Political Roundtable Part XXXI

[pancakes3]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amorylovins/2014/09/07/fusion-power-the-case-of-the-wrong-competitors/?sh=4bfa55b16c3b

old piece from 2014 but as usual, Lovins nails it. I suspect the economics have only gotten
better for renewables and therefore, worse for everything else since 2014.

Yes, they have. But we are still going to have that messy transition as we still need power to create those solar panels.

And we still need those rare earth minerals for batteries. We have 14% of the worlds reserves but won't mine them. Combine that set of NIMBY issues with you now have the fossil fuel guys battling off-shore wind and solar farms.

It is going to be a fascinating transition.

https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manufacture-actually-produce/

What they found was good news for solar energy advocates: solar panels generate more energy than they use, overall, and have been doing so since at least 2010.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824

This was 9 years ago and has almost certainly improved since then.

Of course there is no free lunch. No one can rescind the laws of physics.

I'm not sure what the quibble is. Renewables are passive and the passivity means there's less control over output, which is why energy production requires a portfolio. Nuclear is preferred to fossil because of carbon emissions.

There are also different metrics of efficiency. When coal plants say they're 45% efficient, it means 45% of the energy produced is converted to usable electricity. While solar can claim that the panels generate more energy than they use, the efficiency of solar energy received vs. electricity generated is about 20-25%. Not a big deal, because there are no emissions. Apples to oranges.

The fusion breakthrough, and claims that it can generate more energy than it uses, doesn't really mean anything because at the end of the day, the reactor itself isn't much more different than a fission, or even coal plant, and the reactor efficiency is roughly the same: 45% conversion of heat to electricity. And it doesn't matter for fusion because it's 0 emission. Coal plants care about conversion efficiency because the more efficient, the less coal/kw they'll need, and less emissions.

And ultimately, yes, the real calculus boils down to $/kw, except fossil plants don't include the uncalculable cost of global warming into their $/kw figure, and renewables don't bake in the uncalculable cost of having inconsistent energy availability into theirs.

[Zonkerbl]

Evergreen tweet this year

Read on Twitter

Waiting for the economy is in a shambles post

Hm, arguably the economy has been in a shambles since the 80s when the Republicans, led by Reagan, led the great "defund the govt through tax breaks" campaign that has resulted in the US having the most unequal income distribution in the high income world. If you're in the top 10-20%, the economy's doing fine, for everyone else the economy has been in a shambles for two generations.

[dckingsfan]

Yes, they have. But we are still going to have that messy transition as we still need power to create those solar panels.

And we still need those rare earth minerals for batteries. We have 14% of the worlds reserves but won't mine them. Combine that set of NIMBY issues with you now have the fossil fuel guys battling off-shore wind and solar farms.

It is going to be a fascinating transition.

https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manufacture-actually-produce/

What they found was good news for solar energy advocates: solar panels generate more energy than they use, overall, and have been doing so since at least 2010.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824

This was 9 years ago and has almost certainly improved since then.

Of course there is no free lunch. No one can rescind the laws of physics.

I'm not sure what the quibble is. Renewables are passive and the passivity means there's less control over output, which is why energy production requires a portfolio. Nuclear is preferred to fossil because of carbon emissions.

There are also different metrics of efficiency. When coal plants say they're 45% efficient, it means 45% of the energy produced is converted to usable electricity. While solar can claim that the panels generate more energy than they use, the efficiency of solar energy received vs. electricity generated is about 20-25%. Not a big deal, because there are no emissions. Apples to oranges.

The fusion breakthrough, and claims that it can generate more energy than it uses, doesn't really mean anything because at the end of the day, the reactor itself isn't much more different than a fission, or even coal plant, and the reactor efficiency is roughly the same: 45% conversion of heat to electricity. And it doesn't matter for fusion because it's 0 emission. Coal plants care about conversion efficiency because the more efficient, the less coal/kw they'll need, and less emissions.

And ultimately, yes, the real calculus boils down to $/kw, except fossil plants don't include the uncalculable cost of global warming into their $/kw figure, and renewables don't bake in the uncalculable cost of having inconsistent energy availability into theirs.

And that ties us right into externality. The fossil fuel users don't pay the true cost of burning fossil fuels - if they did, we would be very much further along our path to be fossil fuel free...

[dckingsfan]

Evergreen tweet this year

Read on Twitter

Waiting for the economy is in a shambles depression post

Hm, arguably the economy has been in a shambles since the 80s when the Republicans, led by Reagan, led the great "defund the govt through tax breaks" campaign that has resulted in the US having the most unequal income distribution in the high income world. If you're in the top 10-20%, the economy's doing fine, for everyone else the economy has been in a shambles for two generations.

Fixed.

[Wizardspride]

Read on Twitter

?t=urpwldPsklNymzMOIB6iig&s=19

[Pointgod]

TGW wants us to understand why people voted for Trump. It’s simple, you got conned by a Supreme grifter and liar because of your bigotry, anger or general ignorance about politics. If more people had taken politics seriously and identified that this clown isn’t fit to clean the Whitehouse toilets, the country wouldn’t have been set back a decade. You really couldn’t write a better parody.

Read on Twitter

[Zonkerbl]

TGW wants us to understand why people voted for Trump. It’s simple, you got conned by a Supreme grifter and liar because of your bigotry, anger or general ignorance about politics. If more people had taken politics seriously and identified that this clown isn’t fit to clean the Whitehouse toilets, the country wouldn’t have been set back a decade. You really couldn’t write a better parody.

Read on Twitter

I'm getting serious late night Shopping Channel vibes from this

[Pointgod]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/935341/us-support-for-legal-marijuana-since-2000-by-political-party/

Dems have generally been ahead on the issue, and those I know who call themselves Liberal have consistently been way ahead. The 'Moderate' Democrats though have not. Biden in particular has been notably behind the times. And while he says the right things in the White House, it's not like there has been a massive Federal push to decriminalize it and release prisoners whose sole 'crime' was weed. Proud of Maryland for joining the ranks of States who are doing it, even in this patchwork piece by piece way.

What you consider as "liberal", I call progressive. For example, Biden is liberal; Bernie is progressive. Manchin is a moderate. The spectrum in the US is totally skewed to a point where these terms are used interchangeably, when by worldly view, someone like Bernie is actually considered center left in most countries. Whatever...that's a whole 'nother topic.

Way I understand it, the primary difference between Liberals and Progressives is who pays for the social programs they both support. Liberals do it the traditional way: tax the people and spread the burden. Progressives say Corporations should pay their damn share and not have more power and more freedom than people. Not surprisingly it is a harder road for Progressives to get elected when they don't raise all the cash from corporations, lobbyists and moneyed interests. Liberals basically play the dirty game of politics in order to get reelected and try to stay in place where they can cut the right kind of deals. Moderates even more so, but they actively befriend the big money by trying to look like Republican Lite.

Biden was Moderate his whole career until national changes started pulling the whole power structure a little bit more Left. But that was barely a correction of the drift towards the Right that the elite powers had engineered since Reagan. For decades power brokers and image makers were able to convince Pols that the way to get the most voters was to show them they were nearly as Republican as the next guy while still remaining a Dem. Part of that was a smear campaign against the word Liberal itself. A majority of the American people support the policies of so-called Liberals, while throwing shxt on the name.

I'm happy we have dragged the Overton window a little bit more to the left. To where Bernie and Warren and Katie Porter and the Squad have relevance and force the Mods and Liberals to keep it honest. If a career politician like Biden has to bend to the will of the leftern side, then hey we get better laws passed. But yeah, politics is ugly and the compromises people make to stay in power eventually seem to degrade some of the principles that got them elected in the first place.

There’s a lot of crossover between the different factions of the left. There are people who are Progressive on some issues yet they’d be labelled Liberal while some people might be Moderate on some issues more Liberal on others, but the key thing that people like TGW ignore is that the Democratic Party agrees on 95% of the issues and policies, it’s just a matter implementation and implications. There are so called Liberals who want to tax corporations, but may not agree that the government can just endlessly print money without unintended consequences.

I think my biggest criticism of so called Progressives like TGW is that they don’t acknowledge they don’t have a majority in Congress so a lot of things become performative purity tests. At some point AOC won’t be far left enough for Progressives and she’s already received heavy criticism from far left Twitter for not somehow being able to wave a magic wand. At the end of the day TGW wants to make enemies of Democrats that doesn’t 100% align to his view points instead of focusing on how Republicans block legislation. I’ve asked this question before, but can someone name one Republican politician that supports getting rid of citizens united and money out of politics? There are a lot of Democratic politicians that support it, even the ones that take donations from corporations because they’re smart enough to know you don’t unilaterally disarm until you have the numbers for campaign finance reform. You don’t get anything passed if Republicans gain power because they can’t be reasoned with, so I don’t see it as betraying principles to prioritize working small progress over going backwards

[verbal8]

TGW wants us to understand why people voted for Trump. It’s simple, you got conned by a Supreme grifter and liar because of your bigotry, anger or general ignorance about politics. If more people had taken politics seriously and identified that this clown isn’t fit to clean the Whitehouse toilets, the country wouldn’t have been set back a decade. You really couldn’t write a better parody.

Read on Twitter

I'm getting serious late night Shopping Channel vibes from this

I think the QVC crowd(and spouses) is probably Trump's key demographic.

[verbal8]

double post

[dobrojim]

[snip]

I'm not sure what the quibble is. Renewables are passive and the passivity means there's less control over output, which is why energy production requires a portfolio. Nuclear is preferred to fossil because of carbon emissions.

There are also different metrics of efficiency. When coal plants say they're 45% efficient, it means 45% of the energy produced is converted to usable electricity. While solar can claim that the panels generate more energy than they use, the efficiency of solar energy received vs. electricity generated is about 20-25%. Not a big deal, because there are no emissions. Apples to oranges.

The fusion breakthrough, and claims that it can generate more energy than it uses, doesn't really mean anything because at the end of the day, the reactor itself isn't much more different than a fission, or even coal plant, and the reactor efficiency is roughly the same: 45% conversion of heat to electricity. And it doesn't matter for fusion because it's 0 emission. Coal plants care about conversion efficiency because the more efficient, the less coal/kw they'll need, and less emissions.

And ultimately, yes, the real calculus boils down to $/kw, except fossil plants don't include the uncalculable cost of global warming into their $/kw figure, and renewables don't bake in the uncalculable cost of having inconsistent energy availability into theirs.

General agreement except for your statement that nuclear is preferable because of no carbon emissions.

Lovins explains why

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/why-nuclear-power-is-bad-for-your-wallet-and-the-climate

Nuclear power has bleak prospects because it has no business case. New plants cost 3–8x or 5–13x more per kWh than unsubsidized new solar or windpower, so new nuclear power produces 3–13x fewer kWh per dollar and therefore displaces 3–13x less carbon per dollar than new renewables. Thus buying nuclear makes climate change worse. End-use efficiency is even cheaper than renewables, hence even more climate-effective. Arithmetic is not an opinion.

Unsubsidized efficiency or renewables even beat most existing reactors’ operating cost, so a dozen have closed over the past decade. Congress is trying to rescue the others with a $6 billion lifeline and durable, generous new operating subsidies to replace or augment state largesse—adding to existing federal subsidies that rival or exceed nuclear construction costs.

But no business case means no climate case. Propping up obsolete assets so they don’t exit the market blocks more climate-effective replacements—efficiency and renewables that save even more carbon per dollar. Supporters of new subsidies for the sake of the climate just got played.

Modern renewable generation keeps rising faster than nuclear output ever did in its 1980s heyday. During 2010–20, renewables reduced global power-sector carbon emissions 6x more than coal-to-gas switching (ignoring methane escape), and 5x more than nuclear growth.

Among compelling examples, Germany replaced both nuclear and coal generation with efficiency and renewables: in 2010–20, generation from lignite fell 37%, hard coal 64%, oil 52%, and nuclear 54%; gas power rose 3%; GDP rose 11% (17% pre-pandemic); power-sector CO2 fell 41%, meeting its target a year early with five percentage points to spare.

Japan’s savings and renewables meanwhile displaced 109% of lost nuclear output if adjusted for GDP growth, 95% if not, so its 21 “operational” reactors, shut for 10–14 years and counting, lost their market. And no country retains an operational need or business case for big “baseload” thermal plants—costly, inflexible, now superfluous for reliability—though inflexible mindsets retire even more slowly.

Many in Washington mouth the mushy mantra that climate urgency demands “all of the above.” Actually, no: the more urgent climate change is, the more we must invest judiciously, not indiscriminately, to buy cheap, fast, sure options instead of costly, slow, speculative ones. Only this strategy saves the most carbon per dollar and per year. Anything else worsens climate change.

So the next time you hear some official, eager to appease every constituency, say we support “all of the above—we’re not picking and backing winners,” remember the retort by the dean of U.S. utility regulators, Peter Bradford: “No, we’re not picking and backing winners. They don’t need it. We’re picking and backing losers.”

PS if you google renewable energy reliability, you discover that based on data as opposed to
commonly held beliefs, renewable energy is reliable compared to alternatives.

Lengthy piece on this topic

https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-energy-and-the-grid-debunked

simple explanation - the non-renewable sources are mistakenly thought to be more reliable than
they actually are

and

the renewable sources are widely and mistakenly believed to be less reliable than they are.

[Zonkerbl]

I mean, conservatives are all conformist sheep and they are easy to manipulate, that is why rich people have chosen them to con.

Liberals are all "independent thinkers" which means most of them are absolutely insane. And they never, ever agree with each other.

Pick your poison.

[dobrojim]

Re making public tax returns of elected officials -

it ought to be required as opposed to optional for all
(POTUS, VPOTUS, Congresspeople and Senators and SCOTUS).

It seems obvious the GOP will retaliate but how does retaliation
work when Biden already released his returns. The only recent
POTUS who didn't was Golfy McBonespurs with the bad faith
excuse that he was under audit as if that was relevant
(he signed and filed the return).

[Zonkerbl]

Yes it absolutely should be mandatory from now on. All these "gentleman's agreements" that Trump shredded need to be written in stone.

What a thief. Basically went from losing $32 million a year to making money off forcing the Secret Service to overpay to stay at Mar a Lago, plus whatever extra foreign spies were willing to pay to sniff around his collection of illegally stored nuclear secrets. Not just corrupt but absolutely pathetic.

[pancakes3]

i like how some GOP idiot said a few days ago that "what next? SCOTUS?"

and it's like... uh... yeah.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

MILITARY SERVICE SHOULD BE AS CLOSE to mandatory for ANY US CONGRESS or US SENATE position.

The US Postal Service at one point would give veteran's preference points (prioritized higher) in lieu of employment.
WHAT I AM SAYING IS A Prerequisite should be EITHER Service or Service Awareness CERTIFICATE.
I'm sick of the fackers saying they support the service and I LOATHE SO-CALLED patriots who are more like fascists or kkk hooded rats.

ALSO, in addition to some DEMONSTRATED COMPETENCY with military vs political; THERE NEEDS TO BE CIVICS 301. How does a bill become a law.

FINALLY, tabulation of the vote. COME ON MAN. Can we all UNCOVER THE PROCESS. THE ELECtoral Collage... electoral college WHO DEY IS???


Why can't proxy be done via zoom per locale if secure vote is EASY. (Motor vehicle registration, streaming service, phone etc could all be checks and balance)

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

People thrive on chaos.

Lawyers love slippery slope and billing hours extensive. My way would shut down a lot of bullspit.

[dobrojim]

Ken,
Given that there is an aspect of actual indoctrination that comes with
military service, I would expand that requirement to others types
of public service as well. Military and law enforcement both *in some cases*
attract certain people for the wrong reasons, power trips.

[doclinkin]

MILITARY SERVICE SHOULD BE AS CLOSE to mandatory for ANY US CONGRESS or US SENATE position.)

Love ya buddy, and also I say "nonsense" to that. No man, we need smart principled people of every walk of life, who can understand the needs of the people they represent. This is not the United States of the Armed Forces. You want your laws written by the best and brightest and most forward-looking people. But you want a wide selection, more than one narrow field. I don't care if you are a college professor or air force captain or constitutional scholar or damn good lawyer. I want a slice of all of America so the needs of everybody get put in the spotlight.

Doesn't matter their background, you want smart people who bargain hard but cut good deals. Statesmen not ideologues. Yes I agree a former military guy like John McCain was principled enough to fight for his country AND knew when to compromise. He may have been on the opposite side of the aisle from my guys on most issues, but you never doubted that o the big issues he was doing what he thought was best for the country, more so than strictly working to feed his lobbyists.

Still, I appreciated a guy like Barney Frank, who did the same from the opposite perspective. You want pols who can recognize that we are all in it together. That they represent even the guy who didn't vote for them. And that they even protect people who vote against their best interests and don't really know what they want. Maybe that guy is military, but I don't care if you've been in a wheel chair your whole life and can't do a push-up. If you have damn good ideas and can rally people to vote for them, you're the guy I want in office.

[Zonkerbl]

One way to implement Ken's idea in a less terrifyingly totalitarian way is mandatory public service. Israel does this (as does Russia and a number of other countries).

I like the idea of letting there be a paid, non military option so poor people don't feel they have to sacrifice their life to escape poverty.