Avid supporters of coal, oil, and gas (and opponents of wind and solar energy, but I repeat myself) seem convinced that they’ve got the ultimate gotcha arguments in “intermittency” and “energy density.” They’re right, but not in quite the way they seem to think.

What does “intermittency” mean? It’s pretty simple: The sun doesn’t shine all the time, so solar panels can’t produce energy 24/7. Wind is even more “intermittent,” or at least less predictable. A windmill or wind turbine may or may not generate energy at any particular time, depending on whether there’s a decent breeze.

“Energy density” gets more complicated, but the simplified version looks something like this: A given volume or area of space and fuel dedicated to one kind of energy production is more efficient than another. An acre dedicated to a nuclear reactor or a fossil fuel power plant (and the nuclear material or, say, coal) produces a LOT more energy than an acre covered with solar panels or wind turbines. In fact, it’s questionable whether there are enough acres on Earth to meet humanity’s energy needs with “renewables,” at least if those acres have to be dedicated entirely to energy generation.

The opponents of “renewables” would seem to enjoy an advantage on these arguments. But not so fast.

With respect to density, it’s true that land dedicated to nuclear reactors and e.g. coal-fired power plants has to be dedicated pretty much entirely to those facilities and activities. On the other hand, a rooftop solar panel or wind turbine on a home takes up little or no net additional space at all. You’re not using the roof for other activities, and it would still be there if you didn’t need electricity. Batteries and such take up SOME space, but not much, and may be installed inside a home’s walls. You’re basically getting multiple uses from the same space.

As for intermittency, I just mentioned batteries. You can generate more energy than you’re using when the sun is out or the wind is blowing, and use the stored excess energy when it isn’t.

And it’s not like fossil fuels, especially delivered through an increasingly unreliable “grid” system, aren’t also intermittent. Even setting aside military attacks on production and distribution infrastructure like we’re seeing in Ukraine, and the growing phenomenon of localized sabotage here in the United States, we experience energy interruptions all the time.

Transformers blow. Drunk drivers, hurricanes, or ice storms take lines down or flood/freeze pumps. Trains full of coal derail. Pipelines leak.

When those problems occur, “intermittency” goes to “non-existence,” and “density” falls to zero, until they’re fixed, for every customer downstream of the problems.

If a squirrel chews through the wires connecting your solar panels to your internal home “grid,” your neighbor’s refrigerator doesn’t miss a beat.

I’m writing this column after sunset, on a computer operating from stored energy generated by a non-grid-connected solar panel. No intermittency, sufficient density for my purposes, and independence from sprawling and vulnerable systems.

Your move, fossils.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

It’s never really news that the annual “National Defense Authorization Act” is bloated . The 2023 version comes to $858 billion which, probably ten times what’s required to fund an actual “national defense” (as opposed to trying to maintain a sprawling global empire in terminal decline).

It’s also never really news that various political factions slip  non-“defense” priorities that can’t pass on their own merits into the annual NDAA, which politicians describe as a “must-pass” bill. Hawks in Congress only get their billions in corporate welfare for “defense” contractors if they support unrelated add-ons.

This year, one major inclusion — entirely unrelated to anything resembling “national defense” — is the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.” As is so often the case with legislative titles, it would accomplish exactly the opposite of encouraging competition or preserving journalism.

The core of the JCPA is an exemption to US antitrust law for news organizations. Put that way, I’m inclined to like it. Contra high school history/civics texts, antitrust law was invented by and for the benefit of large corporations, and has always functioned to reduce competition and jack up prices. But that’s another story.

The intent of the JCPA is to “allow” media organizations to get together and create “joint negotiation entities” (the kind of cartel antitrust law forbids) to “collectively bargain” with digital platforms for compensation.

Compensation for what? Promoting and giving advertising to those same media organizations and their content.

The idea is that these cartels would have the “bargaining power” to bludgeon Google News, Facebook, et al. into paying news organizations for the privilege of linking and previewing content that sends readers or viewers to that content.

Imagine, for example, that every time your favorite news aggregator told you about a story carried by the New York Times, Fox News, or the Batesville, Mississippi Panolian, that aggregator had to fork some money over to the Big and Small News Organization Trust (which, hypothetically, those three organization belonged to).

That’s like telling you that if you drive a Ford F-150, every time you cruise down the street and people see the Ford logo, especially if they ask you about it and you say “yeah, great truck, you should buy one,” you’ll have to pull out your wallet and hand a dollar to the Ford/GM/Chrysler Trust.

If the idea sounds monumentally stupid, well, it is.

For obvious reasons, companies like Facebook parent Meta are saying they may  yank news links/previews from their platforms altogether if JCPA becomes law.

I’m all for news organizations being able to hit up platforms for payment. And for those platforms being able to say “no dice — we can link for free or we won’t link at all. We’re helping you out here, take it or leave it.”

Or, to put it a different way, I’m all for “allowing” news organizations to try something stupid and find out it doesn’t work.

But Congress should vote on a “clean” bill repealing antitrust altogether instead of slipping one exemption into an unrelated piece of legislation.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude,” former US president Donald Trump wrote on his pet social media platform, Truth Social, “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” In reference, of course, to his fantasy that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him.

Cue outrage from all sides, including prominent members of his own party. Throw out the Constitution? Just so some politician can get the outcome he wants? Unprecedented! Unthinkable! Out of bounds!

Well, no, not really. “Terminating” constitutional requirements when they’re inconvenient is pretty much par for the course. Not just with Trump, both now and when he actually possessed some political authority (see, for example, his unconstitutional misappropriation of funds for the “border wall”), but with presidents and Congresses going back to at least as early as 1798.

That was the year Congress passed, and president John Adams signed into law, the Alien and Sedition Acts, which clearly and unambiguously “terminated” both the First Amendment’s speech/press protections and Article I, Section 9’s prohibition on federal regulation of immigration.

Current president Joe Biden has a habit of candidly admitting the unconstitutionality of his own executive orders on, for example, the COVID-19-era “eviction moratorium” and his “student loan forgiveness” vote-buying scheme. Yeah, the courts will probably overturn it, but Constitution be damned, he’s going to do it anyway.

In between the Adams and Biden eras, we’ve seen any number of US wars waged without the required congressional declarations, constitutionally questionable kludges implemented to resolve presidential elections (Hayes versus Tilden in 1876 and Bush versus Gore in 2000), and laws passed with nary a constitutional hook to hang them upon.

The Constitution is, and always has been, a convenience to justify the  exercise of political power, and an inconvenience quickly discarded whenever it gets in the way of exercising political power. While it’s uncertain that former president George W. Bush actually called it “just a goddamned piece of paper,” his actions demonstrated that that’s how he, like his predecessors and successors, regarded it.

If there’s anything unique about Trump’s outburst, it’s the credence and publicity he’s receiving for it despite his complete lack of ability to  act on it. He’s no longer the Terminator; these days he’s just a piece of that film franchise’s forgettable roadkill. He’s saying the quiet part out loud, but if he’s the loudest, he’s also far from the first.

As American anarchist Lysander Spooner noted in 1870, “[w]hether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it.”

“In either case,” Spooner continued, “it is unfit to exist.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY