Month: September 2009

Sharon Begley at Newsweek:

DOE secretary Steven Chu has said we need Nobel caliber breakthroughs.

That is also the view of energy chemist Nate Lewis of the California Institute of Technology. “It’s not true that all the technologies are available and we just need the political will to deploy them,” he says. “My concern, and that of most scientists working on energy, is that we are not anywhere close to where we need to be. We are too focused on cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020—but you can always shave 20 percent off” through, say, efficiency and conservation. By focusing on easy, near-term cuts, we may miss the boat on what’s needed by 2050, when CO2 emissions will have to be 80 percent below today’s to keep atmospheric levels no higher than 450 parts per million. (We’re now at 386 ppm, compared with 280 before the Industrial Revolution.) That’s 80 percent less emissions from much greater use of energy.

Lewis’s numbers show the enormous challenge we face. The world used 14 trillion watts (14 terawatts) of power in 2006. Assuming minimal population growth (to 9 billion people), slow economic growth (1.6 percent a year, practically recession level) and—this is key—unprecedented energy efficiency (improvements of 500 percent relative to current U.S. levels, worldwide), it will use 28 terawatts in 2050. (In a business-as-usual scenario, we would need 45 terawatts.) Simple physics shows that in order to keep CO2 to 450 ppm, 26.5 of those terawatts must be zero-carbon. That’s a lot of solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and nuclear, especially since renewables kicked in a measly 0.2 terawatts in 2006 and nuclear provided 0.9 terawatts. Are you a fan of nuclear? To get 10 terawatts, less than half of what we’ll need in 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d have to build 10,000 reactors, or one every other day starting now. Do you like wind? If you use every single breeze that blows on land, you’ll get 10 or 15 terawatts. Since it’s impossible to capture all the wind, a more realistic number is 3 terawatts, or 1 million state-of-the art turbines, and even that requires storing the energy—something we don’t know how to do—for when the wind doesn’t blow. Solar? To get 10 terawatts by 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d need to cover 1 million roofs with panels every day from now until then. “It would take an army,” he says. Obama promised green jobs, but still.

Hence the need for Nobel-caliber discoveries.

I shouldn’t be bitchy, but it’s a frenzy out there. As if frenzy is a good thing, Republicans look over things and think, “See. The free market is all abuzz with innovation. Soon, our problems are solved.” Democrats not much differently, “See what guidelines and incentives can do to spark innovation?”

We’re in an era where things are going every which way yet we are hamsters on a wheel. It’s better than frozen in the headlights, I suppose. Among many challenges, a ‘Model-T’ solution that inherently organizes efficiency across the market is a lot to wish for. There will be skeletons.

Simon Johnson:

Finance is win-win for everyone involved. And financial flows of some kind are essential to any modern economy – at least since 1800, finance has played an important role in US economic development.

Unfortunately, two hundred years of experience with real world finance reveal that it also has at least three serious pathologies – features that can go seriously wrong and derail an economy.

1. The financial sector often acquires or aspires to political power.
2. The financial sector can obtain disproportionate power over industry.
3. Finance can also go crazy, running up speculative frenzies.

How crazy? In our global GDP of $60 Trillion, the derivatives market is a $650 Trillion hole left by the corrupt.

A farmer pondering his beef, his diet:

Perhaps not surprisingly, I think of my own ration in ways similar to that of my livestock. They need a balanced ration that includes energy foods in order to get the most benefit from their proteins and fats.

I even consider the time of day when moving them to fresh forage since the energy value of the forage varies: it’s sweeter in the late afternoon and early evening due to having spent the sunny day photosynthesizing sugars. They will graze a fresh, lush paddock at that time of day with gusto, and then have the cooler night time for digestion, which makes a lot of heat and can stress them in the heat of the day.

Yves Smith at Naked Captalism:

The fact that what is good for the banksters is increasingly at odds with what is desirable for the rest of us simply highlights how predatory the industry has become, and how the incumbents are pathologically unable to see that.

Paul Ferrel at Market Watch:

We refuse to believe in this new Orwellian America. We prefer the world of magic, myth and illusion.

Democracy is dead. Oh, the illusion will be kept alive in our history books, in the rhetoric of politicians, in the manipulated minds of America’s 95 million Main Street investors.

The propaganda machine works.

Like a child’s fairy tale, democracy has been deeply imbedded in our brains for decades; we prefer believing old, familiar stories. They comfort us, even when no longer true. The real democracy, what so many fought and died for since 1776, is dead.

Lobbyists now run America, own America, rule America.

Forget the 537 politicians you thought we elected to the White House, Senate and Congress to run America for us. No, they’re mere puppets, pawns for the “Happy Conspiracy,” an oligopoly, plutocracy, cabal, monopoly all-in-one — a private club of
America’s richest few on Wall Street, in Washington and in Corporate America.

Voters and elections are irrelevant. Lobbyists decide what’s in the best interests of this elite club.

James Kwak at Baseline Scenario:

Probably most of you have already read David Cho’s Washington Post article on how the Big Four banks

1. have gotten bigger through the crisis,
2. have increased market share (now one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards),
3. are using their market clout to increase fees (while small banks are lowering fees), and
4. enjoy lower funding costs because of the nearly-explicit government guarantee.

That said, I’m glad that Geithner says that undoing this situation is “the dominant public policy imperative motivating reform”.

LabelMyFuel, $500 billion sent overseas:

Er, looking at our deficit ahead, what if we still thought Republicans could save the economy?

“Not only was the science of psychology narrowly culture-bound; its emphasis on pathology largely precluded any careful study of the more pleasurable emotions, including the kind of joy – growing into ecstasy – that was the hallmark of so many ‘native’ rituals and celebrations.

“In the psychological language of needs and drives, people do not freely and affirmatively search for pleasure; rather, they are ‘driven’ by cravings that resemble pain. To this day, and no doubt for good reasons, suffering remains the almost exclusive preoccupation of professional psychology. Journals in the field have published forty-five thousand articles in the last thirty years on depression, but only four hundred on joy.”

Are we barely imagined beings?