Net Metering and the Demise of Human Civilization

As readers of my Blog are aware, I am very concerned with the imminent demise of the human species and the destruction of all the marvelous knowledge gained over these last 10,000 or so years of historical civilization as a result of climate change caused by fossil fuel burning, which is of course a natural result of humans overpopulating the earth. In fact recent climate science results suggest that the  "tipping point" beyond which the changes inexorably continue increasing no matter what we do may soon be reached if it has not already occurred. Alas, such pessimism leads to depression and inaction, both of which accentuate the downward spiral.

But one must try even in the face of such overwhelming unpleasant facts, and  in any case, inaction does not imply cessation of thought. Here goes a small attempt at such thought.

It seems to me that a decentralized energy generation system such as that which would be provided by making it obligatory to include solar panels in all residential and commercial building construction is one way to decrease dependence on fossil fuel. And the rapid progress  in efficiency of solar energy conversion that is occurring can only increase the benefits from such a cultural (and political) decision.

However my own recent solar panel installation on the roof of my house made it very apparent to me that there is a real barrier probably resulting from the natural inclinations of giant power monopolies which benefit from cheap fossil fuel usage to relinquish control. This was forcefully brought to my attention when I asked my solar company whether the city (i.e. LADWP) would purchase any energy my system would generate above my own usage. I was aware of the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 regulation that all public energy utilities are required to provide this to all customers upon request. But I am also aware that the implementation of this regulation in the US  is inconsistent and differs from State to State and there are no rules determining the energy "payback" rates. In California a recent Bill, AB 510, requires net metering but  actually limits the maximum payback amount to 5% of the utilities peak demand. I assume that this is a neat political trick to follow the Federal law in principle but not in reality. And even more amazingly, this Bill excludes the LADWP from having to follow this regulation.

These thoughts were crystallized by an email from the LADWP (Department of Water and Power) asking for "Public Input into the Future LADWP Green Energy Policies". I RSVPed and will attend such a meeting next week. As a residential solar power contributor, I feel empowered to attempt to provide the input of this member of the public to these dignitaries. I want to raise the net metering issue at this public meeting and in particular ask why the LADWP is exempted.

Of course I am very aware that climate change is world wide and that any solutions  must also be world wide, but any public discussion awaits another time and place.


End of thought.

Medicare for All!

  The Democrats could, as a response to the current Republican "Destroy Medicare" Ryan budget,  immediately make everyone eligible for Medicare, not just people over 65. This could probably be done as a "reconciliation" of the existing Medicare legislation in the Democrat controlled Senate to avoid the certain Republican filibuster in the Senate and the Tea Party controlled House of  Representatives.

There would be an immediate administrative saving since Medicare only spends approximately 2-3% on administrative costs versus the 20-25% that private heath care companies spend. Second, Medicare currently determines from the advice of knowledgeable medical people the true cost of medical services and only pays that amount. One might argue that private insurance companies would pay the difference for those with secondary insurance policies, as is currently the case, and this would prevent any downward pressure on costs. However, this would also limit extended medical services to those wealthy enough to afford a secondary insurance policy. The number of people covered is uncertain, but I would estimate it will be no more than 10%. Since everyone else would only be covered by Medicare, this would put an enormous popular pressure on lowering medical costs to those provided by Medicare, including both procedures, the use of expensive medical devices such as imaging and the currently exorbitant charges of medical doctors, especially of medical specialists. 

And of course, the way to completely eliminate this pressure value that would continue driving up costs would be to ban all private "for profit" insurance companies from insuring health care at all.  I feel strongly that health care is a right of every citizen, not a privilege, and should not be a profit-making business. I wager that the overall cost of medical services would very rapidly decrease dramatically to realistic values. 

Of course there must also also be a way to increase Medicare revenues. One easy way to do this would be to simply remove or extend upwards the  salary limitations for the FICA (Social Security) taxes (currently 7.65% of salaries up to $106,800) that support the federal system of old age, survivors and disability.  Hospital insurance is separately funded by a Medicare tax of 1.45% of the entire salary from the individual. I have read that a moderate increase in salary cap would more than cover the increased Medicare costs of everyone under 65.

Medicare is probably the most popular federal program ever created in this country, as evidenced by recent polls that show more than 80% of the American people want to keep Medicare as it is and not to change it into the voucher system proposed in the Republican bill. And extension of Medicare benefits to everyone will certainly prove to be even more popular than the current over-65 system. Another aspect would be that businesses would no longer be required to pay for health care insurance of their employees. Not only would this certainly be very popular in the business community but also would stimulate the economy by decreasing the cost of doing business and probably increase jobs.

So there you have it. The rest is silence.

The inquisitive mind wants to know

I have always wondered why toilets in the US universally have a space under the door whereas toilets in every other country (that I myself have personal knowledge of) do not. For me this ranks up there with quantum entanglement and the Higgs boson. Is there a national urge to be able to see the feet of the poor person trying to pretend he is not there? Or is it due to our national obsession with not allowing hanky panky in the bathroom? Or is it just that this is what American contractors learn at contractor’s school?

It reminds me of my undergraduate days at Princeton University (pre-coed) where Woodrow Wilson had once ruled that a true democracy does not have doors on toilet stalls. This of course made for interesting conversations and made it easy to request a roll of paper when necessary. But it was still sort of gross.

I hope that one of you anonymous readers can enlighten me on this important cultural institution.

The die has been cast.

I always knew this was coming, and it will get worse. This country never got over slavery and the myth of the West with its guns and frontier justice. The Tea Party people are no better than the Klu Klux Klan and the Southerners who lynched black men and attacked the black children trying to enter all white schools. Except now the Southerners have become us. Racism and religious fundamentalism are a dangerous mixture.

Religion itself is a dangerous phenomenon, as evidenced over history by the witch drownings, the Inquisition tortures, and now the Catholic priests raping little boys. And the combination is many times more lethal.
Now the crazies and their multinational company friends and benefactors are in political power, and have essentially taken over our military as shown by the influence of the evangelicals in places like our Air Force Academy.

But perhaps the most dangerous aspect is the fact that the crazies refuse to believe science except  when it provides them with better weapons of mass destruction. This could be either true ignorance or, worse, an intentional deception in order to maintain power and achieve short term benefits, but it is likely a combination of both factors. But this does not matter since the problems of political and ideological violence, and worst of all, the coming world-wide disaster of climate change will affect everyone, even the crazies' families and children. Racism, violence  and religious fundamentalism will matter little when coastal cities around the world and even entire countries and are flooded, when millions of displaced Bangladesh start a forced migration to find refuge, when millions of Mexicans unable to find food due to the drought enter the United States only to find that it cannot even provide food for its own people and that its entire financial system is collapsing and martial law has been imposed. Countries that have nuclear weapons will begin to use them out of fright and impotence.

I fear for the future and see no cause for optimism. The die has  been cast.

Ode to the Cheese Steak

 I grew up in Philadelphia where the major culinary achievement is the "Cheese Steak" - a huge mound of finely sliced well browned meat cooked on a grill with fried onions and served on a long bun dripping with grease.

The chefs are usually bulky Italian guys with a few tattoes wearing white T shirts.










Cheese is actually optional but if desired, "the sine qua non of cheesesteak connoisseurs" is actually Cheese Whiz. If you want a steak with onions and cheese, you say in true Philly accent "Whiz, Wit". 

Cheese steaks are not just for the common man. President Obama visited Reading Terminal just to get a real cheese steak.

Cheese steaks were developed in the 1930's in South Philadelphia and South Philly is still the promised land. I lived on cheese steaks for my entire misspent youth. Unfortunately this cuisine does not travel well, and when I left Philadelphia to make my  mark in the world, a lingering nostalgia was all I had left. I once tried ordering Fedexed steaks from Pat's in South Philly for a "Philadelphia brunch" with some old friends now living in LA. But alas, the magic had passed and all that is left is a salivating memory.

M27 or Dumbell Nebula

Images were taken on October 28, 2010, from my back yard observatory with an RCX400 10 inch telescope using an SBIG ST2000XCM single shot color CCD. Two 8 min images were processed and stacked. M27 is a gas bubble ejected from a star at the end of its life. The gas is glowing from UV light emitted by the star. M27 is around 1000 light years distant.

The End of Things

The two dolphins swam side by side and carried on a lively discussion using the high pitched sounds known as the Pacific Dolphin language.  

“Why do you think the humans became extinct in the 21^st century? They had so much going for them – intelligence, ambition, technical abilities. I  know that the environment became degraded and that was the ultimate reason, but what were the real reasons?"

“ Well, they just could not stop breeding and the billions of humans did some pretty bad things – both knowingly and unknowingly. For example, in the early years of the 21^st century, their climate scientists discovered that the production of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” was trapping heat from the sun and causing the temperature of the atmosphere and even the ocean to rise. They predicted with a high level of probability the consequences of this “runaway”  greenhouse effect as increased intensity of storms, changes in weather patterns resulting in the loss of regions suitable for agriculture, extinction of animal species such as the coral reefs in the ocean which we used to enjoy visiting, melting of the world’s glaciers that produced most of the fresh water for the billions of humans, and  in rising in world-wide ocean levels resulting in flooding of coastal regions and cities and in migrations of millions of people who would be displaced by flooding and loss of fresh water. However, there were people throughout the world, and especially in the United States, who believed more in their crazy religions than in science and their religions told them that Armageddon was coming and they could do nothing about it.  These "climate change deniers" in the United States were known as “Republicans”, and they convinced many people and had an enormous amount of power in determining how the country would respond to this crisis. They just closed their minds and let the changes occur, and this behavior had an enormous effect on the rest of the world.”

 “In fact the only people who actually understood what was happening and why were the military. They could see that these changes would affect the security of their nations. In a  few countries the militaries actually took over the governments and tried to force changes in behavior, but it was already too late.  The changes were irreversible.  Even the imposition of martial law in the “rich” countries to prevent unwanted immigration simply led to wars with their neighbor countries over the vanishing resources."

“And closely tied in with these changes was the major problem that humans were innately aggressive and loved to fight each other, instead of helping each other as we do. Again, in the United States, there was actually an organization known as the “National Rifle Association” that essentially financially owned or frightened the ruling politicians into believing that guns were not instruments to kill but toys to play with and that everyone should have a gun.  This of course, combined with all the disintegration of society that was occurring,  led to a vast amount of bloodshed, and this mentality of aggression and selfish nationalism actually led countries to use nuclear weapons before it was  impossible to do so, which caused even more environmental degradation and loss of life.” 

“Very rapidly the environment became almost uninhabitable due to the lack of water and food and the radioactive destruction of the cities. Cities were abandoned and millions of people migrated northward, destroying other cities and other regions. Even the resulting great kill-off of humans did not solve the problems, and eventually the earth began to look like  the hot house planet, Venus.  I believe that the last humans died off by the end of the 21^stcentury, at least as far as we could tell."

“We dolphins also suffered greatly but the ocean mitigated many of the worst problems and our ancestors eventually evolved to be able to live in the warm water and began our rapid climb to becoming the next great intelligent tool-using species.”

“Do you think that this sort of thing will happen to the dolphin civilization?”

“It is always possible, but I believe that we have learned some important lessons from the extinction of humans”.