Eclectications

What a difference a few degrees makes! Las Vegas' climate is pleasant on this sunny day during a "normal" July- a world away from the intense heat of last year's record hot weather. Highs of 99-105 make for a quite different regime than last year's 110-113.

Looking west toward the Spring Mountains and Red Rock Canyon, mid day

I walked this morning on a nicely landscaped jogging trail around our hotel compound. The air felt cool, at 84F just after sunrise. The same walk last night felt strange. The air was warm on my skin even in darkness with a light breeze, around 9 PM. It was still 95F- above that 91F tipping point where your skin begins to be warmed, instead of cooled, by the air around it. This morning, it didn't reach 91 until 11AM.

I spent a pleasant half hour in the cool waters of the wave pool. With totally predictable waves, you could time them perfectly for body surfing. Or stand as I did beyond the never-shifting surf line, and enjoy the waves surging by. (Last year, the hotel pool was almost like bath water.)

Yesterday was blessed with a cloudy sky, and the temperatures outside were tolerable, even in the upper 90s in the afternoon. "Dry heat" does make a difference; at home my clothes would be sweaty in such temperatures.

Physiology tells me I must have been sweating. It's the only way the body can cool itself above 91F, unless you're standing beside a block of ice. But I didn't notice, and my clothes were not even damp.

Last year it never got below 91F during my entire four day stay. I was amazed at the heat, walking the streets at 11 PM, at 100F. Unfortunately for Las Vegas, last year's record heat could soon become the norm.

Left: Cumulus clouds grow rapidly to the northeast, beyond the Muddy Mountains, near sunset / Right: Mandalay Bay hotel casts a mile long shadow

Just a few traveler's impressions. And one more thing I noticed, that others might not: Las Vegas has excellent public transit. It doesn't run right to your hotel door, but the concierge can tell you where to catch the bus, buy passes, etc. You aren't limited to the fancy limos or cabs. Uber is very popular here, too. Our hotel had a designated, well marked Uber pickup point.

I just applied to serve on an advisory board to our county transit company, and noticed that the board's title involved "The Transportation Disadvantaged." They provide good service to people in need. "Just call," a friend on the board told a lady in a wheelchair, "Tell 'em you're disabled and need a ride, and they'll send someone out."

But it's not just the blind and the crippled. Transportation Disadvantaged, in Florida law, also includes "..people with low income who are dependent upon others to access employment, health care, education and other vital services."

(As if auto drivers didn't depend on others. No need for massive Federal and state highway programs, continual street and highway maintenance, parking lots, traffic lights, or police forces focused on traffic accidents and violations.)

That definition could be expanded even more. What about someone who can't travel more than a couple blocks without a 3,000 pound appliance? Who has to buy it, maintain it, fuel it, find parking for it, and ultimately replace it, at a typical cost of $9,000 a year? And who must necessarily use hundreds of gallons of fuel and generate thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide every year?

That's the average American- disadvantaged compared to his European counterpart, who can go for months without getting into an automobile, and never needs to own one. Whose fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions are much lower (a typical city bus gets about 360 passenger-miles per gallon.)

Comments
July 19:
Well, you hit all the high spots in simply raising the question. And the wild card is weather. Florida heat makes any walk farther than a quarter mile into a shirt-drenching expedition. And it's worse in any downtown or extended parking lot area. Concrete becomes its own magnification machine for natural sunlight, easily turning a 90-degree stroll into a 95-degree stroke warning.

I've long wondered why zoning regulations haven't included oxygen generators like trees and shrubs required every third or fourth parking space (along with drainage-friendly surfaces for most parking spaces). Simply reducing the dangers of asphalt/concrete/non-permeable surfaces would go a long way to promote pedestrian activity.

As for public transport, we should remind ourselves that it wasn't until after World War 2 that most US cities abandoned perfectly effective buses, trolleys and trains. The rise of the auto industry, aided by its lobbyists, put most transit firms and public-private partnerships out of business.

You have to ask yourself, too, how long it's going to be cost-effective for cities to continue to repair and expand roads instead of installing rail lines powered by electricity generated by wind, water and sunlight.

And as a newspaper writer, a worker whose job was killed by technology but who managed to survive anyway, I'm disinclined to feel soooooo sorry for folks like coal miners, roadbuilders, public utilities workers and automakers who might find discomfort when their old-fashioned technologies start killing their fading careers. As newsworkers have learned, many skill sets are interchangeable within the demands of newfangled opportunities. And as politicians should realize better than most, adaptability is going to be a hallmark of any American's future. George Meyer
Tampa, Florida

The heat is remarkable, and asphalt is a terrific amplifier- soaks it up and reradiates it. One day last July, I walked home from the bus stop, 3 miles, when the heat index was around 103 - it was torture to keep going. I'd stop in patches of shade to rest. When I'd pass a canal head, the cool breeze off the water felt like A/C. I've made the same trip in the same conditions by bicycle several times this summer, and it's tolerable.

The story you raad everywhere about public transit in mid-century was that some nefarious corporations- either oil companies or auto companies- bought up the trolley systems in several major cities and scrapped them, to promote automobile use.
-- Bob

Mother Jones says "America is inching closer to Energy Independence". The Washington Times says Energy Independence is "achievable."

Yet other recent articles speak of the "'Energy Independence' Myth", and liken it to the promise of perpetual economic growth. In corporate press releases, says one, "Optimism is more important than facts. And, it�s essential for attracting investors."

Who can you believe? All of them, more or less. But watch the details, because at least two concepts of "energy independence" are in play:

(1) No imports of oil, coal or natural gas. That's what President Carter had in mind when he set Energy Independence as a national goal. But today we're importing about 8,000,000 barrels of oil - four supertankers full - every day.

Or (2) Some trade analysis that shows the U.S. as a net exporter of energy. Different analysts go at this in different ways. Some include trade in finished energy products such as gasoline and jet fuel. Some use physical units, others use dollars. The answer depends on how you set up the analysis.

So WSJ can say that the U.S. only imports 25% of its oil (oil and oil products, net) and Berman can reply it really imports 47% (of the crude oil flowing to US refineries). Checking US EIA figures for the latest 4 weeks, I got 48%.

But an export surplus isn't "independence" - it reflects a mutual dependence with our trading partners. Since our civilization is addicted to oil, "codependency" might be more accurate.

Experts have called Energy Independence a "chimera". Which is either a phantom, a will-o-the-wisp, or a fire-breathing three headed monster; not a good object to pursue in any case. But in political discourse, it becomes a chameleon: a wily lizard that changes color to blend with its context.

Carter's specific policy, announced in a 1979 speech, was not to let oil imports grow beyond their value at that time- about 6,600,000 barrels a day. We've come close; imports have been higher and lower over the decades, but today are only 8% higher than 1979, in spite of a 40% increase in population.

Another of my heroes of that era, ecologist Howard Odum, immediately opposed Carter's policy. Use foreign oil first, he advised; achieving energy independence now would guarantee dependence later, as global resources were drawn down.

In the same 1979 speech, Carter asked citizens to take simple energy conservation measures, much as now touted in many articles on the web:

"..I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense -- I tell you it is an act of patriotism."

I admire Carter's concept of patriotism. It's a lot more useful than waving flags or shooting off firecrackers. Not for "energy independence," but for resilience in the face of the energy transition we know will come.

Comments

I wake at the old men's hour, around dawn, climb a few flights of stairs and walk out into cold wind on a rocking, nearly deserted deck. The party people, the young and beautiful are mostly asleep. Only a few of my fellow geezers are up, scattered at tables around the coffee station. One has a ship's name on his cap, with a splash of gold braid. Another rolls his wheelchair carefully between the tables.

Little gray cumuli dot the pale sky, merging into a gray murk at the horizon. The deck rolls and pitches a few degrees each way, walkable but demanding attention. Nets are rigged over the swimming pools to retard splashing as they slosh back and forth. The deck is wet, either from rain or the early morning washdown.

Left: Sunrise ahead, still to right of our heading / Right: Moon setting astern, before dawn

I make a cup of tea, having quit a lifetime coffee habit after some disturbing endoscopy results (which later turn out to be insignificant.) Stuffing the waste paper into the little trash can before the wind takes it, I ride an elevator to the upper sun deck to take some pictures. I like to catch the sun rising, sometimes the moon setting, and the state of the sea Most of all, I'd like to see a healthy mat of sargassum weed. This is our second day out, well into the Sargasso Sea.

Professor Steve Keen may be the first mainstream economist to address a fatal flaw in economic theory: omitting or minimizing the role of energy. Keen has developed a production formula incorporating energy, not as one factor of production along with capital and labor, but as the indispensable flow activating both.

"Labor without energy is a corpse" says Keen; "Capital without energy is a sculpture."

Keen was one of twenty or so economists who made a credible prediction of the 2008-9 crisis, which government economists in the US and abroad declared "unpredictable" - after it blindsided them. His work draws on contemporary economic theory and generates real-world predictions. He's the sort of economist who financial commentators, investors and even government economists listen to; folks who haven't heard of Daly's steady state economy, Odum's energy flow analysis of the ecosystem-economy, or Hall's EROI "cheese slicer" model.

Keen's model implies that economic production is measurable in energy units, as Odum and others argued. Wealth is "nothing but the food, conveniences and pleasures of life," as the earliest economists recognized. But it results from useful work, which can be measured in kilocalories. (To us weight watchers, just "calories.") Here is his fundamental equation (the only one here, I promise):

Y(E) = (K^.E_K^.x_K^.e_K)^{α .} (L^.E_L^.x_L^.e_L)^1-α

(If that seemed hard to read, try coding it in html.) It's worthwhile to look at what goes into this equation, the product of a Capital term and a Labor term. Each of these terms is itself a product of energy flow and two small modifiers. To define the terms,

Y is useful work or GDP, a function of energy supply, in kilocalories
K is capital, as the number of machines employed
L is labor, as the number of workers involved
E is a flow of energy to the economy, to workers or to machines, in kilocalories
α is capital's proportional contribution to production (labor's contribution is 1-α)
x is Exergy, the proportion of E which is actually usable, always great than zero and less than 1. Per the second law of thermodynamics, some energy is always lost.
e is the efficiency of the process: the proportion which actually goes into production after the costs of maintaining the machine or the worker; always greater than zero and less than 1. Logically this factor should include whole life cycle costs, though I'm not sure if Keen intends this.

To test his model against real data, Keen correlated its results with historical statistics of US GDP, and then compared correlations of GDP with the key terms individually. Over 40-odd years of data, his function correlated 0.79 with US GDP. The correlations with employment (Labor) alone and energy consumption (E) alone were much lower, at 0.60 and 0.59 respectively.

His model might have correlated better if applied to a closed economic system, such as the entire world, or the US prior to 1970, if good data were available. Most of the useful work that supports Americans today is performed in the Far East or in the engines of container ships, and the energy inputs are considerable.

Introducing his test data, Keen remarked that government statistics showing minimal unemployment were "just nonsense". He presented a measure of employment instead.

"They ask what Trump is complaining about- here's what he's complaining about.." (This was back in November.)

A decline of a few percent seems small, but two million fewer Americans in their working years have jobs than before the 2008-9 crisis.

Presenting a chart of industrial energy consumption 1960-present, Keen remarked on the on the long decline since the 1979 peak, his latest values showing consumption comparable to 1967-8. Partly the result of increased efficiency, he said, but also "..becoming intractable because we are moving from highly efficient oil and coal to much less efficient wind and solar." (Efficiency as energy output per unit of energy input.)

I don't think I'm overstating to say that Keen's model marks a breakthrough in mainstream economics, though Keen describes it as merely

"..the beginnings of a decent equation to explain the role of energy in production."..demonstrating that wealth is "..fundamentally created by the exploitation of free energy, as the Physiocrats argued two centuries ago."

For those who discount any economic reasoning not expressed in calculus, Keen's work opens an access to the wisdom of the Physiocrats. Maybe that of Daly, Odum and Hall as well.

Nearly all I've said above is taken from Keen's lecture on You tube, which I highly recommend. There's a lot more there, including deep historical background and comparisons with contemporary economic theories. If you haven't listened to a real science lecture since college, it may wake up some brain cells.

Postscript
Having called Keen a "mainstream economist", I now notice in his blog that he contrasts himself with mainstream economists and complains of a strong institutional bias toward the Neoclassical school. He's asking for support via Patreon, partly to continue his work on energy-based economic modeling (I signed up.) Still, he's a lot more mainstream than the environmental scientists I mentioned above.

Comments

April 26
I always thought energy was considered as a business cost. Isn't that standard economic procedure?
George Meyer
Tampa, Florida

April 26
In accounting, I'm sure. But I don't think it's considered in macroeconomic modeling. Economic theory has long been criticized by physical scientists as being disconnected from the real physical processes going on in the economy. I can't cite details because I haven't seen an economic model since an undergrad course in 1966 or so- maybe not then. I'm parroting a criticism I've heard many times from sources I trust.

Keen's introduction gives you some of that background. He wants his theory to conform to the laws of thermodynamics.
Bob

April 26
Well, I've read some of the same stuff that you're reacting to -- the notion that energy consumption and supply hasn't gotten its due in calculating economic models and theories. But it hasn't made sense to me since energy is a cost to business, as in fuel, in transportation and in its competitive standing (like electricity vs. gasoline).

But nearly every time I get interested in economic models, I read something that pretty convincingly argues that such models are so flawed (for the energy as well as other factors) that we're wrong to pay much attention to them.

They're a lot like theories of mass communication. Whenever someone thinks he's got a good one, something -- like, maybe, digital technology -- comes along and makes it look silly, or at least irrelevant...
George Meyer

April 26
Flawed models? Sure. But there are flaws and flaws. Here we're talking about a deficiency that completely divorces economic models from the physical world- that place where we grow crops and build widgets. Such models are capable of, for instance, predicting infinite growth on a planet with finite resources.
Bob

April 28
I haven't studied it, but it doesn't seem immediately clear how Keen distinguishes between the kilocalories used by a machine from those used by a worker. Seems to me that's a huge distinction with lots of implications, especially in the debate about whether production occurs onshore (with lots of expensive machinery) or offshore (with cheap labor). When I get more time I'm sure I'll come up with more questions.
George Meyer

April 29
The energy used by workers and machines comes in distinctly different forms- food vs. fuel. Unless the crew starts drinking gasoline or sticking fingers in light sockets, the flows are pretty easy to distinguish.

The cheap-fuel and cheap-labor modes of production could be distinguished by varying those exponents alpha and (1-alpha). But Keen seems to be describing a complete, integrated economy, like the whole world, that would include both modes. He tests his model against figures for the US economy, which would have made more sense prior to around 1970 when it was fairly self contained.

To put actual numbers to his equation, he simplifies the energy inputs to labor into food alone, and uses that approach to turn the whole labor term into an approximate constant, multiplied by employment. Then he applies industrial energy use statistics to solve the equation over a period of 40-odd years.

In reality, production has to pay the full life cycle maintenance costs of capital and labor (to include rent, medical care, education, etc.) Those costs are logically part of the efficiency factors e, though I'm not sure if Keen intended to include them.
Bob

Sadly, the dissension between scientists about a NOAA study of sea surface temperature trends will go down in many citizen's minds as another data point showing that NOAA, NASA and climate science in general is "politicized." The study was part of an effort to re-evaluate the finding of a "hiatus" - a pause - in the trend of global temperature, noted in the 2013 report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The charge of politically motivated science comes up regularly, and was heard frequently during the Trump campaign. It's a pervasive "poisoning of the well"* for anyone trying to discuss global warming. Some of my friends distrust the data, the theory and the scientists themselves on the basis of this alleged politicization.

All the professional organizations of meteorologists and other climate scientists agree that human activity is the main cause of global warming. By NOAA's count, this amounts to 97% of all such scientists. But apparently they're all deluded or else in on the scam.

One vocal critic of the IPCC writes that "The politicians wanted scientific support for their agendas and the scientists were more than willing to oblige because the politicians held the purse strings for climate research." What these politicians' "agendas" were, and who would benefit by them, he doesn't mention.

Another critic, in his self published book on the subject, promises to expose "the malicious misuse of climate science as it was distorted by dishonest brokers to advance the political aspirations of the progressive left."

The "Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change" (NIPCC) states that "The United Nations [is] a famously corrupt body in which most votes are controlled by kleptocracies and outright dictatorships..any settlement of the Global Warming issue by the UN would entail massive transfers of wealth from the citizens of wealthy countries to the politicians and bureaucrats of the poorer countries."

NIPCC works closely with the Heartland Institute, a "think tank" which cut its teeth trying to discredit the link between smoking and cancer, and now has turned it attention to climate science.

So all the research and reporting on global warming is a huge boondoggle to keep politicians and scientists employed - as if they could find no other work - or else to funnel cash to politicians and bureaucrats in poor countries. I don't think anyone could disprove these charges, but they seem highly unlikely.

I was in graduate school, studying climatology, at the same time as many of the scientists now investigating global warming. I remember the studies of paleoclimate that were starting to show us the baseline against which the recent warming trend is measured, and the new mathematical techniques being developed to study time series of measurements. The grad students and professors I studied with were honest scientists, working hard to discover what actually happened in climate history and what was currently going on in the atmosphere.

Back then, meteorologists were just beginning to understand the El Nino effect, and there was some interest in "atmospheric teleconnections in the equatorial Pacific." Now we have a grab-bag of oscillations and cycles known to affect temperature and rainfall in particular regions. And not just known but measured and somewhat predictable.

I admire the work of all these people, and when 97% of them support a given conclusion, it seems highly likely to me.

*Poisoning the well: "..a fallacy where irrelevant adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that the target person is about to say." - Wikipedia

Comments

Ah, the sweet normality of gridlock! Immigration, Customs and Homeland Security resume normal operations, sixty thousand visa holders get their visas back, and President Trump's immigration initiative starts to grind its way through the Federal courts.

Trump apparently means to walk his campaign talk, and walk it within the bounds of the Constitution. Fears and rumors about Homeland Security defying court orders were unfounded. Anyone who doubts the administration's intent to work within the law should read its memo to the Labor Department about the Fiduciary Duty Rule: more clauses and qualifiers than a bungee jumping waiver.

I had hoped for a few good outcomes from the new crew, along with the other stuff, but I've had one big disappointment. I hoped Trump would go along with the Republican Party platform and reinstate the Glass Steagall act in place of the present Dodd Frank law. The repeal of Glass Steagall during the Clinton administration paved the way for the many of the financial excesses that led to the banking crisis of 2008.

Instead, Trump is moving to weaken Dodd Frank - consistent with his statements during the campaign. He ordered a review of the law, which he says discourages banks from lending for new business ventures. His NEC Director Gary Cohn says it forces banks to build capital "to meet regulatory requirements and pay for additional regulations," reducing the funds available to loan out.

Reserve requirements could be lowered without taking away other protections, such as the Consumer Protection Act. But- "pay for additional regulations"? If you're draining capital to meet day-to-day expenses, you need to raise your fees, right? I don't know much about banks, though; I keep my money in a credit union.

I'm also disappointed in my own party, who seem determined to become the Party of Nooo. If they put all their energy into delay, "resistance" and protest, they'll have a hard time joining in discussions and negotiations as environmental laws are brought up for repeal and new legislation is put through tough Congressional reviews.

It won't help at all with the We the People Amendment, HJR 48, introduced in Congress last week by Rep. Rick Nolan (Dem, MN). We the People addresses the granddaddy of all political issues: campaign finance.

It establishes that corporations are not people, and mandates a redefinition of corporate personhood in more realistic terms. It establishes that money is not speech, contradicting a key point in the 2010 Citizens United court decision.

Citizens United was the ultimate absurdity in a long series of court decisions defending the "civil rights" of corporate persons. It essentially legalized bribery. Justice Stevens wrote in a dissenting opinion,

"...corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of �We the People� by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

Corporate personhood is a bipartisan issue if there ever was one. Passing the amendment will take a 2/3 majority in both houses - or a constitutional convention. But so far, only one of Nolan's twenty cosponsors is a Republican. There's bound to be more support out there, in the electorate and in Congress, but it will be hard for Democrats to rally it with their heels dug in the "resistance forever" posture.

We the People isn't new; it's been introduced every year, in concert with a growing movement led by the Move to Amend organization. The legal language of HJR 48 addresses all the points of Move to Amend's petition, which has been endorsed in resolutions by hundreds of communities and five U.S. states. Its text is even shorter than Trump's inauguration speech:

"We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights."

It is possible that Trump himself might endorse the We the People Amendment. He spoke honestly about campaign finance during the debates:

"When you give," he said, "they [politicians] do whatever the hell you want them to do."

�I was a businessman, I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, and they are there for me.� He added, �And that�s a broken system.�

Trump's inauguration speech was about handing power back to the people. Literally "about" - that was its only topic. And it seems that, for a time, the people have won out against the establishment and its multimillion dollar lobbying arm.

"What truly matters," he said, "is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people."

HJR 48 is our best chance of keeping the people in power. It's a slim chance, because every successful politician depends on campaign donations. The more successful, the more dependent, and the less likely to give up the big donations. But Trump is not in any donor's pocket, He's led his party to an overwhelming victory, and he could bring many legislators and citizens along on this issue.

Back this one, Mr. President, and you solve a host of serious problems in one move. And you'll keep the people in power.