Author Archives: kowalski099

How to power America with renewables on the cheap: Build a shit ton of wind and solar capacity

by kowalski099 Posted on March 28, 2013

How to power America with renewables on the cheap: Build a shit ton of wind and solar capacity

By John Upton

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Wind and solar will do the trick, but we’ll need a whole lot of them.

America could be powered almost entirely with wind turbines and solar systems by 2030 at a cost comparable to what we’re spending for dirty power today, a new study finds. The necessary approach would surprise most people, and it would generate enough economic activity to make any capitalist drool: Build, build, build … and then build some more.

From Midwest Energy News:

The analysis … challenges the common notion that wind and solar power need to be paired with fossil fuel or nuclear generators, so utilities can meet electricity demand when it’s not windy or sunny.

The paper instead proposes building out a “seemingly excessive” amount of wind and solar generation capacity — two to three times the grid’s actual peak load. By spreading that generation across a wide enough geographic area, Rust Belt utilities could get virtually all of their electricity from renewables in 2030, at a cost comparable to today’s prices, it says.

For the study, published in the Journal of Power Sources, researchers used a model to evaluate the cost effectiveness and reliability of tens of billions of combinations of renewable energy generation and storage capacity. They found:

At 2030 technology costs and with excess electricity displacing natural gas, we find that the electric system can be powered 90%–99.9% of hours entirely on renewable electricity, at costs comparable to today’s—but only if we optimize the mix of generation and storage technologies. …

We find that 90% of hours are covered most cost-effectively by a system that generates from renewables 180% the electrical energy needed by load, and 99.9% of hours are covered by generating almost 290% of need. Only [9 to 72 hours] of storage were required to cover 99.9% of hours of load over four years. So much excess generation of renewables is a new idea, but it is not problematic or inefficient, any more than it is problematic to build a thermal power plant requiring fuel input at 250% of the electrical output, as we do today.

The findings support a growing awareness of the potential for renewable energy to power America — and a rejection of doomsayers and fossil fuel executives who say we must keep propping ourselves up with coal, natural gas, and oil.

So keep those wind and solar farms coming, America. And throw in a few batteries too.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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How to power America with renewables on the cheap: Build a shit ton of wind and solar capacity

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Obama creates five new national monuments

by kowalski099 Posted on March 25, 2013

Obama creates five new national monuments

By John Upton

Shutterstock

/ Mariia SatsMonumental.

President Barack Obama doesn’t just think the San Juan Islands are awesome. He thinks they are monumentally awesome.

Obama today will announce the designation of five new national monuments, including nearly 1,000 acres on the San Juan archipelago off the coast of Washington state.

That will more than double his monument-designating tally under the 1906 Antiquities Act to a total of nine.

From The Seattle Times:

The lands that islanders had sought to preserve are already federally owned and overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. While there were no apparent plans for the government to sell or develop the properties, the monument designation offers virtual certainty they will remain protected in perpetuity.

U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, credited “years of persistence” by environmental and business leaders who built a coalition to campaign for the monument.

A national monument is a lot like a national park, except that the president can designate one without the approval of Congress. Other national monuments include the Statue of Liberty in New York City and the Muir Woods north of San Francisco. There are about 100 in all.

Here are the national monuments being protected today, from USA Today:

The San Juan Islands National Monument in Washington state
First State National Monument in Delaware
The Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico
Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio
A monument commemorating Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railway in Maryland

Having gained lots of experience handing public land over to energy companies to drill and pollute, Obama today offers an overdue nod to wilderness and American history.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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Obama creates five new national monuments

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How NASA Scientists Are Turning L.A. into One Big Climate-Change Lab

by kowalski099 Posted on March 4, 2013

green4us

From airborne to chemicals to sunshine itself, measuring change in the West Coast’s biggest city. Ben Amstutz/Flickr Southern California’s Mount Wilson is a lonesome, hostile peak — prone to sudden rock falls, sometimes ringed by wildfire — that nevertheless has attracted some of the greatest minds in modern science. George Ellery Hale, one of the godfathers of astrophysics, founded the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904 and divined that sunspots were magnetic. His acolyte Edwin Hubble used a huge telescope, dragged up by mule train, to prove the universe was expanding. Even Albert Einstein made a pilgrimage in the 1930s to hobnob with the astronomers (and suffered a terrible hair day, a photo shows). To keep reading, click here.

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How NASA Scientists Are Turning L.A. into One Big Climate-Change Lab

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Good News of the Day: Gay Marriage in California

by kowalski099 Posted on March 2, 2013

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According to the latest Field Poll, approval of gay marriage in California is continuing its accelerated pace of the past few years. Between 1977 and 2006, the number of people who approve of same-sex marriage increased slowly but steadily at the rate of about half a percentage point per year. Since 2006, however, approval has skyrocketed from 44 percent to 61 percent, a little over two percentage points per year.

The latest poll confirms this growth rate: the number approving has gone up from 59 percent to 61 percent in just one year. We’re now very close to the two-thirds tipping point that’s a good rule of thumb for getting major legislation passed consistently. Even as we wait for Proposition 8 to wend its way through the court, it’s pretty obvious that within a year or two it won’t matter. An initiative to make gay marriage legal will barely even be controversial and would pass by a wide margin if it were on the ballot.

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Good News of the Day: Gay Marriage in California

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Conservatives Need to Leave Their Comfort Zone on Poverty, Charity, and Welfare

by kowalski099 Posted on March 1, 2013

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Philip Klein wrote on Wednesday that he was unhappy about the lack of healthcare panels at CPAC this year. “Interest in health care policy on the Right is looking more like a fad built around opposition to Obamacare,” he concluded. Today he directs my attention to Ben Grivno:

Healthcare isn’t the only panel discussion CPAC is missing. I, too, examined the CPAC 2013 schedule and there are exactly zero panel discussions on poverty, charity, welfare, or community involvement — all of which are important issues to a majority of Americans….Considering the level of disinterest in these crucial topics, Conservatives should not be surprised we are perceived as uncaring by most of America….If the right is to have any hope of becoming a permanent majority, we must learn to enthusiastically embrace issues outside of our comfort zone. These issues we’re ignoring are just waiting to have conservative principles applied to them.

Obviously I have my doubts that these issues desperately need to have conservative principles applied to them, but then, I’m a liberal. I wouldn’t think that, would I?

Still, Grivno is right that conservatives need to demonstrate some genuine interest in these problems. If the only things that gets the crowds roaring at CPAC are attacks on gays and calls to slash spending on food stamps, it’s not much of a surprise that conservatives are perceived as uncaring. It’s because their revealed preferences demonstrate pretty conclusively that they are uncaring.

Times change. In the same way that Democrats had to painfully come to grips with growing public anxiety over crime in the 70s and 80s, conservatives need to respond to today’s growing public anxiety over middle-class wage stagnation and growing income inequality. And within a conservative framework, they need to genuinely respond, not just produce tired old nostrums that are plainly intended more for looks than as real solutions. The public didn’t buy it when Democrats initially tried to brush off crime with shibboleths, and they won’t be any more indulgent with conservatives over modern-day pocketbook issues.

But yeah, this will require conservatives to work outside their comfort zones. That’s going to take a while.

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Quote of the Day: Frying the Planet Is Okay As Long As We Protect It From Asteroids

by kowalski099 Posted on February 17, 2013

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From Andrew Stuttaford, complaining about liberal spending priorities:

We waste a fortune on measures (that will have no impact for decades, if ever) to tamper with the climate. Some of that money would be better spent on asteroid insurance.

I can’t really come up with anything witty to say about this. I just wanted to save it for posterity in case someone decides to run a contest at the end of the year or something.

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Quote of the Day: Frying the Planet Is Okay As Long As We Protect It From Asteroids

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Obama’s Empty Promises of Transparency on National Security

by kowalski099 Posted on February 13, 2013

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During his first term in office, President Barack Obama often pledged to honor American ‘values’—especially transparency—in the war on terror. During the first State Of The Union address of his second term, Obama returned to that theme, promising to “enlist our values” while killing suspected terrorists.

This time, Obama spoke of past accomplishments as well as future commitments, and responded, perhaps for the first time, to critics of the administration’s largely opaque targeted killing program:

My Administration has worked tirelessly to forge a durable legal and policy framework to guide our counterterrorism operations. Throughout, we have kept Congress fully informed of our efforts. I recognize that in our democracy, no one should just take my word that we’re doing things the right way. So, in the months ahead, I will continue to engage with Congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention, and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.

Obama is acknowledging critics who argue that his use of targeted killing has caused the deaths of innocent people—not just terrorists. It’s likely the first time Obama has spoken of the necessity of “checks and balances” on the targeted killing program. But Obama’s definition of checks and balances probably doesn’t include a targeted killing court that would independently evaluate whether or not someone should be placed on a “kill list.” Instead, he may simply mean that he will tell certain members of Congress after he orders the deaths of suspected terrorists.

Obama’s past record, however, suggests that his promises of transparency will be unmet, and his promise to “continue to engage with Congress” implies that he believes his administration is already meeting most of its transparency obligations.

So far, Obama has disclosed few details of the targeted killing program to Congress, let alone to the public. Until last week, the Obama administration had never shared any of the Department of Justice legal memos justifying the use of targeted killing against American terror suspects abroad. Only recently did the congressional intelligence committees begin monthly visits to CIA headquarters to observe videos of targeted killing operations, and that only began at the insistence of Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate intelligence committee. As the American Civil Liberties Union’s Chris Anders told me last July, when Congress was considering compelling the administration to share the targeted killing memos with Congress, “The key committees of Congress don’t even know what the legal standard for targeted killing is or how they’re applying it. So how can they do meaningful oversight?”

Obama’s broader record on national security transparency is unimpressive. His administration has consistently invoked the state secrets doctrine to block judicial scrutiny of Bush-era abuses and national security practices. It has resisted legal efforts by civil libertarian groups to shed light on Obama administration policies such as targeted killing, calling them “secret” even when they are public knowledge. When it comes to the Freedom of Information Act, the Obama administration’s promises of transparency have gone unfulfilled.

A promise to be “even more” transparent from an administration that has been anything but has little meaning.

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How to Make Money by Screwing Your Customers

by kowalski099 Posted on February 11, 2013

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The mortgage servicing industry has always been a bit of a black hole. Servicers aren’t the folks who make loans, package loans, or invest in loans. Rather, they’re the folks who collect payments and handle the routine administrative work after loans have been packaged up and sold off as securities. Basically, they do the gruntwork.

So they had little to do with creating the mortgage crisis of the aughts. However, despite their unglamorous middleman role, they’ve been one of the chief obstacles to fixing the mortgage crisis over the past few years. The reason is fairly simple: they make more money by screwing borrowers who are in trouble than they do by trying to come up with solutions. David Dayen explains:

In general, servicers are paid through a percentage of the unpaid principal balance on a loan. This creates problems when a borrower gets into trouble and can no longer afford their payments. There are many modifications to help a borrower in such a bind, the most sustainable, successful type being direct reductions of the principal, for obvious reasons. But forgiving principal cuts directly into servicer profits by cutting the unpaid principal balance, so most servicers shy away from it. Moreover, servicers collect structured fees — such as late fees — which make it profitable to put a borrower in default and keep him there. And foreclosures don’t hurt a servicer, because they make back their money owed, along with all fees, in a foreclosure sale, even before the investors for whom they service the loan. The investors take whatever losses result from a foreclosure; the servicer makes out just fine.

So there you have it. Servicers don’t like simple principal reduction because that reduces their fees. Conversely, servicers do like it when borrowers get jerked around a lot because that increases their fees. And if it all ends up in foreclosure? That may be too bad for the investors, but servicers make lots of money from foreclosures. The bottom line is simple: servicers do best when distressed borrowers are (a) milked for a while and then (b) foreclosed on.

So naturally, that’s what usually happens. The new Consumer Finance Protection Board has recently taken a crack at reforming this obviously absurd situation, but they probably don’t have the legal authority to do much about it. However, David suggests that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac probably do. Unfortunately, they aren’t doing anything:

The FHFA/HUD servicer compensation process is showing few signs of life. They announced the initiative two years ago, and released a discussion paper in September 2011, inviting public comment on a couple broadly rendered alternatives, including a “fee for service” model where servicers would get paid a flat rate for performing loans, presumably encouraging them to keep the loans current. As is typical for these regulations, practically all of the public input on the discussion draft came from the mortgage industry. They objected to changing the system before they had new requirements in place, like the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement and the CFPB servicing standards. In addition, they made the usual complaints about undermining the market and increasing costs for borrowers.

Perhaps as a result, basically nothing has been done on servicer compensation since the fall of 2011. Officially, HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan calls the joint project a “work in progress.” An FHFA spokesman told me that “consideration of the servicing compensation issue will continue as FHFA moves forward with the Build portion of the Strategic Plan for the Conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” And in a speech last December, FHFA Acting Director Ed DeMarco remarked that they “have already completed a substantial amount of groundwork on this subject,” and that “it remains for me an important part of the work ahead.”

This has long been one of the most frustrating aspects of the mortgage crisis. Everyone understands that the incentives at work in the servicing industry are completely screwy, but no one has both the authority and the political will to change it. It’s sort of a nutshell version of our entire political system these days.

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16 Surprising Uses for Ice Cubes

by kowalski099 Posted on February 11, 2013

Carla van der Meer

on

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Let’s name all of the ocean water that will someday flood us after Reagan

by kowalski099 Posted on February 7, 2013

Let’s name all of the ocean water that will someday flood us after Reagan

By Philip Bump

Once again, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has proposed naming the United States’ offshore “exclusive economic zone” after Ronald Reagan. (He tried this last year, too.) The EEZ, as it’s known, is the expanse of ocean between three and 200 miles off U.S. coastlines in areas we control. It’s our ocean, which we can do with what we want. Maybe we want to build statues to former presidents there. We can; it’s our water.

So why does Issa want to name it after the Gipper? Two reasons. First, because he can’t suggest we go big and name a state after Reagan since there aren’t any more states. Except maybe someday Puerto Rico, and I suspect Issa wouldn’t consider that an appropriate tribute. And, second, because naming things after Reagan is how Republicans tithe.

From The Hill:

Issa on Wednesday reintroduced his bill to rename the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which generally extends from three miles to 200 miles offshore, as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.

The late Reagan, a Californian like Issa, established the EEZ with a 1983 presidential proclamation that declared the nation’s sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting and conserving offshore resources, including energy. …

Under the proposal, references to the EEZ in U.S. laws, regulations, maps and other documents would carry Reagan’s name.

Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan! Reagan Reagan, Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan!

NOAA

The new map of Exclusive Economic Zones. Click to embiggen and/or print out to use as a poster in your home

There’s another reason this is a good idea for conservatives, though it’s probably not one Issa has thought of. In 100 years, all of that Reagany ocean water will have risen so high that it floods thousands of acres of the snooty, liberal East and West Coasts. We’ll be swimming in Reagan, gang, paying the price for our sins of not loving Reagan enough. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll think of little old Darrell Issa when that happens.

Especially if we live in the new state of Issa, formerly known as Puerto Rico.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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