MOTHER JONES ON HUMANITY AND NATURE

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185      246         82

July       5       251    3572          535       421       173

             7       993    5504        1312       479       192

           12       380    4118          659       500       108

           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107

           19       412    4606          715       675         85

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
Aug      1    1462     6429       1191       765        193
            3       467     4430         514       514        213

            5     1362     6292       1394       849        345

          10       534     4813         593     1013        198
          12     1504     6556       1242       835        130
          16       522     4525         582       961        162
          18     1358     6312        1365    1089        280

          24       510     4356          679      854        100

          25     1290     5856        1215    1066        149

          30       369     4182         398       960          47
          31       512     4226         619       818        121
 Sept    1     1164     5899        1165     1025       114

Summary:  Just when you thought things were getting better, well, maybe not.

I've been reporting a lot about the hopeful coming vaccine for this coronavirus.  Keep in mind that in addition to no vaccine for the common cold, cancer and heart diseases, here is a list of other afflictions lacking  a vaccine:

• Chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis)
• Chikungunya
• Dengue
• Cytomegalovirus
• HIV/AIDS
• Hookworm infection
• Leishmaniasis
• Malaria
• Respiratory Syncytial Virus
• Schistosomiasis

And scientists have been working on them for many, many decades.  However, look at these successes:

With so many candidates to prevent COVID-19 into Phase 3 trials, reasonable to be hopeful.

Let me add another book to the the list I provided yesterday, Melania and Me:  My Years as Confidant, Advisor and Friend to the First Lady, which will be released on September 15.  The White House has been deprecating this effort, and tossing out the usual lies, but had to pause yesterday because the author, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, has what is getting to be known as The Melania Tapes, sharing a portion with Rachel Maddow.

Ivanka Trump is gaining ground as the second worst personality in the administration.  She secured her status with these tapes.

According to Forbes:

The one-time advisor to the First Lady also provides some salacious details about the First Lady’s relationship with the President, his children, and even some of his policies.

This is science day, and I noticed I have not been talking much about renewable energy, which originally was the focus of this blog site.  For most, this posting will be beyond the pale.  Anyway,  I was reading the Warming is Over...If We Pay for It issue of Mother Jones, and thought I'd provide some of the insights from author Kevin Drum.

But first, some background, based on my career in this field:

• Non-fossil fuel electricity self-sufficiency within a few decades will likely happen.  
• The questions are, what percentage will be nuclear, how really serious global warming is and how much sacrifice the public will tolerate.
• The current fission (uranium, plutonium) reactors are problematic because of the radioactive wastes and potential for bomb-making.

• China is advancing thorium as the fuel, so if this option can quickly be transitioned into the mix, all should be well.  Read about my dinner with Kirk Sorensen, a leading authority on this technology.
• The future, of course, is fusion.  After all, our Sun uses this process, and depending on the type of fusion, we should have enough fuel for a very long time.  However, like long-distance space travel and effective vaccines from COVID-19 to heart disease to cancer, maybe we might never get there.  I twice worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on laser fusion, but lost confidence.  That was in the 1970's.

• A 35-nation partnership called ITER, a fusion reactor being constructed in southern France, will cost $65 billion for first power in 2035.  Commercialization should follow.  But when?  Try 2050.  Then another generation, perhaps into the 22nd century, if ALL GOES WELL.

• However, electricity only represents 37% of all the energy used.  The next largest consumer is transportation.  Today, even EVs are mostly re-charged using fossil fuel energy.  What are the future options?
• Biofuels began with ethanol, which was shown to be a Farm Lobby boondoggle.  I've long been touting biomethanol, combined with a direct methanol fuel cell. 
• However R&D for biofuels have been killed off by the current price of oil.  

• Twelve years ago the price of petroleum went up to $150/barrel.  For the past 5 years, it has been largely under $50/barrel.  No biofuel can compete at this price.

• The result is that electric vehicles have developed.  But the lithium battery is the last battery, and, all things being equal, a fuel cell vehicle can go four times further.  Methanol is the only liquid that can be fed to a fuel cell, but the industry seems fascinated with hydrogen, which is very expensive.  Nothing much will happen until oil jumps back to $150/barrel.

• Then there is aviation.  A replacement for jet fuel is also long into the future with the current low price of oil.  Read my HuffPo on The Future of Sustainable Aviation.  The long term solution is hydrogen, beginning with a fast dirigible, then the National Aerospace Plane.  But when?  22nd century?

• What is the Green New Deal?

• A proposed Democratic legislative package to address climate change and economic inequality.  
• Evocative of FDR's New Deal in response to the Great Depression.  
• Basically, it's a program to reverse Donald Trump's inane policies reversing air/water pollution regulations, pull-out from the Paris Climate Change Agreement and promotion of coal, plus more oil from delicate environmental sites.
• Interestingly enough, the two primary leaders are Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey.  As you must know by now, Markey, endorsed by AO-C, just fended off Rep. Joe Kennedy II in Massachusetts.
• President Trump ridiculed this effort saying it will cost $100 trillion.
• The GND is aspirational, and the point is that if we don't do something now, the cost of delay will be catastrophic in the future.

With that, on to Mother Jones (I'm italicizing direct quotes.  The print might be too small for some of you, so you can instead read that article.  There is a second reason why so tiny, as you will see at the end.) and Kevin Drum:

• You know that since the start of the Industrial Revolution we’ve dumped more than 500 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere and we’re adding about 10 billion more each year. You know that global temperatures have risen 1 degree Celsius over the past century and we’re on track for 2 degrees within another few decades.
• And you know what this means. It means more extreme weather. More hurricanes. More droughts. More flooding. More wildfires. More heat-related deaths. There will be more infectious disease as insects move ever farther north. The Northwest Passage will be open for much of the year. Sea levels will rise by several feet as the ice shelves of Greenland and the Antarctic melt, producing bigger storm swells and more intense flooding in low-lying areas around the world.
• About three-quarters of carbon emissions come from burning fossil fuels for power.
• Over the past 40 years, the price of delivering one watt of solar power has dropped from about $100 to $1. 
• In 2019, Los Angeles signed a deal to provide 400 megawatts of solar power at a price under 4 cents per kilowatt-hour—including battery storage to keep that power available day and night.
• Cost of Generation (cents/kWh): (if not italicized, means I am adding this)
• wind onshore  2.8 - 5.5
• wind offshore  6.4 - 11.5
• solar utility  3.2 - 4.2
• residential PV  15.1 - 24.2
• geothermal  6.9 0 11.2
• nuclear  11.8 - 19.2
• coal  3.3 - 15.2
• CCGT  4.4 - 6.8

• Clearly, wind energy and utility solar facilities are the lowest cost options today.  CCGT has to do with natural gas, which emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, but still half.  Drum seemed excited about offshore wind energy, but see how much that costs.  For those with PV on you roof, that is the most expensive way to generate electricity.
•  Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that by 2050, wind and solar can satisfy 80 percent of electricity demand in most advanced countries. But due to inadequate infrastructure in some cases and lack of wind and sun in others, not all countries can meet this goal, which means that even with favorable government policies and big commitments to clean energy, the growth of wind and solar will probably provide only about half of the world’s demand for electricity by midcentury.
• This inevitably means we have to face up to some bad news. If existing technologies like wind, solar, and nuclear can get us only halfway to our goal—or maybe a bit more—the other half would seem to require cutting back on energy consumption.
• But the public likes its current lifestyle, for:   If the tax was $1, only 57 percent supported it. If the tax was $10, that plummeted to 28 percent. Those aren’t typos. Only about half of Americans are willing to pay $1 per month to fight climate change. Only about a quarter are willing to pay $10 per month.  Americans in particular like to watch football on a 60 inch screen in air-conditioned comfort.
• Further:  When pollsters asked specific questions, only small fractions said they’d fly less frequently, purchase an electric car, or give up meat. And a paltry 16 percent said they’d be willing to pay a climate tax of $8–$40 per month.

• The International Energy Agency estimates that the world spends about $22 billion per year on clean energy innovation. The US share of that is $7 billion—that’s about 0.03 percent of our economy. (Trump proposed cutting that figure almost in half.) This is pathetic if you accept that climate change is an existential threat to our planet. During World War II, the United States devoted 30 percent of its economy to the war effort—or one thousand times what we’re spending on green tech.
• This article further did not offer much about how best to develop energy storage, for batteries are just too expensive.  The Sun does not shine all the time and winds come and go.
• It dallied about just taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but neglected to say much about cost, which is substantial.
• Advocated planting more trees.  I wonder about that.  In the long term, trees give back the carbon dioxide into the air, and worse, because of methane.
• The author advocated returning to ethanol.  Ethanol!  
• There must be a life-style change.  Eat less meat, for example.  Tolerate cooler rooms in the winter and warmer ones in the summer.
• Worry was expressed about geoengineering.  That link is to one of my HuffPos.

The more I read, the more I began to wonder who was Kevin Drum.  Well, he's smart, as he started at Caltech, but ended up graduating from Cal State Long Beach in journalism.  He managed a Radio Shack for several years.  He has no experience in energy.  None!  I just ended my subscription to Mother Jones.

One thing Drum hinted about was the money available in the defense budget.  He should have provided some details, for the latest data from May 2020 is that the USA spends MORE ON DEFENSE THAN THE NEXT 10 COUNTRIES, COMBINED:

The Cold War is over, China has no interest in conquering the USA (what you read about their military adventures is mostly the military-industrial complex--MIC--paying off reporters to exaggerate the truth), Russia is essentially toothless, although they still have those nuclear missiles.  North Korea is a joke and Iran has no capability.  We can safely shift hundreds of billions into the New Green Deal, thus creating clean jobs and saving Planet Earth and Humanity.  There are 1.3 million on active duty in the military.  Reduce those numbers, for serious ground wars are now obsolete, and, in the meantime, put them to work on contact tracing and helping with developing our national infrastructure.  

However, the MIC is a powerful lobbying force, so perhaps Joe Biden can compromise by offering at least a few big budget items like another aircraft carrier.  Well, maybe not, for we have around half the carriers in the world, with a future Navy budget that will more than double our number.  Japan is number two, but is just ready to deploy its first new one in 75 years.  75 years!  That was 1945, when World War II ended.  Remember this "next" China carrier above?  That was a hoax perpetrated by guess who?

Continuing at this international level, you must know that Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, announced his resignation.  He will be replaced by the next leader of the Liberal Democratic party on September 14.  That person will be 71-year old Yoshihide Suga, who does 100 sit-ups in the morning, and another 100 each night.  Worked.  He lost 31 pounds.

Once Super Typhoon Maysak made landfall over South Korea at 100 MPH.  Right behind is Haishen, which is projected to only reach Category 4, with a track that seems headed exactly where Maysak entered the country.  Math models, however, show the eye with a wide dispersion potential:

Sometimes I think this monkey might be me:

See how large that coconut crab is?  I once went to Rangiroa, French Polynesia, and stayed in this two-story thatched hut like you see in romantic photos of the South Pacific.  Read about what lives inside this home.  I woke up early and decided to go for a walk.  Blocking my way were three of these monsters.  Then it occurred to me that the outhouse was outside.  What if that night I had...

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