Climate Change – Page 18

Everyday Erinyes #325

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:41 am Politics

Jul 032022

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Armies (and Navies etc.) are made up of human beings, and human beings need everything that all human beings need. This is almost simplistically obvious. But it also leads to the inference that almost anything can turn out to be vital to our national security – and therefore, the production of almost anything can be justifiably encouraged under the Defense Production Act. But inarguably, energy is right up there. To be secure as a nation, we need energy to keep our people from dying from harsh weather conditions (hi, Texas!) Also, in battle conditions, reliable sources of energy are needed to keep tanks moving and communications effective – to name just two of many reasons.
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President Joe Biden authorized use of the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of several climate-friendly technologies.
Werner Slocum/NREL

Daniel Cohan, Rice University

Solar panels, heat pumps and hydrogen are all building blocks of a clean energy economy. But are they truly “essential to the national defense”?

President Joe Biden proclaimed that they are in early June when he authorized using the Defense Production Act to ramp up their production in the U.S., along with insulation and power grid components.

As an environmental engineering professor, I agree that these technologies are essential to mitigating our risks from climate change and overreliance on fossil fuels. However, efforts to expand production capabilities must be accompanied by policies to stimulate demand if Biden hopes to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

Energy and the Defense Production Act

The United States enacted the Defense Production Act of 1950 at the start of the Korean War to secure materials deemed essential to national defense. Presidents soon recognized that essential materials extend far beyond weapons and ammunition. They have invoked the act to secure domestic supplies of everything from communications equipment to medical resources and baby formula.

For energy, past presidents used the act to expand fossil fuel supplies, not transition away from them. Lyndon Johnson used it to refurbish oil tankers during the 1967 Arab oil embargo, and Richard Nixon to secure materials for the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline in 1974. Even when Jimmy Carter used the act in 1980 to seek substitutes for oil, synthetic fuels made from coal and natural gas were a leading focus.

Today, the focus is on transitioning away from all fossil fuels, a move considered essential for confronting two key threats – climate change and volatile energy markets.

A field of solar panels in the desert with Las Vegas casinos and mountains in the background. — Utility-scale solar is now cheaper than fossil fuels. This installation is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The Department of Defense has identified numerous national security risks arising from climate change. Those include threats to the water supply, food production and infrastructure, which may trigger migration and competition for scarce resources. Fossil fuels are the dominant source of greenhouse gas emissions that are driving global warming.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlights additional risks of relying on fossil fuels. Russia and other adversaries are among the leading producers of these fuels. Overreliance on fossil fuels leaves the United States and its allies vulnerable to threats and to price shocks in volatile markets.

Even as the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas, the United States has been rocked by price spikes as our allies shun Russian fuels.

Targeting 4 pillars of clean energy

Transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy can mitigate these risks.

As I explain in my book, “Confronting Climate Gridlock,” building a clean energy economy requires four mutually reinforcing pillars – efficiency, clean electricity, electrification and clean fuels.

Efficiency shrinks energy demand and costs along with the burdens on the other pillars. Clean electricity eliminates greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and enables the electrification of vehicles, heating and industry. Meanwhile, clean fuels will be needed for airplanes, ships and industrial processes that can’t easily be electrified.

The technologies targeted by Biden’s actions are well aligned with these pillars.

Insulation is crucial to energy efficiency. Solar panels provide one of the cheapest and cleanest options for electricity. Power grid components are needed to integrate more wind and solar into the energy mix.

Heat pumps, which can both heat and cool a home, are far more efficient than traditional furnaces and replace natural gas or heating oil with electricity. Electrolyzers produce hydrogen for use as a fuel or a feedstock for chemicals.

Generating demand is essential

Production is only one step. For this effort to succeed, the U.S. must also ramp up demand.

Stimulating demand spurs learning by doing, which drives down costs, spurring greater demand. A virtuous cycle of rising adoption of technologies and falling costs can arise, as it has for wind and solar power, batteries and other technologies.

The technologies targeted by Biden differ in their readiness for this virtuous cycle to work.

Insulation is already cheap and abundantly produced domestically. What’s needed in this case are policies like building codes and incentives that can stimulate demand by encouraging more use of insulation to help make homes and buildings more energy efficient, not more capacity for production.

Solar panels are currently cheap, but the vast majority are manufactured in Asia. Even if Biden succeeds in tripling domestic manufacturing capacity, U.S. production alone will remain insufficient to satisfy the growing demand for new solar projects. Biden also put a two-year pause on the threat of new tariffs for solar imports to keep supplies flowing while U.S. production tries to ramp up, and announced support for grid-strengthening projects to boost growth of U.S. installations.

Electrolyzers face a tougher road. They’re expensive, and using them to make hydrogen from electricity and water for now costs far more than making hydrogen from natural gas – a process that produces greenhouse gas emissions. The Department of Energy aims to slash electrolyzer costs by 80% within a decade. Until it succeeds, there will be little demand for the electrolyzers that Biden hopes to see produced.

Why heat pumps are most likely to benefit

That leaves heat pumps as the technology most likely to benefit from Biden’s declaration.

Heat pumps can slash energy use, but they also cost more upfront and are unfamiliar to many contractors and consumers while technologies remain in flux.

Pairing use of the Defense Production Act with customer incentives, increased government purchasing and funding for research and development can create a virtuous cycle of rising demand, improving technologies and falling costs.

A worker in ballcap and short sleeves installs a large hat pump, hooking up hoses next to a house. — Heat pumps, which can both heat and cool, are far more efficient than traditional furnaces and air conditioning.
Phyxter.ai/Flickr, CC BY

Clean energy is indeed essential to mitigating the risks posed by climate change and volatile markets. Invoking the Defense Production Act can bolster supply, but the government will also have to stimulate demand and fund targeted research to spur the virtuous cycles needed to accelerate the energy transition.

Daniel Cohan, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AMT, It’s indeed true that increasing demand is vital to motivating increased production. And, as long as himans are resistant to change (which I assume will be true until the race becomes extinct), there will be challenges to replacing old technology with new. However, it has happened in the past. If our experience with the automobile is any guide, that means that producers are going to have to accept smaller profit margins than they are acustomed to – at least for a while – at least until the new technologies are firmly established and production costs go down. It would also not hurt for income levels to go up – remember it was the New Deal with all its effects, as well as unions, which actually turned us all into consumers – and gave us the ability to keep up consumption. Wealthy oligarchs were not happy with it then, and they won’t be happy with it now. But if wealthy oligarchs don’t capitulate and start to “bite the bullet” soon, they will end up with no customers and will lose everything.

The Furies and I will be back.

Open Thread June 25, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:38 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 252022

Yesterday, I woke up to over 100 emails – mostly about Roe. And they kept coming in all day (and will probably continue indefinitely.) I have been fighting tears. I never personally needed an abortion, and I certainly won’t now, but I find myself grieving over the women who will die (and who already have died) as a result of this abomination. And then the other decision this week – if life-threatening pregnancies and coat hanger abortions don’t kill us, they will do it with guns. My next thought may sound unrelated, but it isn’t really – I’m beginning to think every man, woman, and child in the US needs to be required to go through a course in anger management (and after that’s done, every child as part of middle or high school – or before earning a GED.) And then again as part of every sentence for a crime involving violence, as a prerequisite for release. Because all this hate comes from anger, and anger is a natural and normal part of the human condition, and we need it – but we don’t like it because it gets ugly, and we think the answer is to eliminate ie. It isn’t. the answer is to learn how to (a) express it in a disciplined and non-hurtful way, and (b) to use the adrenalin to fight politically for policies which are worth fighting for. In other words, anger needs to be well regulated. And people don’t learn how to do that throug osmosis. We need to be taught. And we need role models as part of the learning process. And I wish I had the faintest idea how that could happen. End of rant. I’m sticking woith unrelated short takes – I know you won’t have any difficulty reading about this decision.

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Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Intel Reveals Putin Plan to Weasel His Way Into American Hearts
Quote – [R]ather than counting on exiting the political scene in dramatic fashion, Putin might be betting that he can somehow outlast his detractors as well as the Biden Administration, whose security assistance for Ukraine has been pivotal in keeping a Russian win at bay. And part of Putin’s plot to outlive the Biden administration is likely to include influence operations aimed at securing an American political environment that’s more favorable to his goals, former CIA and Department of Homeland Security officials told The Daily Beast.
Click through for details. I gather the Transylvanians just loved Vlad Dracula too – considered him a Defender of the Faith. (At least if you have friends like that, you have no need of enemies.)

NM Political Report – NM Game and Fish urges people to be ‘bear aware’ during drought
Quote – [Nick] Forman [the carnivore and small mammal program manager for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish] compared [bears] to giant racoons because they are inquisitive and know how to manipulate their environment. [He also] acknowledged that it can be exciting to see a bear, especially for young children. He said parents can encourage their children to “leave wildlife wild” and “give them their space.” He said parents can take the opportunity to observe the bears with their children from afar, especially if there is a safe viewing area.
Click through for more. Neither the drought nor the bears are confined to New Mexico. We have friends on the west side of town who have had bears amble down their street, and I know California has bears. They used to be all over what is now the United States, so there’s no telling where one might pop up. It’s great to have them, but not so great to be mauled by one. I thought it was worth a little cautionary note.

Food For Thought

Open Thread June 23, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:01 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 232022

Yesterday, I did some recovering and braced myself to be ready for tomorrow’s hearing. I did a little knitting – making some headbands with scraps of corron and cotton blend yarn that will just fir around my head at forehead level, which I can wet down and refrigerate for the days when th ceiling fan in the den isn’t enough. I had tried before, but they were always too big and wouldn’t stay put. but after making three now with smaller stitch counts, I have it right The old, too big ones, though, I’ll wet down and refrigerate to go around my neck, sort of like cowls, if I need that extra. Just for getting cool, they won’t be any use as ice packs for arthritis – they’re not thick enough. It’s was a bit cooler, so it seemed like a good time to make them – no pressure.

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Short Takes –

Gizmodo – Hundreds of Little Blue Penguins Are Washing Up Dead in New Zealand Amid an Ocean Heatwave
Quote – New Zealand Department of Conservation post-mortem examinations revealed many of the birds were particularly vulnerable juveniles. The young penguins died of starvation and hypothermia, with no fat to help them hold onto heat in the water. Counterintuitively, seabirds dying of cold corresponds with hotter ocean temperatures caused by both climate change and the weather phenomenon La Niña, a Depart of Conservation representative, Graeme Taylor, told RNZ.
Click through for details. The quote uses the word “counterintuitive” (which is actually true of hypothermia in other ways too), and it strikes me that, in so many ways the things we need to do in the face of climate change are counterintuitive as well. Which is why it is so important to get solid science – exactly what people want to ignore. Sigh.

The New Yorker – Putting the Backlash Against Progressive Prosecutors in Perspective
Quote – In San Francisco, Chesa Boudin—a reform-minded district attorney—was recalled by voters by a significant margin last week. Boudin had instituted a number of progressive reforms, from liberalizing bail policies to reducing jail populations through diversion programs. But those changes were buried by the perception that the city had descended into a state of chaos. His recall has been cast as a referendum on crime and on the public’s attitudes toward progressive criminal-justice policies. What were the voters in San Francisco blaming on Boudin? The New Yorker staff writer Benjamin Wallace-Wells recently wrote about Boudin’s recall. He speaks with the New Yorker senior editor Tyler Foggatt.
Click through – it’s a podcast, but you can download a transcript. It did not offer me any file extension, but when I went to open it, my PC gave me a list of programs to choose from; I selected “Notepad” and it opened right up. “Wordpad” also works, but Adobe Reader doesn’t. It’s valuable information for anyone who cares about restorative justice, reforming our legal and prison systems, and the like.

Food For Thought

Open Thread June 22, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:12 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 222022

Yesterday, I brought up the live hearing, coming in on the testimony of the Speaker of the Arizona House, Rusty Bowers. I then watched the testimony of Georgia’s Raffensberger and Sterling. I had to return later to catch the Georgia election workers Andrea (Shay) Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman. as well as the opening and closing statements. You know, we have been talking about Republicans putting party before country. But with regard to this insurrection, we have been wrong. They were putting prsonal gain – probably in some cases only personal whim – before both party and country. I’ve seen some people on the net saying, “I love it when they eat their oen,” I don’t. I don’t love bottom-of-the-cesspool depravity, and that’s what this is. Disgusting. And also dangerous. If they will eat their own, they will eat anything and anyone. We have also been saying they are moving toward fascism, and by the book they certainly are. But I question whether actual fascism is their goal, or whether tha goal is total chaos – a state with even less predictabiity than anarchy.

When I returned to the hearing at the YouTube link provided at house.gov (to the committee’s channel) I happened to notice that that channel has 29.4K subscribers. I know, not a lot in the scheme of things, but those are only the people who are watching at this channel. That does not include anyone who is watching at PBS, MSNBC/NBC, CBS, ABC, or CNN, or anyone who is watching with The Lincoln Project or Meidas Touch, and that probably does not exhaust the list of sources. Somewhere I also read even Fox is now carrying it (the implication being more than just on Fox Business), but I can’t verify that.

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Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Here’s What the Insecure Insurrectionists Don’t Get About America
Quote – America was not actually built on unlimited individual freedom, as a shocking number of Americans seem to believe it is these days. The foundation of our nation, the bedrock of its multi-century success, is the philosophy of democratic liberalism: the government will not interfere with your pursuit of happiness unless your pursuit interferes with that of other people.
Click through for more (including a point about the poem “America the Beautiful”), but the quote is the bottom line. I also feel that one verse of “America the Beautiful is not enough. I tend to focus onthe second verse (“God mend thine every flaw – Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law”), but the third verse may be even more important.

CPR News – A Colorado startup wants buildings to suck up carbon, one living concrete block at a time
Quote – His company’s proposed alternative is a “bio-cement” first developed at the University of Colorado Boulder. Inside the Colorado company’s warehouse, sand is loaded in block-shaped molds with micro-algae, which binds the material through the same process corals and oysters use to build their shells. The final masonry units feel like hardened sand castles. While the process takes energy, Burnett said algae absorbs enough carbon to make the blocks 90 percent less carbon-intensive than traditional concrete.
Click through for the interview – yes, it’s an interview, but there’s what appears to be at least a partial transcript. It’s good news locally but appears to have potential – and we need every possible step (and may already be too late.)

Food For Thought

Video Thread 6/21/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:12 pm Open Thread, Politics

Jun 212022

Glenn Kirschner – Crimes of Trump lawyer Eastman exposed; will Ginni Thomas testify; DOJ demands all J6 transcripts

Meidas Touch – Texas Paul REACTS to Texas Water Shortages and Power Outages

The Lincoln Project – This Was Planned

CNN – ‘Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ team arrested at Capitol

Guy Who Didn’t Like Cats Finds One Stuck In His Tire

Beau – Let’s talk about culture shifting and representation…. (So Simple – but ir really touched me.)

Video Thread 6/15/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:38 am Open Thread, Politics

Jun 152022

Glenn Kirschner – After enabling Trump’s lawlessness for years, Pence did the bare minimum on 1/6. But he’s no hero

Meidas Touch – Michael Cohen ANNIHILATES Trump after second Jan 6 Committee Hearing

Crooks and Liars – AG Garland Speaks On Jan 6 Committee Hearings

VoteVets – Charity

The Daily Show – Having “The Talk” With Trump Supporters About The Police (Possibly not what you are expecting.)

Beau – Let’s talk about Ukraine, grain, and Africa….

Open Thread June 13, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:41 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 132022

Yesterday, I was surprised by how many of my regular newsletters were not in my inbox. Even for a Sunday, this was striking. Perhaps the internet in general (at leas the sane part) is in the same headspace I am. I want to cover the hearings certainly, but I don’t want the blog to turn into a January 6 blog. There are too many other things happening which are also important – and not being seen. Both this thread and the Videu Thread will be a little short today I will find a way to watch today’s full hearing, probably after the fact, and will post links tomorrow. I”ll continue to do that for wach hearing. And if the posts continue to be short until the hearings are finished it will be what it is.

Cartoon – 13 0613Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

The Hill – March For Our Lives co-founder: Senate gun reform package should be beginning of Congress’s work
Quote – The senators’ framework includes funding for school safety resources, expanded background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21 and incentives for states to implement “red flag’ laws. The proposed legislation comes in response to the recent string of mass shootings in the U.S, which prompted more debate on gun control in the country.
Click throug for story. The March for Our Lives event was Saturday, and it took place in 450 cities all over the country. I want to help prevent it from being overlooked.

The Conversation – Ice world: Antarctica’s riskiest glacier is under assault from below and losing its grip
Quote – Antarctica is a continent comprising several large islands, one of them the size of Australia, all buried under a 10,000-foot-thick layer of ice. The ice holds enough fresh water to raise sea level by nearly 200 feet. Its glaciers have always been in motion, but beneath the ice, changes are taking place that are having profound effects on the future of the ice sheet – and on the future of coastal communities around the world.
Click through to read just how bad it is, with photos and maps.

Food For Thought