At least, without provoking huge fights. Also on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RavenOnthill/status/1196302838604812288?s=20.)

The environmental movement went overboard in its opposition to nuclear power. We failed to compare its risks to expanding fossil fuel usage, and the world is worse off as a result.

We have too many people partly because of patriarchy, because too much of the world treats women as brood mares.

It seems to this old bird that our ruling class, or whatever you want to call it, has decided to settle our environmental problems the good old-fashioned way – via the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Penalties for storming a House hearing in a classified space

This is a rough list of possible charges and penalties for the various crimes committed by the House Republicans now occupying the secured space in the House. At the very least, all the communications devices they brought into the space ought to be confiscated and destroyed by secure procedures.

Interfering with testimony, 18 U.S.C. 1512: 

(d) Whoever intentionally harasses another person and thereby hinders, delays, prevents, or dissuades any person from: (1) attending or testifying in an official proceeding […] or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 3 years, or both.

Breaching a classified space, 18 U.S.C. 793:

(a) Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation, goes upon, enters, flies over, or otherwise obtains information concerning any […] place connected with the national defense […] Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Reprimand, censure, or expel, U.S. Const. art. I, §5, cl. 2:

Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.

Under current House rules, the House Democrats can censure or reprimand by majority vote, in addition to expulsion.

Republicans Storm Impeachment Inquiry Hearing In Stunt

 Link

This was a meeting of the House Intelligence Committee, which is leading the impeachment investigation, to take classified testimony from Laura Cooper, the United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia.

This has to be a crime. Does anyone know what the possible penalties are? Can a majority of the House remove these members?

Morning Croaks

Who would have thought that foreign governments would be the biggest beneficiaries of Citizens United? There's Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and the gods only know who else. Thank you, Roberts Court.

— Raven Onthill (@RavenOnthill) October 22, 2019

Could we hand Trump over to a Kurdish court for justice?

— Raven Onthill (@RavenOnthill) October 22, 2019

Short Croaks for This Morning

There are few things in modern conservative politics that cannot be explained, in whole or in part, as expressions of threatened masculinity.

— Raven Onthill (@RavenOnthill) October 21, 2019

"We are making enemies faster than we can kill them."

— Raven Onthill (@RavenOnthill) October 21, 2019

Scoop: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has privately recommended several potential hires to Pete Buttigieg’s campaign, a rare example of direct political involvement from one most powerful tech executives, @tylerpager reports. https://t.co/wpE9ejb1YJ

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) October 21, 2019

Treason: The Clean Up

To begin with, we need to remove Trump from office. Vice President Pence is also implicated and perhaps should also be removed. The Republicans will scream “dictatorial conduct,” but, really, who cares? Perhaps the Trumpists will rise in revolt, but they are already almost there.

Beyond that, we have to assume there are more people whose behavior, while it may not be treasonous, is at least disloyal. We know that Trump has long-standing ties to Russia’s Putin’s and has betrayed us to Turkey’s Erdoğan. Trump’s conduct towards North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is disloyal. We know that Russia, and perhaps other countries have intervened in US elections. There is a dire need for a counter-intelligence investigation. How many Congresspeople are indebted to these and other foreign governments? Senator McConnell most likely. But who else? As much as is possible, these people must be prosecuted. Where it is not possible to prosecute, we must at least expose them.

How many of Trump’s judges are also disloyal and in the pay of foreign powers?

How many executive appointees have been placed to undermine the agencies they work for? How many of these saboteurs have promoted incompetents and saboteurs.

How far does the rot go?

And a big long loud raspberry to the Roberts Court, which, with its crack-brained Citizens United decision, opened the door to vast unchecked foreign donations to elections. That must be overturned, by Constitutional amendment if necessary. We need campaign finance reform: we must prevent wealthy hostile powers from buying the loyalty of candidates. We also need much more sunlight on the backgrounds and health of our candidates for office. We must see their finances and know that they are, at least, not demented as Trump appears.

A Congress of Cowards

Responding to Presidential Treason

So, Trump has gone and done it. On behalf of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the dictatorial President of Turkey, Trump unilaterally withdrew US troops from Syria, giving our allies, the Kurds, the terrible choice of surrendering to the brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad or being slaughtered by the Turks. So far, reports are they are surrendering to al-Assad, and I hope he does not slaughter them. US troops, as they withdraw, are also at risk.

To my Democratic Congressional Delegation On the Withdrawal of US Troops from Kurdish-occupied Syria

So Trump has finally done it. All your patience, all your waiting, all your hoping has come to nothing. Trump has betrayed his oath of office in a way that fundamentally alters the balance of power in the Middle East, and not in a way favorable to the United States.

This was predicted. People who knew his career knew he was a loose cannon, rolling around on the deck of the ship of state, and that sooner or later he would run into something of value, and so he has. And yet you did nothing.

We are reeling. The world is reeling. People are dying in Syria. Please, do everything you can to remove this traitor from office.

Hunting Mythical Beasts

A few months ago, I wrote about student loan forgiveness, and I commented that let's not even talk about forgiveness; let's talk about a dignified bankruptcy, because if we can't get that – and we can't, those options were steadily taken away – we can't get loan forgiveness. So now I'm thinking about reducing carbon output. We have all these grandiose schemes, and we still have not been able to kill the huge tax breaks given to fossil fuel drillers. Yes, we need to do more. But if we can't do at least that, how can we even hope to do more?

There's something wrong with our whole policy-making process. We focus on complex ideas which are ever so difficult to do, and simple small ideas, yet if we can't pass the small ideas we don't even need to worry about the big ones – they've going nowhere. There's nothing complex about "allow graduates drowning in debt a dignified bankruptcy." There's nothing complex about "stop supporting fossil fuel extraction and refining, it's changing the climate." Yet we can't pass either of them.

Maybe if we can win on the small things, we can win on the big ones.

Are Bad Cops Serial Killers?

The wires are abuzz with a story about a Forth Worth police officer who shot a woman in her own home.

What's striking to me about this is how quick it was. The officer shot and killed the woman in less than four seconds of seeing her, showing that he had, at least, rehearsed the shooting. I wonder how many other people he has shot. Is this officer a serial killer? Is the same psychology at work? Have we ended up creating hiding places for serial killers in our police forces, the way some Christian churches have in their priesthood. Or…?

Anyone who actually knows anything about the psychological issue, I would appreciate comments.

Prosecuting High-Level Traitors

There have been numerous complaints that a whistleblower on Trump's conduct ought not to have been needed. Jim Wright (@Stonekettle) on Twitter:

Here's the thing, America: Whistleblowers are great and all, but in the case of Donald Trump they are unnecessary. Congress does NOT require a whistleblower. Trump's twitter for the last 3 years is more than enough. All Congress needs to do is their job.

Congress and the President have been winking at traitorous Republican leaders since Nixon, since President Johnson realized that Nixon and Kissinger had meddled in treaty negotiations with Vietnam to win the Presidency. Since that time we have had Iran-Contra, leaders pardoned by GHW Bush, the second Iraq war, conducted entirely on false premises, and now Trump, Russia, and the Ukraine.

Our whole foreign policy mechanism has failed.

Liberals and the further left have been screaming about this for 30 years, and in all that time we have been told to keep quiet, that the leaders knew what they were doing. And now we have President Trump.

Too much power has been ceded to the Executive, especially the President. We have become the nation our founders never wanted us to be.

Enough.

On the Electability of Joe Biden

“Anyway, I think Biden would beat Trump handily on an even playing field but he’s an awful candidate and he’d have the best chance of blowing it out of any of the top tier candidates.” – Joshua Holland, tweet.

“I'm not even sure he would. If it's old rich white guy vs old rich white guy, would people vote for Biden?” – Me, tweet.

Considering Nancy Pelosi as Whip and Speaker

I think she's an excellent whip, good at getting members to vote for a proposal and knowing when to bring a proposal into action, and a poor Speaker, unwilling to lead. We have seen this in the passage of the PPACA and the impeachment investigation. Once the Obama administration proposed the PPACA, and it ran into trouble in the Senate, it was Nancy Pelosi who whipped the votes in the House and got it passed. On the other hand, she did not act against W. Bush despite all his offenses, and she waited and waited and waited until atrocities had been committed and the Trump administration had had time to cement itself in power.

Impeachment Momentum

Now that seven conservative House freshman have called for impeachment, Nancy Pelosi is willing to lead the House in impeachment proceedings. I don't know whether to be horrified, amused, or admiring of Pelosi's political acumen. Now that she has both wings of her caucus on board, she is willing to act.

The Spiritual Transformation of Environmental Consciousness and the Gaslighting of the Public

Me, nine years ago:

We need a spiritual transformation that will make the necessary changes acceptable and how to achieve that I have no idea; globally we are in such a horrible state of paralysis that it is hard to get many of us to accept even minor change.

The spiritual transformation is under way.

People are being publicly shamed, told to scourge themselves and advised to undertake solutions that will not work. Veganism, not flying – these things will not stop climate change, they are not major parts of the problem. Relying exclusively on wind and solar power will not work; this alone will not be enough, unless we are willing to accept poverty as a norm.

It is not necessary to create an egalitarian socialist paradise to prevent the world from roasting or drowning under the risen seas.

Shaming people is popular. People listen to the fire and brimstone sermons. It brings them catharsis. Then they go home and keep on sinning.

No amount of blaming ourselves, no amount of hurting ourselves will change physical law. The seas will rise regardless of how much we scourge ourselves or pray or beg the Almighty.

Human civilization must stop using fossil fuels, the sooner the better. There will be privation, but no one individual will be able to escape or choose this privation. It will be imposed. Doing it willingly, proactively, reluctantly, or forced will not make a jot of difference.

People will have their bonfire of the vanities and, in the end, go home and wait for the storms and the rising seas.

Humans are clearly preparing for this transformation. Good. But we are also lost and wondering what to do and which way to go. And there are all these people ready to offer solutions which place the blame on the people in the street, in the factories, in the fields. The blame belongs on the people who are striving to squeeze the last few dollars or riyals out of their fossil fuel holdings before it all becomes worthless.

In Which the House Democratic Coalition Begins to Tear Apart

“At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior - it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it.” – @AOC

Our leaders have abandoned us

The wealthy are pursing fantasies, rather than addressing real problems, or trying to squeeze the last few dollars out of the coal and oil reserves.

Our religious leaders focus on the minutae of sexual behavior, or on nationalism, rather than on the vast crimes being committed worldwide.

Our political leaders vie to see how many people they can throw out of the too few lifeboats.

Tweets: On the Election and General Political Attitudes

A coalition of women, people of color, and young people could swing the election. – link

I'm not even sure [Biden would win.] If it's old rich white guy vs old rich white guy, would people vote for Biden? – link

We have suddenly had a great deal of reality weighed in on us on a very short period of time. Denial is the natural stubborn reaction. There is, unfortunately, no guarantee that acceptance will eventually follow.  – link

Fascist Disaster Planning

I think most major world leaders have decided that planetary disaster is inevitable and that there isn’t enough space in the lifeboats, and so are starting to throw people into the ocean.

Shambles

Me, writing in 2017:

2020. Look to 2020. The country will be a shambles by then, but with luck, organization, and leadership an opposition can win in 2020. We can try things in 2018, but by 2020 I hope we are ready.

Well, we did try something in 2018 and it worked – the Democrats took back the House … and then starting slow-walking action against Trump and the Republicans.

The USA certainly is a shambles and I see no signs the opposition is going to be ready for the 2020 elections.

… and what will we do if Trump and the Republicans lose, yet refuse to leave office? What will we do about the outbreak of right-wing terrorism likely to follow the election, regardless of which side loses?

The Cost of Clean Power

It is a commonplace on that we are building no more nuclear plants and shutting down existing plants because they are too expensive. But…

They are more expensive than wind and solar – variable renewable energy (VRE.) Good, fine. But VRE has its limits, and somewhere between 60% and 90% of grid power, and something more reliable is needed for the balance, either fossil energy, large-scale long-term storage, large-scale hydro, or nuclear. Right now, that something is fossil energy, derived from natural gas and coal, both environmental problems. Natural gas plants is what we currently building and we have to stop burning natural gas. Not only is it a fossil fuel, and therefore a contributor to carbon emissions, it is itself a potent greenhouse gas, though a less persistent one than CO₂.

So, a bit of qualitative economic modeling. While we are building the smart grid, everything is fine for a while. VRE is ramping up and fossil fuel plants are shutting down. But when we arrive the limit of VRE (60%? 90%?) we have to either keep the fossil fuel plants going, driving the warming of the world, turn out the lights (or life-support) somewhere, or find something else to fill in the gap. By that time it will be very late and the necessary work will be very expensive. It would be wiser to start investing and researching now.

What We Now Are Building Instead of Nuclear Plants

Natural gas plants. Burning natural gas creates CO₂, a greenhouse gas. Natural gas production leaks methane which is itself a greenhouse gas, more potent but less persistent than CO₂. This is all crazy and this is what we are doing.

Genocidal Acts in Kashmir

“Just returned from Kashmir. Twelve year olds detained and beaten in midnight raids. Women threatened with rape. Young boys given electric shocks, families unaware of their whereabouts. This is the NORMAL you talk about. This is the worst I have seen in the valley yet.” – Rana Ayyub, Tweet

BBC reports, “Security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir have been accused of carrying out beatings and torture in the wake of the government's decision to strip the region of its autonomy.”

France 24 reports: “A magistrate speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity said at least 4,000 people were arrested and held under the Public Safety Act (PSA), a controversial law that allows authorities to imprison someone for up to two years without charge or trial.”

Guardian Kashmir page.

Added 9/1: in the Indian province of Assam, some 1.9 million people have been declared non-citizens, though their families have lived there for generations. The Indian government is building 10 giant concentration camps to hold them.

To the Indian defenders of their current government: if there is nothing wrong, and the Indian government wants the world to see there is nothing wrong, they need only restore normal communications and travel to Kashmir. As it is, it seems that India is concealing genocidal acts, if not outright genocide. Discouragingly, it appears that having the experience of colonization does not prevent a people from itself become colonizers.

Trump, Granting Wishes

For Trump, in his dementia, there is no line between his desires, his wishes, and reality. He really believes that his trade war is good for the USA, that incarcerating refugees is a reasonable thing to do, that there were "very fine people" on both sides at Charlottesville. For his followers, Trump provides exculpation of their cruel beliefs. Since the highest official in the land believes them, like the white supremacists who have come out of the woodwork, it's OK for them to believe. He is like an evil genie, granting wishes that rebound on the people who make them.

Brief Note: Why is the USA so bad at recycling?

We started recycling when I was a young bird. 40 years on, we are still burying a huge amount of garbage. It is not that more products could not be reused or recycled. Rather, we have not been willing to mandate that manufacturers spend the money necessary to make more products recyclable.

If we are to prosper in the future, this has to change.

Brief Note: Plastics in an Age without Fossil Fuels

Plastics are a byproduct of fossil fuel refining; they're largely made from what is left over after fuel oils are refined out of crude oil.

My initial notes for this series of posts were written while I was sitting in campsite. I was looking around at a tent and a screen house and various other things that make modern recreational camping possible and realizing that almost all of them are made of petroleum byproducts, all the synthetic textiles, all the plastics that make up the various containers. The main thing that wasn't is the little stove – which uses fossil fuel, it's a propane stove. If we stop using fossil fuels what are we going to replace these materials with?

The answer seems to be, plant-based products. In principle, with enough energy and engineering, any chemical, including any plastic, can be made from any other chemical which contains the right elements, any usable “feedstock” in the language of chemical engineering. In practice, some feedstocks are more suitable than others for particular products. Since the energy for producing plastics from fossil fuels itself comes from the petroleum used to produce the plastics, there is going to a significant increase in the demand for energy to the process. To some extent, this perhaps can be mitigated by using embodied solar energy in appropriately-chosen plants, but this is going to take time to work out.

So there is going to be a generation where we rebuild our base of knowledge and products. Time to get started.

Brief Note: the Costs of Supplementing Green Electricity

One of the chief arguments against building more nuclear facilities is that various forms of renewable energy are less expensive. The problem there is the one that energy researchers are finding; some predictable source of power or long-term large-scale ("grid scale") energy storage technology is necessary. Yet all current designs for grid-scale energy storage are physically large, with extensive environmental impacts, and expensive as well. The cost argument against nuclear power is much weaker when one considers the costs of grid-scale storage.

Some links:
  University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems Grid Energy Storage Fact Sheet
  Stanford's Energy's Grid Scale Storage page.
 

Brief note: restarting research into nuclear energy

I think we need to reactivate nuclear energy research. The energy industry has the large-scale light water reactor and no interest in doing other designs. These are hard to operate and extremely expensive. But there is utterly no interest in the industry in researching and developing better designs. So it is time to put the nuclear engineers at the national labs back at to work. We also need to pull together and archive the design work from early nuclear power plant design. A lot of that material is buried in reports, probably not even digital form, and it is important to preserve it because we may need it now.

The Green New Deal: Running the Numbers

The technologies definitely exist to meet our 2030 requirement reaching 60% [renewables] by 2030. We think that we have all the technologies in hand to reach 100% carbon-free or 100% clean by 2045, but it's a little bit less clear what that pathway looks like. And the reason is because when you start talking about really high levels of renewable energy generation technologies on the grid, you need to find ways to store that electricity because it's coming from sources like the wind and sun, so it's not coming 24/7 the way something like stored natural gas is. So, there are some unique technical challenges associated with running a grid with very, very high levels of renewables. We are making a lot of progress on figuring out how to run a grid like that, and we are very confident that by 2045, we will be able to get there. – Laura Wisland, interviewed in Union of Concerned Scientists podcast “Got Science: Clean Energy Momentum: From Goals to Gigawatts.” Accessed August 24, 2019. https://www.ucsusa.org/ep62-wisland.

The Technical Issues

In other words, the technologies we need to make the Green New Deal work do not yet exist. California can provide about 60% of its electricity via renewables. After that, what is needed is technology that can store energy not just for hours and days but for weeks and months. Currently that technology does not exist. It is hoped that it will be available by 2045. Lacking that technology there is large-scale hydroelectric or nuclear energy. There are not many greenhouse gas neutral electric generation technologies.

Laura Wisland is an expert on and advocate for green power with over a decade’s experience. But she must be politic in what she says. I do not need to be, and ravens are supposed to be harsh-voiced, so I will say it plainly: The Green New Deal is not enough. If we believe otherwise, we are deceiving ourselves and putting our nation and perhaps our world at risk

I wrote the Got Science producers on Twitter, and they wrote back with citations. Wisland herself was quoted: “We ‘think’ we can get to 100% carbon free power, but work continues to identify the most cost-effective pathways. E3 (consultant that runs electricity models for the energy agencies in CA) has done some analysis showing that we can get to about 90% and it's that last 10% that is the hardest to decarbonize. SB 100 (the law that created the 100% clean power goal) provides the state with flexibility to decide whether ultimately the power sector will be completely decarbonized or whether it's better to keep a little bit of carbon (gas) on the system to manage cost and reliability issues.”

A very bad mistake was made in the unequivocal opposition to nuclear power on the part of environmentalists. The nuclear plants were not built. Instead, coal and natural gas plants were built, both directly aggravating global climate change and producing the huge pollution and waste of coal and natural gas production and use. Worse still, this set an example for the developing world, with India and China building energy systems heavily relying on coal. Yet the Sanders Green New Deal proposal has the USA shutting down nuclear power plants before the long-term energy storage technology needed to replace them exists.

The Political Issues

The credibility of environmentalism

What is going to happen to environmentalism when the public realizes that they are in part responsible for putting us into this position? The opposition to nuclear power, all the unfounded rumor-mongering all the lies, it played right to the hands of the fossil fuel industries and brought us to crisis more quickly then had we built those nuclear facilities.

This is not to say that nuclear power does not carry real risks, but these were dramatically overplayed by the environmental opposition to nuclear power. Worse still, no comparison with alternatives was done. Voices in the environmental movement who pointed out that coal was in many ways more environmentally troublesome than nuclear power were not heard.

Climate change is not the only environmental problem. The success of humans on earth depends on the human ability to manage our population and use of resources. If the environmental movement loses credibility in one area, we may lose many voices that defend our world and its ecosystems.

Policy Conclusions

My preference would be to roll forward on the Green New Deal, to continue research into the smart grid and long-term energy storage, and also to restart research into nuclear power generation. This seems to me likely, though, to be a counsel of perfection. I fear we are likely to come up short when it is too late to act, and many people will be left, literally, out in the cold, or perhaps the burning heat.

Citations

California Public Utilities Commission. “Proposed Preferred System Portfolio for IRP 2017-18: System Analysis and Production Cost Modeling Results.” California Public Utilities Commission, January 11, 2019. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUCWebsite/Content/UtilitiesIndustries/Energy/EnergyPrograms/ElectPowerProcurementGeneration/irp/2018/Attachment%20A_Proposed%20Preferred%20System%20Portfolio%20for%20IRP%202018_final.pdf.

Herman K. Trabish. “Getting to 100% Zero Emissions in California: Beyond CAISO’s Eight-Solution Menu.” Utility Dive, January 3, 2019. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/getting-to-100-zero-emissions-in-california-beyond-caisos-eight-solution/544467/.

Democratic Leadership, Courage, ACORN, The Squad, Al Franken

There has been (you may know) a reevaluation of Al Franken from the estimable Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. Franken, you probably know, was pressured out of the Senate by the Senate Democrats despite there being clear evidence both from the published image files themselves as well as the history of Leeann Tweeden that the charges were at best distorted.

But this is not about Franken. I went on to consider the bipartisan defunding of ACORN, the low-income voter registration group, based entirely on forged video evidence from conservative activists. And then I went on to consider the treatment of “The Squad” – Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who Trump told to return to where they came from. It took effort to get the House Democratic leadership to support them, despite Trump’s outrageous racist remarks.

When there are attacks on liberal Democrats, the Democratic Congressional leadership can be depended on to fold. Democrats of vision, courage, and ability are discouraged and, often, forced out. The result has been Congressional Democratic Caucuses filled with people who are at best very cautious and at worst weak and cowardly. And now that we need bold action from Congress, there is now almost no-one in the Congressional Democratic Caucuses to undertake it.

Pelosi Opened the Gates to Trump

"I think [Ocasio-Cortez] is being very disrespectful to somebody who's been there a long timeI deal with Nancy Pelosi a lot and we go back and forth and it’s fine, but I think that a group of people is being very disrespectful to her. And you know what, I don’t think that Nancy can let that go on." – Friday, July 12, Bloomberg

AOC tweeted, "Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President’s explicit attack today. @IlhanMN’s life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress. We must speak out. 'First they came...'

Then, on Sunday, July 14, he tweets "Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." – The Hill

Shaun King (The Intercept) tweets:

It’s 1:43AM here in NYC and I’ve been studying white supremacist message boards for 4+ hours tonight. THEY ARE BUZZING WITH EXCITEMENT over the openly bigoted attacks from Trump against 4 women of color today. I literally have not seen them this excited since Charlottesville.

As AOC says, their lives are in danger.

That was a foolish move on the part of Speaker Pelosi. May it energize young voters.

Pelosi Widens the Split in the House Democratic Caucus or, We're So Scrod

---

The official House Democrats account is using @AOC’s words about Pelosi and targeting her chief of staff? I’ve never seen anything like this. – Yashar Ali on Twitter

---

This reminds me of how LBJ broke Humphrey, back in the 1950s. LBJ arranged a series of legislative defeats for Humphrey and, over time, Humphrey just folded. What AOC will do, under relentless attack from the leader of the House Democratic caucus, I do not know. I don't think she will fold. But, if this continues, this will break the caucus, and quite possibly keep young voters and people of color home in the 2020 elections, leading to Democratic losses.

If Trump Wins in 2020…

If we don't defeat the Republicans in 2020, taking at least the Presidency, Trump and the Republicans will:

• Militarize the Southern border. In this case, it is likely the southern border of the USA will be turned into a killing field.
• Seat more radical-right judges, and perhaps more rapists, on the Federal bench.
• Go to war, perhaps in Iran.

The destruction of US institutions will continue and we will see more grossly unqualified people appointed to senior government positions.

Two and a Half Parties: Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party's Dilemma

Why don’t the House Democrats impeach Donald Trump? Why didn’t they oppose the blank check supplemental appropriations bill (S.811, H.R.2157) for Homeland Security and its concentration camps? Why aren’t the Democrats doing, well, anything?

We know about the appropriations bill, because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told us. “Because the Problem Solvers Caucus said, ‘We have enough votes to kill the House amendments.’ And they held. These 40 members led by Representative Gottheimer that worked with Republicans to say we’re going to pass the McConnell bill and so they handed over the Democratic Party.” (Link.)

There’s a lot of blaming of the Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. I think this is misdirected, and this is why:

Over time, as the Republicans have become more fascist, the Democratic right has become the refuge for conservatives who are not full-on fascists. The United States now has two-and-a-half parties: the Republican Party, which is fascist, the right of the Democratic Party, which is conservative, and the left of the Democratic Party, which is liberal and sometimes socialist. As I wrote nearly 10 years ago, the two wings of the Democratic Party exist in an uneasy alliance. Pelosi is having difficulty holding her coalition together. Should the Democrats initiate impeachment proceedings, the Problem Solvers Caucus would likely prevent the House from actually impeaching Trump, and then where would the party be? In this light, Pelosi’s blast directed at the four Democratic Representatives who voted against the supplemental funding bill becomes understandable; she is frustrated that she cannot maintain discipline within her caucus.

I am frustrated, too. I understand that inaction and working to defeat Trump in the next election seems to best thing which can be managed. I doubt any other Democratic Speaker could do better than Pelosi at reconciling the Party’s two wings in the House. At the same time, Democratic voters want to see bold action from the Party, and inaction appears as cowardice. Can a course to victory be charted?

Dementia, President Trump, and History

The other day, Twitter commentator Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) remarked Trump was demented and that this was being covered up by his medical examiners. @duty2warn, a group of psychological professionals, has make similar remarks but instead adds that Trump will never submit to a proper examination. Let us, for the purpose of argument grant the possibility that Trump is demented.

If so, then various Trump officials, as well as foreign heads of state, are taking advantage of this. It seems likely enough; Trump’s pronouncements on Putin and Kim Jong-Un do not seem the thoughts of a sensible person, and there is precedent for this in Ronald Reagan, who had memory lapses and public bouts of confusion. It is hard to be sure; dementia hides itself. In early stages the victim has good days and bad and remains competent at activities they are already skilled at, even though they will be bewildered and lost when they leave their area of competence.

If this is so, part of the reason Trump relies on family, and especially his daughter Ivanka, is likely that they have been covering for him for years, and so Ivanka putting herself forward at inappropriate times (most recently at the 2019 G-20 meeting) is a matter of her trying to cover for her father, similar to the way Nancy Reagan covered for her husband Ronald.

Now I turn to history. King George III was said to be mad, with fits of mania, as early as the 1770s. Diagnosing a historical figure is difficult at best; physicians of King George’s period did not have a modern concept of illness, so that their diagnoses do not translate well into modern terms, and not only does mental illness often hide itself, but King George’s courtiers, friends, and family had excellent reasons to conceal his difficulties. Again, let us grant the likelihood. It is fairly high, with a modern study of his letters showing symptoms.

It seems likely, then, that the king’s mental illness contributed to the grievances of the founders of the United States. It is all rather mythic. The mental illness of a ruler contributed to the foundation of the United States and now the mental illness of a ruler may end the United States.

The Democratic Party, Splitting in Two

“And then all of the sudden, maybe an hour later or whatever, they call the vote, and the vote is for the Senate bill with no amendments. It caught the entire caucus blindsided. And there were literally members that were like: “What’s in this bill? I don’t know what’s in this bill.” […] Because the Problem Solvers Caucus, they said, we have enough votes to kill the House amendments. And they basically held. It was like these 40 members led by Representative Gottheimer that worked with Republicans to say we’re going to pass the McConnell bill. And so they effectively handed over the Democratic Party.” – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, quoted in Mother Jones, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/the-whole-facilitys-culture-is-rotted-from-the-core-what-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-saw-inside-the-el-paso-camps/

“Bipartisan” from Democrats means collaboration with fascists. Do not forget this.

Iconography and Presidents

(Written not long after the election of Donald Trump.)

Let me suggest that not only the Trumpites who are dug in, but also the Berniebros and, yes, the Clintonsistas, too. People are making what ought to be simple fact-based questions (did Russian propaganda influence the election? what was the influence of the Clinton campaign over the DNC?) into identity-based beliefs, which cannot be touched.

Once identity becomes an issue in politics, we start to see behaviors analogous to family dynamics (perhaps these are actually the same.) Roles take precedence over actual behavior: “Dad” may be an abusive alcoholic, but he’s still Dad and deserves some sort of respect. So we have the precedence of image over the person’s actual behavior: Trump is making American great again, Hillary Clinton the great feminist hope, Bernard Sanders is some sort of saint and so on. Everyone is supposed to be the messiah.

What I find striking is the divergence between the image and the person. It is most evident with Trump, of course, many of whose followers still believe even as he works hard to elevate his ego and ruin their lives, but there is some of it in all the leaders. Hillary Clinton is indeed a feminist, but she is also a devout Methodist and conflicted on abortion and charity. (And the less said about her beliefs on foreign policy, the better.) Sanders plainly believes in his socialism, but he is more of a tough practical political survivor than a saint.

As analysts and commentators, we may pay attention to the person behind the curtain, as it were – we supposedly study these matters and pay attention to the actuality as well as iconography – but we have difficulty bringing these insights to a wider public.

Getting Started: the Green New Deal

The Green New Deal proposes to solve environmental problems by hiring a lot of people to do the work, but what is the work? We don’t know what those jobs are, yet. We don’t even know what is to be done. Build wind, solar, tidal, nuclear? (I suspect a lot of GND supporters don’t want to think about nuclear, but nuclear power does not produce greenhouse gases.)

If only there are experts to consult.

And there are. There are 17 US national laboratories. One, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is focused on renewables. Several of the others do renewables work as well.

I recently wrote an old colleague at one of the US national labs (we corvids get around), asked him how things were going, and what, if anything, was being done by the labs on the Green New Deal. They said that their work was going well though they now had to seek high-level approval for publication and that he had not read anything about the Green New Deal beyond the headlines.

If anything like a green new deal is to be implemented, the US national labs will be the primary research and development institutions. So, what are the national labs doing?

Each of the 17 US national laboratories has their own particular history and research focus. One, The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is focused on renewables. Another, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, does all kinds of civilian research, including renewables work, a third, the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), was founded in 1910 to support fossil fuel production and use and continues in that role. The other 14 are largely focused on high energy physics, nuclear weapons, and nuclear energy, though many do work in other fields. Notably, Argonne National Labs in Illinois houses the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), which works on battery technology, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) near Hanford in Washington State, has its Energy Policy and Economics Group.

And this is all very good, and all very fine, and we still don’t have a plan.

We don’t know how to make the Green New Deal work, yet, but we do know how to build a nuclear power system that will do the job – that’s where we have spent most of our efforts over the last 70 years.

Whatever we do, we need to get started.

Kristallnacht, US version

“DHS is planning to target families as part of stepped up effort to deport undocumented immigrants, a senior admin official told me, in response to Trump’s tweet last night. But the official said there are ‘not a lot of happy faces’ at DHS, as Trump revealed plans in the works.” – Jim Acosta, https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1141001638565621761

@Adam L Silverman over at Balloon Juice comments: “We don’t have enough Customs & Border Patrol officers, we don’t have enough Immigration & Customs Enforcement officers, we don’t have enough US Customs and Immigration Services personnel.”

If some local police and paramilitaries join in, would that be enough? It sounds like DHS is working on an updated version of Kristallnacht. The one good thing I can see about this is that support for our immigrants is broader and deeper than that for Jews in Nazi Germany.


In related  news, AOC called the concentration camps concentration camps on Twitter. Liz Cheney (!) wrote to disagree, objecting, “6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this.” The conservative never-Trumpers, Tom Nichols, Max Boot and the like, are Very Concerned.

“If, in the course of defending your political positions, you find yourself clarifying that you only support concentration camps, not death camps, I feel like maybe you ought take that as an occasion to rethink some things.” – David Roberts of Vox, https://twitter.com/drvox/status/1141057521945202688


While I was writing this in BJ comments, I  got a spam call from the American Law Enforcement United Alliance (ALEUA), a dark money pro-police PAC. They are a project of something called “Security in America,” also a dark money pro-police anti-immigrant PAC.

The Erasure of the History of Collective Activism and Non-Violence in the USA

Americans have been heavily propagandized against collective action exactly because it is effective and is the particular tool of movements to leash the power of wealth. The entire history of US socialism has been erased for many people. Equally, distorted versions of the histories of the Indian independence movement and the US civil rights movement has been promulgated, ones that erase the sternness of their leadership and the sacrifices of their followers.

Tweetety tweety tweet!

“At this time, there are three main political factions in the USA: fascists, who dominate the Republican Party, conservatives, who make up the right wing of the Democratic Party, and liberals, who make up the left wing of the Democratic Party.” – https://twitter.com/RavenOnthill/status/1134080445501493248

“Let's start a Twitter campaign to get this app killed.” “@AppleSupport @Android Take this fraudulent thing down.” “Revealed: women's fertility app is funded by anti-abortion campaigners” – https://twitter.com/RavenOnthill/status/1134073682505060353

“While the Democratic leadership is waiting its moment, Trump and the Republicans are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down. Was this what we voted for in 2018?” – https://twitter.com/RavenOnthill/status/1134079247499157504

“Judge Moore blocked me. I feel a sense of accomplishment.” – https://twitter.com/RavenOnthill/status/1133606371947974656

Political Courage, the House, W. Bush, and the Mueller Report

This article includes a 1963 picture of Bernard Sanders being arrested at a protest of racial segregation in Chicago by the brutal Chicago police force, still notorious for racism. In 1963 that force was Mayor Richard J. Daley’s iron hand. Five years later, that force was to brutally assault demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In 1963, protesting racism in Chicago took physical courage. Sanders would more likely have been treated as a race traitor than a privileged white man, possibly a Jewish race traitor.

From that day to this, Sanders has taken uncompromising political stands. After being arrested by Mayor Daley’s brutal force, I suspect that any purely political threat seemed small in comparison. He was not alone. Many activists of his generation faced brutal consequences and political ignominy for opposing racism, sexism, ableism – and they won.

Over 50 years later, the House Democrats face the question of how to respond to Donald Trump and the Mueller Report. In 1980, following the election of Reagan in an outburst of reactionary politics, the Democratic leadership decided to move to the right in the hope of attracting some of the reactionaries. The strategy worked, for a while. But the reactionaries, seeing success, continued to move to the right, impeaching President Clinton, one of the leading conservative Democrats. On the advice of William Barr, now Attorney General of the United States, President G. H. W. Bush (the first) pardoned the traitors of Iran-Contra, and the House Democrats did little in response. When W. Bush (the second) came to the Presidency, he pursued an ill-advised war in Iraq, using numerous illegal tactics and, again, the Democrats failed to act, ceding more and more to the Republicans, including, disastrously, the Supreme Court majority.

All through that time, there were explanations that this was strategy, that the Democrats would eventually fight.

Which brings us to the present day, when special counsel Robert Mueller III wrote a damning prosecutorial report on President Trump and his administration. Even what remains of the report, after redactions by Barr, is damning. Administration officials openly defy Congressional subpoenas and orders under the law. And the House Democrats, newly empowered by the 2018 election have done … what, exactly? So far, make public statements.

It is hard to see this as anything but cowardice. If the House leadership had 1/10 of the courage shown by the 1960s activists, they would be acting.

I have come to believe that one reason Sanders has such devoted supporters is courage. Equally, it seems to me one reason the Democratic Party has so little respect among the public is its seeming lack of courage. I am left wondering how much of the slow erosion of democracy in the USA is down to cowardice.

Meanwhile, in the Marketplace

Amazon’s Warehouses Are Crappy Places to Work (My sister blog, with the occasional story of life in the marketplace.)

Also, a pro-tax tweet:

The USA has been on austerity budget since the 1990s. It hasn't made us richer, or even helped us get by.

Bernie and the Racists

It seems to me that one reason so many Democrats resent Sanders is because he reminds them of what the party was, and abandoned in the 1990s, to gain votes in conservative states, especially in the South.

From the early 1990s to 2016, the Democratic Party was dominated by its conservative wing. They supported and passed a series of tight-fisted laws: the Clinton tax increase, which cost the party the House; welfare and Medicaid reform; the Clinton health plan, followed by the PPACA. At the same time, we heard racist rhetoric from the party leaders: “Sister Soljah,” “superpredators,” and so on. These reassured white racists that African-Americans would be kept from rising against their oppressors.

I wonder how much of the tight-fisted conservative policies were also covert appeals to racists. How much of the conservative faction of the Democratic Party is racist? Some, surely. Most?

Scratch economic conservatism, find racism (and sexism, but I’m writing about racism.) Policies which keep property relations as they stand, dominated by a wealthy white minority, those policies are racist, even if they do not incorporate explicit bigotry. The bigotry may be there, but it only becomes visible when attacked or when some demagogue like Donald Trump makes a direct appeal to it.

I don’t believe we can address racism without addressing disparities of wealth. Do we grant people of color full civil rights and still keep them dirt poor?

Which brings us back to Sanders. Sanders critique of class divisions is profoundly anti-racist – addressing class will, necessarily, raise up African-Americans. The objection from some African-Americans is that that is not enough, that one must first have basic rights. But Sanders stands for those as well: the young man who marched against housing discrimination in Mayor Daley’s Chicago (a very brave thing indeed), the only light-skinned man who stood with the Congressional Black Caucus when the Democratic leadership turned conservative in the 1990s, the first 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate to say “black lives matter” supports civil rights for African-Americans.

I think Sanders is so hated because, just by being who he is, he shames them. Sure, there’s other reasons. There’s people who say he cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency. I don’t agree, but I can understand that. But in the end, Sanders has stood against poverty and racism for his entire career and stands in reproach to people who have not. That is why there are so many attempts to make him out to be a racist, because if he is one, there is no need to listen to him, and his conservative opponents need not be ashamed. I regard such attacks as as valid as the attacks on Hillary Clinton as a cruel entitled masculine woman: these attacks relieve the attackers of the need to consider Clinton as a strong, competent leader, and reassure them that they need not be ashamed for their own weakness.

So let us treat Sanders with respect and listen to him. I doubt he could be elected to the Presidency and he is an old man who may lack the stamina to cope with the stresses of the office, but we should at least treat him decently. He’s been fighting the good fight for most of his life and he deserves respect for that.