Yesterday, I received 3 packages from UPS and one from USPS. The one from USPS was small and delivered to my mailbox, so since I had to go out to the curb anyway, I bindled up a bunch of plastic shipping material (“popcorn” and heavy duty bubble wrap mostly), took it to the trash, and then took the trash to the curb. Today or tomorrow I’ll break up a few boxes and do the same for the recyclables. Pickip os Thursday, and I don’t put stuff out every week. Otherwise, the day was pretty uneventful.
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Short Takes –
Department of Justice – St. Paul Woman Charged in Child Sex Trafficking Conspiracy
Quote – According to court documents, from May 2020 through December 2020, Gisela Castro Medina, 19, and co-defendant Anton Joseph Lazzaro, 30, conspired with each other and others to recruit and solicit six minor victims to engage in commercial sex acts. Castro Medina, who was arrested on August 12, 2021, in Okaloosa County, Florida, made her initial appearance earlier today before Magistrate Judge Hope T. Cannon, in U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Florida. Click through for DOJ press release. This has taken a couple of weeks to surface, but I figured the DOJ version would be the least sensational, and it appears to be. Law & Crime has photos.
The Daily Beast – ‘Wacky Guy’ Angrily Confronts NBC News Correspondent During Live Hurricane Report
Quote – Explaining that the rain had stopped in the area and mail delivery had returned in Gulfport, Brewster reported that the mayor of the town was still enforcing a curfew as they surveyed the damage. At the same time, a pickup truck pulled over in the background of Brewster’s shot, with a large, middle-aged man jumping out of the vehicle and running towards the NBC News crew. Keeping his composure, Brewster attempted to continue to deliver his report on the hurricane’s aftermath, but the man eventually grew disruptive and began shouting at both the camera crew and the reporter. Click through for story and video. This kind of thing just breaks my heart.
AP News – Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, partner wed in New Mexico
Quote – Haaland wore a dress designed and sewn by her sister, said Interior Department spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz. The ceremony incorporated elements honoring her Native American ancestry. The former New Mexico congresswoman is a member of the Laguna Pueblo. According to Schwartz, guests had to be vaccinated to attend and wear masks per CDC and New Mexico guidelines. Click through for story and photo. She looks absolutely gorgeous. They both do.
Yesterday, I mostly rested. Did some crocheting. I had finished the top I was making for my friend, and started another one for another friend. Ordinarily I vastly prefer knitting to crocheting, but this was an unusual pattern and the structure of it hooked me (pun intended.) I may be able to figure out how to translate that look to knitting, but I’ll want to try it doll-size before attempting anything bigger.
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Short Takes –
The Hill – Biden allies say media missing the mark on Afghanistan
Quote – “Every Biden misstep or setback is treated like Trump said COVID will just go away, windmills cause cancer, or that he won re-election,” [Philippe] Reines [a media aficionado and longtime senior adviser to Hillary Clinton] said. “If the goal is to be truly honest, accurate, and fair when covering Biden, there are thousands of adjectives and countless degrees of indignation for the media to choose from. This isn’t hard.” Click through for other statements. Personally, I would file this under “No shit, Sherlock.” (and I would criticize the media a little more harshly than some), but apparently it needs to be said.
CBS News – Veteran dies of treatable illness as COVID fills hospital beds, leaving doctors “playing musical chairs”
Quote – [Belville emergency room physician Dr. Hasan] Kakli told [“CBS This Morning” lead national correspondent David] Begnaud that if it weren’t for the COVID crisis, the procedure for Wilkinson would have taken 30 minutes, and he’d have been back out the door. I’ve never lost a patient from this diagnosis, ever,” Kakli said. “We know what needs to be done and we know how to treat it, and we get them to where they need to go. I’m scared that the next patient that I see is someone that I can’t get to where they need to get to go. We are playing musical chairs, with 100 people and 10 chairs,” he said. “When the music stops, what happens? People from all over the world come to Houston to get medical care and, right now, Houston can’t take care of patients from the next town over. That’s the reality.” Click through for story and video. This, along with one other case in Kansas, is the first confirmed case I am aware of where someone died specifically because of unvaccinated CoViD patients. And it’s heartbreaking.
Dem Underground – From the sane Kennedys
Quote – Our father’s death impacted our family in ways that can never adequately be articulated and today’s decision by a two-member parole board [committee] has inflicted enormous additional pain. But beyond just us, six of Robert Kennedy’s nine surviving children, Sirhan Sirhan committed a crime against our nation and its people. He took our father from our family and he took him from America. Click through to read full statement. I admit this makes me nervous at best.
Food for Thought – kind of related to yesterday’s Furies.
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.”
Renewable energy is, by definition, renewable. If you harvest energy from the sun or from the wind, and the sun sets or the wind stops blowing, there will always be more. But in order to make it through the night, or through the calm days, you need to be able to store the energy you harvested while the sun was up and the wind blowing. And, while we do have a lot of ways to store it, we are not as far along as I had hoped in making those ways last long enough and be dependable enough to leave fossil fuels behind just yet. So maybe we need to take stock of the situation.
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These 3 energy storage technologies can help solve the challenge of moving to 100% renewable electricity
Energy storage can make facilities like this solar farm in Oxford, Maine, more profitable by letting them store power for cloudy days. AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
In recent decades the cost of wind and solar power generation has dropped dramatically. This is one reason that the U.S. Department of Energy projects that renewable energy will be the fastest-growing U.S. energy source through 2050.
However, it’s still relatively expensive to store energy. And since renewable energy generation isn’t available all the time – it happens when the wind blows or the sun shines – storage is essential.
Here are three emerging technologies that could help make this happen.
Longer charges
From alkaline batteries for small electronics to lithium-ion batteries for cars and laptops, most people already use batteries in many aspects of their daily lives. But there is still lots of room for growth.
For example, high-capacity batteries with long discharge times – up to 10 hours – could be valuable for storing solar power at night or increasing the range of electric vehicles. Right now there are very few such batteries in use. However, according to recent projections, upwards of 100 gigawatts’ worth of these batteries will likely be installed by 2050. For comparison, that’s 50 times the generating capacity of Hoover Dam. This could have a major impact on the viability of renewable energy.
Batteries work by creating a chemical reaction that produces a flow of electrical current.
One of the biggest obstacles is limited supplies of lithium and cobalt, which currently are essential for making lightweight, powerful batteries. According to some estimates, around 10% of the world’s lithium and nearly all of the world’s cobalt reserves will be depleted by 2050.
Furthermore, nearly 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Congo, under conditions that have long been documented as inhumane.
Scientists are working to develop techniques for recycling lithium and cobalt batteries, and to design batteries based on other materials. Tesla plans to produce cobalt-free batteries within the next few years. Others aim to replace lithium with sodium, which has properties very similar to lithium’s but is much more abundant.
Safer batteries
Another priority is to make batteries safer. One area for improvement is electrolytes – the medium, often liquid, that allows an electric charge to flow from the battery’s anode, or negative terminal, to the cathode, or positive terminal.
When a battery is in use, charged particles in the electrolyte move around to balance out the charge of the electricity flowing out of the battery. Electrolytes often contain flammable materials. If they leak, the battery can overheat and catch fire or melt.
Scientists are developing solid electrolytes, which would make batteries more robust. It is much harder for particles to move around through solids than through liquids, but encouraging lab-scale results suggest that these batteries could be ready for use in electric vehicles in the coming years, with target dates for commercialization as early as 2026.
While solid-state batteries would be well suited for consumer electronics and electric vehicles, for large-scale energy storage, scientists are pursuing all-liquid designs called flow batteries.
A typical flow battery consists of two tanks of liquids that are pumped past a membrane held between two electrodes. Qi and Koenig, 2017, CC BY
In these devices both the electrolyte and the electrodes are liquids. This allows for super-fast charging and makes it easy to make really big batteries. Currently these systems are very expensive, but research continues to bring down the price.
Storing sunlight as heat
Other renewable energy storage solutions cost less than batteries in some cases. For example, concentrated solar power plants use mirrors to concentrate sunlight, which heats up hundreds or thousands of tons of salt until it melts. This molten salt then is used to drive an electric generator, much as coal or nuclear power is used to heat steam and drive a generator in traditional plants.
These heated materials can also be stored to produce electricity when it is cloudy, or even at night. This approach allows concentrated solar power to work around the clock.
This idea could be adapted for use with nonsolar power generation technologies. For example, electricity made with wind power could be used to heat salt for use later when it isn’t windy.
Concentrating solar power is still relatively expensive. To compete with other forms of energy generation and storage, it needs to become more efficient. One way to achieve this is to increase the temperature the salt is heated to, enabling more efficient electricity production. Unfortunately, the salts currently in use aren’t stable at high temperatures. Researchers are working to develop new salts or other materials that can withstand temperatures as high as 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (705 C).
One leading idea for how to reach higher temperature involves heating up sand instead of salt, which can withstand the higher temperature. The sand would then be moved with conveyor belts from the heating point to storage. The Department of Energy recently announced funding for a pilot concentrated solar power plant based on this concept.
Advanced renewable fuels
Batteries are useful for short-term energy storage, and concentrated solar power plants could help stabilize the electric grid. However, utilities also need to store a lot of energy for indefinite amounts of time. This is a role for renewable fuels like hydrogen and ammonia. Utilities would store energy in these fuels by producing them with surplus power, when wind turbines and solar panels are generating more electricity than the utilities’ customers need.
Today these fuels are mostly made from natural gas or other nonrenewable fossil fuels via extremely inefficient reactions. While we think of it as a green fuel, most hydrogen gas today is made from natural gas.
Scientists are looking for ways to produce hydrogen and other fuels using renewable electricity. For example, it is possible to make hydrogen fuel by splitting water molecules using electricity. The key challenge is optimizing the process to make it efficient and economical. The potential payoff is enormous: inexhaustible, completely renewable energy.
================================================================ Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, we all know that only an idiot would say “if you just have solar power you have no light at night,” or “you only have wind energy when the wind is blowing.” And that is because these technologies utilize storage. And I guess I thought we were farther along in storage than we in fact are. We need better storage, and we need it cheaper – both in terms of the money it costs consumers, and also in terms of how resources are used. Any help from you ladies wold be deeply appreciated.
Yesterday, I put together a pdf on everything I know about my mother’s relatives, for my second cousin, the amateur genealogist. Much of it is family lore, and there are a lot of gaps when it comes to actual information, like names and dates. But he’ll be insterested. He recently passed on (through his sister) that my great-grandfather August, who served the Union in the Civi War (a fact which he, and I, had known for over 20 years) only enlisted after getting drunk with some old army buddies (I assume from some German army – “Germany” didn’t exist as a unified state at that time.) But that’s OK. He served honorably, and did it on the right side. I also did some shopping, including making a grocery delivery order for today.
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Short Takes –
The Guardian – Tennessee woman drowns seconds after filming rising floodwaters
Quote – Victoria Almond said her brother and mother held on to a utility pole but let go when they saw a house floating towards them. When her brother emerged after being pulled briefly under the water, she said, their mother was gone. Click through for story. It’s also a story, in a way, that it’s not American media in which I found this. (Apparently the Washington Post did carry it.)
Common Dreams – 63% of US Veterans Support Afghanistan Withdrawal: Poll
Quote – “Veterans know the cost of war, so it should come as no surprise that they strongly back President Biden’s decision to end the war in Afghanistan,” Mary Kaszynski, director of government relations for VoteVets, said in a statement. “Veterans strongly believe President Biden is right—it is time to go.” Click through for details. There is also a link to VoteVets own coverage.
Vox – What full FDA approval for Covid-19 vaccines really means
Quote – Full approval grants the vaccine manufacturers permission to advertise their products and allow them to continue selling them after the public health emergency around Covid-19 ends. For doctors, full approval also allows them to use vaccines off-label, potentially as booster shots. Click through for other technicalities, implications, and hopes.
Glenn Kirschner – Trump’s Unabated Crime Wave Continues: Threatens Officer Who Protected the US Capitol on Jan. 6
Now This News – London’s Stuck Tower Bridge Inspires Social Media Jokes
The Republican Accountability Project – The New McCarthyism
Ring of Fire – Anti Vax Nurse Investigated For Injecting Patients With Saline Instead Of COVID Vaccine (No words – and the only picture which comes to mind is not just NSFW, it’s NSFPP)
Liberal Redneck – Tennessee’s Turn to Dumb
Rocky Mountain Mike – Hooked On Their Stealing (another favorite of mine – earworm, here we come!
Beau – Let’s talk about Biden’s message to OPEC, foreign policy, and oil…. (I could not keep a straight face through the whole thing – in fact I laughed out loud twice.)
I’ll spare you the Pillow Guy clips and the one about exploding green birds.
Glenn Kirschner – MSNBC Daily Piece – DOJ Officials Thwarted Trump’s Coup. Next Step: A Criminal Investigation
Meidas Touch – WTF: LAX Police Chief CONFIRMS Existence of POLICE GANGS! (And this is why we need more Larry Keasners.)
No Dem Left Behind and Richard Ojeda – Winning Over Rural Americ
This is a presentation of Egberto Willies – I edited out the spoiler at the beginning but not the discussion at the end after the punch line. Egberto’s no fool, but sometimes I tthink he over-explains.
PBS – Dr. Fauci explains booster shots and the delta variant’s threat to children – I’m thinking this would be me (no, not the “children” part) but it’s borderline.
Cracked – If Megachurches Were Honest (“Cracked” is a competitor of “MAD” magazine – or maybe a supplement to it)
Let’s talk about personal responsibility in today’s world…. (LOL of course we know this and mck “the party of personal responsibility.” But Beau has his own ways of communicating.)
