Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lord Liaden]

But... he can't even see Russia from his house!

[DasBroot]

Yet.   

[megaplayboy]

I work near 1600 Pennsylvania, so I pass by Russia every day.

[Iuz the Evil]

I work near 1600 Pennsylvania, so I pass by Russia every day.

They hang a Russian flag at the Old Ebbitt yet?

[Ranxerox]

Trump Budget Reflects Working-Class Resentment of the Poor.  Don't let the title mislead you -- this seems like a balanced and insightful assessment of the social factors behind one of the emotional issues Donald Trump has tapped into.

 

Okay, let talk about this.  I think that the article is absolutely right, life between 100% and 200% (maybe 250%) of the federal poverty line really stinks.  It is stressful to the point that it subtracts years from a person life, and leaves people riddled with guilt for failing to provide better for their spouses and children

 

So, what are the causative factors and what can be one to address these factors or otherwise help those in the just barely getting by income bracket?  I'm hoping that you folk have some ideas here, because I have diddly bumpkus. 

 

For causative elements I come up with globalization, automation and the huge and ever widening wealth gap between the rich and the rest of us.  Globalization and automation are huge social trends centuries in making, and whatever harm they may do, they both give positive benefits to our lives.  If there is anything positive about the wealth gap, I'm not seeing it.  However, living in a country where our legislature, our courts and our media are bought and paid for the rich and have been for a very long time, is addressing the wealth gap even possible?

 

I'm not optimistic about this.  Part of Trump's business model is not paying his contractors because he has realized that he doesn't have to pay them.  Most of the time they would to pay more in legal fees than he owes them in order to collect through the courts.  Think about that.  That did not happen by accident.  How extremely expensive it is to make use of our legal system. to file all the necessary motions and briefs, how expensive it is to get a legal education in the first place, these are features not bugs.  Features that have been made part of and expanded upon over the entire life of our republic by those with wealth and power

 

Were we able to somehow get a true populist government, as opposed to the fact populism of Trump administration, the wealthy would just tie it up in the courts, undermine it in the press, wage a fierce counter insurgency in congress and wait it out.  They wouldn't have to wait long.  In the absence of immediate results the voting public would turn its populist leaders like they turned on the Democrats in 2010 when Obama failed to wave a magic wand and make everything better in his first two years.

 

A pretty bleak assessment, I know.  Hopefully, someone here has a more positive ideas on the subject.

[Old Man]

Honestly I think the solutions are known by everyone, but are merely difficult to implement because of government corruption:

 

- Raise the minimum wage.  The federal minimum wage hasn't been effectively raised in what, thirty years?  States have recently begun to do this themselves, and while I think it's too early to see what the ultimate effects are going to be, the dire predictions of economic collapse have not occurred.

 

- Education and training.  Automation is a cool thing to discuss nowadays but it's been happening for centuries.  More importantly, it's easy to see it coming and prepare for it by providing education, training, and relocation assistance to the people who are being moved.  Again this is a no-brainer--we can resist automation and cling to a less-efficient work arrangement, or we can replace people with robots and dump them on the streets to fend for themselves, or we can make this minimal investment in these people so they can go be productive somewhere else.

 

- Enforcement of human rights.  This one is tricky, but the only reason globalization is perceived as a problem is that it's cheaper for companies to move work from the U.S. to slave laborers in offshore sweatshops.  Oddly enough, this problem is somewhat self-correcting--Chinese labor, for example, is becoming more expensive since we've given them so much work and their economy is (or was) booming.  Still, it shouldn't be difficult to enforce decent working conditions, if not wages, on labor used to produce goods for import.  We already have to monitor such goods closely to keep the lead out of toys and the plastic out of baby formula.

 

 

 

However, living in a country where our legislature, our courts and our media are bought and paid for the rich and have been for a very long time, is addressing the wealth gap even possible?

 

This is the more difficult question.  I wrote an essay a while back about how the democratizing of news via the Internet wound up breaking the media, preventing them from performing their duties as watchdogs, and fragmented the population into bubbles and echo chambers in which only the most hysterical voices could be heard.  I still believe that this problem will be solved through technological and societal means, but there's certainly no guarantee.

[womble]

 

- Enforcement of human rights.  This one is tricky, but the only reason globalization is perceived as a problem is that it's cheaper for companies to move work from the U.S. to slave laborers in offshore sweatshops.  Oddly enough, this problem is somewhat self-correcting--Chinese labor, for example, is becoming more expensive since we've given them so much work and their economy is (or was) booming.  Still, it shouldn't be difficult to enforce decent working conditions, if not wages, on labor used to produce goods for import.  We already have to monitor such goods closely to keep the lead out of toys and the plastic out of baby formula.

 

 

I'm sorry I don't have any answers, but I wanted to add another globalisation-sanctioning inequality that would need to be addressed to bring a "level playing field": environmental legislation. While China (et al) can continue to burn cheap coal in inefficient power stations, their goods will remain cheaper even if their labour costs equalise. Unfortunately, it looks like the general Governmental Will is to equalise this field by eroding the environmental protections already in place in the "first world".

[Michael Hopcroft]

Sadness: "We'll get lost."

Joy: "Think positive!"

Sadness: "I'm positive we'll get lost!"

[Old Man]

I'm sorry I don't have any answers, but I wanted to add another globalisation-sanctioning inequality that would need to be addressed to bring a "level playing field": environmental legislation. While China (et al) can continue to burn cheap coal in inefficient power stations, their goods will remain cheaper even if their labour costs equalise. Unfortunately, it looks like the general Governmental Will is to equalise this field by eroding the environmental protections already in place in the "first world".

 

As I understand it coal is done in China, because the air in Shanghai is opaque and because the costs of solar and wind have plummeted faster than anyone predicted even five years ago.  Last I checked they just flat out halted construction on 100 or so coal plants and are taking the lead in solar production capability. 

 

That said, they still have a lower standard of living, no organized labor, and the U.S. government has abdicated any leadership on renewable energy or environmental protection.  In fact our new EPA head made waves today by wanting to "continue the debate" about whether CO2 dumping affects climate.

[megaplayboy]

Yeah, coal is on the way out globally. Natgas is cheaper and cleaner, and solar and wind are coming up fast. The real death blow to fossil fuels will be the first generation of mass market electric cars to be clearly superior to their gas powered counterparts.

[Lawnmower Boy]

The real death blow to fossil fuels will be the first generation of mass market electric cars to be clearly superior to their gas powered counterparts.

That will never happen. 

 

Chemical>mechanical beats chemical>electrical>mechanical. It's just a fact of life. Electrical motors will replace internal combustion only under appropriate regulatory frameworks.

 

That being said, I'm not sure why we're worrying about this. Biofuels are carbon neutral. In fact, in the right regime, they're carbon-negative. The problem is that the obvious, actual path forward, which has been obvious since the 1960s --heavy investment in agriculture plus nuclear power-- has been hijacked by gestures in the direction of solar and wind --intermittent renewables. (Plus even more unrealistic fantasies of chemical-electrical storage on an industrial scale.)

 

The successful derailing the global economy's nuclear transition in the early 1970s, shows the state of play here. The ideal is the enemy of the practicable, and, in the mean time, we keep on burning fossil fuels. In general, it's game played widely in our modern world and for the same stakes: As long as "technology" is reified as something from outside the world, waiting to swoop in and save us as soon as we  have performed the rituals correctly, we do not have to accept the massive investments and messy and even ugly solutions that will actually work.  

[DShomshak]

A pretty bleak assessment, I know.  Hopefully, someone here has a more positive ideas on the subject.

Probably not. The Mrch 4-10, 2017 issue of The Economist has a featured book review of "The Great leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century," by Walter Scheidel. Professor Scheidel's study of economic inequality through history shows it almost always increases. The exceptions are extremely limited and generally unpleasant: pandemics (example: the Black Death), total social collapse (example: dissolution of the Roman Empire), total revolutions in which societies effectively commit suicide (examples: Chinese and Russian revolutions), and total mobilization for war.

 

"And that is about it. Financial crises increase inequality as often as they decrease it. Political reforms are mostly ineffectual, in part because they are often aimed at the balance of power between the straightforwardly wealthy and the politically powerful, rather than the lot of the have-nots. Land reform, debt relief and the emancipation of slaves will not necessarily buck the trend much, though their chances of doing so a bit increase if they are violent. But violence does not in itself lead to greater equality, except on a massive scale. 'Most popular unreast in history,' Mr Scheidel writes, 'failed to equalise at all.'"

 

Of all the proven methods, only mass-mobilization warfare does not involve smashing society so that all are alike in misery. When a society's survival is at stake, the rich will grudgingly allow themselves to be soaked and allow greater benefits to flow to the poor.

 

The reviewer does note that inequality between societies has fallen in the last few decades as deeply poor societies have become wealthier. The reviewer also notes that genuinely radical economic changes do occur: "As Mr Scheidel shows, the 20th century was quite different from all those that came before." OTOH, it is also possible that highly motivated groups may cause worldwide destruction, whether imagining they will build Utopia on the wreckage or just to see the world burn.

 

(Use for supervillain motivations should be obvious.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[Old Man]

That will never happen. 

 

Chemical>mechanical beats chemical>electrical>mechanical. It's just a fact of life. Electrical motors will replace internal combustion only under appropriate regulatory frameworks.

 

I'm not sure what you're arguing here.  Solar generation already costs less per kW than coal and is competitive with natural gas.  The only reason it's not already beating petroleum is because petroleum prices per barrel are still artificially low (thanks to the Saudis who are dumping their oil on the market while they can still get something for it).  Furthermore solar $/kW continues to plummet while costs for coal and natural gas are likely to go up.  And if fossil fuel companies are ever held accountable for centuries of carbon dumping, those costs will skyrocket.

 

What will really, finally terminate fossil fuels is electricity storage, which will alleviate the problems with intermittent generation that renewables have.  Musk is already down to $190/kWh, which I think is less than half what analysts expected storage costs to be at this time.  As gigafactories and other battery production ramps up, those costs will continue to drop as well.  At that point there will be virtually no reason to use fossil fuels for any power generation outside of aviation.

[megaplayboy]

We are already fairly close(within 5-15 years) to affordable electrics with good performance and range. The cheapest gas powered cars cost around 12-15k USD new. The Tesla Model 3 will sell for 30k(before subsidies). Once Tesla produces a mass market car in the 20-25k range, it's on like Donkey Kong. Much lower maintenance costs, good motor performance, etc. If buying an electric doesn't involve paying a premium for zero-emission, either in price or performance, consumers will buy them in droves.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Yeah, coal is on the way out globally. Natgas is cheaper and cleaner, and solar and wind are coming up fast. The real death blow to fossil fuels will be the first generation of mass market electric cars to be clearly superior to their gas powered counterparts.

Which poses problems for the Rust Belt and for those regions on the USA that depend on coal mining. Problems which the GOP will not be above exploiting to maintain a grip on power.

 

Transitional phases are always difficult, and blaming them on Evil Forces Out to Destroy Our Culture won't help. After all, it didn't work for the Luddites....

[dmjalund]

Someone needs a way to turn coal into plastic

[Ternaugh]

Someone needs a way to turn coal into plastic

 

There are already several processes that do precisely that. I can't say that they are cheaper processes than using other sources, which is probably the main issue.

 

Likewise, the issue with coal-fired power plants is that it takes many hours to ramp up or ramp down output, and the operators have to worry about dealing with the ash and airborne particulates. Natural gas fired plants can change output relatively fast, and produce less particulates. Gas plants are also cheaper to build and operate right now.

[Iuz the Evil]

https://www.honeywell.com/newsroom/news/2016/07/china-turns-coal-into-plastic-with-honeywell-technology

 

Coal into plastic is apparently now a thing.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Someone needs a way to turn coal into plastic

Coal tar (the product of "cooking" coal under the right conditions) is a great material to make plastic out of. Problem is that extracting it produces toxic chemicals (particularly ammonia) and carbon-filled emissions to frightening levels, sop it may not be worth it.

 

The friendliest thing to do, at least for the planet, is to leave the coal in the ground where it belongs, but that would be massively disruptive. Of course, the question is whether that disruption would be bad in the long run.

[Lawnmower Boy]

I'm not sure what you're arguing here.  Solar generation already costs less per kW than coal and is competitive with natural gas.  The only reason it's not already beating petroleum is because petroleum prices per barrel are still artificially low (thanks to the Saudis who are dumping their oil on the market while they can still get something for it).  Furthermore solar $/kW continues to plummet while costs for coal and natural gas are likely to go up.  And if fossil fuel companies are ever held accountable for centuries of carbon dumping, those costs will skyrocket.

 

What will really, finally terminate fossil fuels is electricity storage, which will alleviate the problems with intermittent generation that renewables have.  Musk is already down to $190/kWh, which I think is less than half what analysts expected storage costs to be at this time.  As gigafactories and other battery production ramps up, those costs will continue to drop as well.  At that point there will be virtually no reason to use fossil fuels for any power generation outside of aviation.

 

In the nearest possible future, we need to take modern, high-industrial civilisation carbon-negative. That means a reduction in fossil-carbon consumption below the Earth's natural carbon sequestration. Thus, very little of our future energy can come from fossil sources.

 

There are two main alternatives to fossil fuel. The first is, broadly speaking, "renewables." Energy captured from the Sun within our current carbon budget. In order of social preference, solar power, wind power and biofuels. The second is nuclear power, which has an inherent time limit imposed by the Earth's shortage of uranium and thorium, unless we get to fusion, which is a very crunchy high tech problem. Given that nuclear power has significant environmental risks, obviously we prefer renewables, and, practically speaking, that's where we need to get, eventually, anyway.

 

Looking at human power consumption, replacing fossil fuels has three main goals. First, we need to take the main grid (and heating) out of fossil fuels. Second, we have to replace fossil fuels in high energy intensity industrial production of commodities like steel, concrete, aluminum and ammonia. Third, we need to replace fossil fuels in transportation. 

 

Taking these in order, the industrial problem is a subset of the main grid problem. You can plug an industrial plant into the main grid, as long as there is enough juice flowing in it. The transportation problem is more complex. Trains can be plugged in pretty easily; ships and planes pretty much can't be; cars and trucks are in-between.

 

What problems stand in the way of cars and trucks being plugged in? We've been fiddling with electrical motors for a century or so. There's nothing wrong with electrical motors in general, but that observation comes with a huge caveat. I work with an electrical prime mover every day. If that's the state of the art, in no way is it ready for rush hour. Also, there's the battery issue. Could electrical traction be the all-encompassing answer? Elon Musk says it'll be ready by lunch time. Elon Musk also says that he's going to have the Martian Constitutional Republic up a week Tuesday. Call me skeptical. (You cannot predict the future by laying a ruler to an exponential curve.) 

 

Biofuels, on the other hand, are also carbon neutral. They're also just a particularly-sourced version of the internal combustion fuel that has been kicking electrical's butt for over a century now. Will it stop kicking butt real soon now? Elon Musk says so, but &tc. My personal view is that electric trucks are like the hydrogen economy of a few years ago. They're solutions in search of a problem. Electric cars, on the other hand, are more than good enough for commuting, so if you insist on commuting to work in a personal conveyance, we should stop with the half measures and make people buy them, instead of waiting for the rosy-tinted future when they'll finally beat gas machines on their merits.

 

The Earth has a lot of underutilised capacity for biofuel production --more than enough to meet the needs of the transportation sector, I suspect. Electrical is only a solution --technology issues apart-- if we first solve the main grid problem. If we don't, it's all a big old waste of time.

 

Of the available main grid solutions, we have one that clearly works --nuclear power-- and one that depends on current progress with battery power extending out into the future far enough that a system of solar/wind farms, smart grids and battery parks will be practical. 

 

Here's the thing. We know we can do nuclear power. It went from nowhere in 1945 to supplying 4% of the United State's electrical power in 1975. We can pick up the torch that our astoundingly incautious ancestors through down in a thicket of dry, brown grass to have a smoke, tomorrow. Will it be hard and expensive? Yes, of course! Will it rule out achieving a benign, green, all-Elon-all-the-time future? No! Just set a three-phase goal. Hopefully, the nuclear plants to be built in the 2030--35 phase won't have to be built at all. (They'll be the ones scheduled for Yosemite, downtown Florence, and the Enchanted Forest). Elon will come through for us we can say, at least until 2030.

 

Or we can just keep on doing what we're doing, which is using up the Earth's carbon reserve like there's no tomorrow (I'm hilarious!) and hope that technology will save us. 

[Old Man]

So to cherry pick a few points:

 

- Carbon negative isn't enough.  Even though solar and wind are exploding, you humans could never get your power generation carbon negative in time to prevent very dire climate effects.  Carbon is going to have to be actively removed from the air, but I fully expect humanity to never get around to it and just point fingers at each other while the fish die and the cities drown.

 

- I'm not sure where the negativity comes from regarding electric motors.  Electric vehicles won Motor Trend Car of the Year in 2013 and 2017.  Electric drivetrains have far fewer parts, far better low end torque, and are far more energy efficient than any ICE could ever be.  What's held electric back until now is batteries and energy density, but battery tech has now advanced to where pure electric vehicles are competitive with ICE vehicles for most use cases.

 

- (As an aside, alternative fuels for large ships is a serious issue; as soon as they get into international waters they burn the cheapest, filthiest bunker oil they can buy.  Carbon and pollution from ships is really disproportionate to that from other sources.)

 

- Biofuels are indeed better than fossils from a carbon standpoint but to date they haven't been cost competitive without subsidies.  Ethanol is also not 100% compatible with current drivetrains; you should see what happened to my line trimmer when my grandfather put E10 in it.

 

- Nuclear would be an option but it's economically unfeasible.  It takes decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to put up a reactor facility, and then you still have fuel and waste issues, and that all assumes a modern reactor design which is meltdownproof.  And there is still the risk of reactor projects going awry; Toshiba is losing up to eight billion dollars on its nuclear division, and people are questioning whether the company will even survive.  What lunatic would bother with reactors when solar and wind farms scale easily and can be put up in a matter of months?  Elon is proposing a solution to Australia's current power crisis with batteries in less than four months.  Nuclear is all done.

 

- Your last line is what's going to happen.  You're absolutely right on that one.

[Michael Hopcroft]

There is apparently a very large block of voters in America who want the world to end. That would give them vengeance and vindication against the innumerable people they despise. 

[DShomshak]

A recent episode of Nova reported a lot of exciting developments in battery technology, broadly considered as "any device that stores energy for use later."

 

I've also recently heard about industrial chemists finding ways to use CO2 as a chemical feedstock. It is far too early to say how this will affect climate issues, but it does appear there may be alternatives to dumping CO2 in the atmosphere or burying it back in the ground. Carbon "sequestration" that is actually profitable might change things a bit.

 

I've also encountered claims that fossil fuels retain their primacy through massive, entrenched subsidies. One estimate I heard was that the real, un-subsidized cost of gasoline in the US would be $20/gallon -- "subsidy" including all the costs to the taxpayer of protecting the supply chain, such as maintaining a military presence in the Persian Gulf. I am not competent to judge the validity of such claims, but they are made.

 

A recent episode of All Things Considered noted the irony of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry becoming head of the Department of Energy, a department he once wanted to abolish. The report also noted, however, that as governor, Perry presided over a huge expansion of wind energy generation in Texas. Not that Texans are tree-huggers, but making money off the wind blowing? They're all over that.

 

I am not, overall, a hopeful person. I see little chance of human wisdom prevailing on, well, anything. Progress becomes much easier when it can be tied to greed or the desire to stick it to somebody else.

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

There is apparently a very large block of voters in America who want the world to end. That would give them vengeance and vindication against the innumerable people they despise. 

I cannot tell here if you refer to the Right or the Left. Or both?

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lawnmower Boy]

A recent episode of Nova reported a lot of exciting developments in battery technology, broadly considered as "any device that stores energy for use later."

 

I've also recently heard about industrial chemists finding ways to use CO2 as a chemical feedstock. It is far too early to say how this will affect climate issues, but it does appear there may be alternatives to dumping CO2 in the atmosphere or burying it back in the ground. Carbon "sequestration" that is actually profitable might change things a bit.

 

 

 

Just to riff off this rather than Old Man's longer reply, I started off by expressing skepticism about the idea that electric cars will soon be a better buy than the current, dominant paradigm, the mechanical heat engine. I have been forcefully made aware that there is a current generation of proponents vigorously pushing the idea.

 

So: On the one hand, I don't want to be a big Mr. Knowitall. I'm not an automotive engineer; I am, however, a historian of technology, and I have seen this act before. People are always talking up the Next Big Thing. Electric cars aren't even the Next Big Thing. They've been chasing the heat engine for 150 years without making up ground. At this point, drawing on a past littered with failed technological boosterism, I just want to say, "Ack-thbbf," but also register some kind of modest disclaimer in case I turn out to be wrong. (It takes a special kind of chutzpah to push electrical engines as being more reliable than mechanical, by the way, just saying.)

 

On the other, it's kind of beside the point. We don't care whether electrical cars are better than internal combustion. We care that they replace internal combustion. So it strikes me that, instead of waiting for electrical engines to get better, we should just drop some regulation and be done with it. Unless, you know, "waiting" is the point.

 

Speaking of, we are, in general, waiting for better batteries, because renewable energy faces fierce intermittency problems. For us to have power at night here in North America, even with a continental smart grid, we have to be able to store about four hours worth of electricity to energise the main grid. That's something over 6 million megawatt hours. The current Southern Californian megaproject that, it is hoped, will scale up to address the State of Victoria's problems is aiming for 400 mW hours.

 

The scale of the industrial effort is . . . large, and impractical without significant advances in battery technology, for which we are waiting. 

 

Old Man points out that the alternative that I've put forward --nuclear build out, is impractical on the basis of costs. Well, we don't even know what all these battery parks will cost. We do know that the United States went from no nuclear power plants in 1955 to drawing over 20% of its main grid from them in thirty years. The current argument is that we can't replicate this build up because building large, expensive nuclear power plants is hard now. Honestly, that doesn't sound like an argument. It sounds like Homer Simpson telling his kids that the lesson is to never try. 

 

But! It doesn't have to be a strong argument, because the key point here is not technology, it was never technology. It is about the waiting. Because the longer we wait, the longer the fossil fuel industry remains profitable, and the fossil fuel industry has wads of money and whole states and provinces worth of political influence with which to push the idea that we should wait for a perfect future in which technology can solve all our problems with no mess, no expenses, none of the frightening environmental risks that nuclear power brings with it. 

 

The problem is that we don't have time to wait. And make no mistake; the real gamble here is that battery technology never gets there, and that what we are waiting for is for all of the "stranded energy assets," as the industry charmingly calls the hydrocarbons in the ground, are unstranded. 

 

So. How is the weather on Venus today?

 

Finally, Dean asks about the perfect future in which we've discovered a way of using carbon dioxide as an industrial chemical feedstock. It is worth pointing out that we have an industry that uses carbon dioxide as a feedstock --agriculture. A recent study suggests that, worldwide, 470 million hectares of agricultural land currently lies abandoned because it is too much trouble to cultivate. The Old Man points out that biofuels are not competitive without subsidy. While I don't think that "competing" with fossil fuels is at all a good model for what we need to do in the future as a species, I am entirely down with the idea of subsidising biofuels if it means bringing that land into production, because the consequence of even cultivation without reference to carbon sequestration (as long as the inputs are carbon neutral) is going to be net carbon negative. If we aggressively promote carbon sequestration in agriculture, there is real potential here for a significant reduction in atmospheric carbon using existing techniques.

 

Tl;DR: Stop waiting for technology to save us! We have the tools in hand. What's needed is regulation and public investment, not scientific miracles!