Denmark, Des Moines, and Denton

Fun fact: Denmark, a Scandinavian country, gets around half its electricity from wind generation. The "windmills" that Tucker Carlson calls "fashion accessories" power half the country.

That would be a remarkable statistic for any country, but especially for one 300 miles farther north than Winnipeg.

Ok, let's be honest. I just checked: Despite its being so far north, Denmark's climate is strongly moderated by its proximity to warming ocean currents.

Not landlocked Iowa, though, in an American heartland famous for brutal winters. Iowa gets a whopping 42 percent of its electricity from wind. Iowa is the nation's second highest wind producing state behind Texas. (My home state of Kansas is in fourth place, behind  Oklahoma.) In January, the average high temperature for Des Moines is 28 F. Yeah, that's cold. The average low is 15. That being an average, it frequently gets far colder than that.

Because conservative media is currently all abuzz about how wind doesn't work in cold weather, you should keep these stats in mind. Tucker Carlson is lying to you, as is the entire media ecosystem he sits atop.

Perhaps even more egregious, if that were possible, is the edifice of lies about how wind and solar are responsible for the days-long Texas blackouts.

There were many points of failure with all energy sources in Texas, and we now know the Texas grid came seconds to minutes from catastrophic collapse from which recovery could have taken months. (No, really: when the grid collapses catastrophically, you can't just turn it back on. You have to put it back together piece by painful piece in a process that is maddeningly slow.)

But despite the failures in all energy sectors, by far the largest shortfall in Texas came from "thermal" (gas, coal, and to a small extent, nuclear) sources; far less of the energy shortfall was from wind and solar. That's partly because far less is actually expected from wind and solar in the winter in Texas. According to some reports, the entity that operates the Texas grid, ERCOT, typically plans for wind and solar to contribute 7 to 10 percent of grid load in the winter, but more in the scorching summer when it helps power all those Texas air conditioners.

Among the thermal sources, by far the largest failures came from natural gas power generation. Gas fired plants were unable to get sufficient fuel due to failures in the production and delivery of gas, such as from pipeline freeze-ups. It is tragic that the possibility of such failures was understood long in advance, yet not nearly enough was done to protect against them.

And yet we are now being treated to a raucous hyperventilating din in conservative media about how this all portends ill for "green" energy going forward; indeed, how Texas has in effect already succumbed to a version of the "Green New Deal" while the conservatives who have run the state for decades weren't looking. It is nothing short of Orwellian to hear right now how we need fossil fuel generation to save us from what happened in Texas, when in fact the largest failures were with fossil fuel generation.

With respect to wind generation in cold weather, Chris Hayes wondered in exasperation how stupid Tucker Carlson thinks his viewers are. Pretty stupid, I'm sorry to say. One wonders if Carlson is himself really so ignorant, or is blinkered by raving mindless ideology, or is just deeply cynical and knows which side his bread is buttered on. No way to tell. But even the conservatives in Iowa who see their turbines continuing to spin must be shaking their heads in disbelief about what they're watching on their teevees.

Happily, we don't need Tucker Carlson's derangements to tell us what's going on. There is such a large cornucopia of excellent information sources that finding one is as easy as hitting the side of an Iowa barn with a baseball from ten feet away. And unlike Fox, their highest purpose is the principled exercise of quality journalism.

If you want to know what's going on in Texas specifically, you can do no better than to browse the main page of the Texas Tribune, a statewide newspaper devoted to all manner of Texas happenings. Unsurprisingly, its current coverage is almost entirely about the blackouts. Go here and just start scrolling down the page.

When you do you'll see the article that describes how the grid was on the precipice of catastrophic collapse. Another on how Gov. Greg Abbott is now calling for "winterization" of the state's energy infrastructure—something that had been long neglected in order to keep electricity prices low, and whose neglect is the single largest reason for the system-wide failures (including with wind; turbines need to be winterized too).

You can read about how "Texas jails and prisons see brutal cold and overfilled toilets in winter storm".

You can read about how El Paso is one of the rare Texas cities that's not connected to the statewide grid, but rather the national grid, and so its power stayed on.

You can read about how "Nearly half the state [is] experiencing water disruptions as power grid operator says it's making progress". Turns out water treatment plants need electricity to operate. At least 12 million Texans are under boil-water orders—if they can get any water to boil.

You can read about negligence at the top: "Texas leaders failed to heed warnings that left the state's power grid vulnerable to winter extremes, experts say".

About how "Hospitals in Austin are running out of water, forcing some to transfer patients".

And so on. Article after article after article about the grid failure in Texas.

No need to be ignorant. No excuse for it.

Copyright (C) 2021 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Assault on democracy itself

It's understandable that we'd fixate on the horrific violence Donald Trump incited on January 6. The graphic video and audio from that day is an assault not just on the senses, but on the psyche and the soul.

And it's proper to recoil from the vile desecration of the nation's Capitol, a sacred place where our highest ideals as a national polity are instantiated.

Never forget, though, that it was not just the place, sacred though it may be, that was defiled. It was not just our national symbolism that was debased. And it was not just the occupants of that place who were threatened and harmed.

Horrendous as all those things were, it's crucial to apprehend that the attack on the Capitol was an assault on more than just an abstract ideal: it did real and lasting violence to the actualized expression of our democratic project. It was an assault on the conduct of democracy itself.

Nowhere more clearly can this be grasped than in the stark recognition that Donald Trump sought to systematically subvert the peaceful transfer of power after a free and fair election. Never before in our nation's history has that happened.

And in so doing, Trump also sought to cast doubt on the electoral process, delegitimizing the election in the eyes of tens of millions of enraged fellow citizens, who he deliberately inflamed.

It's imperative to ask how democracy can survive such an assault that's sustained for very long. That's the question Trump's jurors in the Senate should be asking. By all appearances, many of them are not. Many Republican senators who seemed deeply shaken by the video evidence of that horrible day are still poised to acquit, somehow losing the forest in the withering onslaught of trees. Some even demagogically misconstrue the entire endeavor.

"The result of this trial is preordained," said Ted Cruz. "I think the trial is a waste of time and is the result of  seething partisan anger on the part of congressional Democrats."

Copyright (C) 2021 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Just not worth it?

Here we are, on the eve of the second impeachment trial of our recently departed ex-president.

In anticipation, back on January 29, George Will penned a column entitled "It still doesn’t make sense to impeach and convict Donald Trump."

"Doesn't make sense" is Will's operative phrase. He argues not that Trump doesn't deserve impeachment, but that, borrowing from Nancy Pelosi in March 2019, "he's just not worth it."

Trump might not be worth it, but the country is. More on that in a moment.

Arguing at least a bit against himself, Will allows that the incitement of the January 6 Capitol riot was a "patently impeachable offense," and that it "made a second impeachment inevitable." But, he says, that does not "make it prudent."

Will argues that there are two reasons for impeaching a president: removal to prevent ongoing harm, which is now moot, and as a deterrent to future presidents. Actually there are three reasons, at least, and the third does have prudential implications.

Regarding the second reason: "Deterrence, however, presupposes rationality," Will wrote, "and perhaps a conscience, neither of which would feature in any future iteration of the 45th president."

In other words, a future president as amoral and irrational as Trump would not in any case be deterred, so why bother? This is plausible but not self-evident, and besides a future president needing to be deterred might not be so irrational.

But there is a third reason for impeachment and, I will insist, a fourth. The third reason is that an impeached and convicted president can be prohibited, as a further penalty, and by simple majority vote, from ever holding elected office again. Preempting Trump's future political possibilities once and for all seems like a good idea.

A fourth reason is to permanently register Congress's, and our, emphatic rejection of a malignantly unfit president who abused his office, harmed institutions, and attacked democracy. Which is to say, to add an indelible entry to the history books, regardless of whatever deterrent value it might or might not have, as a declaration for all time about who we are and are not. Acknowledging what we have endured compels us to render a permanent judgement apart from any incentives it might have on future politicians. And because synergies accumulate around doing what's right, we can even hope that a judgement so-recorded might incentivize society toward future self-protection, and thus fortify our resolve.

George Will writes that those who loathe Trump are "luxuriating in a vengeance disconnected from the public good," as if the loathing itself is not deeply connected to the recognition that the public good has been defiled. And further, Will notes, they are relishing the plight of Republican Senators who must serve as Trump's jurors while fearing the disapproval of their crazed constituents.

"Reasonable people, for whom seeing is believing, know what happened [on January 6], and why," Will declared, as if to suggest our present knowing without acting is sufficient: that a formal and durable defense of the ideals that are threatened by what we know is not a necessary response. Or perhaps he reckons that such a defense is not attainable through this particular constitutional remedy against this particular ex-president at this particular time.

But seeing and knowing isn't enough. And knowing without acting normalizes what we have endured. It relegates our national tribulation to the category of just another infrequently recurring and hopefully self-limiting political unpleasantry, when in truth it must be unambiguously and formally renounced as aberrant and abhorrent.

George Will rightly observes that these are crazy times, that the craziness is still very much in play on the right, and that it saturates all the right's political institutions. Establishment Republicans such as Rob Portman and Doug Ducey are getting out of the game, and the unhinged conduct of state Republican parties around the country demonstrates quite disturbingly that the fever has not nearly broken. Ducey's state party is censuring him for certifying Arizona's election results; Ben Sasse is being censured in Nebraska, and Liz Cheney in Wyoming. Similar dysfunction is roiling Georgia. And as Will notes, Oregon's Republican party actually announced that "the violence at the Capitol was a ‘false flag’ operation designed to discredit President Trump."

Maybe George Will's point is that since the derangement is so widespread and pervasive, an impeachment conviction would not enjoy the acquiescence of our deluded and delirious multitudes. It would thereby be a judgement of one political side over the other, astride a presently unbridgeable divide, thereby enfeebling its consequence and deepening divisions. Even if the side rendering the verdict is acting righteously in the name of country and sanity, the gulf between the two sides is too great for an impeachment conviction to have much positive effect.

But is that really so? And aren't all difficult and consequential times in some ways like this, where the imperative of the historical moment is to damn the torpedoes and act from principle, thereby registering—by all of us who history will subsequently (we hope) judge to have been correct—a definitive confirmation of who we are and what we are about? Don't we actually, as part of the existential covenant we assume in charting our continuing way forward, in defense of our most important institutions, and embracing the bargains and obligations of citizenship and self-rule, need to anticipate history's ultimate affirmation?

George Will might complain that I have erected a straw man regarding what he is and isn't saying. Perhaps his actual point is simpler: that conviction in the Senate is uncertain, even unlikely, and thus a legal and political acquittal will be construed as a dangerous moral acquittal and even precedent. In the Senate, Will observes, "few Republicans are willing to enrage many constituents by voting to convict [Trump] for no better reason than that he is obviously guilty as charged."

When the Senate fails to convict, what then? Wouldn't such a failure further imperil the very institutions we are trying to protect? And isn't anticipation of such endangerment an argument against provoking the fates by commencing a doomed process?

Sorry, but there is no clean, certain, and painless way forward. That being so, we may as well resolve to do what's right, and hope against hope that doing what's right represents our best chance for national redemption. Not to mention our survival as a self-governing people.

History, to whose final assessments we are not now privy, will judge the Senate's likely failure to convict in one of two ways. The first possibility is that the impeachment trial will document the final death throes of a failed political party (there have been others), and its feckless senators. In a happier future, that party might be succeeded by one that's renewed and revitalized, and ready to claim its rightful role in the national project.

The other possibility is that the failure to convict becomes a historical milepost on our road of continuing national decline. Rome had such mileposts. History knows how this turns out. We don't. 

A belated Happy New Year.

 

Copyright (C) 2021 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.