Science update: The iron-air battery

Some sources are reporting on a possible breakthrough in iron-air batteries. The goal is to get cost of energy storage down to about $20 per megawatt-hour (MW-h). That is enough to run about 1,000 homes for 1 hour. The idea is simple -- adding oxygen from air to iron causes the metal to rust and give off electricity. The battery is recharged by using electricity energy to remove the oxygen, converting the rust back to metallic iron. Current iron-air batteries require about 1 acre of land for 1 MW of storage, with ~3 MW/acre theoretically possible. One acre is an area of 43560 sq. ft. or about 200 x 217 feet.

Iron-air batteries are made of low cost materials. The question is can they actually be manufactured to store energy for ~$20/MW-h? If that cost point can be reached, it would mark a major milestone for humans and civilization. One could envision a drastic reduction in the need for carbon energy sources, maybe about 85-90%. 

One source comments:

They [iron-air batteries] take in power from renewable sources, storing that energy for up to 150 hours and discharging it to the grid when renewables are offline.

Each individual battery is about the size of a washing machine.

Each of these modules is filled with a water-based, non-flammable electrolyte, similar to the electrolyte used in AA batteries.

Inside of the liquid electrolyte are stacks of between 10 and 20 meter-scale cells, which include iron electrodes and air electrodes, the parts of the battery that enable the electrochemical reactions to store and discharge electricity.

These battery modules are grouped together in modular megawatt-scale power blocks, which comprise thousands of battery modules in an environmentally protected enclosure.

Depending on the system size, tens to hundreds of these power blocks will be connected to the electricity grid.

For scale, in its least dense version , a one megawatt system requires about an acre of land.

Higher density configurations can achieve 3MW/acre.

A Boston-area company involved in developing iron air batteries, Form Energy, has high powered researchers and financial backers. The Washington Post writes in an opinion piece today:

A Boston-area company, Form Energy, announced recently that it has created a battery prototype that stores large amounts of power and releases it not over hours, but over more than four days. And that isn’t the best part. The battery’s main ingredients are iron and oxygen, both incredibly plentiful here on God’s green Earth — and therefore reliably cheap.

Put the two facts together, and you arrive at a sort of tipping point for green energy: reliable power from renewable sources at less than $20 per megawatt-hour. 

Form Energy is no seat-of-the-pants outfit. Its founders include Mateo Jaramillo, former head of battery development for Tesla, and MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang, among the world’s foremost battery scientists. Investors include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos, the iron and steel colossus ArcelorMittal, and MIT’s The Engine, a strategic fund aimed at long-term solutions to big problems.  

According to its announcement, Form Energy has the process working well under lab conditions. The next step is to build a warehouse-size battery plant to support an electric utility in Minnesota. If successful, a one-megawatt battery will be able to power the entire utility for nearly a week between charges by 2024.

Then we’ll begin to know just how important this is.

What fascist Republicans vehemently oppose: House Hearings on the fascist 1/6 coup attempt

We will be hearing more from this in coming days. But some of the testimony today deserves some respect. The Washington Post writes:

There are people who believe that the moon landing never happened, that the astronauts in the footage all the world saw were actually bouncing around on a soundstage hidden away somewhere. But they aren’t making our laws, they aren’t invited on TV to discuss their perspective, and they don’t have the ability to influence millions.

Yet there are people who deny the truth of what happened in Washington on Jan. 6, despite all the video, all the contemporaneous reports, all the guilty pleas, and all the testimony. And they have a lot more power.

Tuesday’s first hearing of the select House committee investigating the insurrection, with vivid testimony from four police officers who stood against a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters overrunning the Capitol in an attempt to overturn a presidential election, should put at least some questions about that day to rest.

Still recovering from their physical and mental injuries, the officers seemed particularly incensed that the truth of what happened that day is denied by so many on the right, from Trump himself on down.

“To me, it’s insulting, just demoralizing because of everything that we did to prevent everyone in the Capitol from getting hurt,” said Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell about the effort to minimize what happened that day, including by Trump. (“It was a loving crowd,” the former president told Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, “There was a lot of love. I’ve heard that from everybody.”)

Well, there you have it, there was a lot of love in all that hate and violence. Those dumb officers. Incensed that the fascist right, including the ex-president, denies truth. As the ex-president says, it was just a loving crowd full of love. It was not anything close to these images of threat, hate and rage:

SHOOT HER!! SHOOT HER!! SHOOT HER!!

(but bayonet her guts first)

Instead, January 6 was an innocent show of infinite love, peace and tolerance. You know, clearly and undeniably shown and proven in soft, loving images like these:

IMO, the fascist Republican Party and its constant lies, corruption and treason are deeply immoral, and their defenses are usually not even slightly persuasive. Not even a little. 

Questions: Should that evil socialist witch confronting the National Guard have been impaled on bayonets and then shot full of holes? Should the righteous, patriotic tourists of 1/6 been excused for their minor infractions that the law accords all innocent tourists? Is the 1/6 coup attempt how a fascist leader incites fascist inclined followers to fall deeper into the endless pit of hate and lies that American fascism grows and thrives on, or is it a sincere expression of love, tolerance and peace? Am I over the top, outrageous, unfair or otherwise waaay off the mark on this matter?

Peaceful tourists peacefully greeting law enforcement

personnel at the capital during the 1/6 coup attempt

A peaceful tourist expressing his love of country

Ire directed at unvaccinated people is rising

The New York Times reports that increasingly vaccinated people are losing patience with people who refuse to get vaccinated. Some are concerned for their children, who are too young to be vaccinated. Others are concerned about the possibility of lockdowns or reinfections after vaccination. Vaccine hesitancy or refusal is based on legitimate concern about the lack of long-term safety data and/or illegitimate disinformation. So far, vaccines have been in people for about 16 moths. Thus the safety data is limited to that length of time, but it obviously increases as time passes. The New York Times writes:

As coronavirus cases resurge across the country, many inoculated Americans are losing patience with vaccine holdouts who, they say, are neglecting a civic duty or clinging to conspiracy theories and misinformation even as new patients arrive in emergency rooms and the nation renews mask advisories.

The country seemed to be exiting the pandemic; barely a month ago, a sense of celebration was palpable. Now many of the vaccinated fear for their unvaccinated children and worry that they are at risk themselves for breakthrough infections. Rising case rates are upending plans for school and workplace reopenings, and threatening another wave of infections that may overwhelm hospitals in many communities.

“It’s like the sun has come up in the morning and everyone is arguing about it,” said Jim Taylor, 66, a retired civil servant in Baton Rouge, La., a state in which fewer than half of adults are fully vaccinated.

“The virus is here and it’s killing people, and we have a time-tested way to stop it — and we won’t do it. It’s an outrage.”

The rising sentiment is contributing to support for more coercive measures. Scientists, business leaders and government officials are calling for vaccine mandates — if not by the federal government, then by local jurisdictions, schools, employers and businesses.

“I’ve become angrier as time has gone on,” said Doug Robertson, 39, a teacher who lives outside Portland, Ore., and has three children too young to be vaccinated, including a toddler with a serious health condition.

“Now there is a vaccine and a light at the end of the tunnel, and some people are choosing not to walk toward it,” he said. “You are making it darker for my family and others like mine by making that choice.”

“It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks,” a frustrated Gov. Kay Ivey, Republican of Alabama, told reporters last week. “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”

Even though she is fully vaccinated, Aimee McLean, a nurse case manager at University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City, worries about contracting the virus from a patient and inadvertently passing it to her father, who has a serious chronic lung disease. Less than half of Utah’s population is fully vaccinated.

“The longer that we’re not getting toward that number, the more it feels like there’s a decent percentage of the population that honestly doesn’t care about us as health care workers,” Ms. McLean, 46, said.

She suggested health insurers link coverage of hospital bills to immunization. “If you choose not to be part of the solution, then you should be accountable for the consequences,” she said.

The NYT goes on to comment that 57% of Americans 12 and older are fully vaccinated. Americans are still getting about 537,000 doses per day on average. That is an 84% decrease from a ~3.38 million peak in early April. The combination of a low vaccination rate and lifted restrictions have caused infections to rise. As of last Sunday, there were an average of 52,000 daily new cases, That is a 170% increase over two weeks before then. Hospitalization and death rates are also slowly increasing. 

A parent of a young son in Connecticut commented after a relative who refused vaccination became infected, “I feel like we’re at that same precipice as just a year ago, where people don’t care if more people die.” That parent is worried that his son will become infected from his unvaccinated relative. Similarly, an engineering teacher at the University of Florida, in Gainesville commented, “If we’re respecting the rights and liberties of the unvaccinated, what’s happening to the rights and liberties of the vaccinated?”

One woman who refuses to get vaccinated comments that she is “taking my time with it.” She is concerned about possible long-term vaccine side effects and the rush to get them approved and used by the public. She also commented that “I shouldn’t be judged or forced to make a decision. Society will just have to wait for us.”

Questions: What’s happening to the rights and liberties of the vaccinated? Should vaccinated people have a right to be free from fear of infection from people who refuse to get vaccinated? Should unvaccinated people be financially responsible if they get sick or infect other people? Does the lack of long-term safety data beyond about 16 months justify refusal to be vaccinated?[A] Is society justified in judging people who refuse to get vaccinated or coercing them into getting vaccinated? How much longer should society be forced to wait?

Is distrust of government, the CDC and/or the FDA a legitimate reason to distrust the COVID vaccines, i.e., does distrust simply sweep away or obliterate existing empirical evidence of safety and efficacy? 

Footnote: 

A. My guess is that the probability of the rise of a major new adverse side-effect from the vaccines available now is very low, maybe 1 chance in ~1,000,000 in the next 5 years. That estimate is based on the following factors:

1. Experience from decades of widespread vaccine use globally indicates that previously unknown side effects from vaccines usually become apparent within about weeks 6-8 of clinical trial use, usually a lot longer than that. All major side effects usually become apparent during clinical trials which look closely for adverse side effects.  

2. Such evidence goes back at least to the 1960s (a short review article is here).

3. Some of the factors that caused serious side effects including deaths from vaccines are not present in the current anti-COVID vaccines. The current COVID vaccines contain the nucleic acid from the spike protein so it is impossible for the entire virus to be reconstituted or reassembled as has happened in the past with some vaccines such as the polio vaccine. That was a major source of serious side effects that is simply off the table for COVID.

4. CDC data indicates that over 338 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine were given in the United States from December 14, 2020, through July 19, 2021, which is a massive number of people from which safety data is being drawn. So far, the CDC reports two serious adverse events has been observed through its vaccine safety monitoring system. The CDC writes: "To date, the systems in place to monitor the safety of these vaccines have found only two serious types of health problems after vaccination, both of which are rare. These are anaphylaxis and thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) after vaccination with J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine. Serious side effects that could cause a long-term health problem are extremely unlikely following any vaccination, including COVID-19 vaccination. Vaccine monitoring has historically shown that side effects generally happen within six weeks of receiving a vaccine dose. For this reason, the FDA required each of the authorized COVID-19 vaccines to be studied for at least two months (eight weeks) after the final dose. Millions of people have received COVID-19 vaccines, and no long-term side effects have been detected."

5. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are based on a relatively new technology that delivers nucleic acid (RNA) that encodes the COVID spike protein to human cells, which in turn make the protein, which then causes an immune response against the virus. Similar RNA vaccines against HIV, rabies, Zika and flu have been tested in phase 1 and phase 2 safety trials in people. So far, this kind of vaccine technology has been found to be safe with other viruses, although these experimental vaccines are not on the market, presumably due to lack of efficacy, manufacturing cost and/or unstable or small market size (Zika). Current evidence is that all of the COVID vaccines on the market now are clearly effective enough for mass public use, so that is not a legitimate concern. (link to a general audience article about how RNA COVID vaccines work)

6. The vaccines were developed faster than any others I am aware of. The development time cut off at least 3-5 years of normal development time. The article linked to above comments: "All COVID-19 vaccines have to meet the same rigorous FDA safety standards as any other vaccine. You may be wondering then, how these COVID-19 vaccines were developed so quickly compared to the vaccines of the past, which took years to create. The speed happened on the front end in the development of the vaccines. Because of massive public and private funding, many of the financial hurdles that can delay research projects were removed. But the testing and approval processes were no different than those for other vaccines in the past.

The reported side effects of the mRNA vaccines were temporary symptoms such as fever and muscle aches, similar to what some people experience after getting other vaccines. Most common side effects of a vaccine are identified in studies before the vaccine is licensed. In rare cases, adverse side effects may not be detected in these studies, which is why the U.S. vaccine safety system continuously monitors for side effects after a vaccine is licensed." (emphasis added)

The disinformation industry is alive and thriving

The New York Times writes:

In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal.

A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.

But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.

Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.

Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.

They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability.

“Disinfo-for-hire actors being employed by government or government-adjacent actors is growing and serious,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, calling it “a boom industry.”

Similar campaigns have been recently found promoting India’s ruling party, Egyptian foreign policy aims and political figures in Bolivia and Venezuela.  

A wave of anti-American posts in Iraq, seemingly organic, were tracked to a public relations company that was separately accused of faking anti-government sentiment in Israel.  

The trend emerged after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, experts say. Cambridge, a political consulting firm linked to members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was found to have harvested data on millions of Facebook users.

The controversy drew attention to methods common among social media marketers. Cambridge used its data to target hyper-specific audiences with tailored messages. It tested what resonated by tracking likes and shares.

The episode taught a generation of consultants and opportunists that there was big money in social media marketing for political causes, all disguised as organic activity.

Ahh, the stench of dark free speech in the morning. There's nothing quite like it. But, plausible deniability comes pretty close.

Questions: How can democracy and truth defend themselves against the endless onslaught of lies, deceit, slanders, irrational emotional manipulation (fear, anger, bigotry, distrust, hate, intolerance, etc.), motivated reasoning and the like? How can any defense intended to protect democracy and truth be prevented from use by demagogues, tyrants, crooks and kleptocrats to attack, and maybe even destroy, democracy and truth? Is the dark free speech market just a reflection of capitalism and the invisible hand doing its free market thing, or is it something else? And then, there's Israel, again.

The best answers get awarded a gold star: ⭐

Perfect answers get two: ⭐⭐

After the rule of law gets vindicated: ‘Complete, dysfunctional chaos’

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of American Indians in a lawsuit claiming that an 1800s Treaty agreement with the US government was being violated in Oklahoma (OK). That sort of thing had been common since the 1800s. US Treaties with Indian tribes, supposedly the law, were being ignored by the US government, including federal courts.  

In a surprise last year, the Supreme Court ruled for Indian tribes in OK, holding that about half the state was Indian territory. That was in accord with existing Treaty law. The non-Indian part of OK was in shock. Indian tribes were happy, to say the least. Non-Indians were in shock.

In his dissent in the 2020 McGirt v. Oklahoma case, Chief Justice John Roberts warned that chaos would be the result of the decision. The reason was that many crimes prosecuted by the state of OK would be invalid because they were improperly tried by OK, not the Indian tribes or the federal government. 

Indian territory in Oklahoma

Robert's warning is now playing out. There is much chaos and shock in OK. The Washington Post writes:

Kyle Willis hadn’t seen Kimberly Graham in years, since the day she was sentenced to 107 years in prison after she drunkenly plowed her truck into a group of motorcyclists in Tulsa, killing five people, including his mother and stepfather.

So it was a shock when he saw her at a court hearing last month — tanned, dressed in a frilly purple top and jeans and laughing — a free woman. Graham, who is Native American, was let out of prison in April after a Supreme Court decision last year that found that a large part of eastern Oklahoma is still Indian country. Despite a century of state and local prosecutions, the court ruled that crimes there were the province of federal and tribal courts.

“She’s enjoying life as if nothing ever happened,” said Willis, 34, of Broken Arrow, Okla., who said the sight of Graham left him numb. “It’s bizarre. It’s crazy.”

The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma said prosecution of Native Americans for crimes in the expanded Indian country must be carried out in federal and tribal courts, rather than by state or local officials. It was celebrated across the country by Native Americans last July, who saw it as a historic affirmation of treaties signed with the U.S. government in the 1800s.

But in the year since, the ruling has upended Oklahoma’s criminal justice system, imperiled convictions in thousands of cases, sowed confusion for police and emergency responders and led to the direct release of more than 50 criminals convicted on charges including second-degree murder and child abuse, state records show.

A local power plant is challenging an increase in its property taxes. The state is fending off a move by the federal government to strip its ability to regulate mines on Indian land. The state has also raised concerns about a potential loss of tax revenue.

The fallout has exacerbated long-standing tensions between Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and the leaders of five tribes involved. Stitt held a community forum on the issue this month that degenerated into raucous shouting, with attendees booing and chanting, “Treaties are the law of the land!”

“We are living a nightmare out here,” said Ryan Leonard, the Oklahoma governor’s special counsel for Native American affairs. “It’s complete, dysfunctional chaos in the state of Oklahoma.”

The WaPo article goes on to note that OK estimates that up to 79,000 criminal have to be released. About one-fourth of those will probably be re-prosecuted. Since the state has to step back, Indian tribes in OK expanded their legal operations by adding prosecutors, marshals and victims services personnel. So far, the Cherokee Nation recently added six prosecutors, two district court judges and 13 marshals and filed about 1,300 cases this year. 

Not surprisingly, OK sees this as a mess and Indian tribes see it as a great opportunity to assert their long-denied rights. Justice Gorsuch who wrote the 5-4 decision commented: “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever. Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word. Dire warnings are just that, and not a license for us to disregard the law.” 

At least some of Robert's warnings are coming true.

Questions: What is more important, continuing to violate Indian treaties and the rule of law in the name of avoiding legal chaos, or to try to live up to Indian Treaty legal requirements even if it means some chaos and bad outcomes with bad people being let off the hook and out of jail? 

Are the people who allowed Treaty violations to exist in the first place responsible for the chaos now, or are they well-meaning people (or not well-meaning bigots) who committed forgivable mistakes, assuming (i) any of them are still alive, and (ii) there is at least some legal means to hold them accountable? 

Should the Supreme Court take this case up again and rule against the Indian Tribes for convenience or based on new arguments, e.g., the Treaties don't mean what they say, or for some other reason?[1] 

Footnote: 

1. The current Christian nationalist Supreme Court would probably overturn McGirt and go back to the good 'ole days of blowing off Indian Treaties in OK. Jimcy McGirt was convicted in state court and jailed as a child molester. McGirt, argued that the state did not have jurisdiction to prosecute him because he was a Native American on tribal land. There is one (assuming Kennedy was a radical Christian nationalist) or two more radical Christian nationalist judges now on the Supreme Court than there were when McGirt was originally decided.

An alleged source of Republican opposition to cracking down on tax cheats

Tax cheats underpay taxes by an estimated $1 to $1.4 trillion/year. Years ago, conservative anti-Obama and anti-government propaganda argued that Obama weaponized the IRS when Obamacare imposed a tax penalty for not signing up. That appears to be a major part of fascist Republican Party opposition to giving the IRS the budget it needs to collect taxes. So, us honest taxpayers are just suckers because we don't cheat and the fascist GOP (FGOP) has no problem with it, at least not enough to do anything fix the annual festival of tax cheating. The New York Times writes:

A plan by Democrats to pay for infrastructure investments by beefing up the Internal Revenue Service to catch tax evaders has resurfaced old resentments for Republicans, whose distrust of the agency has simmered for years, erasing hopes of a bipartisan legislative accord built on narrowing the so-called tax gap.

Republican senators backed away this week from a provision to toughen tax enforcement at the I.R.S., gutting a crucial source of financing for an infrastructure package that would devote about $600 billion to roads, bridges, broadband and other public goods. That has left lawmakers scrambling to figure out how to pay for the legislation and has again put the I.R.S., whose funding and ability to conduct audits has diminished over the past decade, in limbo.

For conservative activists, who have harbored enmity toward the I.R.S. for more than a decade, the agency is considered a threat that is beyond reclamation.

“As we learned in 2013, Democrats have weaponized the I.R.S. as a political tool, and now they want an even more powerful I.R.S. to target their political enemies just as they did under Obama,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, a free-enterprise advocacy group. “Their proposal is not cost effective even by optimistic estimates and it’s just another example of the vicious tactics of the radical socialist left.”  

The tax collection agency was never particularly popular with Republicans, who tend to embrace small government and low taxes. But their animus toward the I.R.S. became more impassioned in 2010, after Democrats and the Obama administration used it as a tool for enforcing the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that everyone buy health insurance.

Also note that the FGOP has got its messaging about Democrats in place and down pat. Almost always these days, Democrats and the Democratic Party are slandered as the radical left, socialist left, radical socialist left or something like that. 

Nothing the Democrats propose to pay for federal spending by collecting taxes owed is socialist. Paying for spending on infrastructure isn't socialist either. The FGOP argument is a red herring used to distract people from inconvenient truths such as (i) the FGOP condones massive tax cheating and has for years, and (ii) the FGOP hates government and (a) wants to starve it to death by cutting off federal revenues as much as possible, and (b) wants to privatize as much government activity as possible in its ongoing push to capture much more power and wealth for powerful and wealthy people, groups and special interests. 

Questions: Is it radical to try to pay for federal spending on infrastructure or to try to reduce tax evasion? Is domestic spending for, e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, social security and infrastructure, all of which the FGOP hates and wants to get rid of, socialist and doomed to fail as inherently flawed central planning? Should the the free market be free to deal with these matters because all socialism always fails and free markets always succeed?

Take next exit -- the off ramp is free and clear