IMF says global subsidies to fossil fuels amount to $1.9 trillion a year … and that’s probably an underestimate | Grist

IMF says global subsidies to fossil fuels amount to $1.9 trillion a year … and that’s probably an underestimate | Grist

The Other Renewable Energy Challenge

There are two technical challenges involved in building a renewable energy economy. The first one is familiar to most people: finding cost effective ways to capture the sun's energy, and there are lots of great designs and devices being developed to make solar and wind energy competitive with current prices for oil and coal.

But the other challenge is energy storage. Renewable energy, in most places, most of the time, is an intermittent energy source. The sun only shines during the day, and the wind doesn't blow all of the time. If you want to power a modern, 24-7 economy with renewable energy, you have to have a cheap way to store the cheap solar energy you generate during the day so that you can use it at night.

This article from Slate is a nice, quick survey of some proposed energy storage solutions. I'm attracted to the train idea. It's simple, and I like simple.

Energy storage technology: Batteries, flywheels, compressed air, rail storage. - Slate Magazine

Australia’s carbon price: The woman who made it happen

For me the key point is the line: "...Harris' power only derives from how well she and the CCA board can argue their case in public...". And that's what we're missing from the Obama adminstration, someone tasked to make this case in public, all the time, until we get action from Congress.

Australia’s carbon price: The woman who made it happen

The GOP’s Three Fiscal Lies - The Daily Beast

Lots of people have examined the three specific arguments that Tomasky refutes in this piece. But what really resonated with me is his call for Democrats to refute them in public. The biggest problem I have with Obama is that he will not loudly and consistently attack these arguments. The American people need guidance on fiscal matters, not attempts to pander to the misconceptions that Republicans have drilled into their heads.

The GOP’s Three Fiscal Lies - The Daily Beast

Inside Manhattan's Tower of Internet | The Awl

Inside Manhattan's Tower of Internet | The Awl

Who Invented the Internet?

I know that I can't respond to every piece of right-wing bs that finds its way onto the Internet, but sometimes you have to draw a line. Case in point, this from the Wall Street Journal, where someone named Gordon Crovitz tries to claim that the government didn't have anything to do with the creation of the Internet, and that it was created by Xerox instead.

This piece is such an blatant example of corporatist flummery that it boggles the mind, but I see the point of it from a corporatist perspective: if you are always going to argue for a reduction of democracy in order to expand the powers of the corporations, then it would be convenient if no good things arose from the activities of democracy and all good things arose from the actions of corporations. Take the Internet for example; it would really help the corporatist cause if the Internet had been created by private corporations rather than by the government. And because there are wingnuts and hacks like Gordon Crovitz and the Wall Street Journal around, you can actually find someone to claim that private corporations created the Internet, rather than the US government.

I am sorely tempted to go into a point-by-point rebuttal of Mr. Crovitz's hackery, because internal inconsistencies alone are enough to put his thesis in grave doubt. But life is short, so let me just suggest that you read an actual, serious, history of the Internet. Which one, you ask? Any of them. Any of them at all.

Verizon Might Be On To Something

So Verizon is accusing the FCC of "confiscation without compensation" for trying to impose net neutrality? The easy solution to that problem is to just go ahead and nationalize the Internet ISP networks. Confiscate them, but with compensation. Then we could manage the Internet like we manage the roads, offering access to everyone. Unlike the roads, we should probably charge everyone the average cost of provision, but we'd still come out much better than we are now.

I realize that nationalization has a zero political chance of happening any time soon but, seriously, this is how you settle the whole net neutrality problem. Stop agonizing and squabbling over how to regulate these jerks and just run the Internet as government owned infrastructure. That's the answer, and no matter how unlikely it is that we'll get to the best solution, all of our discussions about net neutrality ought to start with acknowledging what the best solution is.

Inside Verizon’s attack on network neutrality — Tech News and Analysis