Whitcomb: One Hub Is Enough; Move Higher; Lock ‘Em Up! Generating Power While Storing CO2
Sunday, February 20, 2022
“Spring comes laughing down the valley
All in white, from the snow,
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWhere the winter’s armies rally
Loth to go.’’
-- Amelia Josephine Burr (1878-1968), in “New Life’’
Gotta move things along in late February!
“Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob’s fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavored and colored, and put into cans.’’
-- -H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American essayist, reporter, satirist and scholar of American English
“{T}he rise of populism is a tale of how the long-term decline of formerly prosperous places, disadvantaged by processes that have rendered them exposed and almost expendable, has triggered frustration and anger. In turn, voters in these so-called ‘places that don’t matter’ have sought their revenge at the ballot box.’’
-- Andres Rodriguez-Pose, a professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics
One Is Enough
It’s good news that Rhode Island state transportation officials have dropped a plan for a three-station bus hub system in downtown Providence and instead plan on one big new station on Dorrance Street. A three-station system would have been too complicated, inconvenient, and confusing. Let’s hope that the new building would be user-friendly for a wide range of passengers and architecturally distinguished.
Let’s also hope that officials are watching experimental no-fare public bus service in Boston, Worcester and elsewhere meant to get more people out of cars and ease transit anxieties for those who can’t afford to own one.
Seek Higher Ground, Continued
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that the sea level on the East Coast will rise by at least a foot by 2050. Other experts say it could be more. This would mean much more flooding in storms, and even when it’s calm when the moon is closest.
So what’s the current status of state, federal and local efforts to prepare for such a dramatic rise? Dikes, big pumping systems, building up marshes as buffers? All of them? But the prospect of such a rise means that in many places we’ll just have to move back from the shore. And more and more insurers will have to stop covering shoreline property (which tends to be expensive), and the Federal Flood Insurance Program will have to end or at least be totally revamped.
The higher sea levels are obviously connected to man-made global warming. And bogus reports from some nations on their carbon-dioxide emissions that grossly understate their emissions may be resulting in a gross underestimation of the peril.
Hit this link for a review of the undercounts:
Places like Newport’s Point section may come to resemble a New England Colonial version of Venice. Maybe Newport, like Providence, will soon have gondolas, and not just for tourists.
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Would a Care New England-Lifespan merger, blocked for now, substantially improve health care in Rhode Island through greater efficiencies of scale, integration of services, better data collection and use and the strengthening of Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, or would the biggest impact be higher costs for patients and insurers through the new entity’s near-monopoly pricing power? Hard to know. What is clear is that a merger would be very lucrative for the two companies’ senior executives.
Next, watch for out-of-state players to again start intensely eyeing expansion into the Ocean State -- to wit, Mass General Brigham and Yale-New Haven.
A Little Humility, Please
Of course, we live amidst risks, but we shouldn’t stop fully living or assume that humans can prevent all dangers.
Thus one of the silliest things I’ve read from a public official lately is from the U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who wrote in the introduction to the newly released "National Roadway Safety Strategy."
“Zero is the only acceptable number of deaths and serious injuries on our roadways.” (It’s hard to be hopeful when so many heedless, angry and lawless drivers populate the roads.)_
So how, pray tell, do you achieve that in the strange place called “The Real World” other than by closing all roads? That reminds me of one of former Maine U.S. Sen. and diplomat George Mitchell’s remarks:
“One of the paradoxes of life is that the solution to every human problem contains the seeds of a new problem. ‘’
She’s Scaring the Public
People who are charged with murder should always be kept behind bars while they await trial, not in “home confinement’’ with ankle bracelets. Period. Why doesn’t Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Kristin Rodgers, who is letting two people accused of murder sleep in their own beds, seem to understand the obvious potential threat to public safety, and exacerbation of the public’s fear, in her decision is a mystery. Of course, judges’ release of potentially dangerous people is a national problem.
Perhaps we need many more jail cells to hold them? If so, that would be tax money well spent.
They Just Want Good Schools!
Voters in very liberal San Francisco have fired a loud shot against obsessive identity politics by recalling (removing from office) in a special election three city school board members who spent much of their time as COVID paralyzed the schools pushing such things as renaming schools. The city’s schools remained closed because of the virus much longer than in most of the country, with students not returning to school full time until last August.
Politico noted:
“As distance learning dragged on, school board members drew national ridicule as they moved to rename dozens of institutions, including Abraham Lincoln High School {!}. A push to end merit-based admissions at the prestigious Lowell High School infuriated some parents and drew derisive national coverage; {School Board member Alison} Collins raised the temperature further by suing the district for $87 million after she was penalized for an old tweet accusing Asian-Americans of ‘using white supremacist thinking to get ahead.”’
San Francisco has long had a large Asian-American community, and Asian-Americans have a famously intense belief in the value of education. They quite rightly voted in droves for recalling the three, which should be a warning to race/ethnicity/sexual-identity obsessives around America. In somewhat the same way came the victory of tough-on-crime former cop Eric Adams (a Democrat) in last year’s New York city mayoral elections over those who play down crime and, importantly, the perception of crime.
Americans want good schools and safe streets. Some progressives, which generally means Democrats, would do better if they spent more energy on promoting New Deal-inspired socio-economic improvements for the broadest possible range of middle-and-lower-income people and less energy trying to appeal to people on the basis of their membership in certain groups while trying to right all of history’s wrongs and over-simplifying the historical contradictions that go with humans, in all their depravity, ignorance and occasional kindness.
And wouldn’t it be nice if more effort were put into strengthening American families, which would improve just about everything in American society, including public schools.
In 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest birth report, the percentage of American babies born to unmarried mothers had risen to 40.5 percent. That’s up from 7.7 percent in 1965! That explains part of the socio-economic mess that is today’s America. In search of paternal responsibility….
Making Electricity While Removing CO2
As we move with glacial speed to putting up large wind turbine facilities off the New England coast to obtain a major new regional source of electricity and reduce our fossil-fuel consumption, there may be benefits we hadn’t thought of. Consider an idea of Columbia University marine geophysicist David Goldberg:
“I have been exploring the potential for pairing wind turbines with technology that captures carbon dioxide directly from the air and stores it in natural reservoirs under the ocean. Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment….
“New wind farms built with direct air capture could deliver renewable power to the grid and provide surplus power for carbon capture and storage, optimizing this massive investment for a direct climate benefit.
“But it will require planning that starts well in advance of construction. Launching the marine geophysical surveys, environmental monitoring requirements and approval processes for both wind power and storage together can save time, avoid conflicts and improve environmental stewardship.’’
Hit this link for his article on this intriguing idea:
Winter Sports
I wonder how long ski areas will be allowed to take so much water to use to make artificial snow to spray on trails even in areas with water shortages. And as the fake snow melts, it increases erosion on slopes. Further, at some ski areas, chemical additives are used to boost “snow’’ production. (China claims it hasn’t used additives in its fake-snow making at the Beijing Olympics. Beijing, by the way, has suffered water shortages for years.)
As the climate warms, this will be more and more of an issue.
Speaking of The Olympics, what other sport combines so weirdly decorum and seeming silliness as curling, which originated in Scotland? Players slide heavy polished granite stones on ice toward a target area segmented into four concentric circles and use brooms to reduce friction in a stone’s path. It’s rather hard to watch without chuckling.
I had an aunt on Cape Cod who was a curler. After I joked about it, she responded with dignity: “No, no, it’s a real sport. Lots of skill.’’
Truckers Violate Ottawans’ Freedom
At least a two-thirds majority of Canadians oppose that small percentage of Canadian truckers who have caused such havoc and misery with their anti-vax-mandate blockades. The protests have been financed by far-right American and Canadian individuals and groups in an effort to undermine the democratically elected governments of the two countries.
Many of the residents of Ottawa, where the protests have been centered, are infuriated that the protesters have taken away Ottawans’ freedom to move around the city easily, and that the protests have slammed many local small businesses.
Of course, such beneath-contempt U.S. pols as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and crazy Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul want the chaos here, too, as does Vladimir Putin. By the way, look at the lists of the states with the least and most educated populations and then see how they vote in national elections.
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As many have predicted, Putin is doing to Ukraine what Hitler did as pretext for invading Poland on Sept. 1, 1939 – staging bogus, “false flag’’ attacks by “Poles.’’ In this case, the attacks are by “Ukrainians.’’
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Hit the link below to look at how Milan is beautifying itself with vertical forests while doing its bit to fight global warming, promote bio-diversity and make people feel better. (Just looking at the color green makes you feel better.) Other cities have adopted “urban wilding’’ strategies, too. The best known in America is probably Manhattan’s High Line, a 1.45-mile-long elevated linear park, greenway, and rail trail created on a former New York Central Railroad spur line. Check it out!
Dog Mysteries
In these past wintry weeks, I’ve often wondered while walking our dog how much canines feel cold. Our beast is allegedly something called a Dutch Spaniel and a rescue from San Antonio; people in the Sunbelt are notoriously negligent about dogs.
Anyway, we put a coat on our dog when it’s below about 40 though he has fairly long and thick fur. But we see most dogs with very short hair being walked, er, naked.
Are they uncomfortable, or are we anthropomorphizing them in thinking that they are? If only we could get into dogs’ brains to better understand how they feel and how, for example, they sense time. After all, we’ve developed close relations with them over tens of thousands of years and yet we still know remarkably little about how they see us and the world in general. One thing is clear: Their noses are very powerful guides to their world. They smell the world far more than they see it. That can make walking them very tedious.
Fog Envelops Family Histories
For some strange reason of sexual reproduction (no immaculate conception!), many people in my family have been born in February. So amidst the birthday cards, some sent too late as we transpose and otherwise confuse dates, I think of the mysteries of families.
In my case (I’ll leave my poor wife out of it) such mysteries as to why my paternal grandfather never mentioned that he had two sisters, though one, at least, lived nearby. Fight over money? Something worse? And then there was my maternal great uncle, William White, who was murdered in Chicago but nobody seems to know why. It’s also not entirely clear why Uncle Will’s father emigrated from Scotland, first to Canada and then to the United States. He even lived in Providence for a few years, we think as some sort of retailer, before heading out to Minnesota to help start a department store.
I suspect that such cases are common. Meanwhile, newish genetic-tracing companies prosper as people seek to unravel innumerable family mysteries, although ancestors’ motives and emotions at key moments of their lives will largely remain unknown. Genetic tracing of family histories can bring some families together while inciting confusion and discord in others.
Diary of Distractions
“…I began to feel an overwhelming need to go and play games on the computer. ‘I mustn’t do it,’ I told myself. ‘Why do I think these things are necessary?’ I tried to resist.’’
-- From The Luminous Novel, by Mario Levrero (1940-2004)
Can you make an engaging novel out of the procrastinations and distractions and all-around time-wastings of one aging man, mostly living alone in his head amidst the banalities of daily life? The Uruguayan writer Levrero managed to do that in this preposterous, funny, sad, exasperating diary/novel – a strange work indeed. Insomniacs will particularly appreciate it.
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