tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67187726912891141232024-03-17T17:03:59.362-07:00Idiot TrackerAgainst denial. Against fascism. Against climate nonsense, racism, misogyny, religious bigotry, and anti-intellectualism.TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.comBlogger438125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-82895671492508123882021-01-15T11:38:00.003-08:002021-01-15T11:38:30.653-08:00Wherein I am chastised<p> Yep…targeted harassment…of fascists. Now I've heard it all.</p><p></p><p>And heaven forfend anyone suggest soldiers might be called upon to kill people in the discharge of their duties. Where did I get that strange idea?<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA5sN1zYtgaq90h-XVd4O5a9VjhI73WWPuwd8vbBw_e6YAMhHpAqPtaKAHQyG4EsZqqiRAAv3OGjOhri_8KrJw2mwoPXA7OdZwohboUTK9ACKkrxgwu5NRS0Q8PmFPImzDj_xcSnRdT4E/s1174/Screen+Shot+2021-01-15+at+11.31.15+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1174" data-original-width="1116" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA5sN1zYtgaq90h-XVd4O5a9VjhI73WWPuwd8vbBw_e6YAMhHpAqPtaKAHQyG4EsZqqiRAAv3OGjOhri_8KrJw2mwoPXA7OdZwohboUTK9ACKkrxgwu5NRS0Q8PmFPImzDj_xcSnRdT4E/w380-h400/Screen+Shot+2021-01-15+at+11.31.15+AM.png" width="380" /></a></div><br /><p></p>TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-5765807838985243972020-02-07T10:41:00.001-08:002020-02-07T10:41:21.395-08:00Climate 2020: Still on a glide-path to diaster, part three ("Peak Coal")<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In Parts One & Two, I illustrated how the probability of ongoing exponential economic growth makes RCP8.5 (or something even worse) a quite plausible future. But what are the arguments against RCP8.5 as a plausible future?<br />
<br />
Thus Zeke Hausfather in <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-the-high-emissions-rcp8-5-global-warming-scenario">Carbon Brief</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white;">One particular aspect of both the RCP8.5 and the new SSP 8.5 scenarios that has drawn <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544217314597" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">quite a bit</a> <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988317301226" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">of criticism</a>
from energy researchers are their assumptions around future coal use.
Reaching the CO2 emissions in these scenarios requires a large-scale
increase in coal use – with 6.5 times more coal use in 2100 than today.… </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">With <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-plans-for-new-coal-are-changing-around-the-world">global coal use having declined</a> slightly since its peak in 2014, it is <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-coal-use-may-have-peaked-iea-world-enery-outlook">hard to envision</a>
a world where coal expands this dramatically in the future even in the
absence of new climate policies. This is particularly true given the <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-now-cheaper-than-grid-electricity-in-every-chinese-city-study-finds">falling prices</a> of alternative energy technologies in recent years. A forthcoming “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_elicitation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">expert elicitation</a>” – where energy experts were asked to assess the likelihood of various outcomes – gives RCP8.5 <a href="https://twitter.com/tavoni_massimo/status/1162254915869085696?s=09" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">only a 5% chance</a> of occurring among all the possible no-policy baseline scenarios.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<b>Argument I: Coal use peaked in 2014 [or 2013, depending on the source], and is likely to
continue to decline, making the expansion of coal use posited in RCP8.5
implausible.</b><br />
<br />
Truly, it's hard to dispute that, just look at this graph of global coal consumption annually:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpxBdagXVkyq8KksJX-0Qe3Z4u3iHpQLW3WMEDkUFbHTXywWbTuR3MMxZUHQOHben8SYO1dKo7xQZ-yPYH-fhHbLlZW6x8IQl0IB7O0TtdMCKiBFZoOJbfKZMVO8id-8q629GKdGRIcqw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+8.47.30+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="206" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpxBdagXVkyq8KksJX-0Qe3Z4u3iHpQLW3WMEDkUFbHTXywWbTuR3MMxZUHQOHben8SYO1dKo7xQZ-yPYH-fhHbLlZW6x8IQl0IB7O0TtdMCKiBFZoOJbfKZMVO8id-8q629GKdGRIcqw/s400/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+8.47.30+AM.png" width="267" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.globalchange.gov/browse/indicators/indicator-global-surface-temperatures">Not Really</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
No, I'm only kidding! That's part of a graph of global temperatures:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVA_bG2v5clh9fRmtDy033E7jCRuwesBC-GOc5osXTnV6WUfITbnsP4CCDH7rUbHPaOfXcjlfaGI0y6HVJfgC9KfyFGvbugMdlqX7JNc4QgE_d8uKCnyVrKzMGHv0N8jlD1XiopX4SnwA/s1600/global_surface_temp_040819_0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="1600" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVA_bG2v5clh9fRmtDy033E7jCRuwesBC-GOc5osXTnV6WUfITbnsP4CCDH7rUbHPaOfXcjlfaGI0y6HVJfgC9KfyFGvbugMdlqX7JNc4QgE_d8uKCnyVrKzMGHv0N8jlD1XiopX4SnwA/s400/global_surface_temp_040819_0.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Here's the real data on annual coal consumption:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj2uZTjmC16hnIWIEi2AyKT0WJuAbSueZVmOUj12LxSN2lCiXYJeIPk5CKQFMlTmpWpfDHvTNcHnTmZ941a9Gqw3gPdZ0EaZw-3ETgTQ81Xv55VR2QzQcYmMV-BToiFcKHGU9LmhT002c/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+8.58.19+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="368" data-original-width="388" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj2uZTjmC16hnIWIEi2AyKT0WJuAbSueZVmOUj12LxSN2lCiXYJeIPk5CKQFMlTmpWpfDHvTNcHnTmZ941a9Gqw3gPdZ0EaZw-3ETgTQ81Xv55VR2QzQcYmMV-BToiFcKHGU9LmhT002c/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+8.58.19+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Except I'm obvisously still kidding, because I've just taken the September Arctic sea ice area and inverted it:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSPqs_KLVvyVvpUez_f5FRY5vkeBDxn0LTyo-TaLsrg2lBKtBw9hONoWyq1XdkFg9ODK8pjMI7nJLxvQ6G5nFB4XF2lNZovox322qwj07rDMqY-MLr_sPU4xzYxlPrBxyhYNPxVh_QEQk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+8.53.57+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="940" data-original-width="1600" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSPqs_KLVvyVvpUez_f5FRY5vkeBDxn0LTyo-TaLsrg2lBKtBw9hONoWyq1XdkFg9ODK8pjMI7nJLxvQ6G5nFB4XF2lNZovox322qwj07rDMqY-MLr_sPU4xzYxlPrBxyhYNPxVh_QEQk/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+8.53.57+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is -- I promise, joke over, the real thing -- global annual coal consumption:</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAP74mAlUyENLsNa966ycpEnzc1OPN6p9FOIVfSjIv-vwvBjplMHj1B2rpxSIMhWC1-AH7qX8_8rNZ5LvnbK0A44NabqW6otUzih3QDxOCVZQpeuGzNPVPPRqTPYFSxk5RUi8IJtAY6hg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+9.06.16+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1064" data-original-width="1596" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAP74mAlUyENLsNa966ycpEnzc1OPN6p9FOIVfSjIv-vwvBjplMHj1B2rpxSIMhWC1-AH7qX8_8rNZ5LvnbK0A44NabqW6otUzih3QDxOCVZQpeuGzNPVPPRqTPYFSxk5RUi8IJtAY6hg/s400/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+9.06.16+AM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels">Source</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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You can see that the record-highest annual coal consumption was in 2013. This is true, just as it is true that the record-highest average temperature of the Earth was in 2016, and the record-lowest September Arctic sea ice extent was in 2012. But we cannot say coal consumption "peaked" in 2013 any more than we can that global temperatures "peaked" in 2016. What we can say is that 2013 had the highest coal consumption on record, and the second highest was -- 2018 (the last year for which we have data. We also can say that the last eight years of the data (2011-2018) contained the eight highest coal-consuming years.<br />
<br />
When it comes to short-term noise in a long-term trend, climate realists have been round and round this bend before. All the good-faith voices on the climate know the the denialist short con of "no warming since [insert current warmest year on record.] I would suggest we apply the same skeptical attitude to "peak coal."<br />
<br />
Certainly these trends are not exactly analogous. We know the temperature record will be broken again (and again, and again) because of the remorseless laws of atmospheric physics. No law of human behavior is half so ironclad. It may be that after the false spring of 2017 & 2018 (when coal consumption appeared to resume its upward march) will be a blip, and 2013 truly will stand as the peak, as the rest of the world follows the United States and Western Europe in aggressively phasing out coal. But is that really the most likely scenario here?<br />
<br />
The primary reason for the decline in coal consumption from 2014-2016 (it doesn't sound that impressive when we put dates on it, does it?) was that the rapid growth in Chinese consumption abated and their consumption was steady, not rapidly rising, over the past decade:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhyphenhyphen_32Pi0BRURrqeDxglNnDdF9wAZsVHG303IBsu-Dpf2HE0_7Sy73CWtdSjf5I0kHGDpEVeemIKj9IWz1JCyZLTIJq5LViEjQYwy92d0hSYoxy5SlRyCmIkKNkXXK4LTUYTDc3ESWllg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+9.44.38+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="884" data-original-width="1492" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhyphenhyphen_32Pi0BRURrqeDxglNnDdF9wAZsVHG303IBsu-Dpf2HE0_7Sy73CWtdSjf5I0kHGDpEVeemIKj9IWz1JCyZLTIJq5LViEjQYwy92d0hSYoxy5SlRyCmIkKNkXXK4LTUYTDc3ESWllg/s400/Screen+Shot+2020-02-07+at+9.44.38+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
This coupled with the continued reduction in coal use in the United States and Europe accounts for coal's modest decline. Will this decline spread rapidly to the rest of the world? Or, to put it another way, is China's transition a function of their increasing wealth and sophistication (intolerance of air pollution, desire to be a leader on climate change, need to develop clean energy exports) or is it a function of global structural change (perhaps caused by inexpensive renewables) which will spread to all corners of the globe BEFORE said corners are as wealthy and powerful as China?<br />
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A definitive answer to that question is beyond my powers, but we can check in on some of the large, poor countries who, if they emulate China and the United States, could easily push coal consumption to the levels seen in RCP8.5.<br />
<br />
Let's start with India, soon to be the most populous country in the world, currently averaging 6-7% GDP growth annually.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTDF0qgek6W-ZfPW0aAqZ9X0vNWGHcURW1b_Bukaid7K8SzNuti718p8mnmQJpG_A6Rwcof50FVnU942NRfyjIE1tNom-7fZMvCtwtv6UbvBCka9NzcrX4WJJrh1r6caGC9I5ZLh81sAw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+6.06.26+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="856" data-original-width="1600" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTDF0qgek6W-ZfPW0aAqZ9X0vNWGHcURW1b_Bukaid7K8SzNuti718p8mnmQJpG_A6Rwcof50FVnU942NRfyjIE1tNom-7fZMvCtwtv6UbvBCka9NzcrX4WJJrh1r6caGC9I5ZLh81sAw/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+6.06.26+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Not much sign of a coal phase-out there. How about in Africa? Data for the whole of Africa or Sub-Saharan Africa as a region is hard to come by (if you have a source, put it and your thoughts about my poor research skills in the comments.) The largest country in terms of population is Nigeria, is coal declining there?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZlt6bcEFxHwYsQWmwh0OXetVu_TYVHKylx-sOrTYd4TqzFDAadZ5_m-8FtpsqmlDRxL73dfRZspBP92Fum25EVn3pcqWJ2Nv9IqVbo4WFcF9YvuEHFUisOfEVdHpORkPXJDTonkOUHT8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+5.55.33+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="1600" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZlt6bcEFxHwYsQWmwh0OXetVu_TYVHKylx-sOrTYd4TqzFDAadZ5_m-8FtpsqmlDRxL73dfRZspBP92Fum25EVn3pcqWJ2Nv9IqVbo4WFcF9YvuEHFUisOfEVdHpORkPXJDTonkOUHT8/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+5.55.33+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
It doesn't seem so. If anything, it seems like it's just getting revved up.
Another fast-growing economy, neglected by Western pundits doubtless due to the long shadows of CHina and India, is Indonesia, with a population of 264 millions and average annual GDP growth of 4-6% over the last 20 years. How is the post-coal future unfolding on the great Pacific archipelago?
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4BnqMF4wjgShaiK3-IDWXP7nBFMmBpd6nFuJ-nAEMPaYffzfBCiPdx5GA0MVXL21alm3Tjw-JpCZoeUnCmTtoz1RncP_oksGmIivilxtskji9rCNOqOShugBOTyZOmZ2gx93PJCypuMc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+5.57.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="865" data-original-width="1600" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4BnqMF4wjgShaiK3-IDWXP7nBFMmBpd6nFuJ-nAEMPaYffzfBCiPdx5GA0MVXL21alm3Tjw-JpCZoeUnCmTtoz1RncP_oksGmIivilxtskji9rCNOqOShugBOTyZOmZ2gx93PJCypuMc/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+5.57.14+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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India has another important neighbor besides China, their former compatriots and current mortal enemies, the Pakistanis. Unfortunately, though they have their share of differences, in regards to burning the dirtiest fuel on Earth, they seem to be of one mind.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW4UKsYU884upCOMF5EW4XISgieb-jmz5DoQoOSQwX_STwe3jgics798lSii9-NMbd_6dItyBBIqPfXuDyLIf6fVmRdhfZc-ZUaNHWUWR15hAg4tVy0k_ke3NfNI-cuck2E4PGqRbt3iw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+5.58.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="1600" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW4UKsYU884upCOMF5EW4XISgieb-jmz5DoQoOSQwX_STwe3jgics798lSii9-NMbd_6dItyBBIqPfXuDyLIf6fVmRdhfZc-ZUaNHWUWR15hAg4tVy0k_ke3NfNI-cuck2E4PGqRbt3iw/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+5.58.28+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
You can see a similar pattern in other large developing countries like Brazil, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Vietnam (all with rapidly growing economies and with over half a billion people between them):
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZj69fo7-jeAN4scTp4jMLtxpXsxOdKhWx0kxCYVwdfKk__FnI-UXLcAOGp6zKeD3xzicFsFbKhsiPdXooN3pEVtUX1SfG2-XaSdtWZ63inXCohKQLBF1wCRojKyQAx6z-it_1jIdw-ts/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+6.02.06+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="862" data-original-width="1600" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZj69fo7-jeAN4scTp4jMLtxpXsxOdKhWx0kxCYVwdfKk__FnI-UXLcAOGp6zKeD3xzicFsFbKhsiPdXooN3pEVtUX1SfG2-XaSdtWZ63inXCohKQLBF1wCRojKyQAx6z-it_1jIdw-ts/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+6.02.06+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgApzZRTGeenx4-5CAUxjQRNhnDW-wqI1kB0HGxJc3vXDofk2V23UUDkxeAAh4MTLoK7qQedFpIS2vNKrMLxXpAY1s4P1VfeaUoCgcBKZjGush2Ec7QIKYbujUhbK_rxmnaveczLfQa5V8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+6.03.23+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1600" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgApzZRTGeenx4-5CAUxjQRNhnDW-wqI1kB0HGxJc3vXDofk2V23UUDkxeAAh4MTLoK7qQedFpIS2vNKrMLxXpAY1s4P1VfeaUoCgcBKZjGush2Ec7QIKYbujUhbK_rxmnaveczLfQa5V8/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-02-06+at+6.03.23+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
I have probably contributed substantially to global warming with the bits consumed by all of these graphics, but the point is this: the decline in coal consumption from its "peak" was short-lived, was almost entirely driven by the decisions/economic circumstances of a few wealthy countries and one huge middle-income country (and aspiring superpower) (China.) The trend, if it can even be called that, is not nearly enduring enough, dramatic enough, or widespread enough to lead us to abandon the default assumption that more growth leads to more energy use, and more energy use, in the absence of strong collective political action, means burning more coal.
</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-43634541235902726482020-02-06T10:40:00.000-08:002020-02-06T10:52:51.579-08:00Climate Change 2020: Still on a glide-path to disaster, Part Two<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh43EzRZAp0Xc7a32AhuZh5ZEZT3yvudQPeIhnDpkBjopkM7IT80QMG0fMXzUkMUjEVrZ9rrVxd6zaIXuiBFprDj36WXJJkvrdfb6UlKBmAb48uhcKuFD2VBb4XSiXS5t32kiUOR7y8_h0/s1600/RCP8.5.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="369" data-original-width="575" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh43EzRZAp0Xc7a32AhuZh5ZEZT3yvudQPeIhnDpkBjopkM7IT80QMG0fMXzUkMUjEVrZ9rrVxd6zaIXuiBFprDj36WXJJkvrdfb6UlKBmAb48uhcKuFD2VBb4XSiXS5t32kiUOR7y8_h0/s320/RCP8.5.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y/figures/9?shared-article-renderer">Source</a></td></tr>
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In Part One I created a simple model to illustrate how easily the world could reach or exceed the emissions projected by RCP8.5: (Long-term GDP growth) x (smaller annual improvements in emissions intensity) = way too much CO2.</div>
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In Part Two, as promised, I'm going to look at some of the "ground truth" of global development that makes those rising emissions in my very simple model plausible.</div>
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First, the goal posts: RCP8.5 projects 88Gt/year of CO2 emissions in 2100. Without fussing too much about the area under the curve, if a scenario gives us >88Gt/year of CO2 emissions in 2100, we can conclude that RCP8.5 is realistic, presuming said scenario is realistic. Make sense? So our first data points:</div>
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<b>RCP8.5, Co2 emissions in 2100: 88Gt</b></div>
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<b>RCP8.5, CO2e: 120Gt</b></div>
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<b>Current CO2 emissions (2019): 37Gt </b></div>
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We're going to ignore CO2-equivalents for now, because the non-CO2 forcings are largely short-lived, more easily reversible problems, such as methane, which are less relevant on the century scale.</div>
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If I were asked to sum up in a single phrase the reason RCP8.5 cannot be ruled out, and is, in fact, highly plausible, it would be "economic growth."</div>
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Leaving aside the bright spot of the Great Depression -- sarcasm very much intended -- and the hangover from WWI and the 1918 influenza pandemic, the world has not seen less than 3% growth over any five-year period for the past hundred years.<br />
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It is hoped that population growth will continue to slow in the coming decades, but that is unlikely slow economic growth overall -- if anything, the relationship between economic growth and population growth tends to be the inverse of that.<br />
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Even 3% growth, sustained over the next 80 years, leads to a world where the average person is richer -- far richer -- than the average American is today: (<b>$170k/year at purchasing power parity</b>.)<br />
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What might such a world look like in terms of greenhouse gas emissions?<br />
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We had better hope they don't emit like Americans, because that would be the ball game:<br />
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<b>US carbon emissions per capita: 16.5 tons/year</b></div>
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<b>If the world in 2100 emits like the US: 181.5Gt/year</b></div>
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So to put the question in a deliberately stringent way, for RCP8.5 or something worse to NOT unfold over the next 80 years, either long-term GDP growth needs to fall precipitously, which would be a vast crisis of human suffering in its own right, and which virtually no one thinks is just or even sane, OR the population must fall dramatically, OR we are positing a world in which 11 billion people are 2-3 richer than present-day Americans, but produce nothing remotely resembling an American's average greenhouse gas emissions.<br />
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Note that this is just another, hopefully slightly more concrete and accessible, way of talking about carbon intensity and the "decoupling" of economic growth: finding a way for 5-10 billion people to be richer than Americans without producing anything remotely like the GHG emissions we do.<br />
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I wish "not remotely" were a rhetorical flourish, but it isn't. Doing 20%, 30%, 50% better than we do in terms of CO2 per unit of production is not enough.<br />
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Germany, for example, has invested a vast amount in renewable energy, grid improvements, and conservation. The exact figure is <a href="https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/how-much-does-germanys-energy-transition-cost">debated</a>, but the total investment to date is generally agreed to be on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars. So let's imagine a wealthy world that invests heavily in renewables and makes the progress Germany has made.<br />
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<b>German CO2 emissions: 11 tons/year per capita</b></div>
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<b>If the world in 2100 emits like Germany: 121Gt/year</b></div>
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Again, our simple thought experiment blows past the RCP8.5 scenario and into uncharted territory. The same thing happens in a world that emits like China (although with 3% growth, said world would be an order of magnitude richer than China, $170k/year per capita vs $17k):</div>
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<b>China: 8.5 tons</b></div>
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<b>If the world in 2100 emits like China today: 93.5Gt</b></div>
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Just to be clear, this thought experiment imagines a world where carbon intensity is vastly improved, producing ten times as much per unit of CO2 emitted compared to China today. It's not enough. RCP8.5 is still on the table.</div>
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These thought experiments illustrate why (Long-term GDP growth) x (smaller annual improvements in emissions intensity) is such a menacing equation. Since the advent of modern capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, two of the most predictable things about human history is that people will make more people and those people will strive to get rich. And eventually, in more or less time depending on things like the level of governmental dysfunction, frequency of wars and revolutions, and availability of capital, people do get rich (compared to where they or their parents started.)</div>
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So when assessing the likelihood of RCP8.5 or worse, we can break it down to several simple wagers:</div>
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<li>The population in 2100 will be dramatically lower than today: <b>bad bet.</b></li>
<li>Economic growth, averaged over decades, will halt or reverse itself, in contradistinction to the entirety of human history since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: <b>bad bet.</b></li>
<li>Vastly richer and more numerous human societies will, without significant exception, produce vastly more goods and services per unit of emissions: <b>Unknown (policy dependent.)</b></li>
</ul>
<b>Given one of these bets must pay off to have any hope of avoiding RCP8.5 or worse, can we really say RCP8.5 is "implausible"?</b><br />
<br />
In Part Three, I'll discuss the four main lines of reasoning offered to justify playing down or ruling out RCP8.5, and why I think these rhetorical mountains are practical molehills.<b> </b><br />
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TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-68526984983732410672020-02-05T13:46:00.000-08:002020-02-05T16:01:30.926-08:00Climate Change 2020: Still on a glide-path to disaster, Part One<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the last few years, some climate analysts have underlined the fact -- which was never in doubt, but was arguably under-emphasized -- that RCP 8.5 was designed more as a worst case than as the shortest-odds bet.<br />
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As anyone might anticipate who has spent more than five minutes interacting with climate deniers or lukewarmers/inactivists, numerous bad-faith actors took this as their cue to one the one hand exaggerate the importance of RCP 8.5 to the climate literature and on the other to claim it has been admitted to be impossible.<br />
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I only wish I were kidding. <span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Eric Roston</span>'s <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-03/green-daily-the-making-of-worst-case-climate-scenarios">screed</a> is representative:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0fEqqIhLRM8eL6iN7Vux6sAhewDJPVMroNBVGXruvp76EBevqVL1QDrK6td-Ub5cnCPgL_V5C_CbGyFXLUniDMJrpPqXLvobDiTCmwQSgXmbOKQxD2Oinnl9w4HTW8dPBYrvXN0mt_0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-05+at+11.53.30+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="826" data-original-width="1400" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0fEqqIhLRM8eL6iN7Vux6sAhewDJPVMroNBVGXruvp76EBevqVL1QDrK6td-Ub5cnCPgL_V5C_CbGyFXLUniDMJrpPqXLvobDiTCmwQSgXmbOKQxD2Oinnl9w4HTW8dPBYrvXN0mt_0/s400/Screen+Shot+2020-02-05+at+11.53.30+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
To justify relegating the "nightmare scenario" to the "dustbin," Rosten cites the following Nature <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3">editorial</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
RCP8.5 was intended to explore an unlikely high-risk future<sup><a data-action="anchor-link" data-track-category="references" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track="click" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3#ref-CR2">2</a></sup>.
But it has been widely used by some experts, policymakers and the media
as something else entirely: as a likely ‘business as usual’ outcome. A
sizeable portion of the literature on climate impacts refers to RCP8.5
as business as usual, implying that it is probable in the absence of
stringent climate mitigation. The media then often amplifies this
message, sometimes without communicating the nuances. This results in
further confusion regarding probable emissions outcomes, because many
climate researchers are not familiar with the details of these scenarios
in the energy-modelling literature.<br />
<br />
This is particularly problematic when the worst-case scenario is
contrasted with the most optimistic one, especially in high-profile
scholarly work. This includes studies by the IPCC, such as AR5 and last
year’s special report on the impact of climate change on the ocean and
cryosphere<sup><a data-action="anchor-link" data-track-category="references" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track="click" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3#ref-CR4">4</a></sup>. The focus becomes the extremes, rather than the multitude of more likely pathways in between.<br />
<br />
Happily
— and that’s a word we climatologists rarely get to use — the world
imagined in RCP8.5 is one that, in our view, becomes increasingly
implausible with every passing year<sup><a data-action="anchor-link" data-track-category="references" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track="click" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3#ref-CR5">5</a></sup>. Emission pathways to get to RCP8.5 generally require an unprecedented
fivefold increase in coal use by the end of the century, an amount
larger than some estimates of recoverable coal reserves<sup><a data-action="anchor-link" data-track-category="references" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track="click" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3#ref-CR6">6</a></sup>.
It is thought that global coal use peaked in 2013, and although
increases are still possible, many energy forecasts expect it to
flatline over the next few decades<sup><a data-action="anchor-link" data-track-category="references" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track="click" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3#ref-CR7">7</a></sup>.
Furthermore, the falling cost of clean energy sources is a trend that
is unlikely to reverse, even in the absence of new climate policies<sup><a data-action="anchor-link" data-track-category="references" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track="click" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3#ref-CR7">7</a></sup>.</blockquote>
The first problem here is that, by definition, implausible is not impossible. And when dealing with "nightmare scenarios," identifying them as implausible is far from making the case we should "say goodbye" to the possibilities.<br />
<br />
But the major problem with this thinking, in my view, is that RCP 8.5 is quite plausible, and those who say it isn't -- to say nothing of deniers screaming about "<a href="https://twitter.com/geoffsmithsmind/status/1216119195705823233">the RCP 8.5 fraud</a>" -- are overreacting to short-term trends and politicians' promises.<br />
<br />
The case against RCP8.5, in broad strokes, is this:<br />
<br />
*Coal use peaked in 2013, and is likely to continue to decline, making the expansion of coal use posited in RCP8.5 implausible.<br />
*Clean energy options (solar and wind) have dramatically fallen in price, making a return to dirter energy unlikely.<br />
*The amount of coal required to make RCP8.5 a reality may not even exist on earth -- certainly it will not be cost-effective to extract it.<br />
*The pledges by the vast majority of the world's governments in the Paris accords and elsewhere suggest a "business as usual" path far below that of RCP8.5.<br />
<br />
Before addressing these points one by one, let's construct a simple model to illustrate why RCP8.5 is still quite plausible.<br />
<br />
There are two overwhelming important long-time drivers of GHG emissions: population growth, and economic growth. Both can be captured by a single metric: total (not per capita) global GDP, sometimes called Gross World Product (GWP.)<br />
<br />
While it is possible to decouple economic production from GHG emissions, in practice this is a slow, halting, process. Since 1980, carbon intensity (emissions per unit of GDP at purchasing power parity) has fallen slowly, by less than 1.5% per annum:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht2EnbVEKLEypqw5G48nNbHOzDh4dVedlJztIUIVAegwzscMLqPvl_RM_lrfRAZeeg4HZlswrITva7574j3lTUVjTzw6ZI9E6tfwV-8olg1UhibZW0DSFR9ymTDfAz27cdmTw45JCMY-M/s1600/carbon+intensity.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1042" data-original-width="1558" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht2EnbVEKLEypqw5G48nNbHOzDh4dVedlJztIUIVAegwzscMLqPvl_RM_lrfRAZeeg4HZlswrITva7574j3lTUVjTzw6ZI9E6tfwV-8olg1UhibZW0DSFR9ymTDfAz27cdmTw45JCMY-M/s400/carbon+intensity.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Helpfully, carbon intensity worldwide fell by roughly 50% from 1970 to 2015, making calculations easy: .985 ^ 45 = .51. It's a pretty steady decline. Global GDP was $12 trillion in 1970 and $78 trillion in 2014, yielding an average annual growth rate of 4.2%.<br />
<br />
The simplest possible model would just extend these trends into the future. Each year we have 4.2% more GDP, causing 1.5% less emissions per unit. Since 4.2% is quite a bit greater than 1.5%, our uber-simple model projects emissions will continue to grow: .985 (emissions intensity) x 1.042 (GDP) = 1.2637 (CO2 emissions grow by 2.6% per year.)<br />
<br />
If you start with the current numbers, plug in the growth rate of 2.6%, and look at 2100, you don't get RCP8.5 -- you get something far, far worse. RCP8.5 projects a leveling off of emissions growth and emissions of less than 30GtC of carbon annually, compared to 10GtC today.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEt30FEOSlRzsPxVnyEE0Ex9XzjFplevsd_45skB1dFNi2PDkgD-0kk44QZ4DNaIXAW_YNqOM4XmrKLVQDn6y0Q7067131K3F7VCD0OVc5afvBweapPZiQnft04J6NfR-bY_cnya-uJ84/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-02-05+at+1.34.25+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1252" data-original-width="1560" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEt30FEOSlRzsPxVnyEE0Ex9XzjFplevsd_45skB1dFNi2PDkgD-0kk44QZ4DNaIXAW_YNqOM4XmrKLVQDn6y0Q7067131K3F7VCD0OVc5afvBweapPZiQnft04J6NfR-bY_cnya-uJ84/s400/Screen+Shot+2020-02-05+at+1.34.25+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
2.6% growth, on the other hand, would see us over 75GtC in 2100 -- more than double RCP8.5. That's without incorporating carbon-cycle feedbacks or assuming any turn for the worse in terms of climate policy. It's just a straight-up extrapolation of current trends. And while I am not a modelling expert, and extrapolating current trends is far from the only way to guess at the shape of the future (and obviously depends heavily on which trends you project forwards) nevertheless, "Things continue as they are" is always a scenario we should give serious consideration to, lest we outsmart ourselves like the political analysts who fail to seriously consider "Person leading in the polls wins" when predicting the outcome of an election.<br />
<br />
In Part Two, I'll look at the trends that make continued exponential growth in carbon emissions a frighteningly plausible prospect (Spoiler alert: it's population growth and economic growth, plus a dash of human perversity.<br />
<br />
In Part Three, I'll look at the 4 points offered as cause for optimism regarding RCP8.5, and how there's less there than meets the eye.</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-87984333601910497352019-08-15T14:21:00.000-07:002019-08-15T14:21:54.858-07:00Twitter Follies and Our Digital Dystopia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A couple of weeks ago, Twitter locked my account over this tweet:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt6Arib9_5W97Qs5Go3AGL-3P8vUqNZFwN9ILZw9YSU8Q_2euUstlzLR2j_7rbgPE4x5HQwMD_KdBLr2PMOF40SqS1-TOpJSFmCZ7qmzG6NjHQbt1wbUuKkqJ6B03PRBQ0JqJxvz12iL4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-08-15+at+1.59.32+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1102" data-original-width="1272" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt6Arib9_5W97Qs5Go3AGL-3P8vUqNZFwN9ILZw9YSU8Q_2euUstlzLR2j_7rbgPE4x5HQwMD_KdBLr2PMOF40SqS1-TOpJSFmCZ7qmzG6NjHQbt1wbUuKkqJ6B03PRBQ0JqJxvz12iL4/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-08-15+at+1.59.32+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
As far as I can tell, this tweet violated no rules, nor did the block notice tell me what rule I had violated. There was literally a blank line in the notice where the violation was supposed to be.<br />
<br />
After waiting two weeks with no action on an appeal, I deleted the tweet (it can live on here for all time, or until the people running Blogger have a similar attack of whimsy.) This is a minor irritation, but it does focus one's mind on the fact that large areas of the public commons -- places where art, politics, propaganda and rebellion happen -- are in the hands of a tiny number of technology companies.<br />
<br />
These companies' very size pushes them towards a conservative (small "c") orientation because, like network television of old, they are free services offered to a mass audience. Services like that tend to succeed by being liked by many people and hated by no one -- which is, in the long run, a surefire recipe for mediocrity.<br />
<br />
Television stopped sucking when operators like HBO and Netflix created a competing model in which, due to the dynamics of subscription services, lots of people could hate a thing, but if a reasonable number of people loved it enough to keep sending their subscription fee, you could offend, bore, or outrage a bunch of people on the margins. And that is why <i>Three's Company</i> and <i>The Wire</i> are very different kinds of art.<br />
<br />
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and their rivals are free, mass-market services -- more <i>Friends</i> than <i>BoJack Horseman</i>. And if we're going to continue to organize, advertize, and solipsize online -- and what is the alternative? -- that is going to be a problem.</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-7091680762551854142019-04-12T17:17:00.001-07:002019-04-12T17:17:21.077-07:00Fearmongering at the border<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
David Brooks, attempting to mimic the human emotion of "compassion," <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/opinion/border-crisis-immigration.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage">in his column today</a> offers the following analogy:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Suppose one night there is a knock on your door. You open it to find 100
bedraggled families shivering in your yard — exhausted, filthy,
terrified. The first cry of your heart would be to take them in, but
you’d know there were too many.</blockquote>
If there were any confusion, the "100
bedraggled families" are the "hundreds of thousands of people <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/05/opinion/honduras-women-murders.html?module=inline" title="">fleeing violence in Central America</a> or seeking economic opportunity"[1].<br />
<br />
But the math here does not remotely add up. Let's say there are "hundreds of thousands" of refugees at the southern border (the "yard.") There are 329 million Americans in our "household." A half a million refugees is not "100
bedraggled families" -- which would equate to 33 billion(!) refugees. It's 0.15% of the US population -- which is the equivalent of a family of four letting one person sleep on their couch for one weekend out of the year.<br />
<br />
We are not one family facing a hundred impoverished families. We are the richest, most powerful nation in the history of human civilization, occupying the third largest territory (bigger than India! Bigger than China!), overwhelming populated by immigrants and their near descendants.<br />
<br />
That so many conservatives are ready to exploit a humanitarian crisis of their own making to argue that the US is just helpless before the brown horde of the 0.15% percent is frankly pathetic at best, racist and deliberately disingenuous at worst.<br />
<br />
______________________________________________________________ <br />
<br />
1. Aficionados of Zionist histories will recognize the strategic ambiguity of "fleeing violence…or seeking economic opportunity" as a near relative of the popular "fled or were expelled" to characterize ethnically cleansed Palestinians. "Centrists" love this phraseology because they can admit the awkward facts whilst giving their more bigoted readers an "out," eg "fled," "economic opportunity."</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-4262041879580960712019-02-23T10:14:00.000-08:002019-02-28T17:40:47.013-08:00The loss of Diablo Canyon and the fallacy of "100% renewable replacement": Part Two: No subsitutions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtVXpiPiicY6RZKAg4MJEZKklUX-MMPAtAgd7ZBs9q6hQbKy_U0eIpvfWpM8ROvkSXMjKXzx-5wtqrEMn0V7elMLID9A7FHIJ1itjJcXrvJ3zZB8LJtZDzLrEjCLjNstx1IQ9mSffYHtg/s1600/553270228.jpg.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="518" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtVXpiPiicY6RZKAg4MJEZKklUX-MMPAtAgd7ZBs9q6hQbKy_U0eIpvfWpM8ROvkSXMjKXzx-5wtqrEMn0V7elMLID9A7FHIJ1itjJcXrvJ3zZB8LJtZDzLrEjCLjNstx1IQ9mSffYHtg/s400/553270228.jpg.webp" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In part one, I discussed the imminent shutdown of Diablo
Canyon, a nuclear plant supplying 18,000 GWh of carbon-free electricity per
year. Antinuclear activists rationalize this move with a simple argument -- all
of Diablo Canyon's output will be replaced by renewable energy. No harm, no
foul. This is nonsense.<br />
<br />
After the loss of the San Onofre nuclear plant in 2013, California's fossil fuel emissions increased by 35%. To reassure climate hawks that this will not happen again, the legislature passed SB 1090, which proclaims "The commission shall ensure that integrated resource plans are designed
to<b> avoid any increase in emissions of greenhouse gases</b> as a result of
the retirement of the Diablo Canyon Units 1 and 2 powerplant."<br />
<br />
Both the general logic that treats this kind of supposed substitution as a win, and the specific case of applying this logic to the California of 2019, fall apart under scrutiny.<br />
<br />
As to the logic of substitution: put simply, climate change is an emergency: this is no time for lateral moves. The objective is to reduce, then eliminate, greenhouse gas emissions. In the electricity sector, that means eliminating fossil-fuel-burning plants. And California still has (and buys energy from) a lot of those.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHbKJbhpvJm8XeM1Fnj50lLmKDbYItwscaAzHz58Hg2cFfQvVCmCv7H20TH9eVPwNMZaHHGDBOdR4udSliVgZFzWuBhZoIuFOtvvHcRg6d5c7vjy8SIcpp4zq72s043PsUhH7WXOr46EA/s1600/california-electricity.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="336" data-original-width="574" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHbKJbhpvJm8XeM1Fnj50lLmKDbYItwscaAzHz58Hg2cFfQvVCmCv7H20TH9eVPwNMZaHHGDBOdR4udSliVgZFzWuBhZoIuFOtvvHcRg6d5c7vjy8SIcpp4zq72s043PsUhH7WXOr46EA/s320/california-electricity.png" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It must be said again: swapping out one low carbon source for another is like being caught cheating on your spouse and making amends by promising to give up dairy. It's like responding to flunking out of college by substituting boxers for briefs. It's like being told your child has bacterial meningitis, and going out and buying a Prius. <b>In other words, it's an expensive, time-consuming switch that's completely irrelevant to the problem we are facing.</b><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Antinuclear activists promise that there are 18,000 GWh of wave, wind, and solar, plus efficiency, available at a reasonable cost, cheaper than Diablo Canyon. Great! We will have that, please, <i>and </i>Diablo Canyon -- and cut out a big chunk of the natural gas and coal (still!) that are today part of California's energy mix.<br />
<br />
Activists argue we cannot afford new renewable generation unless we redirect the money that would be used to re-license and operate Diablo Canyon. That argument, stated in general form, goes as follows: there is only so much money to fight climate change, and we cannot increase it, so new green energy must cannibalize other green energy for funding.<br />
<br />
I doubt very much anti-nuclear environmentalists would accept this line of reasoning outside the context of nuclear energy. As we contemplate a Green New Deal that would cost trillions of dollars to implement (which does not mean it's a bad idea!) the idea that you can only fund one clean source by cannibalizing another is an absurd rationalization of a predetermined anti-nuclear conclusion.<br />
<br />
So much for the abstract logic of "substitution." What about California's specific case? What will happen when Diablo Canyon's two reactors shut down (in 2024 and 2025, respectively)? <br />
<br />
California is in the midst of a fantastic boom in
renewables, during which the California legislature has set ambitious targets
for energy from renewable sources, only for California's utilities to surpass
those targets again and again. (This in turn has prompted the state to
repeatedly raise the bar, increasing the targeted percentage of renewables and
shortening the time horizon.) The current standard looks like this:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM82hbX-06QP1J4M8y1QO9H3Sk2Ld3VbCqj1trAt7cBXmKjZ1d5atyU1xz5T3fXBY_Y-P4XYKe4jHUglwGVyri9ET90oQIzKiiVbU8BGvZG-NTqg-4rou9X46HB1NxqdXb7MmKhMI2TKk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-02-23+at+8.29.21+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="805" data-original-width="1600" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM82hbX-06QP1J4M8y1QO9H3Sk2Ld3VbCqj1trAt7cBXmKjZ1d5atyU1xz5T3fXBY_Y-P4XYKe4jHUglwGVyri9ET90oQIzKiiVbU8BGvZG-NTqg-4rou9X46HB1NxqdXb7MmKhMI2TKk/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-02-23+at+8.29.21+AM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/renewable-portfolio-standards.aspx#ca">Source</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
California's renewable energy sector has been rapidly expending since 2002 and will continue to rapidly expand regardless of whether Diablo Canyon closes in 2025 or 2045 -- that is mandated by law. As of November 2018 an estimated 34% of California's electricity comes from renewable sources:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZRjSq_AH4LYHJMwPKyQAslyLmRLE-Wuxx0kHUCnlXdwoe_GmIPlDbnOb3LycSIEOrdv6q4xK5pKHlxgfeSO0B9W7s5AFqVEfjZIKrzZtOhRBrIKKp3Fh-l6dltSCUNiavM5-hV0YcZsc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-02-23+at+9.39.52+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="1600" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZRjSq_AH4LYHJMwPKyQAslyLmRLE-Wuxx0kHUCnlXdwoe_GmIPlDbnOb3LycSIEOrdv6q4xK5pKHlxgfeSO0B9W7s5AFqVEfjZIKrzZtOhRBrIKKp3Fh-l6dltSCUNiavM5-hV0YcZsc/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-02-23+at+9.39.52+AM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjVu-LQutLgAhVI4VQKHYhbAAcQFjAAegQICBAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.energy.ca.gov%2Frenewables%2Ftracking_progress%2Fdocuments%2Frenewable.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0v2sZsvK5Vh4PhcbOxKwN5">Source</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Over the course of the next 11 years -- again, entirely independent of what happens with Diablo Canyon and its very low carbon (but not "renewable") electricity, California's electricity from renewables has to increase from 34% to 60% of the total (assuming the targets are not revised upwards, as they have been several times already.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So what will happen when Diablo Canyon goes offline is very predictable. The utility will point to some of the renewable projects that have come on line in the prior few years, and to those coming on line in the following few years, and will designate them as "replacing" the output of Diablo Canyon. Maybe, if they really want to impress, they will temporarily import some renewable energy from other states until their homegrown renewable generation catches up. But presuming they will continue to make smooth progress towards the 2030 goal of 60% renewables, that should take, at most, 2-3 years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And all of that renewable electricity generation was going to happen anyway. None of it is/will be new or unexpected. Rain or shine, the law says California utilities have to grow the share of renewables by 2-3% of total generation per annum to hit the legislature's targets. With the shuttering of Diablo Canyon, several years of that progress will be designating as "replacement" for those lost ergs. That's bookkeeping. Fossil fuel burning, instead of declining, will (best case) stay at current levels ("avoid any increase.") Exactly as common sense would suggest, eliminating a large amount of non-fossil-fuel electricity generation will result in more fossil fuel burning, with the (state-mandated, pre-existing) increase in renewables being used as a fig leaf. But the climate doesn't care -- more CO2 is more CO2, whether it is from an absolute increase in emissions or from sabotaging a decline in emissions already in progress. Worse is worse.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
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Coming soon: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Part Three: Bad excuses<br />
<br /></div>
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TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-59548886859169032772019-02-18T16:19:00.000-08:002019-02-28T17:42:12.698-08:00The loss of Diablo Canyon and the fallacy of "100% renewable replacement": Part One: The Stakes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYVo0AFRb9hEcExaG3McASQf6-MT4qVRhJsHZhb-65KoL0tWI8ACfC1Qry3XZJZQASEeUgPwxf-JeT3OcAqwdKf5NKAcrrGngBbDz0sI9rx9QMNtovV37zZkAgDDCmP5Z4rWcHcltWozA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-02-18+at+4.00.18+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1158" data-original-width="1232" height="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYVo0AFRb9hEcExaG3McASQf6-MT4qVRhJsHZhb-65KoL0tWI8ACfC1Qry3XZJZQASEeUgPwxf-JeT3OcAqwdKf5NKAcrrGngBbDz0sI9rx9QMNtovV37zZkAgDDCmP5Z4rWcHcltWozA/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-02-18+at+4.00.18+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html">Source</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
California's last nuclear power plant, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant">Diablo Canyon</a>, is to be decommissioned in 2024 and 2025. This will, at a stroke, eliminate a fifth of California's carbon-free electricity.<br />
<br />
Diablo's two reactors, which generate 18,000GWh of carbon-free electricity per year, could be licensed for another 20 years of operation, but the utility, PG&E, has decided not to pursue the renewal. California's anti-nuclear activists, naturally, are celebrating the impending shutdown of the last nuclear plant in the state, but have been less than honest in confronting the fact that from the perspective of preventing CO2 emissions, the premature loss of Diablo Canyon is tragedy, not a victory.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaRetnuqy-bG7EA2SzFFQ6Ieg_qYLxuQqaigjmgD2z0iIKhneUFI1rO4_MaXkHGjpqs_Br0V0p5rgDTdFTekdqtjIepGK-jyus0Pw41yMO4vcclaUR3zIBPUaeOc1h4WnvasJjIKCEtXg/s1600/Greenhouse_emissions_by_electricity_source.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="537" data-original-width="944" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaRetnuqy-bG7EA2SzFFQ6Ieg_qYLxuQqaigjmgD2z0iIKhneUFI1rO4_MaXkHGjpqs_Br0V0p5rgDTdFTekdqtjIepGK-jyus0Pw41yMO4vcclaUR3zIBPUaeOc1h4WnvasJjIKCEtXg/s320/Greenhouse_emissions_by_electricity_source.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I should say at the outset that I am not one of the partisans of nuclear energy that dismisses renewable energy as impractical and rationalizes the challenges of the nuclear sector. Nuclear energy can be costly, controversial, and very, very slow, <a href="http://theidiottracker.blogspot.com/2014/06/new-indian-nuclear-plant-illustrates.html">as I've written before</a>. It's important, though, to separate the issues of manufacturing new nuclear power plants on the one hand versus maintaining existing nuclear power plants to the end of their safe operating life.<br />
<br />
These are the major drawbacks/potential concerns with Nuclear Power, writ large:<br />
<br />
1. Construction of the physical plant is expensive, sometimes very expensive. The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, a 3.2 GW project, is currently projected to cost approximately $25 billion to construct.<br />
<br />
2. Construction of the physical plants is energy- and resource-intensive, and is responsible for the vast majority of life-cycle greenhouse emissions (which are small and comparable to those of wind energy, and somewhat better than solar energy.)<br />
<br />
3. Construction of the physical plant takes years -- if it becomes embroiled in legal challenges and a target of activists, as is often the case, it's not unusual for it to take decades.<br />
<br />
4. Current designs produce long-lived toxic waste, which can be stored indefinitely on site, but remains toxic for a long time.<br />
<br />
(Accidents are not listed because while they are feared by the public they are incredibly rare and in terms of human health, not incredibly or even very dangerous. Nuclear energy is an extremely safe power source, and nuclear accidents are the shark attacks of environmental problems -- feared far out of proportion to the danger.)<br />
<br />
What all of those drawbacks/concerns have in common is that <b>they are over and done with on the day a nuclear plant enters service. They do not pertain to the question of <i>keeping</i> it in service at all.</b><br />
<br />
Diablo Canyon is a finished product. It's greenhouse emissions going forward are negligible (tiny amounts related to the mining of uranium.) The costs of construction have already been paid. The waste will be stored on the site -- and must be kept safe for centuries -- and this will be true regardless of whether the plant shuts down tomorrow or runs for another 20 years.<br />
<b> </b><br />
Subtract those things and what we are left with is 18,000 GWh of clean electricity every year for the next 20 years. Over 20 years, 360,000 GWh, or 360 TWh.<br />
<br />
That is a stunning amount of clean energy to leave on the table. Generating it with natural gas -- currently 40% of California's electrical mix (see above) -- would generate CO2 equivalent emissions of 1.8 billion tons. Using a (very conservative, IMO) social cost of carbon of $40/ton, the damage of those emissions is $7.2 billion.<br />
<br />
Continuing to operate the existing nuclear station to the end of its operational life alongside rapidly growing wind and solar energy would speed the elimination of coal and gas from the energy mix and advert those emissions. Who, among those who care about the climate, would say no to that? Only
people who hate and fear nuclear power, which as it turns out is a lot
of people.<br />
<br />
So how do people who purport to be serious about fighting global warming -- people who cheer when AOC <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109/text">proposes we get to net zero emissions in ten years</a> -- rationalize this huge stride in the wrong direction? More to come…<br />
<br />
Coming soon: Part Two, the fallacy of "100% renewable replacement"</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-37061609765748639382018-12-13T11:42:00.004-08:002018-12-13T11:43:01.012-08:00What a "Green New Deal" Should Include -- But Probably Wouldn't<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez" title="">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a>'s revival of the idea of a "Green New Deal" in recent weeks seems to be getting a little traction, at least among the Washington press corp. It's difficult to say whether it is a good or a bad idea because, like the Paris Accords, it is big on atmosphere and light on specifics.<br />
<br />
In general, the idea of a Green New Deal is for an economic stimulus package that accelerates our transition to a more ecologically sustainable society. One might build solar panels and windmills, aggressively retrofit current buildings for greater energy efficiency, or build a network of public charging stations for electric vehicles.<br />
<br />
In general, anything that spends money (excuse me "creates jobs") and is environmentally friendly could be considered a potential candidate for inclusion in a "Green New Deal." I am quite skeptical that any such plan, even if it could be articulated and passed into law, would contain the elements that could make a real dent in anthropogenic global warming, water scarcity, habitat loss, or any of our other serious environmental problems.<br />
<br />
Most obviously, in the midst of a record-breaking period of economic expansion, with unemployment under 4%, a financial stimulus is hardly what we need at the moment. Rather, this would be an excellent time to make some of the difficult structural changes -- such as a carbon tax, banning the burning of coal, sunsetting federal flood insurance -- that might be impossible politically to undertake during an economic downturn.<br />
<br />
But staying with the premise -- spending, not taxing, new programs, not legal or regulatory changes -- there are still many good investments we could make. <br />
<br />
Here are ten things that should, but most likely will not, be included in any serious "Green New Deal":<br />
<br />
<b>1. A nuclear build-out on federal lands.</b><br />
<br />
A single nuclear complex can incorporate as many as eight reactors, while modern reactor designs generate over a gigawatt of electricity (1.1GW, in the case of the AP1000.)<br />
<br />
Twenty such complexes, build on federal lands to minimize commercial and regulatory hurdles, would generate enough electricity to replace every coal-fired plant in the United States, with all the oil, wood, and biomass thrown in. TWENTY. With the waste able to be stored indefinitely at the site itself. Forty could replace every fossil fuel plant in America.<br />
<br />
The major obstacles to a nuclear build-out -- something we critically need if we are to have our emissions peak any time in the next few decades -- are NIMBYism and the business case. The federal government building on federal land would be in a better position than a local utility to resist NIMBYism. With the benefit of #4 (see below) the plants need not be located anywhere near where the electricity is being consumed.<br />
<br />
And while nuclear can get rather expensive (although dirt cheap in comparison with the ultimate cost of burning fossil fuels) an order for 160-320 identical Westinghouse AP1000s should allow for some economics of scale -- a "mass produced" unit in contradistinction to today's "artisanal" nuclear power designs.<br />
<br />
<b>2. Build desalinization plants.</b><br />
<br />
The optimal method of freeing up water resources would be leaning on farmers -- who use 80% of the water -- to adopt more water-efficient methods. But that has proven politically difficult and, for the purposes of this exercise, we aren't regulating. The brute-force solution to water scarcity is to simply make more of the stuff.<br />
<br />
Desalinization costs less than half a penny per gallon and we could eliminate our entire consumption of "wild" freshwater (see also #9, below) -- giving our aquifers a much-needed opportunity to recharge -- for less than a billion dollars per year.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>3. Electrification of the national rail network.</b><br />
<br />
Currently diesel railroad engines emit between 30-40 million tons of CO2 per year. That can be eliminated via electrified rail, a hundred-year-old technology already <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_system">well-established all over the world. </a><br />
<br />
<b>4. A high voltage direct current electrical network.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Current AC lines lose current rapidly, resulting in heavy losses over distances over a few hundred miles. A <a href="http://theidiottracker.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-to-get-serious-about-green-jobs-4.html">backbone of HVDC</a> lines would make a real national power market possible with the ability to send electricity from any source, to any consumer, coast to coast. <b><br /></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>5. Rail-based mass transit in America's 100 largest cities.</b><br />
<br />
While electric cars are making inroads, they are still vastly inferior to mass transit in terms of CO2 emissions. Even when charged from a clean grid, the production of battery-powered vehicles makes their life-cycle emissions -- while far better than a fossil-fuel-burning vehicle -- far from insignificant.<br />
<br />
What the cities which get a significant percentage of their people out of cars and into mass transit all share is some sort of fixed-track infrastructure -- a subway, an elevated rail, a light rail system. Each of the top five performers (see graphic) have such a system, while most of the low performers do not.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyjGLqteg4qtE6Rr969c841P2muFPpMJlUeye3bE_D6-uu_F53bVqhs_htVU2KzkIRi-jigDLwH9iffnSANrkeZoA9PwJMml7p3K1zaVl2ClL0rFSjNumwFkmZ_I-SHE6GzPtAcBUGIBw/s1600/800px-USCommutePatterns2006%25282%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="547" data-original-width="800" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyjGLqteg4qtE6Rr969c841P2muFPpMJlUeye3bE_D6-uu_F53bVqhs_htVU2KzkIRi-jigDLwH9iffnSANrkeZoA9PwJMml7p3K1zaVl2ClL0rFSjNumwFkmZ_I-SHE6GzPtAcBUGIBw/s320/800px-USCommutePatterns2006%25282%2529.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>6. Coastal adaptation (hardening vs planned retreat) for the first 5m of sea level rise.</b><br />
<br />
Does anyone remember when Hurricane Sandy hit New York, and during the approximately five minutes after in which we had a national conversation about the risks of climate change, and Lomborg came out and claimed hardening the coast would be much much cheaper than cutting emissions?<br />
<br />
The numbers were wrong, the argument was a disgraceful mess, and to no one's surprise, once the heat died down deniers interest in actual, non-hypothetical adaptation vanished without a trace.<br />
<br />
But the need is still there. The oceans are going to continue rising for centuries; that is about as close to an established fact as anything we can say about the future. And on past trends, we aren't going to abandon our economically and culturally central coastal cities. There's no time like the present to get in a Netherlands frame of mind.<br />
<br />
<b>7. Evacuated-air trains for long-distance travel.</b><br />
<br />
American air travel is responsible for about 3% of our emissions -- a figure expected to double over the next 30 years. Americans drive 3.22 trillion miles per year, contributing to emissions from cars and trucks ten times those from aircraft.<br />
<br />
One approach to this is fixing carbon from the atmosphere and using it to manufacture synthetic fossil fuels, including jet fuel. This is likely the best solution for international air travel. But domestically, a more ambitious solution would be high-speed ground transportation, using technologies with the potential to travel faster than airplanes without the cumbersome infrastructure of airports.<br />
<br />
No one knows exactly what a system like that would cost, but at the price quoted for a proposed 560km hyperloop system ($7.5 billion) a nationwide system of 50,000km would cost around $700 billion. That's a lot of money (3.5% of the GDP) -- about what we spend annually on the military. <br />
<br />
<b>8. Retrofitting CCS on all remaining fossil fuel electricity generation.</b><br />
<br />
We should not be burning fossil fuels to generate electricity at all, but the rules of this exercise forbid proposing regulations or Pigovian taxes. If, therefore, we must assume coal and gas plants will continue to exists, they must at a minimum capture their CO2 emissions and store them in a stable form. <br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>9. Nationwide water network.</b><br />
<br />
Once we have abundant fresh water thanks to #1, we need a system to supply it to regions far from desalinization plants, via a system of pipelines.<br />
<br />
Evacuated-air trains, a water network, a system of HVDC electric lines -- all of these require the same basic infrastructure layout: track/pipe/lines connecting our major cities (throw in an upgrade of our fiberoptic trunk lines, as well.)<br />
<br />
This would require not only large amounts of money but also eminent domain along the course of the "pipes." It could be the Interstate Highway system of the 21st century.<br />
<br />
<b>10. Replacement of government-owned internal combustion engines (ICEs) with electric vehicles. </b><br />
<br />
The United States Post Office <a href="https://about.usps.com/strategic-planning/cs09/CSPO_09_036.htm">owns over 200,000 vehicles</a>. The Border Patrol operates "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol#Capabilities">over 10,000 SUVs and pick-up trucks</a>." In total, the US government, excluding the military, <a href="http://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/federal-fleet-driving-deficit/">owns or leases about a half a million fuel-burning vehicles</a>. Virtually all of them could be replaced with electric vehicles. This wouldn't be cheap -- assigning a back-of-the-envelope cost of $100,000 per vehicle (an estimate that takes into account that in addition to cars the government owns many pickup trucks, semis, fire engines, and other potentially expensive vehicles) this might cost $50 billion. But it would powerfully demonstrate that the future is not in ICEs and would create the conditions not only for mass production of electric vehicles but for a massive expansion of fast-charging stations -- and a government purchasing such a fleet could chose the charging standard that would become the default.<br />
<br />
<br />
None of these things are likely to happen any time soon, not simply because of the mismatch between what feels "green" to most people (solar panels, wind turbines, etc.) and things which, although they have great potential to protect the environment, do not (nuclear power, desalinization, an upgraded electrical grid.<br />
<br />
There is also a related problem which extends beyond environmental issues -- thinking too small. Private enterprise can be a powerful force for good in human affairs, and efforts to replace it with tight government central planning have been disappointing. But where the government can add value is projects which are too big for any private actor to undertake. The interstate highway system, rural electrification, the postal service, K-12 public education -- these are success stories, both in the sense of generating wealth and in expanding opportunities. But by definition, that sort of thing isn't cheap.<br />
<br />
But in recent decades, the right's crusade against "big government" has taken its toll, such that even on the left, small targeted anti-poverty, environmental, infrastructure programs are the rule, and large nation-shaping public investments are the exception.<br />
<br />
There are many benefits to thinking small, but there are also things you will never accomplish with a $5 million grant for a needle exchange in LA or $10 million dollars for redevelopment grants in Minot, ND. The above proposals would cost trillions of dollars. But climate change is doing to cost us trillions and trillions of dollars one way or the other, whether we mitigate it or adaptive preemptively or just wait for the hammer-blows of crisis to fall.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-82888414527455173462017-11-15T17:37:00.001-08:002017-11-15T17:37:05.687-08:00By 28pt margin, a record number of Americans acknowledge man-made global warming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ3WKlOjtEomKXcYyjLLNBaNDVaYQVBXtX461Bx5N0y35VvtKY1wTqdWw1uqncYF3bljJXgCPrX98XljnPqKsUfvF4ZbxSLLpfScKtVMCnRtOuilswEwdVpatQ29jAIK1zCUn7lht-fpM/s1600/Climate_Change_American_Mind_May_2017-1.3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="720" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ3WKlOjtEomKXcYyjLLNBaNDVaYQVBXtX461Bx5N0y35VvtKY1wTqdWw1uqncYF3bljJXgCPrX98XljnPqKsUfvF4ZbxSLLpfScKtVMCnRtOuilswEwdVpatQ29jAIK1zCUn7lht-fpM/s400/Climate_Change_American_Mind_May_2017-1.3.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Even as the Trump administration reverses what were modest (and frankly inadequate) efforts by the Obama administration to reduce GHG emissions, Americans by almost 2-to-1 are acknowledging climate change is real.<br />
<br />
One wonders if perhaps the denialists' friend in the White House, rather than strengthening their movement, has undermined it by overusing and thus overexposing the techniques of climate deniers: politicization of basic facts, smearing journalists, trolling, whataboutism -- to a point at which the center is beginning to develop an immunity to these appeals.<br />
<br />
It may be that the liars that hawk climate denial may come to rue the day they helped install in the White House's bully pulpit a denier so vain, petty, and self-obsessed he wastes his anti-reality spin cycles on lies as trivial as the size of his inauguration crowds.</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-6419704190735012862017-01-23T11:41:00.000-08:002017-01-23T11:41:29.828-08:00Willis is about as wrong as usual<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Willis wants us to know that carbon taxes, being regressive, are "<a href="https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/21/the-cruelest-tax-of-all/">cruel</a>." So very, very cruel. This he will prove with data, because he is a Serious Person and not at all a shambolic dishonest embarrassment to the human species.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyOHztqyQjLVmhGJmMxfYKW0OM9HCoY9gv07K3rV0GT9RjoV4UtmUC7gnI8P1qCqvz162be6gdtYcz_rkxOGEv0gcOBO21LNmNDSrXlouxHeYYnfFWZfPNtNvGzMiJBHkyToV26n-5pxM/s1600/percentage-income-spent-on-energy.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyOHztqyQjLVmhGJmMxfYKW0OM9HCoY9gv07K3rV0GT9RjoV4UtmUC7gnI8P1qCqvz162be6gdtYcz_rkxOGEv0gcOBO21LNmNDSrXlouxHeYYnfFWZfPNtNvGzMiJBHkyToV26n-5pxM/s400/percentage-income-spent-on-energy.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
Immediately, however, we run into the problem that the numbers provided are not remotely plausible. All the numbers look far too high, but the figure on the bottom for thos making less than $20,000 a year is the standout. While poor Americans often spend more of their incomes on basic necessities like energy, the idea that they spend 40% of their income on energy is, frankly, utterly ludicrous.<br />
<br />
To get here he cites a number of sources, fucking up in unknown ways to get answers that are wildly wrong:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Someone challenged me on this claim about energy taxes the other day,
and I realized I believed it without ever checking it … bad Willis, no
cookies. So of course, having had that thought I had to take a look.<br />
The Energy Information Agency (EIA) collects <a href="https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2009/index.php?view=consumption#end-use-by-fuel" target="_blank">data</a> on this, with the exception of gasoline usage. I got the <a href="https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2009/c&e/ce4.16.xlsx" target="_blank">most recent data</a>, for 2009. (Excel workbook). Gasoline usage figures are <a href="https://www.bls.gov/cex/csxann09.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Finally, income averages by tiers are available <a href="http://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/cps-hinc/hinc-06.2009.html" target="_blank">here</a> from the Census Bureau. </blockquote>
While he laments the loss of his cookie, I would actually offer him two small cookies here. One, he is making an effort to check his intuitions against data. Two, the places he is going for data contain good reliable information: the EIA, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau.<br />
<br />
At that point Willis' cookie supply dries up, because he has mangled the data to get a grossly wrong answer. People who make less than $20,000 per year spend an average of $1,571 dollars a year on energy (slight more if you include gas). So Willis is asking us to accept that the average income of this group is $<span class="cwcot" id="cwos">3,900 a year, and after spend almost half that on energy they are paying for housing, food, and clothes with $200 a month.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="cwcot" id="cwos">The sources Willis cites do not provide numbers for the average income of a household in a given income bracket. Possibly he was using the means as averages, although that would not explain his numbers by itself. The Social Security administration <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2009">does</a> provide averages, fortunately:</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXomXQPQF4rPNNicDamUyuWuZm5DiZ38JE2ZzNMKYmORf_aP-j_XRVNR-P-pFVf3vqz5sVI3oCBfVbT_71tD93kkZVxNqZQL-PDea1bh0Eh75U0hUIQPdAsfk9N5UrIB4hiw0QTaVtHO4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-23+at+11.02.27+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="75" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXomXQPQF4rPNNicDamUyuWuZm5DiZ38JE2ZzNMKYmORf_aP-j_XRVNR-P-pFVf3vqz5sVI3oCBfVbT_71tD93kkZVxNqZQL-PDea1bh0Eh75U0hUIQPdAsfk9N5UrIB4hiw0QTaVtHO4/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-23+at+11.02.27+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<span class="cwcot" id="cwos"> If you plug those numbers in you get an average income, for those making less than $20,000 per year, of $8,124. That would make the energy costs in this bracket 19% (plus a couple percent for gas), which is quite high compared to <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/energy-poverty-low-income-households/486197/">expert estimates</a> the very poor spend about 10% of their incomes on energy, but which is less than half the number Willis somehow obtained.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="cwcot" id="cwos">I don't spend as much time chasing the nonsense on WUWT as I used to, because so much of it is repetitive and deadly boring. It's also because those that want to be informed have a much clearer understanding of the workings of ideological alternative realities than was the case when I started this blog in 2010. For reasons I would never chose, the country and the world are much more familiar with the working of denialism than they were then.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="cwcot" id="cwos">This one caught my eye because Willis is trying to be good. He's looking up good sources. He's trying to test his intuitions against the facts.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="cwcot" id="cwos">He fails because he is still operating out of a denier mindset in which he expects to find something all the experts have missed. A simple google search should have altered him that the people who study energy poverty professionally put the cost of energy in the US to the poor at, at worst, 10-20%. He should then have tried hard to figure out where his calculations went wrong.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="cwcot" id="cwos">Willis has never learned how to manage a data set, which is to say, he's never learned the art of doing a little math as you go, checking the numbers against common sense, and circling back to recheck when the answers starting coming out weird. This is basic, habitual skepticism, and the scientists I know do it so adroitly it becomes invisible and almost unconscious, a reflex. Willis clearly doesn't know that he doesn't know how to do this. Despite gestures at an appropriate method of inquiry, the cruel cold talons of Dunning-Kruger still hold him firmly in its grasp.</span> </div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-51310056536779297882017-01-20T10:27:00.000-08:002017-01-20T10:27:02.311-08:00The last day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
January 20th, 2017, marks the last day we will see for a long time -- perhaps ever -- when our nation was worthy of respect. In the coming years our leadership in the world, our moral authority, our economic and military power will all decline under this corrupt, incompetent regime.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, I do not despair. We will have new elections in less than 2 years, another presidential election in four. It may be that the collection of pus known as the Republican party is coming to a head so that it can finally be incised and drained.<br />
<br />
We live in a system designed to a great extent with corrupt and incompetent leaders and stupid voters in mind. The coming years will be a race between the implosion of the GOP and its efforts to undermine democracy and free elections to the point that that implosion does not matter. If honest people step to the fight and refuse to cower in fear, I think we are likely to win this race.<br />
<br />
The prize, I hope, will not merely be the saving of our democracy but the disgrace and dissolution of what is laughably called the conservative movement in this country, which could bring with it the potential for real substantial policy on climate among other things.<br />
<br />
The key principle is resistance. Tyrants dissolve democracies not due their minority of passionate supporters, but due to majorities which are frightened into silence and denied the knowledge of their own strength. Do not be silenced. Do not be afraid. It's time for them to be afraid. They've grabbed a job they can't do by making promises they can't keep and the bills will rapidly come due. Then the people are coming for them. <br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="detail-hd">
<b><u>
<span class="hdg hdg_1">Say not the Struggle nought Availeth</span></u></b>
</div>
<div class="detail-byline">
<span class="hdg hdg_utility">
By
<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/arthur-hugh-clough">Arthur Hugh Clough</a>
</span>
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Say not the struggle nought availeth, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The labour and the wounds are vain, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The enemy faints not, nor faileth, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And as things have been they remain. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
It may be, in yon smoke concealed, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And, but for you, possess the field. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Seem here no painful inch to gain, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Far back through creeks and inlets making, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Comes silent, flooding in, the main. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And not by eastern windows only, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
When daylight comes, comes in the light, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, </div>
But westward, look, the land is bright.</blockquote>
</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-70130202087876751472017-01-17T11:32:00.001-08:002017-01-17T11:32:55.439-08:00Mysteries<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJN5kbXixu_F3QEuSbIYksWut-swWmYLuDeWFEUTQt_4YlyBGHbXv5wOzMpszYQfriCJwD8nxiznB1_pNKqcgVPzixRNQJmAqtwZYIPEMeMHUKlAoDIDL9kdrQ6Jek1PqwydFE3vD0DYo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-17+at+11.31.20+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJN5kbXixu_F3QEuSbIYksWut-swWmYLuDeWFEUTQt_4YlyBGHbXv5wOzMpszYQfriCJwD8nxiznB1_pNKqcgVPzixRNQJmAqtwZYIPEMeMHUKlAoDIDL9kdrQ6Jek1PqwydFE3vD0DYo/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-17+at+11.31.20+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-87318793894114001562016-12-22T10:04:00.001-08:002016-12-22T10:04:03.880-08:00EnviroNews's Nuclear Nonsense<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
India has embarked on the construction of a mammoth 9.9GW nuclear complex, but not everyone is happy. Opining that "<a href="http://www.environews.tv/120716-editorial-construction-dangerous-coastal-jaitapur-nuclear-power-mega-plant-stopped/">Dangerous Coastal Jaitapur Nuclear Power Mega-Plant Should Be Stopped,</a>" EnviroNews gifts us with this gem of misinformation:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgf6XldNW0oBeDEqAGuPCJNPgbw_eieOiHs005Ir5Ta21YsdQPZ6EX208snyQwQb-YJn81vMXnG5EYaWsBKqDg6CeX_I2q3QBdvBAD5WrAv-ZE6O8d_vhMoCjqwcVBVj-dtTHAnkHQyM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-12-22+at+9.05.37+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="82" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgf6XldNW0oBeDEqAGuPCJNPgbw_eieOiHs005Ir5Ta21YsdQPZ6EX208snyQwQb-YJn81vMXnG5EYaWsBKqDg6CeX_I2q3QBdvBAD5WrAv-ZE6O8d_vhMoCjqwcVBVj-dtTHAnkHQyM/s400/Screen+Shot+2016-12-22+at+9.05.37+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
This is wildly inaccurate. The estimate cost of this plant is $17 billion (of course we have to worry about cost overruns, but the author specifically claims this is true "No matter what the final cost ends up being.") The electricity it can be expected to generate, at a typical-for-nuclear capacity factor of 0.9, is 78 TWh/year. How much solar would it take (ignoring storage costs) to generate 78 TWh?<br />
<br />
As it happens, India has recently constructed what is now <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/india-unveils-world-largest-solar-power-plant-161129101022044.html">the world's largest solar plant</a>, a 648MW facility covering 10km^2, costing $679 million to build. At a capacity factor of 0.2, it will generate 1.1 TWh. You would need 71 of them, costing $48 billion, to generate the same amount of electricity.<br />
<br />
But EnviroNews is not just angry about the cost, but the footprint. The cruel, cruel footprint:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXc9WQLvpvKvJB1xZWXIlza_t4Q6v6FyC-OQt_TcMu8QXmrSNZNUdJyjrn6TdfvM8O8BpurvPB7o9N2hR6qVnoYaI6HhOy231K4cfyMHx0sGpcUcxzJZdrZ8OdO8SyYdndSyFdIC3zC9g/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-12-22+at+9.42.54+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXc9WQLvpvKvJB1xZWXIlza_t4Q6v6FyC-OQt_TcMu8QXmrSNZNUdJyjrn6TdfvM8O8BpurvPB7o9N2hR6qVnoYaI6HhOy231K4cfyMHx0sGpcUcxzJZdrZ8OdO8SyYdndSyFdIC3zC9g/s400/Screen+Shot+2016-12-22+at+9.42.54+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
2,400 acres sounds like quite a bit, and I in no way want to diminish the disruption and loss to those living on those lands. I can't speak to whether this was debated and agreed upon in a democratic way; India has a bad history of pushing people out of the way of its mega-projects, and not providing the compensation promised.<br />
<br />
What I can speak to is the incredible hypocrisy of complaining about the footprint of nuclear power. That 2,400 acres? It's 10km^2. Haven't we seen 10km^2 in this post already? That's right, <b>just one of the 71 solar plants required to replace this nuclear plant takes up that much room. </b>If you replace these nuclear reactors with solar panels, a lot more people are going to be displaced.<br />
<br />
There are other important factors not considered here, such as the 60-year operational lifespan of this design vs about 20-25 years for current solar designs. Such as the intermittent output of solar panels, requiring solar be held to a small share of the total electricity generated over a particular grid, or expensive storage be added. <br />
<br />
I understand the people at EnviroNews are not pro-nuclear energy and are not likely to have a road-to-Damascus moment where they embrace it. But they could, at least, not completely cut loose from the facts whilst smearing it. <br /><br />
<div style="left: -99999px; position: absolute;">
The reactor park is
slated to engulf approximately 2,400 acres of land, and would destroy
the encompassing villages of Varliwada, Niveli, Karel, Mithgavane and
Madban. The government has offered to pay villagers for the land they
will lose, but only 114 out of 2,375 families affected, have claimed any
money — the rest have refused the compensation as an act of protest. -
<a href="http://www.environews.tv/120716-editorial-construction-dangerous-coastal-jaitapur-nuclear-power-mega-plant-stopped/">http://www.environews.tv/120716-editorial-construction-dangerous-coastal-jaitapur-nuclear-power-mega-plant-stopped/</a></div>
<div style="left: -99999px; position: absolute;">
- <a href="http://www.environews.tv/120716-editorial-construction-dangerous-coastal-jaitapur-nuclear-power-mega-plant-stopped/">http://www.environews.tv/120716-editorial-construction-dangerous-coastal-jaitapur-nuclear-power-mega-plant-stopped/</a></div>
<div style="left: -99999px; position: absolute;">
Dangerous Coastal Jaitapur Nuclear Power Mega-Plant Should Be Stopped - <a href="http://www.environews.tv/120716-editorial-construction-dangerous-coastal-jaitapur-nuclear-power-mega-plant-stopped/">http://www.environews.tv/120716-editorial-construction-dangerous-coastal-jaitapur-nuclear-power-mega-plant-stopped/</a></div>
<div style="left: -99999px; position: absolute;">
Construction of Dangerous Coastal Jaitapur Nuclear Power Mega-Plant Should Be Stopped - <a href="http://www.environews.tv/120716-editorial-construction-dangerous-coastal-jaitapur-nuclear-power-mega-plant-stopped/">http://www.environews.tv/120716-editorial-construction-dangerous-coastal-jaitapur-nuclear-power-mega-plant-stopped/</a></div>
</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-21953803585428589062016-12-13T11:27:00.000-08:002016-12-13T11:27:13.847-08:00Where the climate disaster sits<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The last few years have given the appearance of progress, but it's mostly an illusion. The underlying dynamic remains selfish, short-sighted governments, corporations, and individuals failing to accept the science and make a serious plan to cut carbon emissions dramatically.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWL39cz09VHogI3KNnjs3uQRdIEbKP5d1nBxtgLTxnDzJ92QT9rOQVLdrksFc06ZH5ZxOWj6VNIOi8lSb5TBDGVwyTmV9w6vZp_jCyl8ThfsEcS3DMwMFAKsffcqo5IebSxPA3_Re4xog/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-12-11+at+1.13.19+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWL39cz09VHogI3KNnjs3uQRdIEbKP5d1nBxtgLTxnDzJ92QT9rOQVLdrksFc06ZH5ZxOWj6VNIOi8lSb5TBDGVwyTmV9w6vZp_jCyl8ThfsEcS3DMwMFAKsffcqo5IebSxPA3_Re4xog/s400/Screen+Shot+2016-12-11+at+1.13.19+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/16/presentation.htm">Source</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The rate of CO2 growth has slowed over the past few years, but that's misleading. The slowdown is not originating from the replacement of fossil fuels with clean energy sources, rather, it is primarily the result of substituting one fossil fuel for another -- less coal, more methane. China has been the primary source of rising coal consumption for some years now, so their shift is illustrative:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuUsQBss8ZH3eBMMEjTmVHhGne1WD1fzudRAPoFLFGKFuhyVzoJWLYllv01sJ4-sWuNyWja55t4zlmH02XSs21S3JNA3SkeKcH9h_kPODl0h_9xXwPlV056wdsODa6ZzyzgpQl6ctP0Ik/s1600/2014-09-10-Chinablogpic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuUsQBss8ZH3eBMMEjTmVHhGne1WD1fzudRAPoFLFGKFuhyVzoJWLYllv01sJ4-sWuNyWja55t4zlmH02XSs21S3JNA3SkeKcH9h_kPODl0h_9xXwPlV056wdsODa6ZzyzgpQl6ctP0Ik/s320/2014-09-10-Chinablogpic.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyBe7yyNqh0Wq4khRlaCoX9aya8jLsmY65RB-NHcOomwzcxnGLY9Ehau7mZvkH0DD5NRZstJu1ujBTqaZKAT58pYwN3Anr6oYqG_eIAgaZI4AyQhO1UIAnJIXbM1Z6yTzxASHn7Sidl5Y/s1600/china+growing+natural+gas+consumption.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyBe7yyNqh0Wq4khRlaCoX9aya8jLsmY65RB-NHcOomwzcxnGLY9Ehau7mZvkH0DD5NRZstJu1ujBTqaZKAT58pYwN3Anr6oYqG_eIAgaZI4AyQhO1UIAnJIXbM1Z6yTzxASHn7Sidl5Y/s320/china+growing+natural+gas+consumption.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
US consumption in recent years tells a similar story:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRuKnpHGzvQZWUYWdM5BYgapAc1Hd_q01W8rV8MESi-gFi3g-3q-WlIphnLAsi8r5bn258iNiaBgRZSrh4YnjlQYjePPHZY_EJfXjPaD5zL-M9KJpxtlIilNXEJpzV_NG9ewVarXRUjgk/s1600/753px-2008_US_electricity_generation_by_source_v2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRuKnpHGzvQZWUYWdM5BYgapAc1Hd_q01W8rV8MESi-gFi3g-3q-WlIphnLAsi8r5bn258iNiaBgRZSrh4YnjlQYjePPHZY_EJfXjPaD5zL-M9KJpxtlIilNXEJpzV_NG9ewVarXRUjgk/s320/753px-2008_US_electricity_generation_by_source_v2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUrBv6hc_oXWVPPCZ_liAzwraVP2e6Xu7ci6fftWvGgTBHcBv4cYpP9k8BEnvMswb9K8BhNpjrUiIiQ8ROhyphenhyphenQyVU__jAtZPPgoidsBRUD97jY_n5hWC0XraY5-oXDAWGM7pOAx-UOhdY8/s1600/U.S._2013_Electricity_Generation_By_Type_crop.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUrBv6hc_oXWVPPCZ_liAzwraVP2e6Xu7ci6fftWvGgTBHcBv4cYpP9k8BEnvMswb9K8BhNpjrUiIiQ8ROhyphenhyphenQyVU__jAtZPPgoidsBRUD97jY_n5hWC0XraY5-oXDAWGM7pOAx-UOhdY8/s320/U.S._2013_Electricity_Generation_By_Type_crop.png" width="320" /></a></div>
This is a lot of numbers and graphs for what is essentially an old man shaking a cane in blog form, but this is important. Coal has lost 6% of total electricity generation. But 2/3 of that, 4%, went straight to the burning of methane. Renewables snagged another 2% of the total, but half of those gains were lost when nuclear bleed away 1% of the total.<br />
<br />
The additional 1% in clean energy sources likely made less of an impact on our total emissions than the 4% shift from coal to methane.<br />
<br />
But, you may ask, who cares? Flat emissions growth is flat emissions growth. Which is true in a sense. Less CO2 is better than more. But if you are looking for a sign humanity is starting to wake up to the danger it is in, if you are looking for "peak madness," then this plateau misleads.<br />
<br />
There was always going to be a transition between coal and natural gas, due to the immediate health effects of coal smog, and the discovery of fraking techniques that make methane easier, and even cheaper in many cases, to extract than coal. That this transition is happening does the world some good, but it does not say that we will continue to phase out coal when natural gas is not plentiful and cheap, or that we will make serious efforts to eliminate natural gas and all other fossils fuels from our energy mix, as we must eventually do.<br />
<br />
The picture looks even bleaker if we include not only electricity but transportation fuels, which constitute 22% of CO2 emissions today (up from 14% in 2004.) Oil dominates the transportation sector, and despite some promising signs of a beginning of a mass market in electric cars, they remain an almost infinitesimal fraction of the motor vehicles on the road today.<br />
<br />
The Paris Agreement has inspired a lot of optimism, but as far as I can see, it's fairly small potatoes. The emissions cuts promised…well, there aren't any specific emissions cuts promised, as a matter of fact:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The contribution that each individual country should make in order to
achieve the worldwide goal are determined by all countries individually
and called "nationally determined contributions" (NDCs).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-13"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement#cite_note-13">[13]</a></sup>
Article 3 requires them to be "ambitious," "represent a progression
over time" and set "with the view to achieving the purpose of this
Agreement" (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement#Nationally_determined_contributions_and_their_limits">Source: Wikipedia</a>.) </blockquote>
The entire agreement could be summed up as "Global warming is bad, we'd better cut GHG emissions -- everybody do their best with that, OK?"<br />
<br />
Having spent so many hundreds of hours on climate deniers, I am by no means scornful of the accomplishment of getting most of the world's nations to agree that there's a problem and we need to do something about it. But seriously, this agreement fails in every way to resemble the global agreement we need to stabilize the climate. Such an agreement needs the following features:<br />
<br />
1. Binding emissions reductions.<br />
2. Independent agency with secure funding to calculate emissions.<br />
3. Strong penalties for those that violate the agreement or refuse to participate (i.e., a total trade embargo.)<br />
4. Agreed upon scoring for grey areas like land use changes, reforestation, shorter-lived GHGs, and CCS schemes.<br />
5. Some agreed-upon financial support for countries, like India, who will be asked to forgo things like burning coal which facilitated others' industrialization. (This might take the form of grants towards disaster management and adaptation projects, for example -- trillions of dollars in adaptation spending is now inevitable.)<br />
<br />
The Paris Agreement lacks all of these things -- which is likely why so many countries have signed it and ratified it. It's the cotton candy of climate accords. Even the poor much-maligned Kyoto protocol did better.<br />
<br />
Physically, the world keeps getting warming, the seas keep rising and the ice keeps melting. The arctic is having an anomalous winter, the antarctic an even weirder summer:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJUt2VsAX15K0CyhFPnl0lkmKUAjT82GljYimiMiQYcLmfazzBnBjsv7gy52vuzwg4vnVhPdNgraNulese-RIRIKJFJg8g91xiWwYhROliYNJlrr63MYjAE02QZU5syreEKX9QGEN6qwU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-12-13+at+11.15.56+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJUt2VsAX15K0CyhFPnl0lkmKUAjT82GljYimiMiQYcLmfazzBnBjsv7gy52vuzwg4vnVhPdNgraNulese-RIRIKJFJg8g91xiWwYhROliYNJlrr63MYjAE02QZU5syreEKX9QGEN6qwU/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-12-13+at+11.15.56+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
What a difference a year makes. Now climate scientists no longer have to explain why the Antarctic sea ice isn't doing the same thing as its northern cousin. They're twins! Of course, this is one more piece of evidence that the Antarctic is preparing to shed several meters of global SLR from its ice sheets, but every silver lining has its cloud, as they say.<br />
<br /></div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-68510053183526487022016-12-02T20:38:00.000-08:002016-12-03T07:33:00.247-08:00Subjects of the Empire of Denial<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<br />
Denial has conquered the United States of America. To those of us who have been fighting climate deniers for years, this is a nightmare, a sickeningly familiar nightmare where the personality-disordered trolls and con men have exploded out of the comment threads and seized the reins of a great nation.<br />
<br />
To the average citizen, the kind of people who have triumphed in our most recent election seem disturbingly unpredictable. They are by turns abusive and wheedling. They aver a broad range of fringe beliefs, untroubled by the explicit contradictions between them. And Americans are scared. They can sense the sickness of the denier, but do not understand them, and they are all the more frightening for that. But they can be understood, and it is critical to try and understand them, and in particular to understand their relationship to factual truth.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfGej53nri6zQi_zofsJoAm2Cu7OEYLUEuFP__KDGVbVk54sYOgz1sKaNiJ8msYgc-OQNgtZFHdTW2eoqtfTqInG3lM8gr73qd4zOPjhJDeElmMaUUnS9NhHNWkK6L3Eqmh6EU18wESqI/s1600/TrumpClimate.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfGej53nri6zQi_zofsJoAm2Cu7OEYLUEuFP__KDGVbVk54sYOgz1sKaNiJ8msYgc-OQNgtZFHdTW2eoqtfTqInG3lM8gr73qd4zOPjhJDeElmMaUUnS9NhHNWkK6L3Eqmh6EU18wESqI/s320/TrumpClimate.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The thing you must grasp about a denier is that they don't care one whit about factual truth. It has no purchase with them. They exist in a world of emotion and spiritualism, in which the group and the cause are all.<br />
<br />
They are not ideologues. They are not even fanatics. Fanatics believe in things, and will sacrifice to live out those beliefs. Deniers do not sacrifice, because sacrifice doesn't feel good, and feeling good -- feeling <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosyntonic_and_egodystonic">egosyntonic, not egodystonic</a> -- is all.<br />
<br />
Deniers are bullies and sycophants, and everything they say and everything they do refers back to that. They talk, and think, and reason in ways that are about tribal allegiance, in-group posturing. That is the only truth they care about -- the truth of "us" and "them."<br />
<br />
To decent people, their behavior is baffling. They assert blatant lies, which they will defend passionately, but then suddenly abandon, sneering at the fools that treated those lies as important. Others, less creative but equally performers, will profess to believe those lies, even though in reality if you required them to stake their lives or even a hundred bucks on the factual truth of, say, the notion that the world is cooler than it was in the middle ages or that Mexico will pay tens of billions of dollars to build us a wall, they would never in a million years lay money down.<br />
<br />
You may wonder why they lie, if on some level they know they are lying. The answer is that they perform belief in the same way the Japanese would draw and release empty bows, believing the noise drove away menacing spirits. As long as they see themselves as Good and the other as Evil whatever they say that embarrasses, frustrates, distracts, or stymies their Evil opponents (intellectuals, leftists, people of color, foreigners, Jews) serves the cause of Good.<br />
<br />
The denier's sense of truth is emotional. What feels good to him is true. What feels bad to him, what provokes guilt or embarrassment, is an evil lie, probably put there by a Jew.<br />
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<br />
<br />
The denier's sense of the world is fundamentally childish, in the way that children identify authority with reality (everything is my parents' fault.) Atavistic, the denier regards facts as an emanation of power, as an expression of his evil enemies' agency. For the denier this is a moral struggle, a conflict between good and evil, and what we term the physical reality must ultimately reflect their wishes, because they are good and God is good. God would never permit the greens, socialists, atheists, women or Jews to be right. Therefore they are not right, whatever the evidence may be in this specific case.<br />
<br />
The existence of a cold uncaring universe which will unfold implacably according to its own arbitrary laws, regardless of what we think or believe, is abhorrent to the denier, if he can grasp it at all. Clinging to a religious mindset (the world is divided between the saved and the damned; the saved know the truth and the damned are deceived; the true struggle is the moral struggle of the True Believers to save the world) they pursue religious solutions, professing their "truth," banishing doubt with faith, and seeking out the corrupters who lead honest folks away from the truth.<br />
<br />
It follows that the denier is supremely unprepared for victory. While the denier is in rebellion, factual truth is seen as an aspect of the oppressor's authority. By denying reality the denier fights the oppressor. Once he must deliver results requiring navigation of reality that narrative no longer functions.<br />
<br />
His reaction to this breakdown, predictably, will be one of denial -- denial, in this case, of his own power and agency.<br />
<br />
You may expect him to double down on stories of invisible enemies, of malignant forces which somehow still threaten the Good, despite its apparent victory over all of its rivals. Nothing will be built up, nothing will be reformed or improved, because the denier is fundamentally not creative or inventive, but rather self-absorbed and petulant. As his failures mount, scapegoating -- always a key feature of deniers relationship to the world -- will become more aggressive. The denier's search for new enemies can become a lethal delusion.</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-56154493752501839332016-11-16T13:24:00.000-08:002016-11-16T13:24:48.472-08:00One way the world could end<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<br />
It's now evident that Trump will staff the white house with belligerent incompetents, much like himself. We must now seriously contemplate, without hysteria or hyperbole, how bad things could get. Answer: pretty bad. Here's just one way it could unfold:<br />
<br />
1. Trump's <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/07/trump-nato/492341/">undisciplined talk on NATO</a> persuades Putin that he can <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/russia-nato-trump-shirreff/492938/">pull a Crimea with the Baltic states</a>.<br />
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<br />
<br />
2. Trump, not strong-willed or stable at the best of times, is humiliated by this and the screaming taunts of his own party and national security apparatus that he is helpless in the face of Russian aggression.<br />
<br />
3. The US intervenes in the Baltics, which rapid escalates into an undeclared conventional war.<br />
<br />
4. One side or the other <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/coldwar/shatter021099b.htm">becomes</a> <a href="http://blog.ucsusa.org/david-wright/nuclear-false-alarm-950">convinced</a> the enemy has or is about to launch a nuclear strike.<br />
<br />
5. That side launches a nuclear attack, which is quickly reciprocated by the other.<br />
<br />
6. The world as we know it ends.<br />
<br />
At this point, I'm tempted to revisit the topic of the people who voted for Trump, the people who voted for a third party, or (by far the most numerous group) who didn't vote at all. But I realize that while I could happily spend the next however many years screaming YOU DID THIS, YOU ASSHOLES! YOU OWN THIS DISASTER, YOU HUMAN EQUIVALENTS OF A FRESH DOGSHIT AND HOT GARBAGE CASSEROLE! YOU BUILT THAT! such an approach is not likely to be particularly fruitful in terms of where we go from here. Just be advised that I am always, always thinking it.</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-23384168340630996932016-11-13T10:19:00.000-08:002016-11-13T10:19:36.872-08:00Against fascism: Two speeches<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Today we face a dark time in our country's history, where by the evil and folly of our neighbors, and by insufficient efforts among ourselves, our democracy faces its greatest struggle in generations; we face a fight with a force that has so often been invoked in anger and hyperbole but whose unmistakable features now loom before us: fascism. We are in a deadly struggle with the actual, literal forces of fascism, who have openly pledged to attack the media, jail their political opponents, and savagely oppress religious and racial minorities.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
These are not dark hints, or threats of a slippery slope: these are the things that Donald Trump and his followers have openly promised and are now preparing to carry out. This is the grim reality, and yet, we have to refuse to despair. November 8th was a terrible defeat, a catastrophic failure of the American people. It isn't good in any way, but that does not mean we cannot turn it to the good, turn the racists' moment of glory into the beginning of their destruction. History is full of skirmishes, battles, entire wars even where one side flushed with success became disorganized and overconfident and saw the tables turned and their forces crushed. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Trump's narrow victory in the electoral college (aided and abetted by voter suppression, manipulation by Russian intelligence, and violations of election law by the FBI) should not blind us to the fact that Trump lost the popular vote, and, what is perhaps more important in the long run, he lost overwhelmingly among the people who shape our culture: the scientists, the writers, the artists, the journalists, the economists, the musicians, the comedians, the filmmakers. He lost all the demographics in this country which are growing, and ran up bigger margins the older and whiter his marks were.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But strategy is best left to the future. We are going to need to see some of the enemy's moves to effectively plan our countermoves. Right now our task is to name this thing, to name what has happened, name it honestly, name it and to resist the dual temptations of normalizing it one the one hand as an ordinary defeat within an ordinary political struggle, and giving way to a black paralyzing despair on the other.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I think it might behoove us, then, to remind ourselves of these two speeches by a famous anti-fascist, regarding another time a clownish narcissistic bigot somehow took hold of a great nation and seemed to be having things all his own way. And a lot of people showed him the backs of their necks, even before he was in a position to put serious pressure on them, and some people held out for a while, and gave in at the point that seemed sensible to them, but not everybody. Some people chose instead to fight like wounded animals, half-blind with pain and rage, regardless of the odds, regardless of the cost. This, we would like to imagine, is where we would stand if unmistakable evil were staring us in the face.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And now we will see.</div>
<h1>
</h1>
<h1>
We Shall Fight on the Beaches
</h1>
</div>
<h3>
June 4, 1940.</h3>
<h4>
House of Commons</h4>
From the moment
that the French defenses at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the
end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the
south could have saved the British and French Armies who had entered
Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact was
not immediately realized. The French High Command hoped they would be
able to close the gap, and the Armies of the north were under their
orders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost
certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian Army of over 20 divisions
and the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force
and scope of the German penetration were realized and when a new French
Generalissimo, General Weygand, assumed command in place of General
Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in Belgium
to keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own
right hand to a newly created French Army which was to have advanced
across the Somme in great strength to grasp it. <br /><br />However, the
German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of
the Armies of the north. Eight or nine armored divisions, each of about
four hundred armored vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted
to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut
off all communications between us and the main French Armies. It severed
our own communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to
Amiens and afterwards through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the
coast to Boulogne and Calais, and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armored
and mechanized onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries,
and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute
mass of the ordinary German Army and German people, always so ready to
be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts
which they have never known in their own.<br /><br />I have said this
armored scythe-stroke almost reached Dunkirk-almost but not quite.
Boulogne and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The Guards
defended Boulogne for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from
this country. The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen
Victoria's Rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and 1,000
Frenchmen, in all about four thousand strong, defended Calais to the
last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned
the offer, and four days of intense street fighting passed before
silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable
resistance. Only 30 unwounded survivors were brought off by the Navy,
and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however,
was not in vain. At least two armored divisions, which otherwise would
have been turned against the British Expeditionary Force, had to be sent
to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories of the
light divisions, and the time gained enabled the Graveline water lines
to be flooded and to be held by the French troops.<br /><br />Thus it was
that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible for
the Armies of the north to reopen their communications to Amiens with
the main French Armies, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed,
forlorn. The Belgian, British and French Armies were almost surrounded.
Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighboring
beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far
outnumbered in the air.<br /><br />When, a week ago today, I asked the House
to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I feared it
would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our
long history. I thought-and some good judges agreed with me-that perhaps
20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that
the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British
Expeditionary Force north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up
in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and
ammunition. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called
upon the House and the nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The
whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around
which we were to build, and are to build, the great British Armies in
the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to
be led into an ignominious and starving captivity.<br /><br />That was the
prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final
was yet to fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us to
come to his aid. Had not this Ruler and his Government severed
themselves from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in
the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a
fatal neutrality, the French and British Armies might well at the
outset have saved not only Belgium but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the
last moment, when Belgium was already invaded, King Leopold called upon
us to come to his aid, and even at the last moment we came. He and his
brave, efficient Army, nearly half a million strong, guarded our left
flank and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly,
without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the
advice of his Ministers and upon his own personal act, he sent a
plenipotentiary to the German Command, surrendered his Army, and exposed
our whole flank and means of retreat.<br /><br />I asked the House a week
ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were not clear, but I do
not feel that any reason now exists why we should not form our own
opinions upon this pitiful episode. The surrender of the Belgian Army
compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea
more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off,
and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned
the finest Army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in
exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map
will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three
corps forming the First French Army, who were still farther from the
coast than we were, and it seemed impossible that any large number of
Allied troops could reach the coast.<br /><br />The enemy attacked on all
sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the
power of their far more numerous Air Force, was thrown into the battle
or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in upon the
narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began to
fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could
approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas;
they sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than a
hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single
pier that remained, and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had
their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk, and their
motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For
four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armored
divisions-or what Was left of them-together with great masses of
infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the
ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and
French Armies fought.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, with the willing
help of countless merchant seamen, strained every nerve to embark the
British and Allied troops; 220 light warships and 650 other vessels were
engaged. They had to operate upon the difficult coast, often in adverse
weather, under an almost ceaseless hail of bombs and an increasing
concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas, as I have said,
themselves free from mines and torpedoes. It was in conditions such as
these that our men carried on, with little or no rest, for days and
nights on end, making trip after trip across the dangerous waters,
bringing with them always men whom they had rescued. The numbers they
have brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage.
The hospital ships, which brought off many thousands of British and
French wounded, being so plainly marked were a special target for Nazi
bombs; but the men and women on board them never faltered in their duty.<br /><br />Meanwhile,
the Royal Air Force, which had already been intervening in the battle,
so far as its range would allow, from home bases, now used part of its
main metropolitan fighter strength, and struck at the German bombers and
at the fighters which in large numbers protected them. This struggle
was protracted and fierce. Suddenly the scene has cleared, the crash and
thunder has for the moment-but only for the moment-died away. A miracle
of deliverance, achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect
discipline, by faultless service, by resource, by skill, by
unconquerable fidelity, is manifest to us all. The enemy was hurled back
by the retreating British and French troops. He was so roughly handled
that he did not hurry their departure seriously. The Royal Air Force
engaged the main strength of the German Air Force, and inflicted upon
them losses of at least four to one; and the Navy, using nearly 1,000
ships of all kinds, carried over 335,000 men, French and British, out of
the jaws of death and shame, to their native land and to the tasks
which lie immediately ahead. We must be very careful not to assign to
this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by
evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance, which
should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force. Many of our soldiers
coming back have not seen the Air Force at work; they saw only the
bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrate its
achievements. I have heard much talk of this; that is why I go out of my
way to say this. I will tell you about it.<br /><br />This was a great
trial of strength between the British and German Air Forces. Can you
conceive a greater objective for the Germans in the air than to make
evacuation from these beaches impossible, and to sink all these ships
which were displayed, almost to the extent of thousands? Could there
have been an objective of greater military importance and significance
for the whole purpose of the war than this? They tried hard, and they
were beaten back; they were frustrated in their task. We got the Army
away; and they have paid fourfold for any losses which they have
inflicted. Very large formations of German aeroplanes-and we know that
they are a very brave race-have turned on several occasions from the
attack of one-quarter of their number of the Royal Air Force, and have
dispersed in different directions. Twelve aeroplanes have been hunted by
two. One aeroplane was driven into the water and cast away by the mere
charge of a British aeroplane, which had no more ammunition. All of our
types-the Hurricane, the Spitfire and the new Defiant-and all our pilots
have been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face.<br /><br />When
we consider how much greater would be our advantage in defending the
air above this Island against an overseas attack, I must say that I find
in these facts a sure basis upon which practical and reassuring
thoughts may rest. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The
great French Army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and
disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it
not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by
the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I
suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an
opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders,
all fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these young
men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we
stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and
shattering power, of whom it may be said that<br /><br />Every morn brought forth a noble chance<br />And every chance brought forth a noble knight,<br /><br />deserve
our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so
many occasions, are ready, and continue ready to give life and all for
their native land.<br /><br />I return to the Army. In the long series of
very fierce battles, now on this front, now on that, fighting on three
fronts at once, battles fought by two or three divisions against an
equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on
some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so well-in these battles
our losses in men have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded and missing. I
take occasion to express the sympathy of the House to all who have
suffered bereavement or who are still anxious. The President of the
Board of Trade [Sir Andrew Duncan] is not here today. His son has been
killed, and many in the House have felt the pangs of affliction in the
sharpest form. But I will say this about the missing: We have had a
large number of wounded come home safely to this country, but I would
say about the missing that there may be very many reported missing who
will come back home, some day, in one way or another. In the confusion
of this fight it is inevitable that many have been left in positions
where honor required no further resistance from them.<br /><br />Against
this loss of over 30,000 men, we can set a far heavier loss certainly
inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We
have perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost in the opening days of
the battle of 21st March, 1918, but we have lost nearly as many guns --
nearly one thousand-and all our transport, all the armored vehicles that
were with the Army in the north. This loss will impose a further delay
on the expansion of our military strength. That expansion had not been
proceeding as far as we had hoped. The best of all we had to give had
gone to the British Expeditionary Force, and although they had not the
numbers of tanks and some articles of equipment which were desirable,
they were a very well and finely equipped Army. They had the
first-fruits of all that our industry had to give, and that is gone. And
now here is this further delay. How long it will be, how long it will
last, depends upon the exertions which we make in this Island. An effort
the like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made.
Work is proceeding everywhere, night and day, Sundays and week days.
Capital and Labor have cast aside their interests, rights, and customs
and put them into the common stock. Already the flow of munitions has
leaped forward. There is no reason why we should not in a few months
overtake the sudden and serious loss that has come upon us, without
retarding the development of our general program.<br /><br />Nevertheless,
our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved
ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the
fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military
disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army has been
lost, a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had
been reposed is gone, many valuable mining districts and factories have
passed into the enemy's possession, the whole of the Channel ports are
in his hands, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that,
and we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or
at France. We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the
British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay
at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army,
he was told by someone. "There are bitter weeds in England." There are
certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary
Force returned.<br /><br />The whole question of home defense against
invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for
the time being in this Island incomparably more powerful military
forces than we have ever had at any moment in this war or the last. But
this will not continue. We shall not be content with a defensive war. We
have our duty to our Ally. We have to reconstitute and build up the
British Expeditionary Force once again, under its gallant
Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort. All this is in train; but in the interval
we must put our defenses in this Island into such a high state of
organization that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give
effective security and that the largest possible potential of offensive
effort may be realized. On this we are now engaged. It will be very
convenient, if it be the desire of the House, to enter upon this subject
in a secret Session. Not that the government would necessarily be able
to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we like to have our
discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they
will be read the next day by the enemy; and the Government would benefit
by views freely expressed in all parts of the House by Members with
their knowledge of so many different parts of the country. I understand
that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily
acceded to by His Majesty's Government.<br /><br />We have found it
necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against
enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also
against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should
the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are a great
many people affected by the orders which we have made who are the
passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we
cannot, at the present time and under the present stress, draw all the
distinctions which we should like to do. If parachute landings were
attempted and fierce fighting attendant upon them followed, these
unfortunate people would be far better out of the way, for their own
sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class, for which I
feel not the slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us the powers to
put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand, and we shall use
those powers subject to the supervision and correction of the House,
without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied, and more than
satisfied, that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively
stamped out.<br /><br />Turning once again, and this time more generally, to
the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a
period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute
guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have
been given to our people. In the days of Napoleon the same wind which
would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven
away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that
chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many
Continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured
that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of
malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may
certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every
kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no idea is so
outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching,
but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget
the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if
it can be locally exercised.<br /><br />I have, myself, full confidence
that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best
arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves
once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war,
and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if
necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do.
That is the resolve of His Majesty's Government-every man of them. That
is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the
French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will
defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good
comrades to the utmost of their strength. <b>Even though large tracts of
Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the
grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall
not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing
confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island,
whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight
on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender</b>, and even if,
which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it
were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and
guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in
God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps
forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.<br />
<br />
<div class="page-header">
<h1>
Never Give In
</h1>
</div>
<h3>
October 29, 1941.</h3>
<h4>
Harrow School</h4>
Almost
a year has passed since I came down here at your Head Master's kind
invitation in order to cheer myself and cheer the hearts of a few of my
friends by singing some of our own songs. The ten months that have
passed have seen very terrible catastrophic events in the world - ups
and downs, misfortunes - but can anyone sitting here this afternoon,
this October afternoon, not feel deeply thankful for what has happened
in the time that has passed and for the very great improvement in the
position of our country and of our home? Why, when I was here last time
we were quite alone, desperately alone, and we had been so for five or
six months. We were poorly armed. We are not so poorly armed today; but
then we were very poorly armed. We had the unmeasured menace of the
enemy and their air attack still beating upon us, and you yourselves had
had experience of this attack; and I expect you are beginning to feel
impatient that there has been this long lull with nothing particular
turning up! <br /><br />But we must learn to be equally good at what is
short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that
the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move
from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will
bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up
their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and
finished, then, even if it takes months - if it takes years - they do
it.<br /><br />Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing our minds
back to our meeting here ten months ago and now, is that appearances are
often very deceptive, and as Kipling well says, we must "…meet with
Triumph and Disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same."<br /><br />You
cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination
makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not
much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers
than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they
must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this
far-reaching imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone
through in this period - I am addressing myself to the School - surely
from this period of ten months this is the lesson: <b>never give in, never
give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty -
never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never
yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the
enemy. </b>We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed
that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of
ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this
country, were gone and finished and liquidated.<br /><br />Very different is
the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge
across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no
flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a
miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never
doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can
be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.<br /><br />You sang here a
verse of a School Song: you sang that extra verse written in my honour,
which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated
today. But there is one word in it I want to alter - I wanted to do so
last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: "Not less we praise
in darker days."<br /><br />I have obtained the Head Master's permission to alter darker to sterner. "Not less we praise in sterner days."<br /><br />Do
not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days.
These are not dark days; these are great days - the greatest days our
country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been
allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making
these days memorable in the history of our race.
</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-48478099035636933042016-11-11T10:57:00.000-08:002017-01-23T10:28:17.466-08:00If you didn't vote for Clinton: A step-by-step guide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6MfXvw8W80hUaDBmi7qd7ZzKuAPgia5_DSsz91EKoawJ-gNzMltS_MUPh408Ky5hbaHjkGn0_EsxAtMQv3kXaQ-eswMjIGZFIw94Xn_RGbQeNHxiR_CTZcnMbvyiO9mkW-5bz_Jq-gfQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-11-11+at+10.58.44+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6MfXvw8W80hUaDBmi7qd7ZzKuAPgia5_DSsz91EKoawJ-gNzMltS_MUPh408Ky5hbaHjkGn0_EsxAtMQv3kXaQ-eswMjIGZFIw94Xn_RGbQeNHxiR_CTZcnMbvyiO9mkW-5bz_Jq-gfQ/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-11-11+at+10.58.44+AM.png" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I imagine there are some people who are already trying to
come to grips with the fact that by failing to vote for Hillary Clinton they helped make Donald Trump our
president-elect. As it becomes brutally clear what a mistake this was, their
numbers will grow. In a spirit of kindness and friendship, I would like to
offer some practical suggestions to those nonvoters/third party
voters/supporters of write-in candidates who, unlike Trump voters proper, may
have some residual capacity for shame, and might even nurse the secret desire
of someday doing something for the good of the world that might begin to make
up for the death, madness and horror they helped unleash.
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1. Lie.</b> No one
needs to know the truth about who you voted for. People who know will never
look at you the same way again. Every time a journalist is assassinated, every
time another hundred thousand jobs are lost, every time the coffins land at
Andrews from a war that started due to a Twitter beef, people will remember you
helped make it happen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So lie. As of today, you supported Clinton, you voting for
her, despite whatever misgivings you may have had. Learn that story and stick
to it. This is not dishonesty but a necessary social fib. Telling people you voted for Jill Stein is the political equivalent of telling your spouse that their ass looks fat. If you want to do
something good in this world and maybe start to dab at the dogshit that is smeared
across your soul (never to be expunged completely), you will have to cooperate
with decent people to achieve anything. Decent people will never trust you if
they know what you are. Take the secret to your grave.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhBixNWSyHoExs4ZAsL1ATQVT0usGjLS9ctb-G_5T8GwgWUQzrIuEZ51eOSDgoLccs_BNr972i3KvaS-y_GjmSitFNR1RG9TKiACctaw57NxJPV-n9EwMpDWvkSLl9A2txcn2VBPzpaNA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-11-11+at+11.01.31+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhBixNWSyHoExs4ZAsL1ATQVT0usGjLS9ctb-G_5T8GwgWUQzrIuEZ51eOSDgoLccs_BNr972i3KvaS-y_GjmSitFNR1RG9TKiACctaw57NxJPV-n9EwMpDWvkSLl9A2txcn2VBPzpaNA/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-11-11+at+11.01.31+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2. Don’t try to
explain yourself.</b> So maybe you’ve already spilled the beans, and lying is
no longer an option. People know what you did. You’ve started to see the little
stiffness that comes into your friends’ manner when politics comes up when
you’re around. You’ve crossed the point of no return, but there are still
things you can do to limit the damage. Chief among them is to keep your rationalizations and excuses to yourself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">3. Seriously, whatever you do,
don’t try to explain yourself. </b>Don’t whine about Bernie, don’t complain
about Clinton’s e-mails or whatever other non-scandal you used to justify
infecting our democracy with the human equivalent of tertiary syphilis. (Hey,
remember when he ran a fake charity and used it to buy a $25,000 portrait of
himself? That man will be the president. You built that!) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Newsflash: No one cares. No one cares why you enabled a man
who talks about American Muslims in 2016 with the same language Nazis used
about Jews in <span style="font-family: inherit;">1936</span>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Remember Star Wars? Remember Darth Vader? What a great
character! Remember when George Lucas thought we wanted three movies about how
this guy went from an annoying child to a whiny emo bitch to a child-killer?
Yeah, how he got that way was never the point. Normal people don’t give a shit
why you sided with evil. You did, and nothing you can say will make that
better. Just. Stop. Talking.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">4. Do not try and
play both sides of the street.</b> I would not believed it had I not seen it
myself, but there are some people so deranged that they will brag about how
terrible Trump will be and the part they played in bringing him to power, and
then complain that the democrats did, or didn’t do something or nothing to lose
his support and that of others like him (him because let’s be real here, it’s a
him.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Pick a lane. If electing Trump is a bad thing, it is a bad
thing you helped bring to pass, and you with direct responsibility for the
outcome have no business lecturing the people who voted the right way about
what they might have done to gain your support. This is the moral equivalent of
a pedophile publishing a guide for six-year-old girls on what not to wear.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">5. Do not try to
create a moral distinction between you and the people who voted for Trump,
based on the fact that you merely did not vote against him.</b> No one cares
about the difference between the bank robber who shoots the teller and the one
driving the getaway car. If you want to open up a space between you and the
people cursing Muslims in the street and assaulting Jews, there is one and only
one way to do so;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">5. Say you’re sorry.</b>
Just that. Say you’re sorry. You were a fool; you made a terrible mistake; now
you want to work, humbly, alongside the people who made the right choice, to
fight Trump, the GOP, and inbred bigots in general.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I know that some of you are still deep into the process of
rationalizing what you’ve done and you may still think you can justify
yourselves somehow. Time will ultimately bring many of you to a realization
that no justification is possible, only a frank unqualified apology and humble
hard work. If that seems unappealing to you, remember #1 and lie for all you're
worth. Good luck.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-6701946505040154712016-11-10T15:36:00.000-08:002016-11-10T15:37:08.521-08:00Ballad of the Clairvoyant Widow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
A kindly Widow Lady, who lived upon a hill,<br />
Climbed to her attic window and gazed across the sill.<br />
<br />
“Oh tell me, Widow Lady, what is it that you see,<br />
As you look across my city, in God’s country?”<br />
<br />
“I see ten million windows, I see ten thousand streets,<br />
I see the traffic doing miraculous feats.<br />
<br />
The lawyers all are cunning, the business men are fat,<br />
Their wives go out on Sunday beneath the latest hat.<br />
<br />
The kids play cops and robbers, the kids play mumbley-peg,<br />
Some learn the art of thieving, and some grow up to beg;<br />
<br />
The rich can play at polo, the poor can do the shag,<br />
Professors are condoning the cultural lag.<br />
<br />
I see a banker’s mansion with twenty wood-grate fires,<br />
Alone, his wife is grieving for what her heart desires.<br />
<br />
“Next door there is a love-nest of plaster board and tin,<br />
The rats soon will be leaving, the snow will come in.”<br />
<br />
“Clairvoyant Widow Lady, with an eye like a telescope,<br />
Do you see any sign or semblance of that thing called ‘Hope’?”<br />
<br />
“I see the river harbor, alive with men and ships,<br />
A surgeon guides a scalpel with thumb and finger-tips.<br />
<br />
I see grandpa surviving a series of seven strokes,<br />
The unemployed are telling stale unemployment jokes.<br />
<br />
The gulls ride on the water, the gulls have come and gone,<br />
The men on rail and roadway keep moving on and on.<br />
<br />
The salmon climb the rivers, the rivers nudge the sea,<br />
The green comes up forever in the fields of our country.”<br />
<br />
“The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.”<br />
<br />
------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
So is there any sign or semblance of hope to be had today? Very little, I would say. President Obama and Secretary Clinton are behaving according to the basic nobility of their character, adhering to the principles and conventions of a democratic order that died on November 8th. We may do CPR on the corpse of American democracy for some time yet, and perhaps we may yet resuscitate it back to some form of continued life though it will never, ever be what is was before. But that thin reed of possibility is no excuse for blinding ourselves to what has happened: Trump is scum, and the people who voted for him are scum, or in the very best case, immoral fools.<br />
<br />
The damage that they have done is beyond reckoning. I cannot begin to name it today. The simplest way to describe it is that our civilization has attempted suicide. The United States will continue to exist, just as Athens and Rome still exist, as physical places on the map, long after they ceased to be a dynamic force in human affairs. But America as an idea lies on its deathbed today. The pretense of normality will not last. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-19391129521394193192016-11-09T11:17:00.002-08:002016-11-09T11:17:57.111-08:00Jehovah buried, Satan dead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="t s1_2 f0" id="t2_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t3_2">Jehovah buried,Satan dead, </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t4_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t4_2">do fearers worship Much and Quick;</span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t4_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t5_2">badness not being felt as bad,</span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t5_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t6_2">itself thinks goodness what is meek; </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t6_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t7_2">obey says toc,submit says tic, </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t8_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t8_2">Eternity's a Five Year Plan:</span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t9_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t9_2">if Joy with Pain shall hand in hock</span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="t9_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="ta_2">who dares to call himself a man?</span><br />
<br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="ta_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tb_2">go dreamless knaves on Shadows fed, </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tc_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tc_2">your Harry's Tom,your Tom is Dick; </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="td_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="td_2">while Gadgets murder squawk and add, </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="td_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="te_2">the cult of Same is all the chic; </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tf_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tf_2">by instruments,both span and spic, </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tg_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tg_2">are justly measured Spic and Span: </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tg_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="th_2">to kiss the mike if Jew turn kike </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="ti_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="ti_2">who dares to call himself a man? </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tj_2"> </span><br />
<br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tj_2">loudly for Truth have liars pled, </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tk_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tk_2">their heels for Freedom, slaves will click; </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tl_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tl_2">where Boobs are holy,poets mad, </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tm_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tm_2">illustrious punks of Progress shriek; </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tn_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tn_2">when Souls are outlawed,Hearts are sick, </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="to_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="to_2">Hearts being sick,Minds nothing can: </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="to_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tp_2">if Hate's a game and Love's a fuck</span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tp_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tp_2"> </span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tq_2">who dares to call himself a man? </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tr_2"> </span><br />
<br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tr_2">King Christ,this world is all aleak; </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tr_2"></span><span class="t s2_2 f0" id="ts_2">and lifepreservers there are none: </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tt_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tt_2">and waves which only He may walk </span>
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tu_2"> </span><br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tu_2">Who dares to call Himself a man.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="t s2_2 f0" id="tu_2"><span class="t s1_2 f0" id="t1_2"> </span><span class="t s1_2 f0" id="t2_2">- e.e. cummings</span> </span></div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-88361038932906990342016-11-09T00:34:00.000-08:002016-11-09T00:34:21.147-08:00Second Coming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Turning and turning in the widening gyre </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The best lack all conviction, while the worst </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Are full of passionate intensity. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Surely some revelation is at hand; </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
When a vast image out of <em>Spiritus Mundi</em> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
A shape with lion body and the head of a man, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The darkness drops again; but now I know </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
That twenty centuries of stony sleep </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, </div>
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?<br />
<br />
-- <em>The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats</em>
(1989)
</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-8133900887044923922016-09-06T10:42:00.001-07:002016-09-07T01:13:59.612-07:00Trigger warnings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I cannot praise a fugitive and <span class="varspell">cloister'd</span> <span class="varspell">virtue</span>, <span class="varspell">unexercis'd</span> & <span class="varspell">unbreath'd</span>,
that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race,
where that <span class="varspell">immortal</span> garland is to be run for, not without dust
and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity
much rather: that which purifies us is <span class="varspell">trial</span>, and <span class="varspell">trial</span> is by what is contrary.</span></b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
-- John Milton, <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Areopagitica</span></i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There continues to be discussion as to whether college
courses should include “trigger warnings” for potentially upsetting content. No
US college or university I know of requires this, one large survey found fewer than 1% of institutions of higher learning do, and the American Association
of University Professors opposes them, so the discussion is largely
hypothetical at this point, but as there is a vocal minority which argues they should be mandatory, it behooves us to consider whether or not that would be a good idea.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The arguments for trigger warnings are all over the map, but
the main threads are:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. This is a simple courtesy to wounded students; just basic
politeness.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. This is a medically necessary accommodation for students
with PTSD and flashbacks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. Trigger warnings are necessary because presenting sexism,
racism, etc. to students who may have suffered from it, without warning them
that said horror is coming, normalizes the horror and thereby constitutes a
microaggression against the sufferer which may contribute to silencing them and
excluding their experience from the discourse.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The arguments against trigger warnings are also varied and
include:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. It is the responsibility of adult students to deal with
their emotional responses to college coursework.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. Requiring trigger warnings, and thus implicitly extending
the promise that you will NOT be exposed to emotionally trying materials
without forewarning and consent, damages the university as a location for the
free exchange of ideas.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. Trigger warning infantilize students.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before I examine trigger warnings, let me define a few terms
(It’s important to be precise. We’re not talking about potentially
civilization-ending anthropomorphic climate change today; we’re talking about
18-year-olds trying to read Proust and Kant, in other words, something really
important.) A <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">text</b> is used here to
mean any cultural artifact students might make an object of study, including
fiction and nonfiction, pictures and movies, TV scripts or poetry. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">PTSD</b> or post-traumatic stress disorder
is a mental illness, estimated to effect between four and six million people in
the United States, the symptoms of which can include <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">flashbacks</b>, which are technically referred to as re-experiencing
symptoms.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In searching for information about trigger warnings I can
find no evidence that they work in the sense of aiding those with PTSD, and no
evidence of harm when they are incorporated into college coursework. In fact,
as far as I can tell, neither question has been studied. Until
and unless they are, I am reluctant to form a strong opinion about trigger
warnings. When it comes to their effect on students as a whole, I almost
despair of ever getting any data to work with, but if you are going to advocate
for trigger warnings in the name of PTSD sufferers, the absence of any evidence
that they help should trouble you.<br />
<br />
Now, today, both potential benefits and
potential harms from requiring trigger warnings can only be hypothesized.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Might trigger warnings not help those with PTSD? It might
seem self-evident that as it is unpleasant to be “triggered,” a warning is
preferable. It may not be so. If trigger warnings encourage <a href="http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/problems/avoidance.asp"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">avoidance</b></a>, a common problem for sufferers
of PTSD, they might do harm. Telling a sufferer a “trigger” is coming might blunt their reaction but it also might, by suggesting provocative content
is coming, strengthen the reaction, “priming the pump” for re-experiencing
symptoms.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Trigger warnings inevitably direct attention towards the
PTSD-afflicted student. This may be good or bad. Some mental illnesses, such as
somatoform disorders, benefit from frequent structured attention to the
symptoms. Others, like borderline personality disorder or non-epileptic
seizures, seem to get worse when the wrong kind of attention is given. Without
data, it’s hard to say whether trigger warnings would help those with PTSD,
hurt them, or make no difference at all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am talking as if the purpose of trigger warnings is to
help students with PTSD and flashbacks (which might describe one out of a hundred college students, if that), but it’s clear that some advocates see
a much wider role for trigger warnings than this. Consider the much-maligned
and now suspended Oberlin trigger warning guidelines:</div>
<blockquote style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In an Oberlin class that contains 20 students, we estimate that there may be
about 2 to 3 students in the class who have experienced some form of sexualized
violence.. If 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced IPV, there can
be at least 5-6 survivors of IPV in the class. In other words, <i>you may
have taught and may continue to teach individuals who have experienced
significant trauma.</i> . . .</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Oberlin’s community cannot afford to ignore sexualized violence, including
intimate partner abuse and stalking. Faculty can make a serious impact on
students’ lives by standing against sexual misconduct and making classrooms
safer. </span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But this concern for sexual abuse survivors is quickly
subsumed in a much larger set of issues:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "symbol";">·</span><span style="font-family: "times";">
Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to
anything that might cause trauma. Be aware of <b>racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other
issues of privilege and oppression</b>. Realize that all forms of
violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside
your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "symbol";">·</span><span style="font-family: "times";">
Anything could be a trigger—a smell, song, scene, phrase, place, person,
and so on. Some triggers cannot be anticipated, but many can. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "symbol";">·</span><span style="font-family: "times";">
<b>Remove triggering material</b>
when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The initial goal of warning the student
so they can prepare themselves quickly evolves, in the Oberlin guidelines, to
getting the bad stuff out of the picture entirely. When instructors cannot get
rid of it, they are instructed to apologize for it, in such a way as to close
off any potential exploration of whether or to what extent a work is racist,
classist, elitist, and so on. It is definitionally unclean.</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "symbol";">·</span><span style="font-family: "times";">
Tell students why you have chosen to include this material, even
though you know it is triggering. For example: </span></span></li>
<ul type="circle">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "times";">“…We are reading this work in
spite of the author’s racist frameworks because his work was foundational
to establishing the field of anthropology, and because I think together
we can challenge, deconstruct, and learn from his mistakes.”</span></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "times";">“…This documentary challenges
heterosexism in an important way. It is vital to discuss this
issue. I think watching and discussing this documentary will help
us become better at challenging heterosexism ourselves.”</span></span></li>
</ul>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "symbol";">·</span><span style="font-family: "times";">
<b>Strongly consider developing a
policy to make triggering material optional or offering students an alterative
assignment using different materials. </b> When possible, help students
avoid having to choose between their academic success and their own wellbeing.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These quotes are from a larger policy
which was roundly condemned and ultimately abandoned; there are certainly other
ways to handle trigger warnings, but I think the Oberlin experience indicates
that there is something much, much more complex and problematic going on in the
debate over trigger warnings than simply being polite and considerate. There is
a strong ideological perspective here which is presenting an agenda item as
necessary to protect the mentally ill. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Not only is the evidence that it will do
so nonexistent, it further raises a concern any time people use the sick and
vulnerable to define certain kinds of cultural expression as abusive or
dangerous. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is a thing that always happens when something cannot be
condemned in terms of the choices adults make, but which some people strongly
dislike anyway, whether it is pornography, or violent video games, or
homosexual characters in movies or television. The claim that “You and I are
fine, but we must think of vulnerable” always seems to crop up in this context.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One interpretation of this debate,
then, and I do not say this is the only one or the correct one, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is that for people wishing for the academy to
more clearly and explicitly condemn racism, sexism, ableism, classism, etc. in
the Western canon, this is a slightly modified
won’t-somebody-please-think-of-the-children argument. Yes, they may posit, you
could bring these texts into the classroom and let students and teachers tease
them apart and find these aspects themselves, and decide what they think about
them, but won’t-somebody-please-think-of-the-traumatized?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are a number of things about
mandatory trigger warnings I would describe as potentially harmful. Again, we
haven’t gathered data on this and we don’t know. One, and this may be a minor matter, it makes more work for the instructors, who have to add the warnings to the syllabus. As a member of a profession (medicine) where we are being crushed by a mindset of "just one more" documentation requirement, this is near to my heart.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">More seriously, introducing students to a
text with a series of labels describing the ways in which it is potentially
traumatizing encourages them to anchor upon the ways it which it is offensive even as they are first entering the author’s world and beginning to understand the
author’s concerns and perspective. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Labeling a text as traumatically racist,
sexist, classist or even as containing violence or rape encourages people to
approach a text via a prism of our modern values and concerns, prepared to be
hurt and offended by what has been labelled hurtful and offensive.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The open-ended nature of what
constitutes a trigger and which triggers are going to be labelled concerns me.
Labeling rape and graphic violence, though it may be a good or a bad idea, is
at least fairly limited. Extending trigger warnings to racism, sexism,
classism, heterosexism, elitism and so on seems like an open invitation to a
giant clusterfuck of disagreement not only about what type of thing is a
trigger but of what kind of reference to it (direct or indirect, graphic or abstract) constitutes a trigger. Does a battle in a
history book require a trigger? What about a massacre? Or a description of a
slave auction? A list of slave auctions? A map of the transatlantic slave trade?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Activists of one kind or another will press to have examples of
things offensive to them labelled as triggers. Jewish students will describe
Palestinian nationalism as triggering. Palestinians will describe Zionism as
triggering. Arabs will be triggered by Orientalism and trans students by cissexism. No one will want to be left out, since that would imply that their pain from the oppression they have suffered is less significant than other folks'.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What concerns me about this is not so
much that we will end up with the wrong triggers, or too many triggers, as that
the process itself is likely to be vicious, viriputive, and most of all
endless. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What’s more, if in fact the experience
of the student determines what is traumatizing and we are to “believe the
student” as the Oberlin guidelines mandate, can we imagine a day Christian
students describe homosexual sex in a novel as triggering? At most of our
colleges and universities such a claim would be howled down in outrage, but
this just underscores the fact that formulating a list of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">legitimately</i> traumatizing subjects is an inherently political act.
Black students will be warned about discussions of the slave trade: Southern
students will not get warnings before discussing Sherman’s March. Which may be
very fine and good, but it indicates the presence of unspoken assumptions and
premises in the implementation of “trigger warnings” that have no place in the
explicit theory.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s concerning to me that some
activists are asserting a position of radical vulnerability, in which
triggering things as said to paralyze them with horror. That does not seem like
a stance that is sustainable or emotionally or spiritually healthy. While this
may begin as a pose or a way of advocating for others, as soon as activists
“win” by showing evidence of being triggered, more of them will start to
experience those symptoms. We all respond to positive reinforcement. If we encourage student activists to wear a mask of
extreme vulnerability, to some extent that mask will become reality for some of them, which is not desirable.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The best case I think can be made for “strong” trigger warnings
covering racism, classism, albeism, transexism, etc., is that our society, like
many ostensibly free societies, sustains and reinforces privilege by
quasi-objective measures of capability or application that don’t take into
account the different place marginalized people are coming from.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Take a hypothetical case of a university
with ten swimming scholarships for the ten fastest swimmers in Pittsburgh. The
standards of the scholarship are objective – but when you look into it you may
find 30 public swimming pools in predominantly white neighborhoods, and 2 in
black neighborhoods. Our “objective” scholarship doesn't take into account that
difference in infrastructure between the two communities in Pittsburgh.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Proponents of strong trigger warnings
argue something similar occurs with the traditional back-and-forth of the
academy. The ability to assert one’s beliefs, argue for one’s perspective, and
recognize and vigorously refute slights directed at you, your community (or one
of your communities,) is not distributed equally. One of the ways in which it
is unequally distributed is that a larger proportion of marginalized people have
experienced the kind of trauma that could cause them to be “triggered.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An environment of traditional academic
freedom to set one’s own readings, say or entertain discussions they touch upon
painful and difficult topics, and trust that “the answer to free speech is more
free speech” is, in this account, fine and good for those who have benefited
from white privilege, they having been taught from a young age that their opinions
matter, that they can express them without fear, and without their having to
carry the burden of trauma that may be re-provoked by careless treatment of
painful subjects.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Safe spaces and microaggressions,
trigger warnings and affirmative action: all are premised in this basic (and I
think in some measure correct) argument that we didn’t all get here from the
same place, we are not all in fact here in the same here exactly, some of us
got here hurt and damaged from wrestling with injustice, and a “fairness” that
asks everyone to line up for a footrace when some have been kneecaped is not
very fair at all, really. “</span><span class="st"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The </span></span><i><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-style: normal;">law, in its majestic equality</span></i><span class="st"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">,</span></i></span><span class="st"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under
bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="st"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Accepting that there is something here,
something that is not just self-pity, or a cunning attempt to dictate the terms
of the classroom discussion by professions of weakness, it is still not clear
to be that pre-labeling texts as racist or sexist or classiest is actually
helpful. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="st"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is already in the modern American academy a strong tendency to
interpret all texts through the prism of injustice and oppression. And that is
an important frame, and I don’t wish to slight it, but a good text is so much,
much, much more than that, that I am fearful that mandating labels before the student has taken that very first
step toward interpretation risks making the true power and wonder of the text,
of the author’s creation, harder to access, harder to know.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="st"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is the responsibility of students
and instructors to ultimately pick apart texts: to analyze, criticize, and
place in context the authors ideas, subjects, words and context. One issue,
alluded to above, is that trigger warnings take that work out of the students’
hands and present the answer to them in the syllabus: this work is racist, classiest, and sexist. It comes pre-judged.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="st"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another issue, though, is that analysis
and criticism should follow some sincere effort to inhabit the text and to
understand the author’s world and concerns. A text should be approached, in
other words, as if it might teach you something. It may be uncomfortable to
approach a text in that way: exposing ourselves to different ways of thinking
usually is. But we may do no good service to marginalized students by impeding this act
of empathy: Fewer may be surprised by a textual “microaggression,” but by always
beginning with their grievance placed between themselves and the text, will
fewer grab hold of the texts and take ownership of them, fulling participating in the texts that constitute their cultural capital too? Will fewer be able to say, with Richard Rodriguez </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"I
have taken Caliban's advice. I have stolen their books"? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I tend to think that we should
strengthen marginalized students in other ways than this. The study of gender,
race, ethnicity and so on in relation to the Western canon has exploded over
the last 30 years; those pioneers were not silenced by the naked texts, and I
would not expect their heirs to be paralyzed either. Leave warnings regarding disturbing content to the discretion of the instructors; support those with PTSD with better mental health services and case-by-case accommodations; increase minority attendance, and minority presence in the faculty and the administration, which will do more to un-silence marginalized communities in the academy than any doctrine of labeling. Absence evidence of benefit, don't impose scarlet letters of thoughtcrime on texts; this will impede good reading, which alone makes the text a part of the student and their story -- an act which is not only vital to education but is, especially for the young, especially the marginalized, a source of power, part of the flowering of them and their strength.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-15394988989911607032016-08-01T15:09:00.000-07:002016-08-01T15:09:21.056-07:00Rancid wine in cracked bottles: The Tim Ball story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Tim Ball is <a href="https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/31/a-warm-period-by-any-other-name-the-climatic-optimum/">spinning his wheels</a> at WUWT, pushing this long-discredited, mendacious presentation of Greenland ice core data:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRDmCvGewQlhv4powr1Pw7r9glPIdDh00Ft9cQqQD7sIhaonKze_-ubh_B6KGedTLk0tSsbFfoYF0kqhz3QorU-kOr81dPuYd4VhKAo86uEO2keniwrKtOJKOTf85DkbN655FqSPrU2VQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-08-01+at+2.24.35+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRDmCvGewQlhv4powr1Pw7r9glPIdDh00Ft9cQqQD7sIhaonKze_-ubh_B6KGedTLk0tSsbFfoYF0kqhz3QorU-kOr81dPuYd4VhKAo86uEO2keniwrKtOJKOTf85DkbN655FqSPrU2VQ/s400/Screen+Shot+2016-08-01+at+2.24.35+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
This deception was previously employed by Don Easterbrook:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzJTs2exVXIVUgtz2YsOOcASYmXZd-tiHfJdWRfgEzjAzYWnzGySkXTJhRAP4AZd2weaYw_2B-oKNa5yf7GT0t7F6jh6Qbt_LqrcxcUgastOdwnfSNONEyxY8GLScyCIJHaCE1CKItxJw/s1600/easterbrook_fig5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzJTs2exVXIVUgtz2YsOOcASYmXZd-tiHfJdWRfgEzjAzYWnzGySkXTJhRAP4AZd2weaYw_2B-oKNa5yf7GT0t7F6jh6Qbt_LqrcxcUgastOdwnfSNONEyxY8GLScyCIJHaCE1CKItxJw/s320/easterbrook_fig5.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
. . . regarding which, Skeptical Science <a href="https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=337">has already pointed</a> out the rather glaring denier falsehood:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Easterbrook plots the temperature data from the GISP2 core, as archived <a href="ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt">here</a>.
Easterbrook defines “present” as the year 2000. However, the GISP2
“present” follows a common paleoclimate convention and is actually 1950.
The first data point in the file is at 95 years BP. This would make 95
years BP 1855 — a full 155 years ago, <b>long before any other global temperature record shows any modern warming</b>.
In order to make absolutely sure of my dates, I emailed Richard Alley,
and he confirmed that the GISP2 “present” is 1950, and that the most
recent temperature in the GISP2 series is therefore 1855. . . . </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Unfortunately for Don, the first data point in the temperature series
he’s relying on is not from the “top of the core”, it’s from layers
dated to 1855. The reason is straightforward enough — it takes decades
for snow to consolidate into ice.</blockquote>
Of course both Easterbrook and now Ball are also playing that ever-popular denier game of pretending one regional temperature record can stand as a proxy for global temperatures. But what really touches the nonsense into immortality is treating 1855 temperatures as modern-day temperatures, and denying global warming on that basis.<br />
<br />
Have the razor-sharp critical intellects at WUWT picked up on this rather obvious deception? Not in the first hundred comments, which are mostly deniers arguing about whether warming is caused by a 100,000-year-cycle (rather than CO2) or a 21,000-year-cycle (rather than CO2). Tom Dayton points out the obvious, but "AndyG55" is ready with his unanswerable comeback: <i>Michael Mann is a stupidhead LOL</i>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha_2-jAEEkJOuiv7YF7V5m8XBgILim5iugoBof0eSF_ewoeJqOH6BdeiPR7J_MmJ_ZkLh74jfWMWJVhd4Kij963ifhb3X1aQJu5LgrCZFqvw_4snQ0dHPFzIRT9kTPK7qvVb6ZFVC2Do8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-08-01+at+2.50.00+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha_2-jAEEkJOuiv7YF7V5m8XBgILim5iugoBof0eSF_ewoeJqOH6BdeiPR7J_MmJ_ZkLh74jfWMWJVhd4Kij963ifhb3X1aQJu5LgrCZFqvw_4snQ0dHPFzIRT9kTPK7qvVb6ZFVC2Do8/s400/Screen+Shot+2016-08-01+at+2.50.00+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Steve McIntyre splits the baby in his own inimitable style, warning deniers away from the data set without stating the obvious point that YOU CAN'T REFUTE GLOBAL WARMING WITH A RECORD THAT STOPS IN 1855.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-_VcPmLCN0FmBf-Q8h-wucWL4FBfgs0PsoWQI8hTwseoR02O3ggefmwFDFlEypBSfPyMZcaUYSuSrNwhLMNZR3joFD2NidDdPH4pArLione7RkuB1I3nSDSjQMz2UoqtXdiRwzDedCo4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-08-01+at+2.51.38+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-_VcPmLCN0FmBf-Q8h-wucWL4FBfgs0PsoWQI8hTwseoR02O3ggefmwFDFlEypBSfPyMZcaUYSuSrNwhLMNZR3joFD2NidDdPH4pArLione7RkuB1I3nSDSjQMz2UoqtXdiRwzDedCo4/s400/Screen+Shot+2016-08-01+at+2.51.38+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Other than that, it's the same old nonsense. Someone introduces the idea of a 41,000-year-cycle, so they chase that tennis ball for a while. Then, in response to some mealy-mouthed word salad by Easterbrook himself, Nick Stokes, who is somehow not banned from the monkey house, <a href="https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/31/a-warm-period-by-any-other-name-the-climatic-optimum/#comment-2269241">owns him and Steve McIntyre in one go</a>:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJDFZj0VL9hxi_cda2kYjErw9V_fTyfMeymaYmrTNA1D_NsIh_j0G24N5F8l16XxWUWSRABf-BdEPrGMY5tluOa-e8YFZWreFXVFwD_sH5kg2i_c8B8wINCe8VQqZR4QN8STA5vgeY0tU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-08-01+at+2.57.46+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJDFZj0VL9hxi_cda2kYjErw9V_fTyfMeymaYmrTNA1D_NsIh_j0G24N5F8l16XxWUWSRABf-BdEPrGMY5tluOa-e8YFZWreFXVFwD_sH5kg2i_c8B8wINCe8VQqZR4QN8STA5vgeY0tU/s400/Screen+Shot+2016-08-01+at+2.57.46+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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. . . and that actually shuts up these venerable patriarchs of weaponized ignorance. Bravo, Nick. Bravo.<br />
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TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com213tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6718772691289114123.post-9939315237672249832016-06-02T10:02:00.000-07:002016-06-02T10:02:25.053-07:00We can do 100% renewables. But we probably shouldn't.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-02/exelon-closing-2-illinois-nuclear-plants-after-legislation-fails">Source</a></td></tr>
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<br />
Peter Sinclair has a post up <a href="https://climatecrocks.com/2016/06/01/for-renewable-haters-a-quandary-should-we-subsidize-nuclear/">taunting</a> "renewable haters" who are invited to be embarrassed that nuclear plants, under pressure from cheap natural gas, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/business/energy-environment/nuclear-plants-despite-safety-concerns-gain-support-as-clean-energy-sources.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0">may require public money to stay in operation</a>. Following hard on the heels of that, Exelon <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-02/exelon-closing-2-illinois-nuclear-plants-after-legislation-fails">has announced</a> the shuttering of the Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear plants, 3GW of near-zero carbon energy gone for want of $110 million in subsidy per year (which is the combined losses of the two plants in the current market.)<br />
<br />
As an enthusiastic taunter of those I feel deserve it, I know the people Sinclair is talking about: people who position nuclear as the honest, work-a-day, practical solution, where as renewables are impractical fairy dust, a con sustained by massive public money. Which is ridiculous on all counts: nuclear energy has always required <a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-power-policy.aspx">public support,</a> with the government providing most of the R&D, permanent waste disposal at bargain prices (<a href="http://www.macalester.edu/academics/environmentalstudies/students/projects/citizenscience2010/yuccamountain/background.html">how's that coming, guys?</a>), loan guarantees, even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act">free insurance against the possibility of a meltdown</a>. Meanwhile wind has reached 5% of US electricity production: sunny counties and regions, <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/business/21696941-solar-power-reshaping-energy-production-developing-world-follow-sun">such as Jordan</a>, are finding solar energy profitable without subsidies, as prices for modules continue to fall.<br />
<br />
But the vices of nuclear advocates should not be confused with the virtues of nuclear energy. And just because we can build a 100% RE grid, does not mean we should.<br />
<br />
Looking out into the world today, it is obviously imperative to get human civilization to net zero or net negative GHG emissions as soon as possible. Every year, every month that we don't pushes us further into the heart of a global disaster.<br />
<br />
Renewables require careful load-balancing across large areas, storage, and dynamic demand management to begin to approach 100% of the energy supply. Contrawise, every 1% of baseload power you add makes the intermittent load easier to manage and cheaper overall. Science of Doom has <a href="https://scienceofdoom.com/2015/10/20/renewables-xiv-minimized-cost-of-99-9-renewable-study/">a great post</a> on the math here, and it's worth quoting his conclusion at some length:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
What is the critical problem? Given that storage is extremely
expensive, and given the intermittent nature of renewables with the
worst week of low sun and low wind in a given region – how do you
actually make it work? Because <span style="text-decoration: underline;">yes</span>,
there is a barrier to making a 100% renewable network operate reliably.
It’s not technical, as such, not if you have infinite money.. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It should be crystal clear that if you need 500GW of average supply
to run the US you can’t just build 500GW of “nameplate” renewable
capacity. And you can’t just build 500GW / capacity factor of renewable
capacity (e.g. if we required 500GW just from wind we would
build something like 1.2-1.5TW due to the 30-40% capacity factor of
wind) and just add “affordable storage”. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So, there is no <span style="text-decoration: underline;">technical</span>
barrier to powering the entire US from a renewable grid with lots of
storage. Probably $50TR will be enough for the storage. Or forget the
storage and just build 10x the nameplate of wind farms and have a
transmission grid of 500GW around the entire country. Probably the 5TW
of wind farms will only cost $5TR and the redundant transmission grid
will only cost $20TR – so that’s only $25TR. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hopefully, the point is clear. It’s a different story from dispatchable conventional generation. Adding up the possible <span style="text-decoration: underline;">total</span> energy
from wind and solar is step 1 and that’s been done multiple times. The
critical item, missing from many papers, is to actually analyze the
demand and supply options with respect to a time series and find out
what is missing. And find some sensible mix of generation and storage
(and transmission, although that was not analyzed in this paper) that
matches supply and demand.</blockquote>
<br />
What's more, baseload renewable sources such as geothermal, hydroelectric dams, and tidal power, all require large areas with appropriate geography (and geology) to be successful. Geothermal and tidal power are starting from an extremely small base, while hydroelectric dams (which have significant environmental costs of their own) are already close to their saturation point.<br />
<br />
Compare the Exelon plants, Clinton and Quad Cities. Their combined capacity is 3GW, which at the industry-standard 0.9 capacity factor is roughly 24,000 MW-h per year. Those two plants, alone, produce more GWh of electricity than all the geothermal plants in the nation, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy_in_the_United_States">combined</a>. They produce more clean energy than all the utility solar plants in the nation, <a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/u-s-solar-is-producing-50-percent-more-electricity-than-we-thought/">combined</a>. That would be a bargain for a tiny subsidy of $100-150 million a year. It comes to about $0.05/kWh. We could subsidize our entire electrical grid to that extent and spend less than 2% of the GDP.<br />
<br />
Nuclear energy is, by far, the largest source of low-carbon energy in the United States. Doubling or tripling our capacity could be done easily with the political will to do so. At a bare minimum, we should be maintaining the plants we have to the end of their useful life. Subsidies aren't a dirty word here. At least until we have a comprehensive carbon tax, all low-carbon energy will require subsidies or unfunded mandates, including wind and solar, especially once they reach a scale where their fluctuations necessitate storage.<br />
<br />
Different countries and regions with different resources, relationships, and geography are going to need different mixes of sources to get to net zero. Ruling out either more RE or more nuclear seems irresponsible to me.</div>
TheTrackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10011829472333355911noreply@blogger.com6