News: BKC fights for opacity; A COVID origin story; Carbon tax research

The Lever writes about a quiet lobby effort to block disclosure of carbon emissions by BKC (brass knuckles capitalist) businesses in California:

One of the nation’s most important climate fights is currently playing out under the radar in California, where state residents are weathering an unprecedented tropical storm. Oil and industry lobbying groups are spending millions in a last-ditch attempt to block first-of-its-kind legislation that would require thousands of large companies doing business in the state to fully disclose their carbon emissions, a move that would effectively set national policy.

In the final weeks of California’s legislative session, which ends in mid-September, Assembly members are expected to vote on the climate transparency bill. With a federal version of the measure still delayed — and nearly certain to face lengthy legal challenges from industry — California’s legislation could expedite a public reckoning over corporations’ true contributions to climate change.

The bill has already passed the state Senate, and if it survives a secretive appropriations hearing later this month, it will go before the full Assembly — where a previous version failed by just four votes last year following a fierce opposition campaign.

This is more evidence of the tactics that major BKC interests routinely employ to keep as much information as possible from both the public and government. For most businesses, an ignorant consumer and an ignorant government is best for revenues and profits.

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A long, detailed WaPo Editorial Board opinion focuses on China's very bad cover-up and lies behavior in the early part of the epidemic:

In the first weeks of 2020, a radiologist at Xinhua Hospital in Wuhan, China, saw looming signs of trouble. He was a native of Wuhan and had 29 years of radiology experience. His job was to take computed tomography (CT) scans, looking at patients’ lungs for signs of infection.

And infections were everywhere. “I have never seen a virus that spreads so quickly,” he told a reporter for the investigative magazine Caixin. “This growth rate is too fast, and it is too scary.”

But this tableau of chaos was hidden from the Chinese people — and the world — in early 2020. Chinese authorities had acknowledged on Dec. 31, 2019, that there were 27 cases of “pneumonia of unknown origin,” and 44 confirmed cases on Jan. 3, 2020. The Wuhan health commission reported 59 cases on Jan. 5, then abruptly reduced the number to 41 on Jan. 11, and claimed there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission or any signs of doctors getting sick.

That claim was a lie. The coronavirus was running rampant. Doctors at the radiologist’s hospital, and other hospitals, were getting sick. But China’s Communist Party leaders prize social stability above all else. They fear any sign of public panic or admission that the ruling party-state is not in control. 

Secrecy has long been a major tool of the governing Communist Party. It suppresses independent journalism, censors digital news and communications, and withholds vital information from its people. Doctors in Wuhan who knew the truth were afraid to speak out. China did not reveal human transmission of the virus until Jan. 22, and by then, the global pandemic had been ignited.  

This editorial is part of a series examining the inner workings of authoritarianism around the world. Previously, we looked at how dictatorships exploit social media, at the creation of disinformation and at how autocrats share tactics. This installment examines how China’s authoritarian system handled a grave public health crisis, as seen through the eyes of doctors and other health-care professionals on the front lines who were struggling to cope with a virus no one had witnessed before. At a time when trust and transparency were needed to save lives, Chinese authorities covered up the facts and lied — and they continue to do so today.  

In editorials last year, we called attention to how the virus was spreading in November and December 2019, earlier than China has admitted; how China had carried out genomic sequencing of the virus in late December 2019; and we pointed to additional cases that were not reported to a joint mission of China and the WHO. It is still not known precisely how or where the pandemic began, whether from zoonotic spillover or a laboratory leak. .... The genomic sequencing showed the virus was closely related to the first SARS virus, which had set off panic in China almost 20 years earlier.  

At Wuhan Central on Dec. 30, 2019, ophthalmologist Li Wenliang examined the medical report of a patient whose condition seemed strikingly like SARS. He shared it with his former medical school friends in their class WeChat group, so they could be prepared. “Seven cases of SARS confirmed,” he wrote. On Jan. 1, Li was detained by police, along with seven other doctors. He was accused of “making untrue comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order.” He was reprimanded for “this illegal activity” and signed a paper promising not to do it again.  

But while democracies are swamped with information as well as disinformation, China’s dictatorship bottled up the truths and published lies. The party’s quest for absolute control — through fear, threats and intimidation — blocked action precisely when the virus spread might have been slowed or stopped. The decisions allowed a spark to become a wildfire, a disaster of immense proportions. As the pandemic unfolded, China remained a black box. It slammed the door on any further investigation of the origins of the virus inside China and did not publish accurate data on the pandemic death toll; doing so might have called into question the party’s competence and leadership. When Zhejiang province recently published mortality data indicating a surge of deaths after China abruptly lifted its “zero covid” policy in December 2022, indicating a higher death toll than China had acknowledged, the data was promptly deleted.

One has to ask the obvious questions: What else is the brutal Chinese government still hiding? We all know the official answer to two critical questions about (i) whether COVID was man-made, and (ii) whether COVID leaked from a lab in Wuhan, regardless of if the virus was arose in nature or was man-made. 

The official Chinese government response to those two questions? (a) Hell no, (b) hell no, and (c) if you keep asking those questions, you will be disappeared and your family billed for your assassination and secret burial costs, so STFU.

We are never going to know the truth about what China did and/or did not do in the early days if it makes the dictators look bad. The least worst story that the virus arose naturally is the official story, even if it's a lie. That's just how dictators routinely operate.  

Q: Does how the Chinese government acted remind us of anything roughly similar to that in American politics? 

Hint: Hell yes, the corrupt RRRP (radical right Republican Party) and its brutal, corrupt cult leader.

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An article The Conversation published discusses some recent research into projected effects of having a carbon tax. At present, a carbon tax is impossible to pass at the national level. The RRRP (radical right Republican Party) is dead set against dealing with global warming. Maybe some blue states could impose a state tax.  

In a new study, colleagues and I investigated U.S. households’ personal responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2019. We previously studied emissions tied to consumption – the stuff people buy. This time, we looked at emissions used in generating people’s incomes, including investment income.

We linked a global data set of financial transactions and emissions to microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly labor force survey, which includes respondents’ job, demographics and income from 35 categories, including wages and investments. People’s wages we connected to the emission intensity of the industries that employ them, and we based the emissions intensity of investment income on a portfolio that mirrors the overall economy.

A couple of interesting things might result, particularly if the tax was set based on the carbon intensity of the company. Corporate executives and boards would have incentive to reduce emissions to lower taxes for shareholders. Shareholders would have incentive, out of self-interest, to pressure companies to do so.

Investors would also have incentive to shift their portfolios to less-polluting companies to avoid the tax. Pension and private wealth fund managers would have incentive to divest from carbon-polluting investments out of a fiduciary duty to their clients. To keep the tax focused on large shareholders, I could see retirement accounts being excluded from the tax, or a minimum asset threshold before the tax applies. 

Instead of putting the responsibility for cutting emissions on consumers, maybe policies should more directly tie that responsibility to corporate executives, board members and investors who have the most knowledge and power over their industries.

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Crackpot watch: About 33% of adult Americans believe that COVID-19 vaccines probably or definitely caused thousands of sudden deaths. 

There sure are a heck of a lot of gullible, falsely informed people wandering around out there. This is worse than pathetic.

News bits: Regarding America's real civil war; An untapped source of freshwater

CONTEXT: We are in an anti-democracy, anti-civil liberties, anti-inconvenient fact and truth civil war. Domestic American terrorists operate mostly in service to one or both of two cynical, immoral ideologies. One is enraged, bigoted and increasingly violent Christian nationalism (CN). The other is brass knuckles capitalism (BKC) and its brutal war on the environment. The CN war machine works to stifle civil liberties, while figuratively killing secularism and a literally killing secularists that God disapproves of. The BKC brigades literally kill by enhancing global warming in their unquenchable lust that trickles profit up to the elites while all the environmental damage and human deaths crash down on all of us.

No, that's not hyperbole in my firm opinion.

CN murders in the name of an allegedly loving, tolerant God 

The NYT reports about a woman shot to death by a gunman to punish her for flying a gay pride flag:

Every time someone ripped down the rainbow Pride flag from the Mag.Pi clothing store in the San Bernardino mountains in California, the store’s owner, Laura Ann Carleton, responded by putting up a bigger one.

Ms. Carleton, 66, did not waver in her support of L.G.B.T.Q. people.

Around 5 p.m. on Friday, she was fatally shot by a man who made disparaging remarks about the shop’s Pride flag, the authorities said.

The man, whose identity has not been released, fled the scene on foot. Deputies found him with a handgun, and he was killed in an encounter with law enforcement, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.

Wait a minnit! What's the evidence of CN involvement?

It is possible this murder had no connection to the CN wealth and power movement. But maybe it did. At this point, it is clear that America is in a real civil war against democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, respect for truth, transparency in government and commerce, just plain civility, and etc. This war is murdering innocent, decent Americans right now. That is not a hypothetical.

Given the circumstances, the burden is on the CN movement to prove it was not a motivating factor in this murder. The burden is not on me to figure that out. The CN wealth and power movement, just like the BKC wealth and power movement is a deadly enemy. Both movements have conclusively proven they are deeply mendacious, immoral and corrupt. Innocent human lives mean little to either ideology. Therefore, logically speaking, they have earned and fully deserve no benefit of doubt for anything they say in their own defense. Only tangible evidence counts. Honesty and mere words are inimical to those extremists. 

The only apparent shooter motive I divine from all the reporting is that the murderer just hated gay people and would not tolerate someone talking back to him about his mindless hate. The reporting about the killing of the shooter by the cops is suspicious. So far, I've seen no explanation for why the cops shot the murderer dead. That makes it smell like excessive use of force by police.

Qs: Is it over the top or irrational to see the elites who run the CN and BKC movements as domestic terrorist organizations? If not, what is the criteria needed for them to be domestic terrorist organizations, e.g., a higher body count, an actual declaration of war? And finally, as usual, waddabout the rank and file who keep supporting and empowering both movements, e.g., by voting for corrupt radical right Republicans and corrupt neoliberal Democrats? 

Laura Ann Carleton preached 

“love, acceptance and equality”

For that sin, she was murdered in the 

name of the baby Jesus  

Credit...

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Too good to be true? Maybe not

Starting at ~8:32, this 16:31video describes a low tech way to harvest fresh water from the air just above the surface of the oceans. Ocean surface air is high in humidity, generally about 80%, (closer to 100% according to the video) making it a gigantic, reliable source of clean freshwater that can be captured and harvested.

In short, towers about 100 M high and 200 M wide are equipped with huge fans that blow humid air into giant ventilation ducts that are connected to giant condensers on land. The condensers use electricity to condense the freshwater from the air. Modeling calculations indicate that 9 towers could provide all the normal freshwater needs for Los Angeles. Cost of the operation and maintenance of the system is projected to be about $20/month for typical personal usage in California, ~ 300 liters/person/day. That is way less expensive than what we pay now, about 70% less costly. It is also a lot less costly than desalination because desal plant require huge amounts of electricity to operate compared to a gigantic condenser.

 

M = million

Other items to consider is that there are expected to be no adverse environmental impacts other than ecoNIMBYs killing trees and wasting vast amounts of paper by filing lawsuits to protect their ocean views. The amount of water collected from the ocean is trivial, so no impact there. Ocean water is going to evaporate and blow away, regardless of whether some of the moist air is harvested for water reclamation or not.

Diagram of the setup from the 

Dec. 2022 research paper

Projected water recovery along coastal areas

Bkg = billions of kilograms

This thing needs to be built and tested for its performance and cost. If the projections in the paper are even reasonably close to the modeling estimates, this could be a game changer for dealing with drought.

News bits: Corrupt Trump judge; Edible microchips; Deceptive business practices; Etc

As we all know, ethics for radical right Republicans in power is extinct. The Lever reports about a current example of a corrupt Trump federal appeals court judge:

Trump Judge’s Anti-Abortion Ruling Followed 

Payments From Group Leading Case

The conservative group arguing the abortion pill case has made frequent payments to the spouse of James Ho, who just helped threaten access to the medicine

One of the judges who issued Wednesday’s federal court ruling that could significantly reduce access to medication abortions has close ties to the conservative legal advocacy group that argued the case, according to records reviewed by The Lever.

Corrupt Trump thug James Ho

(actually looks like a real thug)

Slate writes about the court case:

Based on what the majority of the three-person panel ruled, the 5th Circuit could be saving this argument for a better case, as they instead ruled on procedural grounds (in a separate opinion partially concurring and dissenting from the panel majority, Trump appointee James C. Ho stated that the Comstock Act meant that it is illegal to send abortion medication via mail). The same wait-and-see game goes for claims that the FDA did not have the authority to loosen restrictions on mifepristone, or even to approve it in the first place.

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QAnon was right! There really are microchips in whatever they said there was microchips in. Business Insider writes:

Parmigiano-Reggiano makers are putting edible microchips the size of a 

grain of sand into their 90-pound cheese wheels to combat counterfeiters

There are counterfeiters of Parmigiano-Reggiano. That's because it's the original parmesan cheese officially protected by the European Union, meaning the name can only be used for the authentic product. Parmigiano-Reggiano must be made in a particular area of northern Italy's Emilia Romagna region ....

The Wall Street Journal reported that the micro-transponders are made of silicon and about the size of a grain of sand. They are being placed on the casein label, a food-safe label commonly used in cheese production, which is placed on the cheese wheel. The microchip can then be scanned to pull up a unique serial ID that buyers can use to ensure they've got the real thing.  

The Journal reported the chips cannot be read remotely or used to track someone should they ingest it.

We're being watched. 👀

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From the An Ignorant Customer is a Profitable Customer Files: Tech dirt writes about huge tech corporations trying hard to avoid transparency about their pricing to consumers:

Comcast, AT&T Try To Kill New Requirements 

To Be Transparent About Their Shitty Pricing

The 2021 infrastructure bill did some very good things for broadband. Not only did it include a massive, $42 billion investment in broadband deployment and require better mapping, it demanded that the FCC impose a new “nutrition label for broadband,” requiring that ISPs be transparent about all of the weird restrictions, caps, fees, and limitations of modern broadband connections.

It’s 2023 and there’s still no label. And big broadband providers including Cox, AT&T, Comcast, and Charter are, unsurprisingly, trying to have the entire requirement killed. After whining for two years that it was too hard to comply with the requirement, industry trade groups and lobbying organizations have been petitioning to have the new rule killed entirely:

The US broadband industry is united in opposition to a requirement that Internet service providers list all of their monthly fees. Five lobby groups representing cable companies, fiber and DSL providers, and mobile operators have repeatedly urged the Federal Communications Commission to eliminate the requirement before new broadband labeling rules take effect.

To be clear, requiring that these regional monopolies be clear about pricing is pretty much the bare minimum when it comes to regulatory oversight. Big ISPs for decades have advertised one price, then saddled your bill with spurious below the line surcharges to hit you with a higher rate.

The FCC, lobotomized after decades of lobbying, routinely engages in regulatory theater when it comes to big telecom. As in they’ll implement some fairly tepid efforts to demand “transparency” by big monopolies, but they routinely lack the courage to actually take aim at the underlying monopoly power and lack of competition (lest it upset campaign contributors and domestic surveillance allies).

Once again, brass knuckles capitalism shows its moral fiber. The fiber is revenue and profit lust. Tech giants want to maintain their revenues and profits by deceiving consumers to rip them off more effectively. Fortunately, we have a lobotomized FCC to pretend it is protecting consumers. Just wait until Republicans control congress and the White House again. What little is left of the FCC will be obliterated.

On a related note, I cannot figure out what electricity costs per kilowatt hour. The bills that SDG&E send out are blindingly complex and undecipherable. As best I can guess, the lowest rate at midnight to 6 am is about $0.30 per kWh. I think its closer to about $0.40 at 4 -9 pm and about $0.35 at 6 am to 4 pm. I gave up trying to figure it out. After all I want to be a good customer and  the best customer is ignorant. I'm ignorant. 

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From the Cruel Tyranny of the Radical Right Files: Time magazine reports about a 13 year old girl in Mississippi who was raped. She did not know she was pregnant and could not get an abortion once she figured it out. She starts the 7th grade soon:

Ashley just had a baby. She’s sitting on the couch in a relative’s apartment in Clarksdale, Miss., wearing camo-print leggings and fiddling with the plastic hospital bracelets still on her wrists. .... Peanut, the baby boy she delivered two days earlier, is asleep in a car seat at her feet, dressed in a little blue outfit. Ashley is surrounded by family, but nobody is smiling. One relative silently eats lunch in the kitchen, her two siblings stare glumly at their phones, and her mother, Regina, watches from across the room. Ashley was discharged from the hospital only hours ago, but there are no baby presents or toys in the room, no visible diapers or ointments or bottles. Almost nobody knows that Peanut exists, because almost nobody knew that Ashley was pregnant.  

In the fall of 2022, Ashley was raped by a stranger in the yard outside her home, her mother says. For weeks, she didn’t tell anybody what happened, not even her mom. But Regina knew something was wrong. Ashley used to love going outside to make dances for her TikTok, but suddenly she refused to leave her bedroom. When she turned 13 that November, she wasn't in the mood to celebrate. “She just said, ‘It hurts,’” Regina remembers. “She was crying in her room. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she didn’t want to tell me.” (To protect the privacy of a juvenile rape survivor, TIME is using pseudonyms to refer to Ashley and Regina; Peanut is the baby’s nickname.)

The signs were obvious only in retrospect. Ashley started feeling sick to her stomach; Regina thought it was related to her diet.  

The closest abortion provider for Ashley was in Chicago. At first, Regina thought she and Ashley could drive there. But it’s a nine-hour trip, and Regina would have to take off work. She’d have to pay for gas, food, and a place to stay for a couple of nights, not to mention the cost of the abortion itself. “I don’t have the funds for all this,” she says.

So Ashley did what girls with no other options do: she did nothing.

Poor sad Ashley, Regina, Peanut and sad family. They have been mugged and robbed by a cruel God. America's radical right Christian Taliban is responsible for this gratuitous, outrageous cruelty. It's Dark Ages evil and savagery in the name of an allegedly loving, tolerant Christian God, Jesus, Holy Ghost or whatever the God-forsaken thing(s) is called. 

Q: Can one consider forced birth laws a form of domestic terrorism and Ashley & family casualties of the radical right's civil war on secularism and civil liberties? (it sure looks that way to me)

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From the Trumplandia Cult Files: Poll data from CBS says it all:

Information in the indictments doesn't have an impact, in part, because they generally believe it's Trump who tells them the truth. Trump far and away leads the GOP field among voters who place top importance on a candidate being "honest and trustworthy."

The context here is that Republican primary voters believe the political system is corrupt at an even higher rate than Americans overall do. That could mean perceiving Trump as railing against — or prosecuted by — that system might well make him seem, from their perspective, like the one telling a larger truth.

More generally, Trump's voters hold him as a source of true information, even more so than other sources, including conservative media figures, religious leaders, and even their own friends and family.

What??? Honesty is important to Trump supporters and he is trustworthy?? What planet am I on? Did someone slip a roofie into my kopi luwak? Call out the National Guard! Somebody do something!

Cult: (a) a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object, e.g., "the cult of St. Olaf"; (b) a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister, e.g., "a network of Satan-worshiping cults"; (c) a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing, e.g., "a cult of personality surrounding the leader"

Qs: Is MAGA a cult with Trump the cult leader? If not, why not? 

News bits: Brass knuckles capitalism strikes again; Russian space boo-boo; Etc.

The ever playful sprites that run American Capitalism, Inc., are always protecting their revenues and profits by all available means. Sometimes that means breaking laws. Sometimes it means changing things that were illegal into things that are legal (I call that deep capture and deep political corruption). And, it almost always that means lying to and deceiving the public. Stanford News reports about how the meat and dairy sectors fall back on good old fashioned American capitalist-style deep capture and deep political corruption:

How the meat and dairy sector resists competition 

from alternative animal products

A new Stanford study reveals how meat and dairy industry lobbying has influenced government regulations and funding to stifle competition from alternative meat products with smaller climate and environmental impacts. The analysis, published Aug. 18 in One Earth, compares innovations and policies related to plant-based meat alternatives and lab-grown meat in the U.S. and European Union. Its findings could help ensure legislation, such as the $428 billion U.S. Farm Bill set to expire Sept. 30, levels the food industry playing field.

“The lack of policies focused on reducing our reliance on animal-derived products and the lack of sufficient support to alternative technologies to make them competitive are symptomatic of a system still resisting fundamental changes,” said study lead author Simona Vallone, an Earth system science research associate in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability at the time of the research.

Livestock production is the agriculture sector’s largest emitter of the potent greenhouse gas methane, due to emissions from ruminants such as cattle, sheep, and goats. It’s also the main direct cause of tropical deforestation, due to pasture expansion and feed crop production. Numerous studies have demonstrated that dietary changes hold great potential to reduce humanity’s ecological footprint, especially a reduction in red meat consumption. At the same time, Western-style meat-heavy diets are becoming more popular around the world.

“It’s clear that powerful vested interests have exerted political influence to maintain the animal-farming system status quo.” — Eric Lambin, George and Setsuko Ishiyama Provostial Professor (Provostial, mind you, harrumph!)

In the U.S., about 800 times more public funding and 190 times more lobbying money goes to animal-source food products than alternatives. In the EU, about 1,200 times more public funding and three times more lobbying money goes to animal-source food products.

• EU cattle producers were highly dependent on direct subsidy payments, which constituted at least 50% of their income during the study period. Some of these payments incentivized farmers to maintain herd size, keep pasture in production, or increase overall output.

• In 2017, following a European Court of Justice ruling, dairy terms such as milk and cheese could no longer be used to market most alternative milk and dairy products. Similarly, a proposed amendment to the U.S. Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act would prohibit the sale of alternative meats unless the product label included the word “imitation” and other clarifying statements indicating the non-animal origin.

Not the difference in lobby (corruption) cash intensity in the brass knuckles capitalist US (anti-public interest) and the squishier capitalist (much more pro-public interest) EU. 

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Those pesky Ruskis are sneaking around in space, as usual. One of their nefarious exploits blew a gasket. The NYT reports:

Russia’s Lunar Lander Crashes Into the Moon

The robotic Luna-25 spacecraft appeared to have “ceased its existence” after a failed orbital adjustment, the space agency Roscosmos said  

On Sunday, Roscosmos said that it had lost contact with the spacecraft 47 minutes after the start of the engine firing. Attempts to re-establish communications failed, and Luna-25 had deviated from its planned orbit and “ceased its existence as a result of a collision with the lunar surface,” Roscosmos said.

Luna 25 on its way to a ceased existence as a 

result of co-mingling with the moon's surface

Oops.

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It's going to rain in San Diego because a tropical storm is going to hit later today.

Aaarrrggh!! Rain??

Now that I am fully prepared, I feel better. Carry on.

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Griping about the USSC: A WaPo opinion opines:

Rosalie Silberman Abella is the Samuel and Judith Pisar visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School and is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. This op-ed is adapted from her speech upon receiving the 2023 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medal of Honor from the World Jurist Association.

Regrettably, that regressive climate is where we find ourselves today, especially about the judiciary. Critics call the good news of an independent judiciary the bad news of judicial autocracy. They call women and minorities seeking the right to be free from discrimination special interest groups seeking to jump the queue. They call efforts to reverse discrimination “reverse discrimination.” They say courts should only interpret, not make, law, thereby ignoring the entire history of common law. They call the advocates for diversity “biased” and defenders of social stagnation “impartial.” They prefer ideology to ideas, replacing the exquisite democratic choreography of checks and balances with the myopic march of majoritarianism.

All this has put us at the edge of a global era unlike any I’ve seen in my lifetime. We’re in a mean-spirited moral free-for-all, a climate polluted by bombastic insensitivity, antisemitism, racism, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia and discrimination generally. Too often, law and justice are in a dysfunctional relationship. Too often, hate kills, truth is homeless and lives don’t matter. 

We need to put justice back in charge, and to do that, we need to put compassion back in the service of law and law in the service of humanity. We need the rule of justice, not just the rule of law. Otherwise, what’s the point of law? Or lawyers? What good is the rule of law if there’s no justice? And to make justice happen, we can never forget how the world looks to those who are vulnerable. It’s what I consider to be the law’s majestic purpose and the legal profession’s noble mandate.

A moral free for all. Hate kills. Truth is homeless. A political climate polluted by bombastic insensitivity. Racism. All of that sounds like America's radical right.

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From the MAGA files: Politico reports about an incident where DeSantis channeled Hillary and is experiencing his very own "deplorables" blowback moment. MAGAlandia has been rudely thrown into a gigantic snit: 

The Trump campaign and MAGA world on Saturday blasted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for remarks appearing to label some of the former president’s supporters “listless vessels.”

“DeSantis goes full-blown Hillary and call[s] MAGA supporters ‘Listless Vessels,’” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote on X, referring to a DeSantis interview with The Florida Standard in which the GOP presidential candidate stated that a strong conservative movement needed to be based on principles.

Listless vessels?? 

Bwaahahahahahaha!!

Politics can't get any better than this. 🤪

News bits: Authoritarianism and fertility rate; Global warming cost watch; Electric battery improvement

A WaPo commentary by several staff writers about the economic slowdown in China raises some interesting insights. A fertility rate of about 2.1 children per woman is requires to maintain a stable population. Sebastian Mallaby writes:

Demographics are destiny

The deep cause of China’s economic slowdown — and the strongest reason to believe it will be lasting — is its demographic collapse. Last year, the country’s population fell for the first time since 1961, a landmark that had not been expected until 2029 or later. .... The United Nations projects that the country’s head count will plummet from today’s 1.4 billion to below 800 million by century’s end. You have to go back to the plagues and famines of the late medieval period to find a loss of population so severe.

China is following the pattern of other high-saving, high-investment economies in Northeast Asia. Economic systems that suppress consumption and living standards eventually face a comeuppance: They create legions of stressed young couples who don’t want to make babies. Accordingly, China is one of the world’s most expensive places to raise a family, a fact that has driven fertility down to an all-time low of 1.2 children per woman.

China’s rock-bottom fertility also reflects distinctly Chinese characteristics — specifically, the authoritarianism of the Communist Party. Because of selective abortion and neglect of baby girls, China has about 30 million fewer females than males. And because China experiences steady net outward migration, it cannot fix its problem by attracting foreigners. Mobile and aspirational people tend to shun aggressively authoritarian regimes.

Thoughts that (i) young couples are burned out and don't want to make babies, and (ii) immigrants don't like dictatorship strongly suggest that China's dictators face problems they cannot fix. To stay in power, another writer suggests that the dictators can play the nationalism card and attack Taiwan. 

Until now the deal was that the Chinese people gave up their freedoms and meaningful political participation in return for an increasing standard of living. After decades of delivering on the deal, the dictator's imposed quid pro quo is now failing. That raises pressure on the dictators to deliver something. Taiwan is something.

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Articles discussing various effects of global warming are increasingly popping up. Paying some attention to a topic like the costs of global warming make sense to keep this developing story in context. The NYT writes:

Grab-N-Go, a drive-through and walk-up convenience store in New Iberia, La., has a central air-conditioning system, a window air-conditioning unit and two small, portable air-conditioners. On a recent afternoon, all of them were running. Cool air swirled through the devil-red metal box of a building.

Still, Don Vitto, the shopkeeper, was sweating anyway.

“It’s a sticky, heavy heat,” Mr. Vitto said, disgust dripping from every drawn out syllable. “You can feel it in your breathing — I know I can. I can feel the thickness in the air.”

The air has felt swampier and more suffocating. Yet, confoundingly, as moist as the air has been, a scarcity of rain and clouds has made the sun all the more blistering, leaving the earth as dry and cracked as peanut brittle.

But what has made recent months so punishing is the relentlessness of it all, as the conditions have dragged on for days on end and the volume of excessive heat warnings has broken records.

“It’s been an incredibly aggressive summer,” said Barry D. Keim, Louisiana’s state climatologist. “We normally have spells like this most summers. But this summer has been very, very persistent. The breaks are the fleeting moments, and it’s been oppressive most of the time.”

For fairness, the standard global warming denier response: This isn't caused by global warming. It's just weather. Global warming is a socialist, communist hoax. Next year will be different, just like all the other years.

Now that that propaganda is out of the way, one can rationally to consider the misery of high heat that global warming causes. Heat is starting to kill people who have to work outdoors without air conditioning. It's a quality of life thing. At worst, global warming causes the quality of life to decrease so much that it literally kills some people. That is a fact, not an opinion.

Of course global warming deniers, especially ones who mostly live and work in air conditioned workplaces will argue that you cannot put an economic value on quality of life, and therefore there is no economic value to be had. That is false. Value can be and is being assigned as the damage becomes measurable. 

An experiment I would love to do is this: Force those air-conditioned blowhards in high heat areas to live and work for 1 month in July or August without air conditioning. Then poll them to see if they still believe there is no economic damage from global warming, and instead we are merely experiencing weather. Even thought they will still deny it, they will be forced to know that global warming imposes economic costs. 

What a wonderful experiment.

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The Independent newspaper reports about one of those too good to be true electric battery things:

World’s first ‘superfast’ battery offers 400km range from 10 mins charge

Tesla, Toyota and VW supplier CATL says production will begin in 2023

The world’s largest battery maker has launched what it claims is the first ever “superfast charging” battery capable of delivering 400 kilometres (249 miles) of range from just a 10 minute charge.

China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) said its new lithium-ion battery would open up a new era for electric cars and eliminate range anxiety for owners.

On a full charge, the battery holds enough charge to travel over 700 km (435 miles) without needing to recharge – roughly 60 per cent further than the average electric vehicle in 2023.

What makes this seem like it is for real is the fact that CATL says that commercial scale production will start in 2023. For those who are unaware of it, 2023 is not very far off in the future. Actually, the end of 2023 is not very far off in the future, i.e., the manufacturing plant has to be close to completed and ready for production. Maybe this is for real, ~85% chance according to my minions.

If this is for real, it will revolutionize the way people think about electric cars. The next barrier is getting enough lithium to meet skyrocketing consumer demand.

In 2022, ~14% of new car sales were all electric (~10%) or hybrid

For 2023, electric/hybrid car sales are expected to hit ~18%

A possible solar cell improvement

CONTEXT

Transpiration: the process by which plants give off water vapor through the stomata in their leaves

Stomata: any of the minute pores in the epidermis of the leaf or stem of a plant, forming a slit of variable width which allows movement of gases in and out of the intercellular spaces

Solar cell performance enhancement

Interesting Engineering writes about what seems to be a major advancement in solar panel technology. If this is for real, it is a big deal. IE writes:

Researchers have developed a leaf-inspired design that captures solar energy and generates freshwater, emulating real plant processes

Researchers from Imperial College London have invented a new leaf-like design that collects and generates photovoltaic solar energy and produces freshwater by mimicking the processes found in real plants.

Called PV-leaf [photovoltaic leaf], the innovation “uses low-cost materials and could inspire the next generation of renewable energy technologies.”

Studies have already found that PV-leaves can “generate over 10 percent more electricity compared to conventional solar panels, which lose up to 70 percent of the incoming solar energy to the environment.”

The invention also has the capacity to produce over 40 billion cubic meters of freshwater a year by 2050 if deployed with efficiency.

The artificial leaf has been designed to remove the need for pumps, fans, control units and expensive porous materials. It can also provide thermal energy, adapt to a variety of solar conditions and tolerate ambient temperatures.  

The photovoltaic leaf is capable of synergistically utilising the recovered heat to co-generate additional thermal energy and freshwater simultaneously within the same component, significantly elevating the overall solar utilisation efficiency from 13.2% to over 74.5%, along with over 1.1 L/h/m2 of clean water.

OK, 74.5% sounds too good to be true. So, more info. The press release from the Imperial College London comments:

Taking inspiration from plant leaves, the PV-leaf concept mimics the transpiration process, allowing water to move, distribute and evaporate. Natural fibers mimic leaf vein bundles while hydrogels simulate sponge cells, so a PV-leaf can effectively and affordably remove heat from solar PV cells.

Concept structure drawing:

Real leaf on the left

PV leaf on the right

 OK, that sounds possible. The researcher's paper in Nature Communications says:

Most solar energy incident (>70%) upon commercial photovoltaic panels is dissipated as heat, increasing their operating temperature, and leading to significant deterioration in electrical performance. The solar utilization efficiency of commercial photovoltaic panels is typically below 25%. .... We demonstrate experimentally that bio-inspired transpiration can remove ~590 W/m2 of heat from a photovoltaic cell, reducing the cell temperature by ~26 °C under an irradiance of 1000 W/m2**, and resulting in a relatively 13.6% increase in electrical efficiency. Furthermore, the photovoltaic leaf is capable of synergistically utilizing the recovered heat to co-generate additional thermal energy and freshwater simultaneously within the same component, significantly elevating the overall solar utilization efficiency from 13.2% to over 74.5%, along with over 1.1 L/h/m2 of clean water.

** At the latitude of Massachusetts, the solar radiation value at the Earth's surface is approximately 1000 W/m2 on a clear day at solar noon in the summer months.

A biomimetic transpiration (BT) layer is attached to the back of a solar PV cell in order to remove the heat generated in the cell. Natural bamboo fiber bundles are employed to mimic the vascular bundles in transporting and distributing liquid water over the cell’s surface, while hydrogel cells with large specific surface area and excellent water absorption performance are used to mimic the sponge cells in providing effective evaporation.

The capital cost of the additional transpiration components (hydrogel, fiber bundle, supporting mesh and piping) of the PV-leaf relative to a conventional standalone PV panel is estimated to be ~1.1 $/square meter, based on available bulk prices, which is only ~2% of the price of a commercial PV panel (~55 $/square meter). The payback time of the additional components is thus less than half a year. Given current predictions for the global PV capacity to reach over 22 TW [terrawatts] by 2050, and assuming that 30% of the PV panels have access to water resources [primarily sea water?] as coolant, PV-leaf designs promise to generate an additional ~650 GW [1 TW = 1,000 GW] of power globally, which is close to the current global PV installed capacity.

Ooh, that's how they did this - they attach the fake leaf to the bottom 

of existing solar cells to draw heat off by transpiration, which cools the solar 

cell, and that increases electricity output from 13.2% to 14.5% (an impressive 9.8% increase) 

Note in (c), the "root" in water - that's where the water

for transpiration and cooling of the solar cell comes from

(it can be sea water)

Cooling efficiency data

But how did they get from 13.2% to 14.5% efficiency in electricity to the claimed 74.5% efficiency in total solar energy hitting the surface of the Earth? That huge increase in efficiency is claimed to come from transpiration and the use of salt water to generate fresh water. The water used in the root can be sea water, which is about 3.5% salt. The water vapor that comes from transpiration is fresh water with 0% salt in it. 

But here a major problem jumps right out. The salt.

Where does the salt in salt water go? It stays in the fake leaf hydrogel and accumulates each day as water passes from the root into the air as water vapor. The water vapor can be captured and used as freshwater. But at the end of each day, the hydrogel needs to be soaked in more salt water to release the accumulated salt from the previous day. Doing this near the sea could be feasible on a huge scale. Whether that's the case inland away from sea water isn't clear.

The paper explains that its claim of 74.5% total energy efficiency comes from a combination of the 9.8% increase in electricity, capture of heat and production of freshwater from salt water - see (c) in the figure below.  

The researchers note that they plan to tweak the polymer composition of the hyrdogel to enhance clearing of salt from the hyrogel and work on ways to improve low-temperature water vapor condensation. It's not clear to me if the claimed 74.5% total energy capture is theoretical or actual. The paper says it's actual. If that's true, this could be something worth serious development work.