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.

Flashback – Critical Thinking

The idea behind the flashbacks on Fridays is to review and update some thoughts and examples from the past. These examples remain valid because behavior has changed very little over the years. We are not learning from our mistakes.

 

The main difference in 2020 is that almost every subject quickly becomes political with people taking sides. The Real Solutions are not political. They come from people changing their personal consequences by improved choices using the Five Dimensions. As these individual improvements accumulate, America moves in the right direction. The solutions come from us and not from the government, but try telling someone that in an election year! 

 

Here from almost nine years ago are some thoughts on critical thinking.

[Around the time of the Civil War, John Stuart Mill wrote essays in opposition to slavery and in favor of women’s rights. In both cases he recognized the difficulty of persuading people to change their minds when their conviction was based on feelings rather than logic – thinking with their hearts instead of their brains. Near the beginning of “The Subjection of Women” he writes: “So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, … the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, … always throwing up fresh entrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old.” In other words, it’s tough to get people to change their mind when their opinion is not based on logic. The more you talk, the deeper they dig in to protect long-held beliefs.  

We see this behavior almost daily. We are warned to avoid subjects of religion and politics in social conversations. They lead to no resolution, instead causing others to protect their turf.

This is why many of my critical thinking arguments will fall on deaf ears. Considering, though, the waste, misdirection and sometimes danger that result from individual and societal forays down these blind alleys of feeling-based decisions, I continue.

There are two categories of critical thinking. The first involves paying closer attention, for example, recognizing the popular advertising pitch of “save up to 50% or more” as virtually meaningless. Literally it means: maybe saving some undefined amount that can be less or more than 50%. Likewise, how can all car insurance companies save you (up to) $300 when you switch? They all say so. One even claims that  80% of those who switched saved money - but doesn't mention the 20% dumb enough to switch anyway. These examples, and many others, just take some basic questioning.

The second category hits on subjects treated almost as religious beliefs. When I warn of the dangers of dietary supplements, the ineffectiveness of performance bracelets, or that all-natural does not necessarily mean healthier, I know there are a certain number of readers who will dig in, ignoring examples, evidence and explanations, knowing in their hearts that they are doing the right thing, resisting rather than even considering an alternative point of view. For some the ideas of green and sustainable are nearly sacred. They will not bat an eye when told that a particular wind turbine, for example, saves enough coal-powered energy to pay for itself in 150 years, but has a life expectancy of only 50 years! “But, but, but it’s green! It must be good. It’s the direction we need to be moving!”  Logic is lost in feelings and further argument leads only to increased resistance.

Nevertheless, I will continue to cite examples and drive the message of critical thinking. Making good decisions most of the time is essential for our success, both as individuals and as a society.]

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? 

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.