He’s Dumb, But Not Alone

        The Orange Dunce of Mar a Lago once told his then media bitch, Sean Hannity, that “Wind energy won’t work because the wind only blows sometimes.” More recently he raved about the "fumes" associated with wind power.  As a science nerd, I could go into some detail about why this is bat shit crazy, but I’d rather have a frank discussion about why the “Green New Dealers” also need to do more homework. I’m reminded of the stoner, interviewed at Woodstock who opined that Woodstock was a “model for the world, man.” It was a great concert, but hardly a model for urban planning, living or (definitely not) sanitation.

        Idealism, untempered by a grasp on the possible, rather than the Utopian. is a lousy framework for getting meaningful things done. This is certainly true in the case of exclusively wind power as part of a nationwide electrical grid. In furtherance of the goal of “all wind all the time,” Green New Dealers almost always (I only add “almost” because someone, somewhere, may have stated factual data but we have yet to see it) grossly understate the true cost of wind in several ways.  Understand this before I begin: I loathe fossil fuel’s negative effects on the environment and public health. What I am referring to here is the amazingly lo-ball numbers we are being fed re: wind as opposed to other possibilities.

        To begin with, energy storage in a “situational” power source situation (Solar, Wind) is critical to maintaining unbroken power supplies to consumers. “Peak” energy consumption across the nation is after dark much of the year. Clearly, solar must overproduce during the day and store energy for the dark hours. This battery technology, while burgeoning is grossly expensive and in its infancy and will cost far more than the solar panels which produce the energy they would have to store. Solar has the advantage of no moving parts, ergo lesser maintenance, however, it also is easy to damage (hail, normal wear and tear) It also wears out and is carbon intensive in both manufacture and disposal.

        Wind, of which the dunce in chief demonstrably knew little, has more and more expensive concerns, generally glossed over by the naïfs who tout the GND as a panacea.

        The two major disadvantages of wind power include initial cost and technology immaturity. First: constructing turbines and wind facilities is extremely expensive for the amount of power generated by each unit- an average about 2.5 to 3 KW per, with 5 KW as a probable maximum. Secondarily, at the current state of technology, maintenance, such as changing oil in rotor bearings at the top of the tower weekly, is periodic, essential, frequent, and expensive. (Ask the Danes!) It is even costlier in offshore installations.  We, too frequently, see cost per kwh listed as production cost, not cost to consumer, which is extremely equivocal. As an example, most cost per kwh numbers we see are misleading because they frequently omit the initial cost of hardware. This “total” cost, which is passed along to consumers is known as levelized cost. 

    What GND’ers cite (in the vicinity of 3.1 cents per kwh) is like citing the cost of a car wash considering only the water, soap and minimum wage imbecile who reminds you to “put the window up!” without adding the cost of the machines, the building, the electricity, etc. This is about like bragging about how many miles per gallon your hybrid gets without considering the initial cost of the vehicle (still a good investment by the way!) Here is a sobering real-world number: Danes pay about 40 cents per kwh, which is 13 times as high as the GND’ers hype states!

       Moreover, it almost always fails to consider energy storage costs for the periods when demand exceeds supply. This seems minor, but in a nationwide grid it is critical. Just to power New York City alone (this is just households, not the far more energy hungry hotels and businesses) would require the installation and constant operation of about 5,700 wind turbines, not to mention energy storage capacity. The cost of the turbines alone, at an average $3.5 million apiece, would run to well over $20 billion.  At an average annual maintenance cost per turbine, add another $270 million annually!

        That cost, passed on to consumers, would be almost punitive. This does not include the far, far higher energy demands of industrial operations.

        In the real world, the cost to non-industrial consumers of electricity fluctuates over the entire nation, from a low of 8 cents per kwh in Idaho, to 18.1 cents per kwh in NY and CT, to a whopping 33.2 cents per kwh in Hawaii. Idaho is relatively cheap because most of the electricity produced and consumed there is generated by the cleanest source on the planet – hydro-electric plants. Idaho also has some geo-thermal (hot underground water) sources and uses the free heat to heat some buildings. According to the Federal Energy Information Administration, the "levelized cost" of new wind power (including capital and operating costs) is 8.2 cents per kwh, essentially in a dead heat with Nuclear. Advanced “clean-coal” (bullshit!) plants cost about 11 cents per kwh but advanced natural gas-burning plants come in at just 6.3 cents per kwh.  Without regard to the environment, this makes gas even cheaper than wind and solar. Of course, there’s that nasty little carbon footprint thingy which remains relatively high. Coal is filthy in all ways and constitutes a well-documented public health hazard.

        None of the above should be construed as indicating a dislike for wind power, but rather as a factual prequel to a discussion of an even better option. 

        What is being overlooked is that there is another “zero carbon footprint” technology, its reputation damaged by a movie and a “no harm/no foul” accident within weeks of each other in 1979. Three Mile Island and “The China Syndrome” scared the hell out of many Americans, the more ignorant, the more scared. The nuclear power industry in the US has still never really recovered, despite the fact that perhaps the most rigorous public health data collection effort ever, concluded in the US after 40 years, announced the total casualties either direct or indirect from the TMI incident as “zero.”  Nuclear power emits no exhausts, discharges no pollutants into streams, has a zero-fatality record over about 70 years of US operation, land based and seaborne, yet some shun it because we fail to understand it.

        Want to be “Green?”  China and India obviously do. They are pioneering liquid salt reactor technology which the US gave up in the late 1960s. Why did we do so? Even though the prototype had a record of over 6000 effective full power hours of incident free operation at the Oak Ridge, TN, facility, it was not capable of producing weapons grade Plutonium, ergo it was scrapped in favor of high-pressure fast breeders (like Chernobyl).

Liquid salt reactors can use Thorium, of which we have literally thousands of years’ worth, and are inherently stable and safe. They even produce fewer waste products to be handled than current pressurized water designs, of which, by the way, I have more than a passing operational knowledge of, at sea, submerged. Interestingly, molten salt fuel comes with an inherent safety feature. If the salt overheats, it naturally expands and makes the fission reaction less effective, which shuts down the reactor. Tech innovators such as Bezos with Amazon, Gates with Microsoft and Altman with OpenAI are united in betting on nuclear energy. And they're not alone. The nuclear sector is experiencing a renaissance, bolstered by climate goals and energy demands, A wind farm would need 235 square miles to produce the same amount of electricity as a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant. The nuclear power plant can operate at constant power day/ night, wind or calm, freezing or scorching requiring no massive (and, as yet, non-existent battery) banks. 

        We love to cite Denmark when we discuss Utopian social models which we have been conned into believing. One such is the fact that the Danes are wind powered for all electricity, much of it sea-borne (off shore). So, they must get really cheap electricity, right? Not so much. They pay more (40.5 cents per kwh) than even Hawaii!  apparently the “green” in Green New Deal doesn’t refer to the color of money! I failed to mention the estimated half-million birds of all sorts killed annually in the US with existing wind turbines. Finally, what would all these new turbines cost? Assuming all current non-wind energy production became “wind based” and at today’s prices, merely (roughly) about 15% of the current total national debt! This of course excludes land costs (astronomical) and, yet to be invented storage capabilities. National bankruptcy, anyone?

        Bottom line? Nuclear power is safe, reliable and can be sited anywhere, no matter how remote. Both China and India are already building next generation liquid salt reactors for electric power production. Although China leads the world in terms of total wind generation capacity, they also would seem to realize the advantages nuclear offers, since, this year (2025) they are building a pilot liquid salt electric power station in the Gobi desert which, while only about 9 feet by 7 feet in size, will produce enough power for about 45,000 homes. This is equivalent to 54 wind turbines operating at constant maximum output. Future liquid salt plants will produce far more, in the area of 1100 mw. This would be sufficient to power more than half a million homes. It would require more than 400 wind turbines operating at full capacity, 24 hours per day, to provide the same output.

      Do the homework, be informed, unlike the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

 

                              Fascism, a History and a Warning

 

        “Fascism: A form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.”

        “Antifa: a political protest movement comprising autonomous groups affiliated by their militant opposition to fascism and other forms of extreme right-wing ideology.”

        Trump’s first term continued reference to Antifa was primarily aimed at shifting attention from his continued and increasing cult of personality/oligarchy/isolationism. America’s relationship to and with fascism is not, I think, generally very well understood, if at all, by the majority of our population.

        On the simplest level, it is noteworthy that most multigenerational US families have, or have had, family members whose military service they venerate. If this service was in either of the two World Wars, the opposition was Fascist in both. In WWI, Germany was, although a nominal monarchy, in essence fascist in some of the areas as listed in the definition.

        However, the aftermath of that war was, almost predictably, the breeding ground for a far more vicious version: Sven Reichard, in a 2009 book, summed it up thus: “The experience of World War I was the most decisive immediate precondition for fascism.”  In other words, without that war there might well have been neither fascism in Italy nor National Socialism in Germany. “Without the First World War and its consequences, but also without the October revolution and the symbolic strength of Leninism, fascism would have remained a sectarian movement.”

        Although peripheral, it cannot be overlooked that the Versailles treaty, while endeavoring to make things better for colonial subjects, also condemned Germany to post war economic struggle, always a fertile field for a rabble rouser, and Germany certainly spawned one. Additionally, Hitler availed himself of a sort of “reverse” religious zealotry, not the usual muscular support of a specific faith, but the brutal condemnation and demonization of one. Blaming Jews was nothing new to Germans, as German Knights had slaughtered Indigenous Jews before going to the Crusades and even reformer, Martin Luther, had, in his last years become a rabid anti-Semite.

Hitler took it to the next level, blaming Jews, not just for the “denial of Christianity” but for essentially every ill Germany endured in the late 1920 and early thirties, having been devastated by the great depression. Into this misery, Hitler revived every Germanic heroic legend, even some Scandinavian ones, implying that they had been part of a Germanic “golden age” (they hadn’t) and, as Benito Mussolini would in Italy, called for a return to a largely manufactured “heroic age.”            Hitler’s speech, the infamous “prophecy” of 30 January, 1939, is significant: “Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the Earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” I find it noteworthy that Hitler intentionally conflated Judaism with Bolshevism (Communism) even though Marx was baptized Lutheran and Lenin Catholic.

        Subsequent events are well known, as both Germans and Italians succumbed to propaganda and “manufactured histories” to become text-book fascist states. What is less emphasized (by some) in the US is that, while we fittingly venerate those who   landed at Normandy and fought and died valiantly in Italy, North Africa, and Western Europe, we hear far less about how long many Americans stridently opposed US entry into the war.

        The America First movement was amalgam of groups from liberal to conservative, united under the banner of “Stay the hell out of the ‘European war’.”  Underlying this however, and under emphasized, in this writer’s opinion, was the sense of some Americans that the Germans and to a lesser extent the Italians were “Christian folks like us” added to this was the undercurrent of American anti-Semitism, reflected by the refusal of US authorities to allow the 900 passengers on the MS Saint Louis, all Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany seeking sanctuary, to land in America. The vessel was forced to return to Europe where, eventually, about a third of the passengers were executed.

        Even earlier, such prominent Americans as Henry Ford had stoked the fires of anti-Semitism. One business acquaintance recalled that, on a 1919 camping trip, Ford had lectured a group around the campfire. He "attributed all evil to Jews or to the Jewish capitalists," the friend wrote in his diary. "The Jews caused the war, the Jews caused the outbreak of thieving and robbery all over the country, the Jews caused the inefficiency of the navy.” (??) In 1918, Henry Ford acquired a newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. A year and a half later, he began publishing a series of articles that claimed a vast Jewish conspiracy was infecting America. The series ran in the following ninety-one issues. Ford bound the articles into four volumes titled "The International Jew," and distributed half a million copies to his vast network of dealerships and subscribers. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,"(!!!!) Hitler told a Detroit News reporter two years before becoming the German chancellor in 1933, explaining why he kept a life-size portrait of the American automaker next to his desk. Actually, both Ford and GM had readily retooled German plants to build the military machines which were used to invade Poland in 1939.

          In July 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, Henry Ford was awarded and accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. The following month, a senior executive for General Motors, James Mooney, received a similar medal for his "distinguished service to the Reich." As one of the most famous (yet markedly undereducated) men in America, Henry Ford legitimized ideas that otherwise may have been given little authority. In Trump world, immigrants and LGBT persons are the new “Jews.”

        Franklin D. Roosevelt realized that the fortunes of the US were tied to a free Europe and tried in several ways (not going into details here for brevity’s sake) to ease the nation farther toward open alliance (and armed participation with) Britain and France. We’ll never know how long that might have taken, because another Fascist/Monarchist state halfway around the world attacked the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was easy to get an almost unanimous declaration of war against Japan since pre-existent anti-Asian racism and religious intolerance fueled the fire. When we declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy (the Axis Powers) actually honored their treaty with Japan and declared war on the USA.

        I know, “That’s fine Mike, but why the history lesson?” It’s simple really, because as Santayana (a philosopher, not a guitarist) famously said, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”

        It could well be argued that a sizable portion of Trump policy and rhetoric reads and sounds like precursors of fascism. Look at those he admires, beginning with Vladimir Putin, who rules Russia with the collusion of a handful of oligarchs, responsible to no elected body, willing to sanction the poisoning of political rivals, controlling all media and glorifying the state above all else. Continue with the Elon Musk bromance. Recall Musk mourned the end of Apartheid in his birthplace, South Africa.

        Then consider Mohammad Bin Salman, Absolutist ruler of Saudi Arabia, whose $1.3 trillions make Trump salivate, while ignoring the brutal dismemberment of a journalist at his (MBS’s) order, (yes the CIA told Trump so, but he chose to disbelieve, because “Hey, he’s rich?”)

Trump has described both of these individuals as “very nice, very fine people.” His closeness to Musk is beyond weird and scary.

        In conclusion, nothing I can write will change the xenophobic, racist, religiously intolerant, economic elitist attitude of Trump’s many supporters, but I would hope they would at some point acknowledge that, by condemning minorities and inclusionary policies  at Trump’s bidding, they are supporting a political philosophy against which some of their relatives almost certainly fought and died in Europe and the Pacific, less than a century ago.