Is California Insane?

We are all familiar with the stories of the California governor ignoring his own Covid-19 rules to dine at an exclusive upscale restaurant with friends and supporters and of the LA County Supervisor who dined outdoors at her favorite restaurant hours after voting to ban such activity as too dangerous but before the ban took effect. They go out and party, then lock down the people who elected them.

 

That’s just simple hypocrisy. That happens across the nation, although California does seem to have a talent for electing some real nutcases to various levels of government. 

 

We almost expect that kind of hypocrisy from any politician, most of whom are elected on the basis of their charm, good looks or name recognition rather than their ethics and intelligence. But that’s not why California stands out. Here are just two of many examples.

 

The Glock Company manufactures and sells guns. On their site they list the GLOCK 19, a 9 mm Luger. It’s a handgun with a magazine capacity of 15 to 33 rounds. It’s not unlike side arms carried by police. The site carries a warning, only one warning, and it has nothing to do with gun safety. It reads: “This Product can expose you to chemicals including lead [in the bullets?], which is known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other productive harm.” 

The sun can also cause skin cancer. Will they soon require that all doors that lead outside carry a similar warning? The danger of catching cancer from a gun falls far behind other, more immediate dangers.

 

Last August an estimated 3.3 million in California were “Facing [the] Largest Power Outages In Its History … Amid Record Heatwave.” On October 23 the news came:  “Due to extreme fire risk the utility is shutting off 466,000 customers between Sunday and Tuesday.” Then on December 5 the news read: “As parts of California rev up for another round of potentially fire-fueling gusty winds, Pacific Gas and Electric is warning 130,000 customers across 15 counties that they could lose power starting early Monday morning.”

 

Disregard the fact that many experts believe California added to the wildfire problem with poor forestry management. Just think about those stories in light of this headline from last September, “California Governor Signs Order Banning Sales Of New Gasoline Cars By 2035.” 

Picture hundreds of thousands of citizens stuck at home on a regular basis without electricity to charge their cars (or their phones). It’s just one more good idea – unless you can see the unintended consequences. California citizens can sit at home in the dark and applaud their governor for saving the planet. 

 

The antics of California would be funny if they weren’t completely crazy, and if the rest of the country weren’t slowly drifting in the same direction.

Energy Stupidity

Perhaps stupidity is too strong a word. Perhaps it’s a combination of ignorance, impatience, an inability to foresee all consequences and a tendency to let emotions override critical thinking. This is not an example from America, but a powerful lesson.

 

US News reports, last weekend in Luetzerath, Germany "hundreds of anti-coal activists staged protests in and around a mine in western Germany.” This is part of an ongoing series of demonstrations against coal mining and the use of coal power plants. “Environmental groups oppose the German government's decision to allow the mining and burning of coal in the country until 2038.” They believe that would be too late to meaningfully affect climate change.

 

This activity is just the latest of many protests against both mines and power facilities. Here is a headline that one outlet labeled the top environmental story of 2017: “Thousands protest German coal use.” I also found news items about similar demonstrations from June and December 2019 and earlier this year. There is no doubt that this recent protest will not be the last.

 

So far it seems reasonable. Coal burning pollutes the air. Phasing it out will clean the air and remove greenhouse gases. Maybe they have a point, except…

 

In 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima accident and with 70 percent of the population opposed to nuclear power, Angela Merkel announced that Germany would close all 17 of its nuclear reactors by 2022. At the time a science reporter for Time wondered how Germany would meet “increasing energy demands while also tackling climate change” as they “shun any low-carbon energy sources, no matter how troubling.” (Nuclear energy is not low-carbon; it’s zero-carbon.)

With the plan in place “to curb greenhouse gas emissions but at the same time...shut down all of its nuclear power stations, which in the year 2000 had a 29.5 per cent share of the power generation mix,” Although Germany has been moving heavily toward renewables, where does the power to fill the need between now and 2038 come from?

The Asia Times earlier this year noted, “Germany now generates over 35% of its yearly electricity consumption from wind and solar sources” with thousands of wind turbines and over a million photovoltaic installations. “Unfortunately, most of the time the actual amount of electricity produced is only a fraction of the installed capacity. Worse, on ‘bad days’ it can fall to nearly zero.” That leaves 65% or more unaccounted for.

Forbes lists a few problems with this rapid transition. It imposes increased direct and indirect costs on German businesses and consumers, who already pay “among the highest electricity costs in the world.” The “landscape is being ruined by unsightly wind turbines” virtually everywhere, and the supply from these sources “varies dramatically in the course of a day or week.”

 

Finally, a McKinsey report from last year, that one German newspaper described as “disastrous,” stated that the current “transition to renewables, poses a significant threat to the nation's economy and energy supply.” At times the country’s grid was close to a total blackout and had to be stabilized by short-term imports. The implementation lags its completion goal by eight or more years.

 

Germany has major problems with all aspects of their renewable energy transition, made worse by the added gap from closing their nuclear plants, plus protests against a coal power industry needed to take up the slack. What else are they supposed to do in the interim, attach generators to exercise bikes and ask citizens to generate their own electricity?

 

Unfortunately, instead of learning from the German experience, other European countries, including France, with 58 nuclear power reactors producing nearly 72% of their electricity, plan to follow their lead. 

 

Critical thinking has taken a backseat to emotional reactions. Nuclear power has always been a safe and pollution free energy source. “The risk of accidents in nuclear power plants is low and declining.” Modern technology is superior to the plants built years ago. And engineers in France are recycling spent fuel to avoid the need for massive radioactive waste sites. If fluke accidents drove decision making in other arenas we would be riding horses and be forbidden to have a swimming pool or a bucket of water in the backyard (among many other things).

 

In short, the German people have turned their back on a viable pollution-free alternative and then launched protests against the only industry able to take up the slack during the transition – maybe not stupid, but certainly not smart.

Flashback – Electro-pseudoscience

[In recent news from England “a poster for the charity Electrosensitivity-UK asked, “How safe is 5G?” They oppose the roll out of 5G technology and warned, without any scientific evidence, that it causes a “range of health effects such as ‘reduced male fertility, depression, disturbed sleep and headaches, as well as cancer’”.

This fear mongering is reminiscent of my posting in December 2014 titled “Fear of Power Lines.” This kind of panic based on bad science will keep coming up as long as a gullible public will buy into it.]

If you are old enough, you remember the big scare in the late 1980s about power lines causing cancer. In fact, if you are not old enough to remember the news reports at the time, you have probably heard about this idea from someone who was. There was a great deal of concern, but after over 30 years of further research, it appears to have been a mistaken assumption.  Still the fear persists.

This fairly short (7:46) NY Times Retro Report is worth watching.

It begins with replays of news reports from all the major networks from 1987.  It was big news at the time, and this reminder is very informative showing in retrospect how the news business operates when breaking news has the potential to stir up a lot of fear based on a very limited study.  A voice-over talks about how power lines may cause cancer while showing the picture of a small bald child, apparently battling cancer (but not from power lines) – sneaky.  When seven children in one Denver school developed cancer and parents blamed it on nearby power lines, one reporter said that it could be a “tragedy of enormous proportions.”

The Times calls the episode “Power of Fear” with the message that once this type of fear is introduced into our society it never really goes away.  

The researcher who first suspected the problem now explains that further research has ruled out any problem. With the number and density of power lines, this should have developed into a major health problem, but it didn’t. “That suspicion [of a cancer risk] was simply wrong...The likely impact [of power lines] is zero.”  

Scientists in the 1990s conducted hundreds of experiments exposing rats, other animals and human cells to intense EMFs (magnetic fields around the power lines) over long periods of time with no change in the cells.  “In 20 years of looking, no one has found a way that power line fields can do anything at all to cells of animals; unless it can do something to cells, it cannot cause cancer.” The National Academy of Sciences confirmed this by reviewing 500 studies and releasing their findings in October 1996. Nothing since then has altered the conclusion of no danger.

The association was always “suggestive, but very faint” but correlation does not prove causation. Yet the idea, the fear, persists and is still spread by some public figures, some advertisers who use the scare tactics to sell real estate service and by word of mouth – now enhanced by the reach and power of social media.

Why do some Americans believe these sources and continue to fear the presence of power lines? Psychologists tell us that risks that are invisible, that might cause suffering before death or that might affect children have uncanny staying power, even in the face of firm evidence to the contrary. This highlights the need for critical thinking, to put aside emotional responses and listen to the facts. Don’t we have enough stuff to be afraid of without dredging up errors from the past?

Climate Change: Overlooking the Details

You can’t really call it a lie, but when people who should know better spread misinformation, it feels like the same thing. The latest example came a few days ago on the national news when a reporter said the Paris Climate Accords “set global standards” for emissions. This is clearly incorrect. The agreement consists of a compilation of NDCs, Nationally Determined Contributions. They are not a global standard but targets set by each individual country, i.e., nationally determined, with no enforcement mechanism for those who fall short and no authority to reject a proposal as inadequate. (Follow this link to access all of the individual NDCs. See this link for a Washington Post article praising the “few countries” that are meeting the standards they set for themselves.)

This is a common misunderstanding of the agreement that leads to unnecessary handwringing over the fact that the United States is no longer a signatory. Despite that withdrawal, according to the EPA the green house gas emissions by the US are decreasing and are lower today than they were in 1996.

Meanwhile, while everyone is worrying about carbon dioxide, criticizing all the SUVs on the roads, a far more powerful greenhouse gas is flying under the radar of public interest. The BBC warns, “It's the most powerful greenhouse gas known to humanity, and emissions have risen rapidly in recent years.” Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a gas used by the electrical industry in the switching equipment in power stations, wind turbines and sub-stations to prevent short circuits, fires and other accidents. “In terms of warming potential, SF6 is 23,500 [times] more powerful than CO₂."

It is intended by design to remain contained within the insulator, but problems arise when leaks occur and evidence shows that they are occurring regularly as the global use of the gas “is expected to grow by 75% by 2030.” BBC puts the amount of leaking in the UK alone at the equivalent of an “extra 1.3 million cars on the road.” And the reason for the growth is a need for more of the switching equipment driven by the increase in sustainable power, such as wind and solar.

Here in the US, the EPA is aware of the problem, and Pacific Power & Gas is one of the utilities with plans to solve it. Fixing a single SF6 leak has an average cost of $25,000, so they are looking for alternatives and expect to have the problem solved in their business region by 2030.

Make no mistake; with so many more sources, carbon dioxide is still a far larger problem than SF6. But where is the balance? Why do we hear about the benefits of wind and solar while the drawbacks are ignored? Why do we hear the “dangers” of nuclear power while its remarkably  safe history is glossed over? Why are we urged to panic over unsigned Climate Accords when the truth is far more nuanced? 

Being Afraid of the Wrong Things

A few days ago, a headline appeared in Science Daily: “Why do we love bees but hate wasps?” It’s an interesting question and the reason seems totally emotional.

“Both bees and wasps are two of humanity's most ecologically and economically important organisms. They both pollinate our flowers and crops, but wasps also regulate populations of crop pests and insects that carry human diseases.” But their survey showed that almost everyone sees bees as the good guys and wasps as scary and unwelcome. Although, both are known to sting humans, bees are associated with honey and wasps only with stinging. The researchers assert that this universal antipathy “is most likely due to a low-level interest in nature and a lack of knowledge about the benefits wasps bring to our planet's health and function.”

One example of the pest control aspect was a hornworm I found on one of my tomato plants the other day. It was no longer eating leaves because it had become a meal for many wasp larvae. Wasps are our friends.

Wasps are one example of things we should not be afraid of, but the fear of wasps doesn’t have a devastating effect on the future, beyond the fact that all pollinators should be encouraged to thrive in the interest of our future food supply. But there are other examples that are far more crucial.

One is nuclear power. People are scared of nuclear power. They hear of a nuclear power plant and picture a mushroom cloud, a Chernobyl-like meltdown or a disaster from an earthquake or tsunami. This attitude put the brakes on the development of nuclear power in the US 40 years ago. The German government decided to shut down nuclear plants and revert to coal in the face of “mass anti-nuclear protests…in the wake [of the] Fukushima event. Hence, Germans are giving up a source of non-polluting energy with a much smaller physical footprint than wind or solar. Back at home, as Americans have seen firsthand major technological advances in computers, telephones, transportation, and so many other areas, they have been stuck on the assumption that nuclear technology would have been stagnant since the 1970s. Had we adopted a different attitude then, it’s quite likely that the majority of our energy problems today would have been solved.

Another example is GMOs. Last month I wrote about the effects unreasonable fears of GMOs have on the world’s food supply. Americans are demanding labeling on packaging, so they know what they are eating. In Europe the government agencies confirm the safety of GMOs, while public opinion prevents their spread. People are starving in poorer countries for lack of food while the rich and middle class in the richer countries fuss about imaginary dangers.

Finally, add the idea of irradiating food for safety. From the FDA: “Irradiation does not make foods radioactive, compromise nutritional quality, or noticeably change the taste, texture, or appearance of food.” The technology “improves the safety and extends the shelf life of foods by reducing or eliminating microorganisms and insects.” It doesn’t make food glow in the dark; it makes it safer to eat. 

But when people hear anything that sounds like radiation, they panic; unaware perhaps, that all the sunshine they were soaking up on vacation a few weeks ago is also radiation. The vast majority wants it labeled, just in case. Then, when people avoid it and it doesn’t sell, we are all exposed to less safe food!

All these fears stem from the same source, captured in the above article about wasps, “a low-level interest in” science in general “and a lack of knowledge.”

The real cause for concern as we move further into the 21^st Century should be how public opinion will continue to work against public welfare. When we allow the "activists" and fear-mongers to keep winning, where does it lead?

How Much Consumer Protection is Needed?

We would need a lot less consumer protection if consumers themselves spent more time thinking and researching and less time looking for easy answers and magical products.  Slowing down to think and research relates to the dimension of critical thinking, which promotes suspicion of those easy answers that are so tempting when discipline fails us.

Here is an example of the importance of those practices.  An Australian company is offering for $165 a product called a Geoclense Harmonizer.  (You can order a configuration that plugs into electrical outlets in the US.)  The name itself sounds healthy and friendly, but what does it do?  “The Geoclense is a negative charge resonance field generator designed to balance positive charge resonance otherwise known as noxious, unhealthy energy created by all forms of EMR, RF, Wi/Fi, Earth Radiation and Bioplasmic Radiation to a healthier negative charge resonance.”  That certainly sounds scientific.

The advertising goes on to list twenty-five individual types of "noxious energy" that you will be protected against.  Under the Bioplasmic or Human-generated energy category they include “Negative Psychic impressions/Psychic attacks.”  Under the General category, they include:  “Baby Monitors, Bluetooth Devices and Noxious Resonance from Mould and Fungus.”  You are also protected against stress from seismic faults and drinking water.  All you have to do is plug it into the wall.

Looking at this list, it’s hard to understand what dangers come from all these sources of supposed radiation.  Many tests have confirmed the safety of cell phones, so why would we fear Bluetooth devices or baby monitors?  Should people really worry about the negative psychic impressions floating around the house?  How does plugging a solid block of green plastic resin into the wall protect you from seismic faults, fungus, poor quality drinking water or any kind of radiation?  The website never explains how it works. 

The rest of the website uses testimonials and junk scientific “studies” to confirm the effectiveness.  We hear how people felt so much better after plugging it in and see through Kirlian photography how their aura is stronger.

A real scientific study from an Australian consumer review organization tells a different story.  The power of the Harmonizer is “based on the principles of 'orgonomy', which…was pioneered by Dr. Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian psychoanalyst who died while serving time for refusing to obey an injunction against selling quack medical devices.”  The review team tested the Harmonizer against seven of the company’s claims using simple tools such as a compass to detect the reported effect on the earth’s magnetic field.  In all cases except one it failed to show any effect at all.  Where it did live up to the company’s claim was the fact that “it uses absolutely no power. Hardly surprising for an inert lump of plastic, but it does beg the question as to why you need to plug it in at all.”

This product and others like it try to capitalize on public misperceptions like the fear of power lines that was popularized in the 1980s but has long since been debunked.  Even without the benefit of the above review, it takes a minimum of critical thinking, research and common sense to come to the right conclusion about such products.  We really don’t need the degree of consumer protection that Washington is always trying to enact and re-fund.  We just need a populace with better scientific understanding and a willingness to spend a little time to think it through.  Each $165 saved is an extra $165 toward paying off that mortgage or saving for retirement.

Green Energy

When I saw the CBS story:  “Most Americans are willing to pay a little more each month to fight global warming - but only a tiny bit, according to a new poll,” I thought it was time to do some investigation.  The story went on to say that if the electric bill went up by $1 a month, 57 percent of Americans would support it.  A $10 a month increase got only 39 percent support.  “At $20 a month, the public is more than 2-to-1 against it. And only 1-in-5 would support $50 a month.” Last time I looked the cost of wind and solar was very much higher than fossil fuel generated electricity – two to three times, in some cases.  On a nationwide average bill of about $110, we are talking about much more than $12 a year, closer to $50 a month or more.

But my research surprised me.  I found that over the past few years the cost of electricity renewable sources has become more competitive and continues to drop.  (See the chart showing the wholesale costs per kilowatt-hour and not necessarily the price on your bill.  The next column shows projected “leveraged cost,” different units but comparable within the same column across options.)  More government restrictions on coal and subsidies for wind and solar farms, bring the relative cost of renewables down, but do it in part by bringing fossil-fuel costs up, which will affect bills by more than a dollar a month.  How much more is still unknown.

Power Plant Type	Cost cents/kW-hr	Leveraged Cost by 2020
Coal	9.5 - 15	95.1
Natural Gas	7 - 14	75.2
Nuclear	9.5	95.2
Wind	7 -20	73.6
Solar PV	12.5	125.3
Solar Thermal	24	239.7

In any case in August President Obama said:  “We'll take steps to meet the goal we set with Canada and Mexico to achieve 50 percent clean power across North America by 2025.”  This brings up another interesting point, variability.  Wind and solar are not available at all times, calm nights for example.  They are not always consistent and you can’t easily turn them on and off, or store electricity produced today until tomorrow.

There was an Economist article about three years ago addressing this problem in Germany, a leader in renewable energy.  The wholesale price of electricity actually goes negative on bright and windy days because of the unusually high supply, which threatens to overload the grid due to their inability to quickly and efficiently adjust their coal, gas and nuclear plants.  In places where utilities are required to buy solar- and wind-generated electricity first and where those systems provide a high percentage of the generating capacity (40%+), utilities can lose profits, money for future investment in delivery systems.  That may seem like a minor problem until the next hurricane or snow storm when we lose power longer due to that lack of investment in lines, and fewer crews available to make repairs.

This chart shows the degree of that variability for wind turbines in Germany in 2013.  Solar variability is similar, and the peaks may occur at the same or different times.  Their total need is around 52,000 MW, which is twice as high as the highest wind peaks.  All this demand must be consistently met by filling the gaps with power from the back-up sources like coal and gas that can be controlled by the people running power plants, not by the whims of nature.

As mentioned earlier, one way to solve this problem would be to store renewable energy for later use.  This could be done with traditional battery systems or some other mechanism, like a huge very low-friction disk powered by a motor to store it as kinetic energy until needed.  Nothing is yet available at the scale needed.

This was an interesting investigation.  Despite favorable cost movements, much more work needs to be done to implement a practical large-scale conversion to renewable energy.  To fall in love with a 50% number, when we already know 40% causes such problems in parts of Germany, while at the same time making it more difficult for the more reliable, traditional sources to operate, is a bit naïve at best and possibly dangerous.*

*The dangers of tinkering with an electrical system that we are so dependent on in our modern world move beyond the inconvenience of the lights going off.  We depend on electricity for heating, food preservation and the smooth operation of hospitals, emergency rooms and other emergency services.