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Sunday, February 21, 2021

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

Dear Uncle stranger, Cousin known too late,

sweet wife unkissed, come, we will celebrate

in this thronged mirror the uncelebrated dead,

good men and women gone too soon to bed.

-- From Dear Uncle Stranger, by Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)

The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

-- Rachel Carson (1907-1964), American marine biologist and author. Her most famous book is Silent Spring, about the damage done by pesticides.

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Energy meltdown in Texas

Contrary to the assertions of the usual fossil-fuel fans, Texass use of a lot of wind power (especially in the summer) was not an important culprit in the disaster. Indeed, the wind turbines along Texass Gulf Coast that didnt have ice gumming their works helped ensure that the crisis wasnt even worse. And for that matter wind turbines in Iowa and Canada and a lot of other usually chilly places do fine. So, do solar panels, even if you have to push snow and ice off them from time to time.

The biggest Texas problem was that the natural-gas pipeline system couldnt deliver enough gas to meet the suddenly much higher demand for home heating and electric power. Natural gas is the largest power source in Texas. Pipelines froze and there were cold-related breakdowns at the gas-powered utility plants themselves, some due to poor maintenance and some because the equipment just couldnt handle very low temperatures. And theres obviously not enough backup or as the engineers call it, redundancy. Thats because of utilities drive for maximum profitability.

Consider that back in the 1990s Texas decided against paying power producers to hold gas reserves, even though the common practice in the U.S. and Canada has been to require a buffer of at least 15 percent beyond a typical days need. That also made things worse.

But then, a cursory look at, for example, Americas transportation infrastructure, as well as its electric utilities, shows that were not very enthusiastic about spending money to prepare for emergencies or maintaining public as well as private infrastructure.

Further, the Lone Star State is the only state in the continental United States that runs a stand-alone electricity grid, designed to keep its energy system independent and isolated from other electricity markets.

That means that during storms and extreme heat and cold, most of Texas cant draw from other grids. That raises the question as to whether the entire continental U.S. electrical system should be connected to alleviate regional crises when the occur. Or would that make the whole countrys electricity too vulnerable to cyberattacks by Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians and other enemies?

At least some of the crisis could have been forecast last month, when the stratospheric air above the Arctic suddenly warmed up. That caused a slow-moving atmospheric chain reaction that weakened the high-level air current circling the Arctic that traps frigid air there. This let frigid air pour into temperate regions of Asia, Europe and North America.

As global warming continues, expect more extreme weather, with more severe storms, worse heat waves and, yes, deep freezes in unlikely places. Our electrical infrastructure must be adapted to these extremes even as we move away from the fossil-fuel burning thats causing global warming.

Heres a good overview of the problem, Click HERE

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Meanwhile, Florida and Alaska have been much warmer than normal this winter.

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U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

But so what?! All hed do back home is posture and get in the way. If only hed move to Cancun permanently.

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Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott and Governor Gina Raimondo

Why, oh why was Rhode Island so late in creating a truly centralized, reliable and easy-to-understand vaccination-registration system instead of the chaotic, confusing hodge-podge that we saw for weeks? Its a tiny, densely populated jurisdiction that would seem well-positioned for such a system. But what weve had is a mess, though its been getting better the last week or so. Massachusetts (Medical Capital of the World!) has had similar vaccination-rollout problems, though theyre being addressed faster now.

The mixed messages in the Ocean State have been something. Consider that people officially too young to get shots in the first cohorts have been able to jump the lines and get them. Apparently, its easy to lie about your age amidst the confusion.

I think a big, if well-intentioned, problem has been efforts to almost micro-target high-risk groups, which has tangled up the wider anti-COVID effort.

Even West Virginia, which, like many Red States, has many impoverished residents, along with bad health indices because of poorly funded health systems, has done much better than us managing the COVID crisis so far. It rapidly created a registry system that assigns everyone seeking a vaccination a place in line and notifies them when and where they can be vaccinated.

Lets hope that Rhode Islands shot-sign-up site, vaccinateri.org, can handle the crush of people seeking shots. Massachusettss vaccine appointment site, vaxfinder.mass.gov,crashed Thursday morning as about 1 million residents became newly eligible to book their appointments! Any techno lessons there for the Ocean State, even taking into consideration that its population is much smaller? Spend (and tax) whatever it takes to make these sites work.

Post-Pandemic Learning Catch Up

How much learning has been lost because of COVID-19 rules and closings in our schools for the past year? All states should use the results of coming standardized tests and other indices to determine how far behind COVID has left them. Dont cancel the standardized tests. Use them to help figure out how to structure catch-up programs.

Kids in lower socio-economic groups who lack the help (including computer equipment) that kids from more comfortable backgrounds have gotten to try to weather the crisis have fallen the most behind. We need to figure out what sort of remedial programs could help narrow the gap. This will cost tax money, but its absolutely necessary for the future of the country.

Assuming that the vaccination process moves fast enough, this summer ought to see many schools open for catch-up work.

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Expectations for massive job loss due to AI

Last November, Bill Gates predicted that half of business travel and 30 percent of days in the office would disappear forever. Meanwhile, the McKinsey Global Institute says that a mere 20 percent of business travel wont return and about 20 percent of workers might be working from home indefinitely. Whomever you believe, all this means far fewer jobs at hotels, restaurants and downtown shops, even as the pandemic has speeded the automation of (i.e., killing of) many office jobs (including home office jobs) and more factory jobs.

So what can government do to train people for new, post-pandemic jobs, assuming that there will be many? How can vocational and other schools be brought into this project? The trades electricians, plumbers, carpenters, roofers, plasterers, etc., will probably have the most secure, and generally well compensated, jobs going forward, along with physicians, dentists and nurses as well as engineers of all sorts and computer-software and other techies.

Another part of the jobs package should be a WPA-style program to rebuild Americas infrastructure, which the drive for lower taxes and higher short-term profits has dangerously eroded. (See Texas again.) This has undermined the nations long-term economic health. Such a program could also serve to train many people in new, post-pandemic skills that would be useful even as automation accelerates.

Of course, there will always be jobs available for very low-paid personal-help people, such as home health-care workers. Indeed, the aging of the population means that well need a lot more of them

Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, made addressing the looming threat of automation-caused job losses a key part of his campaign, which he suspended before the pandemic. He has proposed giving Americans a $12,000-a-year basic income to help get them through the developing employment implosion. It may come to that.

Meanwhile, meds and eds Greater Bostons (of which Rhode Island is on the edge) dense medical, technological and higher-education complexes will help save it at least from the worst of the long-term economic disruption caused by the pandemic. Much research must be done by teams in labs; technological breakthroughs require a lot of in-person collaboration, and most college students will continue to want and need in-person teaching. Further, Greater Boston is an international venture-capital and company start-up center. These high-risk activities also require a lot of in-person, look-em-in-the-eye work.

On the other hand, Bostons banks and its famed retirement-investment companies, such as Fidelity, will never have as many employees working in its offices as before COVID-19; nor will its innumerable law firms. Many offices in high rises in downtown Boston (and Providence) will remain empty for a long time while architects, engineers and interior designers try to figure out what to do with them.

But No Room ServiceSome of those COVID-closed hotels and motels may never reopen. Can some be converted into housing -- rental apartments or condos to mitigate our housing-affordability crisis? I would think so.

Ready, Aim, Raise Money

It says something about the current state of the gun-obsessed Republican/QAnon Party that Rhode Islands Republican Conservative Caucus is raffling off firearms, including an AR-15 assault rifle, to raise money to elect more alleged conservatives (translation: far-right populists) to the states General Assembly.

The quote below is from the then-retired U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger (1907-1995) in 1990. The Second Amendment interpretation by this true conservative judge was generally the one held by the Supreme Court until far-right appointees of Republican presidents, in league with the gun lobby, began to take over the court. He was chief justice in 1969-1986.

The Gun Lobbys interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies the militia would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.

The Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Note that the Founders wrote not only Militia but also well regulated, in those days before assault rifles.

Go here to read the rest:
Whitcomb: Power Failures; Test How Far Behind They Are; Imploding Employment; Rush Job - GoLocalProv