Destroying the educational system

 You save your money and buy a goat. Your neighbor does not have a goat. What should be done about this disparity? Kill your goat.

Here is an educational goat story from the Epoch Times.

We are headed back to the Dark Ages.

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Boston Public Schools (BPS) are halting a selective program for high-performing kids in grades four through six because of a lack of racial equality in the makeup of the student population, local media have reported.

The program, known as Advanced Work Classes (AWC), will be paused for a year, reported PBS-affiliate WGBH.

“There’s been a lot of inequities that have been brought to the light in the pandemic that we have to address,” Superintendent Brenda Cassellius told the outlet. “There’s a lot of work we have to do in the district to be anti-racist and have policies where all of our students have a fair shot at an equitable and excellent education.”

According to the school district’s website (pdf), the AWC is a full-time program that provides an “accelerated academic curriculum for highly motivated and academically capable students.” Students who wish to participate need to take the popular Terra Nova 3 standardized test, and those who meet the score requirement will be put into a lottery conducted by the central administration office, and lottery winners receive letters inviting them to apply to the program.

Last fall, 453 students received invitations, 143 students applied and 116 enrolled for this year, officials said, reported WGBH.

The decision to pause the AWC is based on a district analysis of the program, which found that more than 70 percent of the students enrolled were Asian or white. By contrast, a Massachusetts state analysis of the BPS suggests that out of the district’s 48,000 students in school year 2020-21, 42 percent are Hispanic, 29 percent are black, 15 percent are white, and only 9 percent are Asian.

A BPS spokesperson told WGBH that there will be no new students admitted for fifth or sixth grade but those already in class will be allowed to continue. New fourth-grade students will be admitted by standards to be determined by individual schools.

The fate of the AWC will be decided by a district working group by May, the spokesperson said.

Similarly, New York City last month replaced the admission test to its Gifted and Talented program with a lottery, as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s effort to ease what he considers is a problem of racial disparity.

The G&T program, which offers specialized instruction and enrichment opportunities for young learners deemed exceptional, admits students based on a single, high-stakes entrance exam. The de Blasio administration, over the past two years, has argued that the program’s admission format unfairly favors affluent white and Asian middle-class families.

In 2019, de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group, which was tasked with providing recommendations to reduce segregation in city schools, recommended the elimination of the G&T program. The advisory panel highlighted the fact that black and Hispanic students make up only 27 percent of students in those gifted classes, even though they account for about 70 percent of students citywide.

Who are the mass public shooters?

 From the Crime Prevention Research Center.

The CPRC is is one of the few objective and truthful sources of gun related information available.

"The False Narrative Of White Supremacists Doing Mass Public Shootings: Racial, Gender, Religious And Political Views Of These Killers From 1998 Through January 2021"

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Entertainment television continually provides a false impression of those who commit mass public shootings and how they commit them. Show after show has mass public shootings involving machine guns, though that never happens. But another myth is that attacks are frequently by white supremacists. In his first Townhall as president, Biden claimed: “And now a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.” CBS entertainment television constantly portrays white supremacists as the most pressing danger facing the country, committing almost all the mass public shootings. Yet, that is far from the case.

Our dataset of Mass Public Shooting List US 1998-January 2021 provides information on the ages, political views, and religious beliefs of mass public shooters and these killers’ race and gender. Mass public shootings are defined as those cases where four or more people are killed at one point in time in a public place and not involving some other type of crime such as a gang fight or a robbery. We also looked at information on the mass vehicle and bombing attacks (though bombing attacks in the US where multiple people are killed are rare). Clearly, we showed that very few of these attacks are politically or religiously motivated.

The claim that these killers are so overwhelmingly white is also misleading. While whites (excluding those from Middle Eastern descent) make up most mass public shooters, that is 7.4% below their share of the population. Hispanics are even lower than their percentage of the U.S. population. By contrast, those of Middle Eastern descent, Asians, blacks, and American Indians are all above their population shares. If you combine all Christian groups together, you get 12.5% being Christian, so that slightly exceeds the number of Muslims, though Muslims and other non-Christian religions are overrepresented relative to their share of the population and Christians and Jews are underrepresented.

These killers are also overwhelmingly non-political (72%). The next most prominent group are Islamic extremists (9%), but you won’t see any of the television shows having Islamic extremists making these attacks.

However, mass public shooters are overwhelmingly male, with 96% of shooters being male.

NASA video of Aurora Borealis from Space in Ultra-High Definition

 Here is the link.

How to create more racism

 I believe that there is racism in the US.

I believe that for a long time it was decreasing and had reached a low level.

I suspect that, recently, racism has been increasing.  I think that because my guess is that there are too many people calling other people who are not racist racist.  I consider the former set of people racist - and and believe that their number has grown substantially.

I believe that one danger of the widespread use of unjustified accusations of racism is that it may cause a reaction that produces racism in the accused.

Here is Jonathan Turley with an illustration of what I am talking about.

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Smith College and its President Kathleen McCartney are under fire for its treatment of employees after a student, Oumou Kanoute, accused the school of racism in an incident with a security officer and a lunch worker. The incident was disproven but McCartney and the college (as well as the media) treated the allegation as manifestly true — resulting in destruction of the reputations of a number of employees who were labeled as racists or examples of white privilege. To this day, McCartney remains unapologetic for her failure to guarantee due process and fairness for these employees, even after an investigation of the incident in a recent New York Times piece.

Smith has long been a symbol of the elite with tuition costs exceeding $75,000. It is also an institution known for its liberal politics. The school was thrown into a frenzy in 2018 when Ms. Kanoute tweeted out that she was the victim of a racist encounter with a campus security officer. “All I did was be black. It’s outrageous that some people questioned my being at Smith College and my existence overall as a woman of color.” ABC’s “Good Morning America” ran an account that notably did not seriously question the underlying facts. On the program, Kanoute stated:

KANOUTE: I see the cop walk in with a Smith employee, whom I’ve never seen before, and the man asked me, ‘We were wondering why you’re here.’ … It just still upsets me to just talk about it, because I don’t even feel safe on my own campus and I’m away from home. I’m the first in my family to go to college.

Various media outlets also ran stories about the shocking and abusive encounter with the security officer who allegedly confronted Ms. Kanoute without any justification. In reality, Kanoute was in a house that was closed to students. Only children attending a summer camp were allowed to use the building’s cafeteria. There are various reasons, including legal reasons, why schools close access to areas used by younger children in such programs. The encounter with the security officer however was taped and (despite the clam of his being armed and abusive) the officer was unarmed and polite. Here is the entire exchange;

KANOUTE: Hi.

MAN: How you doing?

KANOUTE: Good, how are you?

MAN: We were wondering why you were here.

KANOUTE: Oh, I was eating lunch. I’m working the summer program, so I was just relaxing on my couch …

MAN: Oh, just taking a break. So you’re with one of the summer programs?

KANOUTE: Yeah, I’m actually a TA …

MAN: So that’s what it was …

KANOUTE: Yeah, I mean, it’s OK. It’s just, like, kind of, stuff like this happens way too often where people just feel, like, threatened.

Nevertheless, the school ordered immediate action on the assumption that this was a serious racial incident. The ACLU (which apparently did little investigation) agreed with Kanoute that this was an incident of a student being abused for “eating while black.” McCartney suspended the janitor who called campus security. She also ordered campus wide training sessions and seminars to deal with racism on campus.

Kanoute publicly demanded the release of the name of an employee in the incident for public condemnation and she was supported by many like Charles Song:

Your racist employee probably permanently scarred that student and you’re worried about protecting the privacy of that racist employee? Get your priorities in order.

— Charles Song (@CS70) August 3, 2018

Kanoute reportedly published the picture and name of at least one of the employee and accused a cafeteria worker, Jackie Blair, of being a racist despite later findings that Blair played no role in the incident. According to the reports, “[Blair] discovered that Kanoute had posted her photograph, name and email on Facebook, along with that of another janitor, Mark Patenaude, a 21-year veteran of Smith College, who was not even on site at the time of the July 31 incident.”

The custodian, the security officer, the cafeteria worker, and others found themselves the targets of threats and public denunciations.

Even after the intensive investigation found that there was no racial bias incident, McCartney and others refused to apologize and most of the media did not report on the fact that the original allegation was disproven. McCartney simply declared “I suspect many of you will conclude, as did I, it is impossible to rule out the potential role of implicit racial bias.”

The ACLU was even more dismissive of the abusive treatment of these workers who earned less in salaries than the annual tuition at the school. Keep in mind that the report exonerated these employees who spent years being called racists and left the school. Rahsaan Hall, racial justice director for the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts and Ms. Kanoute’s lawyer, simply said “It’s troubling that people are more offended by being called racist than by the actual racism in our society. Allegations of being racist, even getting direct mailers in their mailbox, is not on par with the consequences of actual racism.”

Most recently, another employee went public with a resignation and her own story. Jodi Shaw is graduate of Smith College and worked at the college as a librarian. She objected to the racial training seminars ordered by the school in response to the Kanoute incident. While she loved Smith College, she finally left after what she saw as indoctrination and humiliation. She published the following letter which has been posted publicly. In the letter to McCartney, Shaw states in part:

In spite of an independent investigation into the incident that found no evidence of racial bias, the college ramped up its initiatives aimed at dismantling the supposed racism that pervades the campus. This only served to support the now prevailing narrative that the incident had been racially motivated and that Smith staff are racist.
…
As it turned out, my experience in the library was just the beginning. In my new position, I was told on multiple occasions that discussing my personal thoughts and feelings about my skin color is a requirement of my job. I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of my employment. I endured meetings in which another staff member violently banged his fist on the table, chanting, “Rich, white women! Rich, white women!” in reference to Smith alumnae.
…
Although I have spoken to many staff and faculty at the college who are deeply troubled by all of this, they are too terrified to speak out about it. This illustrates the deeply hostile and fearful culture that pervades Smith College.

The last straw came in January 2020, when I attended a mandatory Residence Life staff retreat focused on racial issues. The hired facilitators asked each member of the department to respond to various personal questions about race and racial identity. When it was my turn to respond, I said, “I don’t feel comfortable talking about that.” I was the only person in the room to abstain.

Later, the facilitators told everyone present that a white person’s discomfort at discussing their race is a symptom of “white fragility.” They said that the white person may seem like they are in distress, but that it is actually a “power play.” In other words, because I am white, my genuine discomfort was framed as an act of aggression. I was shamed and humiliated in front of all of my colleagues.
…
This was an extremely difficult decision for me and comes at a deep personal cost. I make $45,000 a year; less than a year’s tuition for a Smith student. I was offered a settlement in exchange for my silence, but I turned it down. My need to tell the truth — and to be the kind of woman Smith taught me to be — makes it impossible for me to accept financial security at the expense of remaining silent about something I know is wrong. My children’s future, and indeed, our collective future as a free nation, depends on people having the courage to stand up to this dangerous and divisive ideology, no matter the cost.

McCartney rejected the allegations in the Shaw letter and said lashed out at Shaw. In a letter from McCartney the College maintained that it “flatly denies” Shaw’s “baseless” claims and stated that her letter “contains a number of misstatements about the college’s equity and inclusion initiatives.” McCartney also attacked Shaw for saying that she was offered a large settlement in exchange for a confidentiality agreement:

“The employee suggests that Smith tried to buy her silence. But it was the employee herself who demanded payment of an exceptionally large sum in exchange for dropping a threatened legal claim and agreeing to standard confidentiality provisions. Further, while the employee aims her complaint at Smith, her public communications make clear that her grievances about equity and inclusion training run more broadly…”

It is clearly true that Shaw was objecting to the training programs. I also do not fault McCartney in ordering campus reviews in light of the allegation. The allegation was made national news by ABC and other outlets. As a community, it is important to discuss such issues and look at any concerns, particularly among faculty and students of color. I cannot speak to the need for “training seminars” or their content since we only have opposing accounts. However, when such allegations are raised, it is important for the college to initiate discussions among faculty and students. Clearly McCartney did more than that in the use of these training sessions, but it is important for schools to move quickly to allow for a community dialogue on such disturbing allegations.

Where I (and many) are most critical is in the treatment of employees accused by Ms. Kanoute and others. There was no semblance of due process for these workers. Moreover, there was no acknowledgment of the disproving of the allegations and the pain that it caused these workers. The College and others immediately appeared to accept that the incident was true and proceeded from that basis even though it turns out that innocent workers (including one not even involved) were mistreated.

In her letter McCartney defends her racial training seminars as “grounded in evidence.” That could be true, but the treatment of the College of these workers was not. It was based on assumptions and merely followed the public narrative created in the media to the deprivation of workers at the college. These workers have little power or money to contest such actions by the college. Yet, McCartney’s empathy clearly does not extend that far.

None of this was necessary. Smith College had a video of the incident. It could have declared that the matter would be thoroughly investigated but reaffirm that both the student and these workers are entitled to an opportunity to be heard on the matter. It could have held sessions to discuss claims of systemic racism and privilege at the college for anyone to attend. Likewise, the media could have done a modicum of investigation and even presented both sides of this story as a contested account of racism. The costs of those failures were placed on these workers. Indeed, most media (and certainly McCartney) did not admit to the failures or the unfair treatment of these workers. Even after the investigation disproving the Kanoute allegation, it is simply too risky for many to be seen as critical of the original narrative.

The Smith College incident should be a learning experience for all universities but the lesson has not taken in the past. Schools like Duke University have engaged in the same presumptions of guilt in incidents that later were proven false but destroyed the lives of students or staff. As with Smith, the rush to judgment was led by the Duke President who seemed to dismiss any obligations to the accused students who were labeled as gang rapists. What is most striking is how such failures to guarantee fairness ultimately undermine not just the institutions but the cause itself. There are serious problems with racism in our society, including in our educational institutions. These false allegations undermine those efforts and these schools magnify those costs by failing to exercise a modicum of judgment and fairness in their responses.

The traitors continue their war against free speech

 Here is Jonathan Turley free speech.

As usual JT is on target.

Those who are fighting to limit speech and grow the cancel culture are traitors.

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Below is my column in the Hill on yesterday’s hearing on possible private and public limitations on free speech and the free press, including a letter from Democratic members asking companies why they do not remove Fox News and networks from cable. I recently responded to comments made by Rep. Anna Eshoo in the hearing. However, the letter highlighted the continuing pressure from members on both Big Tech and cable suppliers to silence opposing viewpoints. What was most disappointing was that no Democratic members used the hearing to offer a simple and unifying statement: we oppose efforts to remove Fox News and these other networks from cable programming. Not a single Democratic member made that statement, which (in my view) should be easy for anyone who believes in free speech and the free press. Even though every witness (including one who lost her father to Covid-19) made that statement, no Democratic member was willing to state publicly that they would oppose efforts to remove Fox News from cable access. That silence was also chilling to the point of glacial.

Here is the column:

English essayist Samuel Johnson wrote that “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” I thought of Johnson’s words in preparing to appear before a House committee exploring limitations on free speech, including a campaign by some Democratic members and activists to remove networks like Fox News from cable carriers. As someone who just came over to Fox News as a legal analyst from CBS and the BBC, the hearing concentrated my mind “wonderfully” on the future of free speech and the free press.

Increasingly, free speech in the United States is described as a danger that needs to be controlled, as opposed to the very value that defines us as a people. While I am viewed as a “free speech purist” by many, I maintain what once was a mainstream view of free speech. I believe free speech is the greatest protection against bad speech. That view is, admittedly, under fire and may even be a minority view today. But history has shown that public or private censorship does not produce better speech. It only produces more censorship and more controlled speech.

There is no disagreement that we face a torrent of false, hateful, extremist speech on social media and in other public forums. This speech is not without cost: It fuels those filled with rage, victimizes the gullible, and alienates the marginal in our society. It is a scourge, but not a new one.

The Constitution was written not only for times like these — it was written during times like these. Politics has always been something of a blood sport, literally. At the start of our Republic, the Republicans and Federalists were not trying to “cancel” one another in the contemporary sense; they were trying to kill each other in the actual sense, through measures like the Alien and Sedition Acts. There also were rampant false conspiracy theories about alliances with Great Britain, France, Spain, and other foreign powers. Newspapers and pamphleteers were highly biased and partisan.

Members of Congress are now pushing for public and private censorship on the internet and in other forums. They are being joined by an unprecedented alliance of academics, writers and activists calling for everything from censorship to incarceration to blacklists. For example, an article published in The Atlantic by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods called for Chinese-style censorship of the internet, stating that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”

Much of the effort by politicians and activists has been directed at using Big Tech to censor or bar opposing viewpoints, seeking to achieve indirectly what cannot be achieved directly in curtailing free speech. Congress could never engage in this type of raw content discrimination between news organizations under the First Amendment.

However, it can use its influence on private companies to limit free speech. The move makes obvious sense if the desire is to shape and control opinion — the essence of state-controlled media. Controlling speech on certain platforms is meaningless if citizens can still hear opposing views from other sources. You must not only control the narrative but also eliminate alternatives to it.

The most extreme effort was made plain this week as some in Congress sought to pressure companies like AT&T to reconsider whether viewers should be allowed to watch Fox News and other networks. In a recent letter to cable carriers like AT&T, House Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney of California appeared to mirror calls from activists to drop such networks from their lineups. The members stressed that “not all TV news sources are the same” and called these companies to account for their role in allowing such “dissemination.”

The letter solely targeted those networks that the members and their constituents do not like or likely watch, a list of every major television channel viewed as conservative leaning. If the cable carriers were to yield to such pressure, there would be no major television outlet offering a substantial alternative to the coverage of networks like CNN and MSNBC. Tens of millions of viewers would be forced to watch those channels, or watch nothing at all. The limitation or elimination of conservative networks clearly would work to the advantage of Democrats — an obvious conflict of interest laid bare not only by the demand but the inclusion of only networks with large conservative audiences.

Democrats are pushing for cable carriers to explain their “moral” criteria for allowing tens of millions of viewers access to Fox News and other targeted networks. The answer should begin with the obvious principles of free speech and a free press, which are not even referenced in the Eshoo-McNerney letter. Instead, the companies are asked if they will impose a morality judgment on news coverage and, ultimately, public access.

This country went through a long and troubling period of morality codes used to bar speakers or censor material that barred atheists, feminists, and others from espousing their viewpoints in newspapers, books, and movies. Indeed, there was a time when the Democratic Party fought such morality rules, in defense of free speech.

Those seeking free-speech limits often speak of speech like it is a swimming pool that must be monitored and carefully controlled for purity and safety. I view speech more as a rolling ocean, dangerous but also majestic and inspiring, its immense size allowing for a natural balance. Free speech allows false ideas to be challenged in the open, rather than forcing dissenting viewpoints beneath the surface.

I do not believe today’s activists will succeed in removing the most-watched cable news channel in 2020 from the airways. But, then again, I did not think social media sites — given legal immunity in exchange for being content-neutral — would ever censor viewpoints.

Roughly 70 years ago, Justice William O. Douglas accepted a prestigious award with a speech entitled “The One Un-American Act,” about the greatest threat to a free nation. He warned that the restriction of free speech “is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” The measures being discussed in Congress have the potential to defeat us all. It is surprisingly easy to convince a free people to give up their freedoms, and exceedingly difficult to regain those freedoms once they are lost.

Assigning Blame for the Blackouts in Texas

 Here is an analysis from a Planning Engineer.

The message: Government and Activists screwed up (no big surprise).

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The story from some media sources is that frozen wind turbines are responsible for the power shortfalls in Texas. Other media sources emphasize that fossil fuel resources should shoulder the blame because they have large cold induced outages as well and also some natural gas plants could not obtain fuel.

Extreme cold should be expected to cause significant outages of both renewable and fossil fuel based resources. Why would anyone expect that sufficient amounts of natural gas would be available and deliverable to supply much needed generation? Considering the extreme cold, nothing particularly surprising is happening within any resource class in Texas. The technologies and their performance were well within the expected bounds of what could have been foreseen for such weather conditions. While some degradation should be expected, what is happening in Texas is a departure from what they should be experiencing. Who or what then is responsible for the shocking consequences produced by Texas’s run in with this recent bout of extreme cold?

TRADITIONAL PLANNING

Traditionally, responsibility for ensuring adequate capacity during extreme conditions has fallen upon individual utility providers. A couple decades ago I was responsible for the load forecasting, transmission planning and generation planning efforts of an electric cooperative in the southeastern US. My group’s projections, studies and analysis supported our plans to meet customer demand under forecasted peak load conditions. We had seen considerable growth in residential and commercial heat pumps. At colder temperature these units stop producing heat efficiently and switch to resistance heating which causes a spike in demand. Our forecasts showed that we would need to plan for extra capacity to meet this potential demand under extreme conditions in upcoming winters.

I was raked over the coals and this forecast was strongly challenged. Providing extra generation capacity, ensuring committed (firm) deliveries of gas during the winter, upgrading transmission facilities are all expensive endeavors. Premiums are paid to ensure gas delivery and backup power and there is no refund if it’s not used. Such actions increased the annual budget and impact rates significantly for something that is not likely to occur most years, even if the extreme weather projections are appropriate. You certainly don’t want to over-estimate peak demand due to the increasing costs associated with meeting that demand. But back then we were obligated to provide for such “expected” loads. Our CEO, accountants and rate makers would ideally have liked a lower extreme demand projection as that would in most cases kept our cost down. It was challenging to hold firm and stand by the studies and force the extra costs on our Members.

Fortuitously for us, we were hit with extreme winter conditions just when the plan went in place. Demand soared and the planned capacity we had provided was needed. A neighboring entity was hit with the same conditions. Like us they had significant growth in heat pumps – but they had not forecasted their extreme weather peak to climb as we had. They had to go to the overburdened markets to find energy and make some curtailments. The cost of replacement power turned out to be significantly greater proportionately than we incurred by planning for the high demand. They suffered real consequences due to the shortcomings of their planning efforts.

However, if extreme winter had not occurred, our neighbor’s costs would have been lower than ours that year and that may have continued many years into the future as long as we didn’t see extreme winter conditions. Instead of the praise we eventually received, there would have at least been some annoyance directed at my groups for contributing to “un-needed expenditures”. That’s the way of the world. You can often do things a little cheaper, save some money and most of the time you can get away with it. But sometimes/eventually you cut it too close and the consequences can be extreme.

The Approach in Texas

Who is responsible for providing adequate capacity in Texas during extreme conditions? The short answer is no one. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) looks at potential forecasted peak conditions and expected available generation and if there is sufficient margin they assume everything will be all right. But unlike utilities under traditional models, they don’t ensure that the resources can deliver power under adverse conditions, they don’t require that generators have secured firm fuel supplies, and they don’t make sure the resources will be ready and available to operate. They count on enough resources being there because they assume that is in their owner’s best interests. Unlike all other US energy markets, Texas does not even have a capacity market. By design they rely solely upon the energy market. This means that entities profit only from the actual energy they sell into the system. They do not see any profit from having stand by capacity ready to help out in emergencies. The energy only market works well under normal conditions to keep prices down. While generally markets are often great things, providing needed energy during extreme conditions evidently is not their forte. Unlike the traditional approach where specific entities have responsibilities to meet peak levels, in Texas the responsibility is diffuse and unassigned. There is no significant long term motivation for entities to ensure extra capacity just in case it may be needed during extreme conditions. Entities that might make that gamble theoretically can profit when markets skyrocket, but such approaches require tremendous patience and the ability to weather many years of potential negative returns.

This article from GreenTech media praises energy only markets as do many green interests. Capacity markets are characterized as wasteful. Andrew Barlow, Head of the PUC in Texas is quoted as follows, “Legislators have shown strong support for the energy-only market that has fueled the diversification of the state’s electricity generation fleet and yielded significant benefits for customers while making Texas the national leader in installed wind generation. ”

Why has Capacity been devalued?

Traditional fossil fuel generation has (as does most hydro and nuclear) inherent capacity value. That means such resources generally can be operated with a high degree of reliability and dependability. With incentives they can be operated so that they will likely be there when needed. Wind and solar are intermittent resources, working only under good conditions for wind and sun, and as such do not have capacity value unless they are paired with costly battery systems.

If you want to achieve a higher level of penetration from renewables, dollars will have to be funneled away from traditional resources towards renewables. For high levels of renewable penetration, you need a system where the consumers’ dollars applied to renewable generators are maximized. Rewarding resources for offering capacity advantages effectively penalizes renewables. As noted by the head of the PUC in Texas, an energy only market can fuel diversification towards intermittent resources. It does this because it rewards only energy that is fed into the grid, not backup power. (Side note-it’s typical to provide “renewable” resources preference for feeding into the grid as well. Sometimes wind is compensated for feeding into the grid even during periods of excess generation when fossil fuel resources are penalized. But that’s another article. )

Traditional planning studies might recognize that wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel (more so under extreme conditions) such that if you have these backup generators its much cheaper to use and fuel them, than to add wind farms with the accompanying significant investment for concrete, rare earth metals, vast swaths of land …. . Traditional planning approaches often have to go to get around this “bias” of favoring capacity providing resources over intermittent resources.

When capacity value is rewarded, this makes the economics of renewables much less competitive. Texas has stacked the deck to make wind and solar more competitive than they could be in a system that better recognizes the value of dependable resources which can supply capacity benefits. An energy only market helps accomplish the goal of making wind and solar more competitive. Except capacity value is a real value. Ignoring that, as Texas did, comes with real perils.

In Texas now we are seeing the extreme shortages and market price spikes that can result from devaluing capacity. The impacts are increased by both having more intermittent resources which do not provide capacity and also because owners and potential owners of resources which could provide capacity are not incentivized to have those units ready for backup with firm energy supplies.

Personal Observations

Wind and solar have value and can be added to power systems effectively in many instances. But seeking to attain excessive levels of wind and solar quickly becomes counterproductive. It is difficult to impossible to justify the significant amounts of wind and solar penetration desired by many policy makers today using principals of good cost allocation. Various rate schemes and market proposals have been developed to help wind and solar become more competitive. But they come with costs, often hidden. As I’ve written before, it may be because transmission providers have to assume the costs and build a more expensive system to accommodate them. It may be that rates and markets unfairly punish other alternatives to give wind and solar an advantage. It may be that they expose the system to greater risks than before. It may be that they eat away at established reliability levels and weaken system performance during adverse conditions. In a fair system with good price signals today’s wind and solar cannot achieve high penetration levels in a fair competition.

Having a strong technical knowledge of the power system along with some expertise in finance, rates and costs can help one see the folly of a variety of policies adopted to support many of today’s wind and solar projects. Very few policy makers possess anything close to the skill sets needed for such an evaluation. Furthermore, while policy makers could listen to experts, their voices are drowned out by those with vested interests in wind and solar technology who garner considerable support from those ideologically inclined to support renewables regardless of impacts.

A simpler approach to understanding the ineffectiveness of unbridled advocacy for wind and solar is to look at those areas which have heavily invested in these intermittent resources and achieved higher penetration levels of such resources. Typically electric users see significant overall increases in the cost of energy delivered to consumers. Emissions of CO2 do not uniformly decrease along with employment of renewables, but may instead increase due to how back up resources are operated. Additionally reliability problems tend to emerge in these systems. Texas, a leader in wind, once again is added to the experience gained in California, Germany and the UK showing that reliability concerns and outages increase along with greater employment of intermittent resources.

Anyone can look at Texas and observe that fossil fuel resources could have performed better in the cold. If those who owned the plants had secured guaranteed fuel, Texas would have been better off. More emergency peaking units would be a great thing to have on hand. Why would generators be inclined to do such a thing? Consider, what would be happening if the owners of gas generation had built sufficient generation to get through this emergency with some excess power? Instead of collecting $9,000 per MWH from existing functioning units, they would be receiving less than $100 per MWH for the output of those plants and their new plants. Why would anyone make tremendous infrastructure that would sit idle in normal years and serve to slash your revenue by orders of magnitudes in extreme conditions?

The incentive for gas generation to do the right thing was taken away by Texas’s deliberate energy only market strategy. The purpose of which was to aid the profitability of intermittent wind and solar resources and increase their penetration levels. I don’t believe anyone has ever advanced the notion that fossil fuel plants might operate based on altruism. Incentives and responsibility need to be paired. Doing a post-mortem on the Texas situation ignoring incentives and responsibility is inappropriate and incomplete.

Links to impressive NASA videos

 Apollo 13 views of the moon in 4K

SDO captures brilliant solar eruption

Judith Curry provides a sensible perspective on climate change

 Judith Curry is a renowned climate scientist who does not have an agenda.  She is a great source of information and opinion about climate.  Here is her latest blog entry "Assessment of climate change risk to the insurance sector".  The assessment provides a valuable perspective far beyond the insurance sector.

Some of the charts are striking - and show how disingenuous are some of the comments made by climate change alarmists, politicians, and the media.

Here is the link.

Here is her introduction

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The insurance sector is abuzz with a new report from AIR Worldwide on the insurance risk from the impact of climate change on hurricanes. Insurance industry clients of my company, Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN), have requested a critique of this report.

AIR Worldwide, a respected catastrophe risk modeling and consulting company, has recently published a report Quantifying the Impact from Climate Change on Hurricane Risk. AIR’s assessment has three components:

• Hazard component (relates to the frequency and intensity of events)
• Engineering component (relates to physical assets at risk)
• Financial component (relates to monetary losses)

The AIR Report purports to “capture the full range of plausible events that could impact an area.”

My critique focuses solely on the hazard component. A summary of my analysis is provided below:

• The driver for AIR’s assessment is warming associated with the emissions/concentration scenario RCP8.5, which AIR refers to as a ‘business as usual scenario.’ In fact, RCP8.5 is increasingly being judged as implausible by energy economists, and is not recommended for use in policy planning.

• The hurricane risk from climate change focuses on the number and intensity of U.S. landfalls in a changing climate. Their scenario of the number of major hurricanes striking the U.S. by 2050 is judged to be implausible for medium emissions scenarios such as RCP4.5.

• The sea level scenarios used in the AIR Report are higher than the recent IPCC consensus assessments and are arguably implausible for medium emissions scenarios.

• The AIR Report ignores the ‘elephant in the room’ that is of relevance to their target period to 2050: the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). A shift to the cool phase of the AMO would arguably portend fewer major hurricanes striking the U.S.

For reference on the topics of hurricanes, sea level and climate change, see these reports recently published by CFAN:

• Special Report on Sea Level and Climate Change [Download Report]
• Special Report on Hurricanes and Climate Change [link]

Here is her conclusion.

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Not surprisingly, the combination of implausibly high sea level rise projections and increase in the number of major hurricane landfalls in the U.S. results in a projection of substantial increases in damage and losses. From the AIR Report:

“The results of the analysis show that increased event frequency and sea level rise will have a meaningful impact on future damage. The growth in the number of stronger storms, and landfalling storms overall, increases modeled losses by approximately 20%, with slightly larger changes in areas such as the Gulf and Southeast coasts where major landfalls are already more likely today. The loss increases extend to inland areas as well, as stronger storms may penetrate farther from the coast.

The impacts from sea level rise, using the analysis of storm surge for New York, Miami, and Houston suggests that by 2050, sea level rise may increase storm surge losses by anywhere from one-third to almost a factor of two, with larger impacts possible when combined with increases in the number of major storms. The results suggest that an extreme surge event in today’s climate may be twice as likely to happen 30 years from now.”

While predictions for global climate change out to 2100 are weakly constrained and highly uncertain, we have a much better idea of the constraints on likely outcomes out to 2050. It is expected that variations in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation will continue to dominate the statistics of Atlantic hurricanes for the next several decades, with any signal from global warming being difficult to discern amidst the natural variability.

The plausible worst case scenario has an important role to play in some decision making frameworks. However, the plausible worst case scenario requires assumptions that are justified and not falsifiable based on our background knowledge. The scenarios for climate change out to 2050 presented by AIR are based on an implausible emissions scenario that produces an implausible amount of warming by 2050. Even if this large amount of warming is accepted as plausible, the scenario for substantially increased numbers of major hurricane landfalls impacting the U.S. is judged to be very unlikely if not borderline implausible. The intermediate-high sea level rise scenario in the AIR Report extends well beyond the likely range of the most recent IPCC assessment, even for RCP8.5.

Apart from the slow creep of sea level rise which in recent decades has been tracking the low end of the RCP4.5 scenario, there is little justification for expecting a noticeable increase in insured losses associated with U.S. landfalling hurricanes by 2050.

An objective assessment of Trump’s second impeachment

 Here is Jonathan Turley on Trump's second impeachment.

JT is one of the relatively few with a clear head about the tradeoffs associated with Trump syndrome and the cancel culture.

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In the 1946 movie “Gilda,” Rita Hayworth delivered perhaps the ultimate film noir line. Looking at her former lover, she declared, “I hate you so much that I would destroy myself to take you down with me.” Hayworth made self-destruction sound positively alluring. That line came to mind as I watched House impeachment managers and Democratic senators systematically discard basic values that once defined fair trials — and American values — under the Constitution.

When Donald Trump’s defense counsel objected that he was not afforded due process in the House, the managers shrugged and said due process was not required. When the defense objected that Trump’s Jan. 6 speech was protected under the First Amendment, the House scoffed that free speech is not only inapplicable but “frivolous” in an impeachment. Nothing, it seems, is so sacred that it cannot be discarded in pursuit of Trump. Over and over, it was made clear that his trial is about the verdict, not about our constitutional values.

Even with acquittal all but ensured, there was no room for constitutional niceties like free speech or due process. There was only one issue — the same one that has driven our media and politics for four years: Trump. Through that time, some of us have objected that extreme legal interpretations and biased coverage destroy our legal and journalistic values. It was not done out of love for Trump: I voted against him in two elections and have regularly denounced his actions and rhetoric, including his Jan. 6 speech. However, I cherish our values more than I dislike him.

That is why the second Trump impeachment trial played out with a film noir flourish, featuring the same “lost innocence,” “hard-edged cynicism” and “desperate desire” of that movie genre — most obviously when House managers dismissed any due process in an impeachment proceeding. Indisputably, the House could have held at least a couple days of hearings and still impeached Trump before he left office. It knew the Senate would not hold a trial before the end of his term, so it had until Jan. 20 to impeach him. It did so on Jan. 13.

A hearing would have given Trump a formal opportunity to respond to the allegation against him; no one has ever been impeached without such an opportunity. It would have allowed witnesses to be called (including many who already were speaking publicly), to create even a minimal record for the trial. Yet the House refused, and then declined for more than four weeks to call a dozen witnesses with direct evidence to create a record even after its snap impeachment.

So the House could have afforded basic due process but chose not to do so simply because it does not have to. When confronted about this in the Senate, one House manager scoffed at the notion that Trump should be afforded more due process. Representative Ted Lieu said, “Trump is receiving any and all process that he is due.” A chilling answer, since Trump received none in the House. There was a time when denying due process would have been shocking. Even if you believe that due process is not required in an impeachment, it is expected. We do not afford due process to people simply because we have to.

It is like decency, civility and other values. They are not observed because they are mandatory but because they are right. It is a value that defines us and our actions. Moreover, this is a process dedicated to upholding the Constitution. To deny a basic constitutional value in its defense is akin to burning down a house in the name of fire safety. Yet, the House’s position is that a president can be impeached and tried without any record of a hearing, an investigation or witnesses.

Then came the matter of free speech. Trump’s defense argued that it is inherently wrong to impeach a president for speech that is protected under the First Amendment. The House managers cited a letter from law professors declaring the argument “frivolous” even though some of those professors believe Trump’s speech may indeed be protected under cases like Brandenburg versus Ohio.

Understanding how such language would be considered protected by the courts is relevant in whether it should be treated as a constitutional violation for the purpose of impeachment. Just as courts balance the value of criminal prosecution against the impact on free speech, the Senate can strike that same balance in an impeachment trial. Even if you believe the First Amendment does not apply in a case of incitement, you still must decide if this represented incitement or an exercise of free speech. Yet in a letter that spun with circular logic, the professors declared that “the First Amendment does not apply” to impeachment proceedings. At least not in a trial of Trump.

House managers were asked why they did not present a case with specific elements of incitement set forth by the Supreme Court. Lead manager Representative Jamie Raskin said blissfully this case and Trump are a one-time instance of “presidential incitement” with its own ill-defined elements. In other words, it doesn’t have to meet the definition of incitement. Under such logic, the House could have impeached Trump for Endangered Species Act violations and said it need not involve any endangered species.

This impeachment trial captures our age of rage. For four years, people claimed total impunity in discarding legal or journalistic standards. They claimed that attacks on free speech, due process, or media objectivity are noble in pursuit of Trump. You can be lionized for tossing aside such values in order to get him. A few years ago, a trial would have been viewed as wrong without direct evidence, due process, or clear standards. Yet this is a trial of Trump, and many have allowed Trump to define them more than their values. Like “Gilda,” they are willing to destroy their values to destroy him.

The Road to EU Climate Neutrality by 2050 – bad news for wind/solar

 Here is a link to a 456 page peer-reviewed publication for ECR Group and Renew Europe, European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium.

The Executive Summary follows.

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The EU is committed to achieving climate neutrality (i.e. net zero greenhouse gas emissions) by 2050. Electrification of the energy system is a key component of this strategy. This implies that the electricity (or power) system must be completely ‘decarbonized’ over the next three decades.

This study analyses and compares two climateneutral power-generating technologies that can result in decarbonization of the electricity system6 -- wind/ solar and nuclear. We assess the amount of space necessary for each technology to deliver the power required, and the costs of the power thus generated. This analysis has been done for two EU member states: The Netherlands, a country along the North Sea with abundant wind, and the Czech Republic, a landlocked country with no access to sea and less wind. This study also assesses the effectiveness of EU climate neutrality.

Space demand

We found that amount of space required to provide annually 3000 PJ of power in The Netherlands by wind and solar power7 in 2050 would range from 24,538 to 68,482 km2. To put this in perspective:

* 24,538 km2 is roughly the size of the five largest provinces of The Netherlands combined (Friesland, Gelderland, Noord-Brabant, Noord-Holland, and Overijssel); and

• 68,482 km2 corresponds to about 1.8 times the entire land territory of The Netherlands.

To generate the same amount of energy, nuclear power would require, on average, no more than 120 km2, which is less than half the size of the city of Rotterdam. Thus, due to their low power density, wind energy requires at least 266 (offshore) to 534 (onshore) times more land and space than nuclear to generate an equal amount of electricity; for solar on land, at least 148 times more land is required (disregarding, in all cases, the additional land required for the necessary network expansion and energy storage or conversion solutions).

For the Czech Republic, the amount of space required to generate 1,800 PJ by wind and solar8 would range from 14,630 km2 to 43,758 km2. To put that into perspective, that covers 19 % and 55 % of the Czech Republic’s available land. Achieving the same level of electricity output with nuclear power would require no more than 269km2.

Costs

The cost of nuclear is generally lower than the cost of wind/solar, in most scenarios by a significant margin. In the best-case scenario for wind/solar, the cost of nuclear is still slightly lower. In the worst-case scenario for wind/solar, nuclear cost only one fourth as much as wind/solar, i.e. wind/solar cost four times as much. For an average Czech household,9 this means an annual electricity bill of that is at least €50 more expensive for wind/solar compared to nuclear; for the Dutch,10 it implies an annual electricity bill that is at least €165 more expensive for wind/solar compared to nuclear. In reality, the cost of wind/solar is even higher because these technologies require other expenses to bring the power where it is needed and to maintain the integrity of the electricity system (so-called integration- and system-related costs).

Based on ETM modelling for The Netherlands, we found additional integration cost for wind/solar at levels of up to 18 %, further deteriorating the economic case for wind/solar.

Effectiveness of EU Climate Neutrality

EU 2050 climate neutrality, if achieved, will likely cause only a very small decrease in the global average atmospheric temperature increase. Relative to current policies, 2050 EU carbon neutrality will add no more than between 0.02 and 0.06 °C average temperature reduction in 2050 and between 0.05 and 0.15 °C in 2100, if no carbon leakage occurs, which the EU cannot prevent. For the EU to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050, it must begin now deploying renewable energy at a rate at least 4 – 7 times higher than the average rate over the last 12 years. Even if the EU can do so over three decades, there still is a very high likelihood that other countries will not limit their emissions, thus frustrating the EU’s efforts.

To exclude this unfortunate outcome, the EU would have to curb also carbon emissions from outside EU territory. A relatively certain way for the EU to prevent carbon dioxide emissions in the rest of the world would be acquiring the current estimated reserves of fossil fuels.11 Such a purchasing program would impose a minimum cost of €560,000.00 per household, or a total expense of €109,200,000,000,000, which is approximately 7 times the entire EU’s annual GDP and thus would be prohibitively expensive. This number not only gives us an idea of the economic value of fossil fuels, but also shows that a sure way to prevent the EU’s climate neutrality efforts from being futile, is unrealistic. Put differently, the enormous cost of buying up all fossil fuels casts doubt over the practicality of EU climate neutrality policy

No regrets’ solutions

The ineffectiveness of the EU climate neutrality program gives policy makers a good reason to consider space- and cost-effective ‘no regrets’ solutions, such as nuclear power. Nuclear power can also play a role in the evolving hydrogen technology, which is another part of the EU’s climate neutrality strategy. At the same time, an unambiguous choice for the nuclear power option would meet the EU policy objectives of energy security, affordability, and social acceptability. 12 EU energy policy-making, however, should also consider impacts of various power generation technologies on other EU policies and interests, such as environmental and health policies. In many areas, nuclear energy would appear to perform well relative to renewable energy.

Policy Recommendations

Thus, to realize its climate neutrality ambition, the EU needs to end the unjustified discrimination of power generation technologies and create a technologyneutral13 level playing field for decarbonized power generation technologies. To this end, the EU can adopt a ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ program that places nuclear energy on equal footing with renewable energy. The study report provides 12 policy recommendations for such a program.