| Thursday,
February 3, 2011 Now that I have watched the television
reports of the incidents in Cairo today, it's pretty clear to me what
happened: the local civil service unions, and the tourist services unions
support the government. The camels come from the tourist industry. So did
the horses. Those are the camels you hire when you want your picture taken
at the pyramid. So are the horses. The "whips" reported are riding crops. I
didn't see any machetes or swords. It's no wonder that the civil service
supports the government.
If a million people turned out to oppose the government, that is 1/40th
of the population or 2.5%; a formidable number, but not a majority. I would
presume that at least 5 %, twice that many, are employed by the government
and presumably support it. Subtract the army, which is really the regime in
that it is the decisive factor. Mubarak was the chairman of the Mameluke
junta, but he is easily replacable. He would prefer to live in honorable
retirement, but if he has to live in exile, well, the Farouk family still
lives well.
Add up what we know about various factions. That still leaves the
other 90% of the population unaccounted for. What do they think? Does anyone
know?
Escalation continues. I didn't see who started throwing firebombs. News
media are saying it was the counter demonstrators, but that was not at all
clear from the broadcasts.
There is no evidence of who ordered what; who approved union members
trying to protect their jobs with counter=demonstrations, or how much of the
population prefers the government to something else. The Muslim Brotherhood
is small but its support is estimated at about 20% of the population;
clearly that many didn't turn out. Meanwhile, food is getting short in
Cairo. Prices escalate people get hungry. Tempers flare. At some point the
Army will have to take sides.
================
Energy Policy
I presume
that most of my readers know that Newt Gingrich is an old friend. I first
met him when my phone rang and a voice announced that he was Newt Gingrich,
a Congressman from Georgia, and he had just read A Step Farther Out
and wanted to discuss it with me. He had got my phone number from the
publisher. I had never had a cold call from a Congressman who didn't want
money. Newt and I became friends, and I used to see him when I went to
Washington. When he was Minority Whip I took another friend, Dan Goldin,
then Administrator of NASA, over to Newt's office because I thought they
ought to meet.
I haven't
seen Newt since my recovery from brain cancer, but I still consider him a
friend. I was a bit dismayed by his Iowa speech emphasizing biofuels.
Newt
Gingrich explains his biofuels speech in Iowa in a letter to the editor of
today's Wall Street Journal. "I've Always Supported an 'All of the
above'' Energy Policy", (link).
I wish he had consulted me before he made the speech, but his explanation
does give his reasoning on the subject; and of course if you're speaking in
Iowa and you're in favor of biofuels, it's pretty certain you'll say so.
Newt
says:
I am not
a lobbyist for ethanol, not for anyone. My support of increased domestic
energy production of all forms, including biofuels and domestic drilling, is
born out of our urgent national security and economic needs. It is in this
country's long-term best interest to stop the flow of $1 billion a day
overseas, in particular to countries hostile to America. Think of what $1
billion a day kept in the U.S. economy creating jobs, especially energy jobs
which cannot be outsourced, could do. Hence, I have supported measures to
increase domestic energy production throughout my career in public life.
I am
very much for an eclectic approach to energy, and I suspect that some of
Newt's views on biofuels are based on some of the hopeful essays in my A
Step Farther Out; as part of an overall policy of energy independence,
use of biofuels for some levels of energy generation makes sense, but only
as part of an overall policy, and not as a high priority item. Biofuel
energy recovery is certainly useful as part of a waste disposal program.
There are other uses. Today’s crazy set of subsidies and the requirement
that we add alcohol to gasoline was never part of any program I supported,
and I continue to believe it is not a good solution to the $billion a day
exported to countries hostile to America; but then I am not a politician.
Politics is the art of the possible. Newt knows this far better than I do.
Were I
Emperor I would be inclined to end government involvement in adding alcohol
to fuels; if it makes economic sense, let private enterprise do it, but if
it needs subsidies and government mandates, then let it end. Burning food
raises food prices. It also makes internal combustion engines less efficient
and engine life shorter. It doesn't look cost effective to me, and the side
effect of raising food prices has a potential for disaster. I'd rather
export that food to the oil producing countries. They have to eat, and
rising food prices were one of the motivating factors for the unrest in the
Middle East.
Newt is
certainly correct: we must expand domestic energy production, and we ought
not a priori rule out any of the methods: coal, oil, natural gas,
nuclear, and yes, wind, solar, and biofuels. However, we need to have some
priorities here. The urgent need is massive amounts of energy now, both for
static installations -- factories, homes, street lights, and so forth -- and
transportation. For static installations the primary fuel now is coal,
followed by oil (for heating homes). For transportation we burn oil, much of
which must be imported. We don't import coal.
The first
order of business, then, is to increase domestic oil production and
refining, but that's a temporary measure, and has environmental
consequences. We can tolerate some smog better than we can tolerate
bankruptcy, but we'd prefer to avoid both. Over time we can phase in natural
gas, which is also a good source for electric generation. Note that it takes
energy to develop and produce sustainable energy sources: with cheap enough
energy, the price of solar cells will fall. Solar cells produce low voltage
energy, good for supplementing central power grids. Solar electric is very
useful for home lighting and air conditioning and other on-site uses, and
leaving out the conversion systems for putting that trickle into the grid
makes the initial installation cheaper as well. If the overall cost of solar
cells is low enough, there will be more such uses.
And of
course when we mention electric power, the gorilla in the parlor is nuclear:
we have the technology, and we ran the most expensive destructive test in
history at Three Mile Island, where we learned that even when everything
goes wrong the costs are economic, not a public health disaster. France and
Japan have demonstrated nuclear’s long term cost effectiveness.
Our first
order of business ought to be to reverse Jimmy Carter's disastrous stoppage
of spent fuel recycling, and start building nuclear power plants. Cheap
electricity won't free us from the billion a day we export to buy oil, but
it will go a long way toward letting us develop the means to use natural gas
and domestic oil to make us North America energy independent. Once we're on
that path we can have a good look at how biofuels fit into the pattern of
sustainable energy; but that, I would say, is nowhere near the top of the
priority list. In A Step Farther Out I showed that biofuels can be
useful. I fear I didn't make it clear enough that it wasn't the top
priority. Of course when I wrote that I didn't know just how much energy
trouble we would be in, although I should have: After all, those were the
times when I wrote my major series "Our Looming Energy Crisis."
Newt is
correct in saying that the crisis is real and we need to do everything we
can to staunch the bleeding. His Iowa speech in my judgment over emphasized
the importance and priority of biofuels. I believe Newt needs to reexamine
the negative features of the current biofuels policies. But I am in complete
agreement with him that energy policy is perhaps the most important task of
the United States today. We're in deep trouble, and until we staunch the
bleeding, we won't solve our economic problems. We can't spend our way to
prosperity, but we can divert a lot of our spending toward sensible energy
policies. Some of that spending can be diverted from what we spend to
implement a bad biofuels policy.
=====================
The situation in Cairo continues, with the Egyptian wearying of ham
handed US attempts publicly to treat our Egyptian allies as a puppet
kingdom. The White House and Department of State have roles to play in this
crisis, but making condescending public statements are not part of them.
I do not always agree with Krauthammer, but his suggestion that Gibbs be
put under house arrest for the duration of this crisis would be a good
start. I will say that the Honorable Hillary Clinton has done much better
than her master.
What the press is calling 'pro regime thugs' look to me like public
service union workers. We see them in action in Los Angeles, where the media
seems to favor them. Apparently they are not so popular with our media when
they are in Cairo.
And the food supplies get lower and lower.
============
Holey Moley. Now the EPA out of the blue claims that they must regulate
drinking water because it causes autism. I haven't seen the science that's
based on, but surely there must be some heavy duty NSF funded studies
proving it. A cure for autism! Found by government! The remedy is to
regulate drinking water! Astonishing. I can't wait for the science reports.
I wonder where they will appear?
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/
epa-administrator-claims-regulating-drin-0
===================
The cold continues. I am still waiting for an explanation of how Global
Warming has caused cold weather in Texas and New Mexico. I can understand
that melting ice in the polar regions might affect the Gulf Stream and thus
cause England and Scandinavia to be colder, although I haven't seen much
evidence that this is happening now, and logically it ought to have happened
during the Viking Warm when Greenland supported dairy farms -- but in
actuality England and Scotland were warmer in those times. But even assuming
that mechanism, I do not understand how Global Warming caused the Dallas
airport to be shut down.
Do understand: I don't know why Dallas airport was closed by snow and
cold. If asked I will say "weather" and have done with it. We understand the
weather better than we did when I was young, but we still can't predict it
very far in advance. I only raise the question because Al Gore claimed a
predictive triumph.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/03/
worsening-winters-come-global-warming/
My position is that we don't know a lot about climate prediction. Our
models don't seem to be corroborated by successful predictions. We do know
that CO2 levels are increasing, and we rightly ought to be concerned about
the possibility of runaway CO2 levels, but there aren't really any signs of
that happening, and the remedy, it seems to me, would be to develop ways to
extract CO2 from the atmosphere; reversible biological means being the
proper approach and we ought to be developing them. CO2 levels have risen
during the Great Recession so it's not likely that crippling the economy
will do much to slow that rise. Bankrupting ourselves does not seem a useful
way to expand our options.
This generation knows a very great deal more than was known when I was
growing up; but we don't know everything, we can't fix everything, and there
are priorities on what we ought to be studying. What we mustn't do is wreck
the economy so that we don't have any choices at all.
=========
Subj: Groundhogs or Rodent Prognostication
From Yesterday's View:
>The official US groundhog predicts early spring.
It's global warming.
Ever the contrarian, here in Raleigh, yesterday, our
own beloved Sir Walter Wally predicted six more weeks of winter. Many were
dressed in shorts for the ceremony in 70 degree weather. Today the
temperature plunged thirty degrees. Wally *knows*. Take that, Punxsutawney
Phil and the Warmers.
http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-raleigh/
sir-walter-wally-sees-his-shadow-at-raleigh-
nc-annual-ceremony
-~~~ Cecil Rose
So now we know. It's cold in Los Angeles. Below 70 degrees.
==============
We have mail including
a long analysis of the Egyptian situation.
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