Commentary on the rule of law; Global warming update: Propaganda for power & profit

The Financial Times editorial board writes:

America’s gathering legal storm

Donald Trump promises the mother of all stress tests for the US rule of law

The former attorney-general Bill Barr alleged that in his first term Trump suggested that rivals be “executed”. Barr said that he did not worry about Trump’s impulses because he knew they would be thwarted. 

Such complacency is no longer merited. The Supreme Court last July significantly boosted Trump’s powers by granting near sweeping immunity to the “official acts” of the US president. In theory this could include assassinating political adversaries. In practice, it will almost certainly include legal witch hunts against Trump’s detractors in politics, the media and civil society. Some of them, such as Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman, and Mark Milley, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, he has repeatedly singled out.

The FT editorial goes on to point out DJT's low quality cabinet appointees and his outright contempt for international law as evidence of pressure on the rule of law generally. His public track record of criminality, treason, felony convictions, outrageous courtroom shenanigans, and open contempt for the rule of law all speak loud and clear. The intent of DJT and MAGA elites to subvert the rule of law cannot be much clearer. How our democracy responds, or fails to respond, is the open question. 

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The fossil fuel industry has been running a large propaganda campaign for decades to promote pollution for power and profit. Industry tactics are well-known in propaganda campaigns, e.g., lying, delaying, slandering opposition and inconvenient science and scientists, distracting society and confusing the situation. Global warming is denied, distorted or downplayed.

CleanTechnica writes about a gigantic lie about solar energy the polluters and sympathetic news sources like the Wall Street Journal are spreading:

Fossil Fuel Interests Ramp Up Their “Solar Makes 

Electricity More Expensive” Falsehood

In the run-up to Trump 2.0, the fossil fuel industry is trotting out its biggest guns to attack renewable energy and electric cars, which should come as no surprise. They paid to get him elected and now they want to make sure they get the maximum return on their investment. This morning there were two emails in my “solar power” news alert that caught my eye. One was a headline from the Wall Street Journal that screamed, “Green Electricity Costs a Bundle. The data make clear — The notion that solar and wind power save money is an environmentalist lie.” The second was from a Koch Industries mouthpiece in Canada called the Fraser Institute that proclaimed, “Solar and wind power make electricity more expensive — that’s a fact.”

When faced with such outrageous and downright scary news from the likes of the Wall Street Journal and the Fraser Institute .... I reached out to Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University.

Mark responded with an information-packed email but also with a link to a study published December 22, 2024, by the journal Renewable Energy authored by himself and his colleagues that addresses precisely the questions raised by the WSJ and the Fraser Institute. Here’s what he had to say in response to my SOS for information.

“Table 1 of the paper shows that 10 of the 11 U.S. states with higher fractions of their demand powered by renewables are among the 20 states with the lowest U.S. electricity prices. Six of the states are among the 10 states with the lowest prices. For example, from October 1, 2023 until September 30, 2024, South Dakota (ranked #1 in terms of its penetration of WWS [wind, water (hydropower), solar] renewables relative to demand) provided 110% of the electricity it consumed from just wind (77.5%), hydro (30.1%), and solar (2.2%) yet had the 9th-lowest electricity price in the U.S. in March, 2024. South Dakota also produced another 16% of its electricity from fossil gas and 11.2% from coal so produced a total of 137% of the electricity it consumed but exported the additional 37%. Similarly, Montana (ranked #2) and Iowa (#3) supplied 86.5% and 79.4% of their demand with WWS but had the 8th and 12th-lowest prices.

“California (#12) also had high prices (ranked #49). However, it is easy to show California’s high prices have nothing to do with increasing renewables. For example, the same paper in Figure 8 shows that the spot (instantaneous) price of electricity in California dropped by over 50% during the period of interest covered by the paper (March 7 to June 30) 2024 versus 2023 despite a big growth in solar, wind, and batteries in 2024 versus 2023. A lower spot price means it is easier to match demand with supply. Spot prices dropped over 50% despite far more WWS on the grid in 2024 indicating renewables reduce the risk of blackout and make it easier to match demand.

“So why are California’s electricity prices so high? They are high for several reasons that have nothing to do with renewables. These include high fossil gas prices (3rd highest in U.S.), utilities passing on to customers the cost of wildfires due to transmission-line sparks, the cost of undergrounding transmission lines to reduce such fires, the costs of the San Bruno and Aliso Canyon fossil gas disasters, the cost of retrofitting gas pipes following San Bruno, the cost of upgrading aging transmission and distribution lines, and the cost of keeping the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open. In sum, available data indicate that increasing the share of WWS reduces electricity price throughout the US. When high prices occur, they are not due to WWS.”

The error that both the Wall Street Journal and the Fraser Institute make in their articles is an example of the sort of trick apologists for the fossil fuel industry pull all the time. Because the price of electricity in Texas spiked after a winter storm, it must be because of those damned solar and wind farms (in fact, solar came through for ERCOT big time when the thermal generating stations failed). If the cost of electricity in Germany has gone up, it must be because of solar, not because Germany decided to take its nuclear power plants off line with little prior planning. (emphases added)

The war against democracy, the rule of law and the public interest that DJT and MAGA are currently engaged in is heavily funded, broad, deep, sophisticated and powerful. Attacks are coming simultaneously from hundreds of sources, including supportive, deceived and/or subverted mainstream media like the WSJ, the US supreme court, the Republican Party, many big corporations, including ones that own mainstream media conglomerates, and the Christian nationalist theocracy movement. Low information members of society are significantly deceived and mostly defenseless against the onslaught. They have been conned and betrayed.