MrG's Blog & Notes

* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with monthly entries.

[*] NEWS FOR OCTOBER 2020

* The US election of 2020 is imminent, indeed well in progress in early voting, and things are not looking at all good for Donald Trump. As reported in an essay by Lexington, the rotating USA columnist of ECONOMIST.com ("Donald Trump's Effort To Sow Mistrust Is Looking Like An Own-Goal", 24 October 2020), Trump's tricks worked in 2016 -- but they're killing him in 2020.

Welcome to North Carolina, regarded as a battleground state, where voters around the state have been lining up to cast early votes -- one local public official saying: "I've never seen anything like it!" The voters are emotional, expressing fear, anguish, even shedding tears. Fortunately, the voting system is working effectively and efficiently, despite the pandemic and the attempts by Trump and others to undermine it.

Most of the early voters are Democrats, but some are Trump loyalists -- easily identified because they usually won't wear masks, regarding them as submission to a tyrannical government. According to Lexington:

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That may suggest a continued and possibly growing division of America -- but then again, the biggest factor in the problem, Donald Trump, seems clearly on the way out. He is dragged down by his flaws, arguably the most spectacular being how incompetent he is. In trying to undermine the election, Trump has only energized the Democrats against him.

Hillary Clinton had been favored to win in 2016, but an analysis of the relevant statistics at the time shows she had significant weaknesses, particularly a popularity distinctly under 50%. More to the point, nothing went right for her in the campaign -- but even at that, Trump's win was very weak, with Trump losing the popular vote by millions. Now, it's Trump's turn to go from stumble to stumble.

There were two debates between Trump and Democrat challenger Joe Biden; the first debate was a barking contest, the second was better, but still did Trump no good. Trump also presided over a COVID-19 spreader event at the White House that landed him in the hospital, where he was given the latest treatments, and seemed to quickly recover. Some thought it was a hoax and a ploy -- but if so, it accomplished nothing for Trump. Finally, in an interview with Leslie Stahl of CBS News, Trump was petulant, to then cut off the interview and walk away. Stahl also interviewed Joe Biden, who was prepared down to his fingertips, being smooth and articulate.

Not bad for a man who Trump, in grand projection, has tried to label as senile. In addition Trump's attempts, through Rudy Giuliani, to smear Biden through his son Hunter Biden, have been an utter dud. The biggest of Trump's failures, of course, is his belief that the best thing to do about the pandemic is pretend it's not happening -- which has got to be the worst political strategy in American history. Who can believe Trump will win on election day? The only question is how badly he will be beaten, and how much he will drag the Republicans down with him.

Should Trump indeed lose, he will face almost certain indictment, giving him an incentive to skip the country. That leads to an unsettling thought: he would also have a motive to run off with a load of America's secrets, giving him something to trade for being taken in and protected. The question is then: "Would he dare do that?" The answer is clearly: "Yes." [ED: That's not what Trump did. He did something even more shocking.]

* As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("China Struggles To Fill Trump's 'America First' Leadership Void" by Tony Munroe, 21 October 2020), China has had mixed feelings about US president Donald Trump. Yes, he's a pain to China, but his rabid isolationism would seem to present opportunities for China to stand taller on the world stage, at the expense of the USA. However, despite big efforts, it hasn't proven that simple.

Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing, says: "China has been trying its best to take advantage of the U.S. retreat to advance its own goals. Nevertheless, China has had difficulty translating its growing influence into foreign policy success."

China's initial bungling in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has made it the target of criticism. Beijing's clampdown on Hong Kong, the suppression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, its island-building in the South China Sea, saber-rattling towards Taiwan, and aggressive diplomacy haven't won China many friends either. Yes, America's allies are sick of Trump, but he is clearly a passing affliction, and China has not been able to exploit that annoyance with Trump.

Susan Thornton, the top US diplomat for Asia early in the Trump administration, says: "Many see the US retreat from global institutions under Trump as ceding fertile ground to China in this area, but what is striking is how much China's so-called 'wolf-warrior' diplomacy has undercut their ability to take advantage."

A survey by the US-based Pew Research Center found that negative views towards China in advanced economies including the USA had soared during 2020. There are reports that a Chinese internal paper released in April 2020 warned that Beijing faced a rising wave of hostility in the aftermath of the coronavirus, with global anti-China sentiment at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Assuming, reasonably, that Joe Biden wins the US presidential election, he will maintain a tough stance on China, while ending Trump's isolationism, dealing with allies and international bodies in a cooperative fashion, as a significant example rejoining the Paris climate accord. Although Biden has labeled Russia an "enemy", he calls China a "competitor", and clearly wants engagement. Jia Qingguo -- a professor at Peking University School of International Studies who has advised China's government -- says: "On many issues of global governance, there is still much room for cooperation between the two countries."

Simply put, the Americans are much more experienced and, lapses like Trump aside, much more skillful at playing on the world stage than China. The Chinese government has tried to have it both ways, working as a rival to the USA, while saying it does not want to challenge America. China's diplomatic efforts tend to be transactional, with a policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries, no matter how dreadful those affairs are -- and similarly protesting angrily at any criticism of its own internal affairs.

Its Belt & Road initiative has been criticized for a lack of transparency, over environmental concerns, and the financial sensibility of projects. China's success at putting one of its own as head of France-based police coordination agency Interpol ended disastrously when the chief, Meng Hongwei, resigned after going missing in China, where he was sentenced to jail in 2020 for graft.

Julian Gewirtz -- a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank -- says: "China's explicit ambitions to 'lead the reform of the global governance system' have not been clearly defined. These statements are often swaddled in gauzy platitudes ? and that means the rest of the world should judge China by its track record, rather than its promises."

* As discussed in an essay from ECONOMIST.com ("The Pragmatist", 3 October 2020), the Trump campaign has persistently tried to paint Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden as a radical, or at least under the control of radicals, who would upend America's economy pursuing an absurd "socialist" agenda -- never mind what "socialism" is really supposed to mean. Hardly:

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Assuming, as seems reasonable, that Biden wins the election, what then? There are concerns that his pragmatism won't be up to the huge job he will inherit, as seems likely, with the USA struggling against a pandemic and accompanying economic crash, along with huge government deficits. Not being an ideologue, he has no fixed concepts, instead doing what he believes, on the basis of his counsels, to make the best sense. Rightists fear that means he will end up stepping on capitalists; Leftists fear he won't -- and both fear he will fail. They are hyperventilating:

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Joe Biden's career in politics suggests less of a focus on economics than on the justice system and foreign policy. He is an advocate of the middle class, less so of the upper and lower classes; however, his home state of Delaware has a heavy corporate presence, and he is not hostile to business.

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Where Biden's economic path takes him depends on three factors that could drive him to more daring economic initiatives. First, the COVID-19 recession: GDP hasn't taken as much of a hit as feared, but the pandemic isn't over, and much can still go wrong. Small businesses and the poor have suffered the most, while state and local governments are in a cash crunch. Some industries are prospering; some, like travel and movie theaters, are in dire condition. Normal laws of economics are topsy-turvy, with interest rates zeroed out, meaning borrowing is nearly free; a swelling budget deficit; and, most bewildering, a soaring stock market.

Second, the Woke Left: Biden has skillfully placated the Leftists in his party, while tempering their more ambitious proposals, such as the "Green New Deal" and "Medicare For All". The Woke Left doesn't control the Democratic Party, but it is a significant presence in it, and will retain influence in a Biden Administration. Biden is all for addressing climate change and getting the US healthcare system in order -- but he is not anti-capitalist, nor are the overwhelming majority of Americans. Nonetheless, there are pressures pushing him to the Left.

The third constraint will be Congress. The Democrats are certain to retain the House, indeed may gain seats, and are favored to retake the Senate. The Senate filibuster, which forces a 60-vote majority for critical votes, would still give the Republicans leverage even if they lose the majority; but the filibuster has been so hollowed out by partisan warfare that Democrats will want to kill it, should they gain enough control of the Senate. It will be with no regrets: the House hasn't had the filibuster since 1842, and only 14 state legislatures retain it. For much of its life, the filibuster was rarely used, and then largely for theatrical effect; from the 1980s, following a change in the rules that made it easier to invoke, both sides escalated its use, to the point of absurdity. It needs to go.

Uncontested Democratic control of both wings of Congress would simplify life for Biden, but he would still have to give Congress its due. Biden loves Congress and is skilled at working with it, but he may not be able to get his own way in all cases. The pressure from the Woke Left would be less than that of centrists; the largest caucus, with over 100 members, is the Moderate New Democrat Coalition. Biden's instincts are centrist, but reality may push him Leftwards, with Congress finding some of his initiatives hard to buy. There is also the entirely unpredictable trajectory of the Republicans after the fall of Trump -- with a possible collapse of the GOP, and the rise of a new Center-Right party.

It seems unlikely that Biden will be willing or able to greatly expand the state, with the budget growing by only a few percent. He wants a jumbo recovery bill, with a prominent "green infrastructure" component that might include upgrades to electricity grids and charging stations for electric cars. He wants to pump money into green technologies, and also other leading-edge technologies like 5G or AI.

If the jumbo recovery bill goes well, there may be room for a Biden Administration to pursue one other big legislative priority. One possibility is immigration reform; another is boosting middle-class social mobility, where Biden proposes universal pre-school education, tax-credits for child care, and free public-university education for families earning less than $125,000 USD a year. Total spending for such a social-mobility agenda might come to a trillion USD over a decade.

Biden is proposing to moderately raise taxes. He would increase raise the rate on corporate income from 21% to up to 28%, levy minimum taxes on foreign earnings, and remove tax perks for real-estate and private-equity firms. Individuals earning more than $400,000 USD would see the top band of income tax rise to up to 39.6%, and those earning more than $1 million USD might have to pay a capital-gains rate that is closer to the one they pay on their income.

Of course, how Biden handles the economy depends on who he appoints to critical positions, such as treasury secretary. There's been talk of Senator Liz Warren taking that position -- giving Wall Street the shudders -- but again, Biden is not an anti-capitalist, and Massachusetts would need to hold a special election to fill her Senate seat. Biden will very likely pick centrists, for example Lael Brainard, a center-Left member of the Federal Reserve Board; Jeff Zients, a co-head of Biden's transition team; Sylvia Mathews Burwell, a former Obama official; or Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Fed governor and Treasury official. If a business figure is needed then Ruth Porat, the finance chief of Alphabet, the parent group of Google, may be a contender.

His vice-president will also have a voice, a big one:

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The final tool Biden has is executive orders, which the Obama Administration made big use of. The shift of the Supreme Court to the Right may make that more troublesome -- except for the fact that the Democrats are likely to, however reluctantly, shake up SCOTUS. In any case, Biden could use his executive power to reverse some of Trump's own executive orders -- most importantly, drop the ban on some migrants, while lifting Trump's clampdown on refugees and undocumented workers. The rules for visas for skilled workers would be streamlined.

Biden's stance on protectionism is more ambiguous. Biden has been a free trader in the past, and would certainly be less confrontational with China than Trump has been. He would rally America's allies to put in place a co-ordinated response to deal with China's economic model -- in which even notionally private Chinese firms are often acting under the strategic direction of the Chinese Communist Party. However, American suspicion of China is running high, and Biden will have to tread carefully in relaxing confrontation. He is not likely to stop the Trump Administration's war against Chinese high-tech firm Huawei, but he may regard Huawei as less of a threat and more of a bargaining chip.

It is similarly not clear how far Biden will go with trade deals. It may just be a question of how Biden presents them: he can sell deals on the basis of having zealously protected America's interests, glossing over the fact that trade deals of the past also protected America's interests, being the products of tough negotiation. There has, despite Trump's claim, never been unfettered free trade; there is only negotiated trade.

* In sum, a Biden presidency promises moderately higher taxes and more spending, especially on green infrastructure; more industrial policy, not too much change to trade policy. Who wins, who loses? In terms of individuals, his policies are aimed squarely at the middle classes and lower-paid who would benefit from a list of measures such as cheaper education, perks to get on the housing ladder, and a higher minimum wage. Increased taxes will fall on the rich.

As for businesses, which firms would gain and which would suffer? One estimate suggests corporate profits would fall by about 12% because of the tax rises, with alarmist warnings that higher taxes on business would impact the workers in those businesses -- a variation on the weary "trickle-down" argument. Investors have already begun to discount this, to bid up the shares of renewable-energy firms and construction and infrastructure companies which might benefit from a Biden presidency.

Of course, fossil-fuel energy companies are likely to suffer, but changing realities indicate that's their future in any case. Although there's clearly a drift towards clamping down on Big Tech firms, tech stocks have risen even in the face of the pandemic; indeed, the stock markets are doing well, despite difficult circumstances. It doesn't appear that many people are worried about a socialist revolution from above. True, a Biden presidency, along with being a crushing defeat for the Republicans, could open the door to radical legislation; but Biden is not a radical, and is unlikely to play along with excess.

Again, Biden is likely to give jobs to the Woke Left in the regulatory apparatus -- and there's certainly going to be a backlash against the Trump Administration's reckless trashing of regulations. The fear is that new rules will be turned out in an uncontrolled and strident fashion, without carefully considering their impact. Biden will try to act as a brake on excess, but it may be a lot to handle. A Biden Administration won't be as business-friendly as the Trump Administration, but it won't be as half-baked either.

One final concern is huge budget deficits. The pandemic has made them largely unavoidable, with the Fed pumping out funds to keep the economy afloat. Right now, Biden has no plan for getting America's long-term finances on a stable footing. That is clearly something that will have to be put off, as Biden addresses immediate problems:

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* As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Cyber Heists", 10 September 2020), cyber-thieves never give up, they're having too much fun. One estimate, from 2018, put total cyber-crime revenue at $1.5 trillion USD or more a year -- including not only bank jobs, but also theft of intellectual property, counterfeiting, data-ransoms, and so on. Thanks to COVID-19, it might well be higher now, since many financial firms have struggled to keep security tight with so many staff working from home.

Most big heists are carried out either by organized-crime groups or state actors. There's more focus on the state actors these days, since hackers thought to be linked to the North Korean government stole $101 million USD, and almost nicked another $850 million USD from Bangladesh's central bank in 2016, after hacking transfer instructions from SWIFT, a global payments tool with 11,000 members.

After a lull, the North Koreans are back, the US government having issued an alert that they have been coming up with new bank-robbing schemes to help fund the regime of Kim Jong Un, cash-strapped by sanctions. One such scheme, known as an "ATM cash-out", is described in a new report by SWIFT and the financial-consulting arm of defense giant BAE Systems on how cyber-heists are carried out and the loot laundered. It's a labor-intensive scheme, involving hacking cash machines to pump out money, which is grabbed by accomplices called "money mules". Among those who specialize in cash-outs are the "BeagleBoyz", a group linked to the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a North Korean spy agency.

ATM cash-out is labor-intensive, since no one ATM stores a lot of cash -- so a lot of them are hit at one time. ATMs in more than 30 countries have been targeted in a single strike. An attack on one bank, by a group called Lazarus, involved 12,000 ATM withdrawals across 28 countries, all made within two hours, according to the report. Then there's the problem of laundering the stolen cash. One popular way is to take it to a casino, buy chips with it, then exchange it back into cash in the form of a check from the casino showing a legitimate transaction. The check can then be deposited in a bank without setting off alarms.

Countermeasures tend to focus on identifying mules from CCTV footage, then trying to connect dots up the chain of command. Some banks are taking stronger measures: after being warned about the latest threat from North Korea, some Bangladeshi lenders now shut their ATMs down between midnight and 6 AM to reduce the threat from cash-outs. It's not so easy to get away with snatching cash pouring out of ATMs in the daylight.

* Australia-based shipbuilder Austal showed off concepts for autonomous ships at a 2019 trade show in Sydney, the offerings being targeted for future US Navy requirements. The offerings are in single-hulled, catamaran, and trimaran configuration; they range in length from 40 to 110 meters (150 to 360 feet), with displacement from 260 to 2,500 tonnes (285 to 2,750 tons). They will have networking capabilities for command and control.

Operational configurations include small patrol craft for constabulary duties; high-speed troop transports; and replenishment-at-sea vessels. Optional kit includes vertical-launch missile arrays, self-defense weapons, berthing for optional crewed requirements, support of air and sea drones, refueling at sea, and vertical replenishment by helicopter. The ships will be able to operate for up to 90 days, with an unrefueled range of 18,500 kilometers (115,000 miles / 10,000 NMI) at a cruise speed of 30 KPH (18 MPH / 16 KT).

* As reported by CNN, the presidential campaign to elect Joe Biden has opened up a front in virtual space, in the popular "Animal Crossing" game for Nintendo. Animal Crossing features a society of animal characters, with players setting up villages and conducting daily life activities. Now, thanks to a deal with Nintendo, players can display four different Biden campaign signs.

The Trump campaign is of course stodgy, and has no interest in establishing a front in virtual space, a spokeswoman saying: "This explains everything: Joe Biden thinks he's campaigning for President of Animal Crossing from his basement. The Trump campaign will continue to spend its resources campaigning in the real world with real Americans."

Of course, Trump supporters, and supporters of other political figures, have made their own signs for use in Animal Crossing. [ED: The political agitation got too strong in the game environment, and the management finally banned it.]

I got a flyer in the mail from the Trump Campaign, screaming at me: JOE BIDEN HAS COMPLETELY EMBRACED THE RADICAL LEFT! I just laughed: "You people really are crazy. You're doomed." My neighbors tell me they haven't got such stuff, so I must be on some mystery mailing list.

* The US West continues to have a nasty fire season. It has remained, with some chilly excursions, unseasonably warm. Nearby fires choked Loveland, Colorado, with smoke, with flecks of ash decorating my car. Late in September, the Moon came up as orange as a pumpkin one night.

It's no fun, but I just continue with my work -- nothing else I can do. I got to playing with the Signal encrypted messaging app a bit more, and discovered a few interesting things. First, it can only really be installed on one platform at a time. I tried to install it on two of my smartphones; it will install, but it will only work with one at a time. To change phones, I have to go through the validation process on the new phone, and give up use on the first phone. I think if I used different phone numbers for Signal, I could get it to work simultaneously on two platforms, but that sounds like undermining security.

Second, I tried to use Signal to send a text message to my niece Jordy to get her iPhone on Signal, so we could trade information. It wouldn't do it; I finally realized: "That's because I told it not to." I'd set it up so I could only handle encrypted messages.

Another thing I still need to figure out is how to cut and paste text from my PC to Signal on my smartphone. It turns out there are apps that allow a Windows cut to end up in an Android clipboard; when I get some time, I'll see how it works. Signal, by the way, is on a roll these days, with the US public demonstrations resulting in a boom in downloads.

In a parallel exercise, I was downloading a set of out-of-print aircraft books from an archive site. Most of them were in .PDF format, which was no difficulty, but some were in a .RAR format. What? After some poking around, that turned to be an unusual archiver format, I think out of Russia. I got to thinking that it might be nice to find an online site to unpack it, instead of going through the hassle of installing an app on my PC. Apps not found on official stores are security risks anyway.

After some dead ends, I finally found ZAMZAR.com, which is a site devoted to file conversions. It was put together by brothers Mike and Chris Whyley in England in 2006, and now covers a very wide range of conversions. It is free for casual use, though free users can only convert two files a day. I only had two .RAR files, so that wasn't a problem; I converted the files from .RAR to .ZIP, and I was flying. I'm keeping the link to that site; every rare now and then I run into some strange file type, with the result that I have to figure out what I've got, and then convert it to something I can use.

* Concerning the item about the pandemic, virtual education, and Chromebooks last month, school districts across the USA have tried to make sure all their students get access, by sending out school buses equipped with wi-fi to park near housing complexes and provide online access. This dovetails with my pet notion of an open national wi-fi network to give online access to everyone -- if at low data rates, about a megabit a second. Municipalities, businesses, or even private citizens could help support the network, and it would not need universal coverage. Given open access, it would have to be monitored by law enforcement, to keep the Black Hats from exploiting it.

Wi-fi access is so widespread that it seems we're part of the way there. As I've mentioned before, I don't have a phone subscription for any of my phones, relying on wi-fi instead. Since I spend most of my time at home, that works, and I can find wi-fi access when I'm on the road and need to make a call. Of course, these days, I'm never on the road.

[*] NEWS FOR NOVEMBER 2020

* The big news for the USA in November was the election of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the USA. Of course, as expected, incumbent president Donald Trump has refused to acknowledge defeat, claiming voter fraud and pressing lawsuit after lawsuit -- to see them all dismissed as frivolous.

The election was unsatisfactory to the Democrats, however, in that they lost seats in the House -- though still retained control -- and did not do well in their effort to retake the Senate. It has led to recriminations between the Woke Left and the Moderates in the Democratic Party; the Woke Left insists that Republicans would not have won so readily if the Democrats had campaigned farther to the Left, while the Moderates believe that the Republicans gained because the Democrats seemed too far to the Left.

The Moderates have the much stronger argument, the public having become weary of public demonstrations and the rowdiness that too often accompanies them -- as well as appalled by the "Defund The Police" slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yes, "Defund The Police" is not as extreme in practice as it sounds, but it was senseless to use a slogan that did sound so extreme. As the saying goes in politics: *If you have to explain, you've lost.*

On reflection, the Democrats are exaggerating their own weaknesses, and ignoring the weaknesses of the Republicans. It was certainly an unpleasant surprise that Donald Trump, as appalling as he has been in office, got more votes in 2020 than in 2016 -- but he still lost by a margin close to 10%, and the reality is that he's in decline, facing a range of investigations and lawsuits against him.

Along with state charges and civil lawsuits, Trump faces prospective Federal charges, but Joe Biden has been cautious about Federal prosecution against Trump, saying merely that would be up to the attorney general. Although Trump deserves everything bad that he gets, Biden clearly regards him as a distraction from more important things.

No matter what happens, Donald Trump will be in a lot of trouble when he leaves office on 20 January 2021. His troubles will afflict the Republican Party, which has become the Trump Party, and not to the benefit of the GOP. The stereotypical Trump voter hates politicians, all of them -- and without Trump, the Republican Party has little attraction.

The Republican Party's relationship with Trump was unhealthy, with Republican politicians split into three camps: those who idolized him, those who feared him, and those who cynically saw him as furthering their ends. There has been some active resistance as well, the campaign against Trump notably featuring the efforts of the Lincoln Project -- a gang of anti-Trump conservatives whose motto was: "We go low so you don't have to." Trump did not destabilize the GOP; it was unstable when he came on the scene, and has only become more so.

* In the meantime, Trump is still refusing to acknowledge his electoral defeat, though he is no longer trying to hold up the transition of power. He had been flooding state courts with nuisance lawsuits; in response to one such lawsuit, Michigan Judge Cynthia Stevens told a Trump lawyer:

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The Trump apparatus set up a voter-fraud hotline, with the Lincoln Project suggesting: "In their time of crisis, calling 1-888-630-1776 would distract them from their vital work. So please don't call 1-888-630-1776." Of course, the hotline got spammed to death.

The last act was a frantic attempt to get the Republicans in Michigan to overturn the state's electors, with Trump inviting Michigan GOP to the White House. The exercise made everyone nervous, but cooler heads pointed out that the idea was preposterous -- Biden took Michigan by a six-figure margin, and the state GOP didn't really have the power to overturn the electors. It fizzled, the state certified its vote, and that was effectively the end of it. The stand for Joe Biden's inauguration is now being built in front of the White House.

Trump seems uncharacteristically deflated. He's talking about big plans for starting a TV channel, or running for president in 2024, the better to milk his fans for campaign contributions. He may well not live to 2024, and if he does, he'll be even less functional than he is now, which is saying a lot. [ED: He did live that long, and he was clearly in decline by that time.]

What really happens next? Who knows? All that's obvious is that 2021 will be a very chaotic year. It pays to wait to see what the landscape will be like in 2022. It may look much more promising.

* One of top items on Joe Biden's agenda is climate change. As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("Can Joe Biden Make Good On His Revolutionary Climate Agenda?" by Jeff Tollefson, 25 November 2020), even though Biden faces a split Congress, he has tools at his disposal to take strong action. Vicki Arroyo -- executive director of Georgetown University's Climate Center in Washington DC -- says: "This is really the first time that a US president is leading with climate." That's exciting, she adds, but she suggests cautious optimism: global warming is still a partisan issue on Capitol Hill, and "that is going to limit what Biden can accomplish".

Trump is a climate-change denier, having pulled the USA out of the Paris climate agreement. He was on a wrong-way street; now other players, from China to the European Union, are preparing to present a new round of commitments at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021. Biden has already made it clear that the USA will come back to the climate accord and climate discussions. On 23 November, Biden named John Kerry as his special envoy for climate change and gave him a seat on the White House National Security Council. Kerry had served as secretary of state under Obama, and was key to mediating the original Paris Agreement.

Biden's first opportunity to advance his agenda through Congress could, as with Obama, come in the form of an economic stimulus bill. With the US economy staggering from the pandemic, many analysts expect this to be at the top of Biden's agenda when he enters office. His team has made climate a central feature of the administration's economic plan, and could leverage a stimulus package to increase Federal investments in low-carbon energy and green infrastructure.

It is unlikely that Biden will be able to establish anything like a "Green New Deal", but he still has options. Despite their inclination to deny climate change, Republicans are not all that down on renewable energy -- wind power has saved the livelihoods of many farmers in Red states -- and may not necessarily be hostile to climate action, if carefully presented. One important thing to do is to establish a carbon tax. One proposal suggested by the Climate Leadership Council -- a non-profit organization based in Washington DC, would start with a modest $40 USD per tonne tax on carbon dioxide emissions that would increase over time, with the goal of cutting US emissions in half by 2035. The proceeds would be refunded back to taxpayers.

How easy it will be to get a carbon tax through the Senate is impossible to say in the disordered political landscape, but failing that, there's still much Biden could do via executive action:

• The Interior Department, for example, could accelerate the processing of Federal permits to build offshore wind farms and other renewable-energy projects.
  
  
• The Department of Energy could raise energy-efficiency standards for appliances.
  
  
• The Treasury Department could work with financial regulators to develop rules on how publicly traded companies report the financial risks of climate change -- a move that could help investors to make wiser choices and encourage businesses to take the issue more seriously.

Tim Profeta -- who leads Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions in Durham, North Carolina -- says: "There's no need for Biden to wait. There's a lot the president can do using his own authority, starting from day one."

Profeta co-chairs the Climate 21 Project, an independent group of academics, policy specialists and former government officials that has drawn up a blueprint for executive action across eleven Federal offices and agencies to deal with global warming. The headline recommendation from the group, which already is connected to Biden's transition team, is that the new administration should establish a "National Climate Council" led by an official that reports directly to the president. This person would help to advance Biden's climate agenda by coordinating with various US agencies. Profeta says: "You need somebody in the West Wing who has the president's ear, and who is focused on making climate action happen across the Federal government."

The biggest hammer the president has when it comes to climate change is regulating greenhouse-gas emissions directly through the EPA. Over the past four years, Trump's EPA has reversed or weakened dozens of environmental regulations, including a trio of Obama-era climate policies targeting emissions from vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas facilities. Biden is expected to immediately move to restore and strengthen those efforts -- but that promises to be a lot of work, and it's important for the Biden Administration to figure out the most effective way to tackle the problem.

In the case of the policy on fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles, the administration might move forward with an entirely new rule. The Trump administration rolled back standards put in place under Obama so that the car industry has to boost average fuel efficiency by only around 1.5% per year between 2022 and 2025, instead of 5% per year. Instead of simply changing the rule again, the Biden Administration will likely develop an entirely new set of regulations that look forward another 10:15 years for longer-lasting impact.

One outstanding question is how to deal with the power sector, which accounts for more than a quarter of US emissions. The Trump administration replaced Obama's Clean Power Plan -- which never went into effect owing to court challenges -- with what amounted to a non-program, Trump being focused on bringing back coal power. It didn't work. Thanks in part to state and local regulation as well as simple momentum, cheap natural gas and renewables such as wind and solar, combined with long-standing pollution regulations, have put many coal-fired power plants out of business. As a result, US carbon emissions from the power sector were nearly 33% below 2005 levels in 2019, surpassing Obama's goals eleven years early. A new Clean Power Plan is an obvious path for the Biden Administration, the challenge being to get it through the courts.

Of course, the first thing to do will be to re-integrate the USA into the Paris climate agreement -- but that in itself is not enough: the USA has to take a global leadership role. The Biden Administration will need to devise a climate pledge and announce it to the world at the 2021 conference in Glasgow, where countries are expected to update their commitments for the first time since the agreement was signed in 2015. Under Obama, the United States initially committed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 26% below 2005 levels by 2025.

Joseph Aldy -- an economist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who served as a White House climate adviser under Obama -- says that the challenge is to make sure the new US pledge is both strong and credible: "We have lost credibility on many fronts as a result of Donald Trump." The Biden Administration will have to establish a robust program that will be sustained by future administrations. Aldy says: "Our counterparts around the world will be looking very closely at what we are doing."

Bob Inglis -- previously a Republican member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina, now head of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, which is a think tank that advocates politically conservative environmental solutions -- believes that Biden's working-class roots and his decades of negotiating across the political aisle in the Senate make him the best man to take on MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, Inglis saying: "Joe Biden was made for this moment. He's a centrist who knows how to operate within the system, and that's what I'm putting my confidence in at this point."

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Rivers Could Generate Thousands Of Nuclear Power Plants Worth Of Energy, Thanks To A New 'Blue' Membrane" by Robert S. Service), the idea of extracting electricity from the flow of rivers into the ocean is picking up steam.

The "blue energy", as it's called, involves spanning a membrane between the river's outlet and the sea. Ions from sea salt migrate through the membrane, generating electricity. It's much like a giant flow battery. It promised to generate a lot of electricity, since rivers dump about 37,000 cubic kilometers of freshwater into the oceans every year. Some estimates suggest blue energy could provide about 2.6 terawatts of power in all, or the equivalent of about 2,000 nuclear power plants.

French researchers devised the first blue-energy membrane in 2013, using a ceramic film of silicon nitride -- commonly used in industry for electronics, cutting tools, and ETC -- pierced by a single pore lined with a boron nitride nanotube (BNNT). Since BNNTs are highly negatively charged, the French team suspected they would prevent negatively charged ions in water from passing through the membrane.

Indeed, they found that when a membrane with a single BNNT was placed between fresh water and salt water, the positive ions passed through to the fresh water, while the negative ions were blocked. The charge imbalance was so great that the researchers estimated a single square meter of the membrane -- with millions of pores per square centimeter -- could generate about 30 megawatt-hours per year, enough to power more than 400 homes.

Unfortunately, this was no more than a proof of concept, since the scheme, as originally devised, couldn't be reasonably scaled up. Now a team under Jerry Wei-Jen Shan -- a mechanical engineer at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey -- has figured out how to do so. The BNNTs were easily obtained from a company. The researchers then added the nanotubes to a polymer precursor that's laid out as a 6.5-micrometer-thick film.

The problem was orienting the nanotubes. The researchers thought of using a magnetic field, but the BNNT aren't magnetic. No problem, they just painted the tubes with a positively-charged coating -- based on molecules too big to fit inside the tubes, leaving them open -- and then added negatively-charge magnetic iron oxide particles to the mix, which affixed to the positively charged coating molecules. That done, they used a magnetic field to align the BNNTs, then cured the polymer using ultraviolet light. As a final step, the researchers used a plasma beam to trim down both sides of the film, ensuring that the nanotubes were open.

The end product contained some 10 million BNNTs per cubic centimeter. When the research team placed their membrane in a small vessel separating salt- and freshwater, it produced 8,000 times more power per area than the previous French team's BNNT experiment. Shan believes that's because his BNNTs are narrower than those of the French experiment, and were better at excluding negatively charged chloride ions. In addition, only 2% of the BNNTs in the film were open on both sides; Shan is confident his team can easily improve on that number.

* An article from ABC.com dated 14 November 2019 warned travelers to "Beware Of Juice Jacking". Wot? The warning was about using USB chargers in airports to recharge a phone, since sometimes devious Black Hats infect the chargers with malware, to infect phones plugged into the charger.

A little further investigation suggests this is not such a problem, at least for more recent phones. These days, if a phone is plugged into an unfamiliar USB socket and something tries to get into the phone via USB, the phone asks the user to grant permission. If juice jacking is still a problem, it won't be for much longer.

* One of the many results of the CV19 pandemic on my personal life was that I finally got into ebooks. I have an old 11-inch tablet, and it makes a pretty good ebook reader.

On getting into ebooks, I then started to think about checking them out from the local library. I wondered how that was done, thinking: "It would be nice to have an app to read library books." I finally found out about "Hoopla", which is an ebook service for libraries, and downloaded its app. It took me a while to learn how to use it; searching for titles, for example on "Thomas Jefferson", gave me a ton of very thin books on Jefferson for kids. It turned out that browsing hierarchically -- from "biographies" to "presidents" -- got better results.

I was then tipped off to another service, named "Overdrive", which has a "Libby" app. At this point, the exercise came to a screeching halt. It turns out that anything I check out on Hoopla costs the library an average of over $2 USD. Huh? I figured ebooks would be like print books: the ebooks are purchased by the library, and then one person checks each one out at a time. Unfortunately, that's not the case, publishers making sure they get a good cut every time a book is read. It's a greedy money machine.

That ended up putting a stop to my library downloads. I could make donations to the library -- I do on occasion, I could do it more often -- to cover the cost, but it turned out the selection wasn't all that good for my own needs. It was more effective in all regards to buy either used books or ebooks from Amazon, whichever is cheaper.

* In less amusing news, Colorado has had an unprecedented fire season, with walls of flame roaring through the mountains. I am not at any great risk here in Loveland, since it's pretty much open country, but shifting winds occasionally smother the city with acrid smoke. Some mornings I get up and there's ash all over my driveway. It tends to blow away quickly.

Sometimes Sikorsky Skycrane helicopters fly in to nearby ponds to tank up for another run on a fire. I feel a bit of guilt, living in comfort while an army of fire-fighters is on the front lines -- and worse about people who have lost everything to the flames. We had some fair snow and a cold snap in late October; it slowed down the fires, but it didn't put the bigger ones out. They're not expecting the fires to be under control until December.

I will say that skepticism about climate change is clearly on the fade in Colorado, since the connection between the fires and the extended dry, hot summer in the region is unmistakeable. It wasn't so long ago that Australia was burning as well; and we'll be facing more of it in the future.

[*] NEWS FOR DECEMBER 2020

* On 24 December 2020, after months of fractious negotiations at the brink and at the last moment, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Britain had sealed a trade deal with the European Union: no quotas, no tariffs. There was widespread relief; a no-deal "Brexit" from the EU would be politically and economically disastrous, so much so that it seemed hard to believe it would happen. It didn't. It is not thought that ratification will be a problem.

In addition, the two sides agreed to an independent arbitrator to judge on future trade controversies, and a system for settling disputes that doesn't involve the European Court of Justice, the ECJ having been a particular Brexiter boogeyman. The EU gets fishing rights in British waters for five years, if with quotas cut by 25%; a long-term solution on fisheries will require more talking.

However, the agreement is very limited. The trade provisions relate almost entirely to goods, meaning there is next to nothing for services, which constitute 80% of Britain's economy and make up the fastest-growing sector of global exports. Financial services remain up in the air, nothing yet on free transfer of data, nothing on recognition of professional-services qualifications. There also nothing on foreign-policy cooperation -- Boris Johnson's government doesn't seem to care much about it -- and little on police cooperation.

The thing that ordinary Britons will notice immediately will be losing the right of free movement throughout the EU, a consequence of ending the open right of EU citizens to enter the UK. There will be travel and work restrictions. Some scientific and research co-operation should continue, but Britain has been excluded from the Galileo navigation-satellite project.

And then there is the particularly troublesome issue of Northern Ireland, which will awkwardly remain in the EU single market and customs union. Border and customs checks in the Irish Sea are likely to generate continuing debate over the future unity of the UK, as will continuing Scots opposition to Brexit. There's definitely going to be a hit to the UK's economy, at a time when it is already in trouble because of the pandemic. The British government has played up trade deals with minor partners, but big trade deals with the likes of the USA, China, and India do not seem imminent.

This is a hard Brexit, the second-worst option as compared to No-Deal -- far better, but still not good. It is not clear who is happy with it: hard-core Leavers never wanted a deal of any sort, at least not one that was at all realistic, while Remainers by definition didn't want to Leave. The most that can be said is that it provides a basis for further negotiations; having broken the ice, they may go smoothly, but then again, they may not.

Of course, Boris Johnson will not be in #10 Downing Street forever. After Britain gets over "Brexit fever", might there be a rapprochement with the EU from a Labour government? Switzerland has a generally -- if not completely -- reasonable relationship, both politically and economically, with the EU, even though it is not formally part of the single market ETC; the Swiss instead have a matrix of agreements to define their relationship with the EU. Might Britain eventually adopt a Swiss solution? Possibly -- but only after the damage has been done.

* As discussed in an article from TIME.com ("Donald Trump's Foreign Policy Leaves Behind Destruction -- And Opportunity -- For Joe Biden" by Kimberly Dozier and WJ Hennigan, 3 December 2020 6:22 AM), as President-Elect Joe Biden is working towards inauguration, he's been getting briefings on world events, and putting together a foreign-policy team -- incoming National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Since Biden hasn't taken office yet, there's not so much he can do other than set a tone and directions. There's no serious complaint about that, since the tone and directions are welcomed. Donald Trump's foreign policy was deliberately chaotic, emphasizing snubs and insults to America's friends and kissing up to the country's enemies.

Even senior Republicans members of Congress who have worked with Biden -- and with Blinken and Sullivan -- quietly say they are looking forward to a sensible US foreign policy. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that, among US allies, the response to Biden's election "was the collective breathing of a huge sigh of relief. You could sense the unknotting of shoulders all the way from Seoul to Sydney."

However, reconstructing America's relations with the world is not going to be easy. Relations with China haven't been this bad since the days of Chairman Mao, while US commitment to NATO has been damaged. North Korea remains a menace -- and of course, there's the overwhelming dark reality of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, reconstruction is an opportunity to get a fresh start on long-standing problems. In conversations with TIME, Biden aides say they have a policy blueprint for Biden's first 100 days, the next 100 days and beyond, that fixes what they can and does the best with what they can't.

Jake Sullivan comments that the immediate strategy "starts with renewal at home, and builds to reinvesting in alliances and rejoining institutions." On the first day of Biden's presidency, Sullivan says, the US will rejoin the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization. That can be done in parallel with the most important effort: getting the COVID-19 pandemic under control, demonstrating that the USA can get its own house in order. After that, Sullivan continues, the strategy is to work with allies that represent "half the world's economy" to address common challenges like China, North Korea, Russia, and Middle East instability.

Biden's team got off to a difficult start, partly because of Donald Trump's refusal to admit that he lost. Sufficient pressure was exerted on Trump to force him to grudgingly allow the transition process to begin, though he still insists he was cheated, and the transition process hasn't exactly been smooth. The pandemic makes things troublesome as well, all the more so because Trump's White House has been heavily compromised by the virus, and face-to-face interactions between the two administrations are problematic. Julie Smith -- Biden's former Deputy National Security Advisor, who's now with the transition team -- says: "I don't know how tall anybody is. I don't know how short anybody is. All I've seen is their kitchen. We've had to work together with people we've never met together in person."

In the bigger view, the Biden Administration is confronted with having to rebuild a government apparatus that was badly damaged by Trump, in his war against the "deep state" -- that is, any part of the government that he didn't like or resisted him. Trump eliminated or left unfilled hundreds of positions at the State Department, the Defense Department and other agencies, and cut the National Security Council (NSC) staff in half. He trimmed back or killed off entire offices, like the NSC's pandemic cell, which Sullivan intends to rebuild. Dozens of ambassador posts remain vacant.

That's another challenge -- but again, also an opportunity. Julie Smith comments: "We're going in with a bit of a clean slate in these institutions, because the damage is so severe." She adds: "We obviously have to build back the workforce." -- but the Biden Administration can also revamp structures that were designed "70-plus years ago."

In China, the Middle East and Europe, Trump kicked over long-standing foreign policy dilemmas. For years American diplomats struggled to figure out how to stop China from cheating on international rules of commerce without starting a trade war, how to make peace between Arabs and Israelis without selling out the Palestinians, and how to get Europe to bear more of the costs of its own defense without weakening the USA's alliance with them.

Trump simply smashed everything up, yielding no long-term solutions, and suffering painful costs: America is in an economically burdensome trade war with China, the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is comatose, and NATO is limping. However, a new start may yield, at long last, progress.

That won't be easy. China is, overall, stronger than it was before Trump, while Russia, emboldened by Trump, is more mischievous on the global stage. Biden, however, will be working from strengths: he is warm, empathic, earnest, level-headed, and startlingly blunt for a politician. He is experienced in diplomacy, he is easy to communicate with, and he seeks agreements -- while never forgetting American interests. He is a pragmatist: he has strong principles, but he cares about solutions, not ideology. Biden appears to recognize the opportunity he's been given. Introducing his foreign policy team on 24 November 2020, the President-elect declared: "We cannot meet these challenges with old thinking and unchanged habits."

He will be playing in an altered international landscape. German Chancellor Angela Merkel left her first meeting with Trump convinced that Europeans had to start taking care of themselves, recalls the State Department's former Number 3, Ambassador Thomas Shannon. Trump's assault on NATO and collective security undermined faith that Europe and the USA would stand together against common enemies. European allies did, in response to Trump, raise their defense spending, while France strengthened its counter-terrorism presence in Africa, to the relief of US commanders there.

Nonetheless, collective security was weakened, much to the liking of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin insinuated Russia into European politics, supporting Moscow-friendly candidates with a mixture of money and a flood of disinformation.

Trump, as much as he wanted to, was never able to get rid of sanctions on Russia, and so that gives the Biden Administration leverage. There's an opening as well: the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expires on 5 February 2021. Neither the US nor Russia want to get into a renewed nuclear arms race, since nuclear weapons are tactically useless and more than sufficiency is just a waste of money. Moscow has dropped hints it may be ready to deal.

Biden has already moved to restore faith in NATO in calls with Merkel, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and French President Emmanuel Macron. Julie Smith says: "They know that he wants to revitalize alliances. They're counting on him to do that."

Trump similarly upset the applecart in the Middle East. He cut off aid to the Palestinians, embraced an Israeli plan to take control of most Palestinian territory, and recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. At the same time, Trump courted Gulf states by getting tough on Iran. The gambit yielded the Abraham Accords: the United Arab Emirates' recognition of Israel, in return for halting the threatened seizure of West Bank territory. Bahrain and Sudan followed by normalizing relations with the Jewish state.

This process had its positive aspects, but the first casualty was the long-sought "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The incoming administration recognizes getting peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians back on track will be hard. Biden says he won't reverse the Trump Administration's move to Jerusalem, since it would just create frictions without result. Beyond that, according to Jake Sullivan, all that can be done is reach out to both sides to "just try to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution, [and] not allow for further erosion or deterioration."

As far as Iran goes, the Biden Administration would like to restore the Obama nuclear deal. The Iranians are raising the stakes in talks by expanding their nuclear program, and now threatening to bar inspectors if US sanctions aren't lifted by February. Nonetheless, the fact that the Iranians are raising the stakes means they're after a deal, and Tehran has indicated its willingness to talk. Sullivan has signaled openness to lifting sanctions to salvage the 2015 agreement, adding that Trump's get-tough approach did indeed have its silver linings: "We have proven to Iran over time that we can put sanctions back on after they have been relaxed in ways that create enormous economic pressure."

Of course, there's China. The USA once wanted to bring China into the global rules-based order -- but Beijing replied by building military bases in the South China Sea and, according to US intelligence, cyberstealing US technology and government personnel records, as well as hacking the Pentagon. Trump's team waged solo economic war, slapping on tariffs, sanctioning Chinese officials, and labeling companies like Huawei and TikTok as national-security threats -- all to little effect.

Trump's antagonistic approach to China was justified to a degree, but it didn't accomplish much, with China effectively ending Hong Kong's autonomy decades early and expanding its crackdown on minorities like the Uighurs. China is now one of the biggest traders, funders, infrastructure builders and preferred lenders in Africa, Latin America, and Central and Southeast Asia. In November 2020, it minted a 15-country free-trade alliance, the world's largest, that includes Australia and New Zealand.

Trump did negotiate a bilateral trade deal that threatens more tariffs if China doesn't buy $200 billion USD in American goods and services over the next two years, which hands Biden some leverage. However, Trump's attendant China-bashing has helped fuel historically high anti-China sentiment among Americans, making future compromise with Beijing harder politically.

Biden is looking for a new approach on China: after a 2011 visit he declared that "a rising China is a positive, positive development, not only for China but for America and the world writ large." Now his team will spend its opening months rounding up a hands-across-the-water mix of democratic Pacific and European allies to check China's expansionism. The size of their combined markets -- more than half the world's economy -- will, according to Sullivan, lay down "a marker that says, if you continue to abuse the system in the following ways, there will be consequences."

Biden has been publicly cool to joining up with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which had been a goal of the Obama Administration, to be torpedoed off by Trump. However, there are real advantages to a trade alliance that helps restrain China, and it appears Biden simply wants Congress to buy into trade alliances before proceeding on them. Sullivan adds: "If we invest in ourselves, invest in our relationships with our allies, and play this key role in international institutions, there is no reason why we cannot effectively manage the China challenge in a way that avoids the downward spiral into confrontation."

And then there's North Korea, always a problem. Trump attempted personal diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, the country's ruler, but it was half-baked, and accomplished nothing. The North Koreans correctly recognized that Trump was simply engaging in personal promotion, selling himself as a global deal-maker, and giving them nothing that they wanted. They finally broke off discussions in irritation.

Improving matters with North Korea will mean working with South Korea and Japan. Relations under Trump with these two long-standing American allies in the Far East were not good, Trump calling them "freeloaders" and demanding billions of dollars to pay for the 80,000 US troops in the two countries. The good thing is, of course, that Biden is not Trump, and they appreciate the fact. Colin Kahl -- previously a Biden National Security Advisor, and now on his transition team -- says: "What you'll see is much more of a united front. Making real progress on these issues in the medium to long term is exponentially greater if we're working alongside our allies, but also managing our allies' relations with one another."

* One item left out of this TIME.com article was Afghanistan, which will present a challenge to the Biden Administration: the fighting there has gone on for two decades, and Americans aren't all that happy about being involved there -- but can we afford to let the Taliban win?

Admiral James Stavridis, once a NATO supreme commander, made a case for continued involvement in an essay from TIME.com ("I Commanded NATO Forces in Afghanistan. Here's How We Could End this 'Forever War'", 9 December 2020). He began with his own experience in the conflict:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Stavridis went on to say that Afghanistan is by no means a lost cause:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The Taliban, however, remains strong in rural districts, being financed by the opium trade -- and with support of Pakistani intelligence services, continues to perform attacks. Al-Quaeda / Islamic State remains present and influential, while Trump's evident lack of interest in the fate of Afghanistan has shaken Afghan confidence. Stavridis suggested a list of measures for success:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

With the end of World War II, the USA entered the era of "dirty little wars", which Americans have found endlessly frustrating. Can we really win the "dirty little wars"? Do we have the staying power? [ED: We didn't.]

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Next Generation Water Splitter Could Help Renewables Power The Globe" by Robert F. Service, 10 March 2020), hydrogen is seen as an attractive fuel in a post-carbon future. It burns clean, producing water as an output, and there are s vast quantities of hydrogen in the world's waters. Renewable energy can be used to drive an "electrolyzer" to split the hydrogen out of the water. The problem is that current electrolyzers are costly, demanding either expensive catalysts or pricey metal housings. Now, researchers have figured out a cheaper electrolyzer.

Scientists knew how to electrolyze water more than 200 years ago: put two metal electrodes, a negative cathode and a positive anode, in a jar of water; apply an electrical voltage between them; and hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) will bubble up at the separate electrodes. Since the two molecules have a tendency to explosively recombine, in modern electrolyzers the two electrodes are separated by a plastic membrane that isolates the gases. At the cathode, water molecules split into H+ and OH? ions, with the H+ ions combining with electrons from the cathode to make H2. The OH? ions diffuse through the membrane to the anode, where they generate O2 and water.

Modern electrolyzers also use metal catalysts, typically cheap ones like nickel and iron, to speed the reaction. They also add potassium hydroxide (KOH) to the water to support the migration of ions. Unfortunately, KOH is highly caustic, requiring that devices be made out of expensive inert metals like titanium. In consequence, in the 1960s researchers developed electrolyzers using a "proton-exchange membrane (PEM)", in which the dividing membrane is constructed to allow H+ ions through. In a PEM electrolyzer, the catalysts are on the two sides of the membrane, not on the electrodes. The catalysts on the anode side split water molecules into H+ and OH? ions, with the OH- ions instantly reacting at the catalysts to form O2 molecules. The H+ ions then migrate through the plastic membrane to the cathode side, where the catalysts on the membrane convert the H+ ions into H2.

Since OH- ions don't persist in PEM cells, there's no need for a highly alkaline electrolyte. PEM cells also typically produce hydrogen at five times the rate of the alkaline version. Nonetheless, PEM cells have their downsides: the membrane sets up highly acidic conditions, demanding the use of expensive corrosion-resistant metals, and also demand the use of expensive platinum and iridium as catalysts.

Now, Yu Seung Kim and his colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, working with researchers at Washington State University, have come up with a new electrolyzer that gets around this obstacle. In the new scheme, catalysts on the cathode split H20 into H+ and OH- ions. The H+ ions form H2 molecules, while the OH- ions migrate through an "anion exchange membrane (AEM)" to the anode, where they react via catalysts to produce O2. There's no need to use expensive catalysts, the electrolyzer instead using catalysts based on nickel, iron, and molybdenum. Although the AEM membrane does create a highly alkaline environment, it is localized to the membrane, and so the electrolyzer can be made of stainless steel.

The new device generates hydrogen about three times faster than conventional alkaline devices, though still not as fast as commercial PEM electrolyzers. It is strictly a lab demonstration; at present, the membrane tends to break down after ten hours of use, apparently because it absorbs water. The researchers believe that adding fluorine to the membrane will cause it to repel water.

Other research teams are working on improved electrolyzers, with some moving towards commercialization. Kim believes the technology is practical, and that improved electrolyzers may well join solar cells and windmills as a key technology for a carbon-free world.

* As discussed in a related article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("New Fuel Cell Could Help Fix The Renewable Energy Storage Problem" by Robert F. Service, 12 March 2019), everyone knows that renewable energy sources don't work all the time -- solar power doesn't work at night -- and so energy storage is needed to allow them to provide continuous power. The most common approach is to use large banks of batteries, but they're expensive on a unit-storage basis.

Another option is to store the energy by converting it into hydrogen fuel. The conversion is performed by an electrolyzer, with electricity splitting water into O2 and H2. The two gases are then recombined in a fuel cell. It would be nice if the same device could be used as an electrolyzer and a fuel cell -- in a way parallel to how batteries can be recharged and discharged. Unfortunately, at present electrolyzers and fuel cells use different catalysts, and one device can't do both jobs. To get around this obstacle, researchers have been experimenting with a new type of fuel cell, called a "proton-conducting fuel cell (PCFC)", that can do both.

A PCFC consists of two electrodes separated by a membrane that allows protons across. Consider what happens when it's operated as an electrolyzer:

• At the first electrode, the "air electrode", steam and electricity are fed into a ceramic catalyst, which splits the steam's water molecules into positively charged hydrogen ions (protons) plus electrons and O2 molecules. The O2 is why it's called the "air electrode".
  
  
• The electrons travel through an external circuit to the second electrode, the "fuel electrode". There, they meet up with the protons that crossed through the membrane, a nickel-based catalyst making them into H2. That's why it's called a "fuel electrode".

In earlier PCFCs, the nickel catalysts performed well, but the ceramic catalysts wasted about 30% of the electricity, mostly as heat. Two research teams have now obtained improved efficiency.

Researchers led by chemist Sossina Haile at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have devised an air electrode made from a ceramic alloy containing six elements that has an efficiency of 76% in use of electricity to split water molecules. A team under Ryan O'Hayre, a chemist at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, has done much better, devising a ceramic alloy electrode, made up of five elements, with a remarkable efficiency of 98%.

When both teams run their setups in reverse as fuel cells, the fuel electrode splits H2 molecules into protons and electrons. The electrons travel through an external circuit to the air electrode. When they reach the electrode, they combine with oxygen from the air and protons that crossed back over the membrane to produce water. Haile is impressed by the School of Mines work, but she cautions that neither team has anything more than a lab demo. Scaling the schemes up will demand a lot of work, and efficiencies seen in the lab may not be maintained in real-world devices.

* As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("The Truckers Who Keep India's Coronavirus Patients Breathing" by Devjyot Ghoshal, 2 November 2020), there's a lot of infrastructure that we take for granted, or barely know exists -- but if it stops, we're in trouble.

Subhas Kumar Yadav is a 33-year-old truck driver with Linde India LTD, a branch of the world's biggest supplier of industrial gases. He delivers oxygen from a plant in India's Himalayan foothills to hospitals in the northern plains. They need oxygen to help patients breathe, a matter that has become critically important in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Delivery was particularly troublesome during lockdown, when motels and other facilities were shuttered. Yadav says he had to persist nonetheless: "We were on duty. It's not like we could just give up and go home."

In the face of the pandemic, the government says demand for medical oxygen has jumped four times to about 2,800 tonnes a day, prompting some states to restrict movement of the commodity from local factories to other regions. Around half of the total liquid oxygen production in India is now being used for medical needs, up from only 15% earlier.

Linde, which competes with nearly two dozen oxygen suppliers in India, including France's Air Liquide, has had to divert its production away from industrial gases like nitrogen and argon -- less needed as the economy was more or less in suspension -- to keep the oxygen flowing. It has also deployed its entire fleet of trucks to deliver medical oxygen to hospitals across the country, many of them in the hinterlands and with limited oxygen storage capacity. Linde India officials proudly say: "Despite the limitations, there has not been a single stock-out situation for our partner hospitals." There was a crunch for oxygen in mid-September as infections peaked, but the Indian government says supplies are now stable, and is seeking to import large quantities to ensure supply.

India has the world's second highest number of confirmed coronavirus infections at more than 8 million, behind only the United States. However, India's deaths-per-million people ratio of around 88 is one of the lowest in the world among hard-hit countries; the government has said getting oxygen to critical patients in time has played a key role.

Linde India's factory in Selaqui, at the foot of the Himalayas in northern India, normally produces 154 tonnes of oxygen daily, but since the pandemic, the facility has ramped up to 161 tonnes a day. It helped that the depressed economy also depressed industrial demand. Surendra Singh, a Linde India official, says: "We did maximum oxygen production. Almost 85:90% went to medical [clients]."

To ship the oxygen to hospitals -- the furthest is 680 km (420 miles), a two-day drive away on India's roads -- and two regional depots, the factory depends on a fleet of 33 container trucks and a pool of 66 drivers. Its fleet has on-board cameras, GPS trackers, and careful safety procedures to ensure timely deliveries. When the drivers found that roadside restaurants and motels were shut down, the factory's canteen provided them with packed meals, along with biscuits and dry fruit. Although they were provided with masks and other protective gear, drivers worried about being infected when they transferred their oxygen load to hospitals.

The pandemic receded for a time, but it may be ramping up again as winter approaches. Drivers like Yadav are braced for the challenge: "Doctors are working hard, the nurses are working hard, and we are doing our part. If we give up, then the hospitals will close down."

[ED: Somehow I envision a Bollywood movie about heroic oxygen truck drivers -- of course, with a lot of singing and dancing.]

* I'd bought a little toy drone to fly around my living room a few years back. It proved to be very hard to control, and I eventually lost interest. However, I ran across an ad for a "hand-controlled" toy drone on Twitter, and was interested.

It turns out there's a lot of them on the market, and I bought one cheap, about $16 USD, from a company named Amcrest. It's a little handy-size drone in a plastic cage; I just lift up my hand and give it a little bounce up, it turns on and flies around a bit, to then go into a hover. It has some sort of sensing and avoids running into things, at least usually. I can accordingly shove it around with my hands.

It's purely a toy, it only has a few minutes of flight endurance before I have to recharge it. However, I find it a surprising amount of fun, flying it around my living room in the dark. It looks like a little UFO with colored LEDs. It's welcome in this otherwise dismal holiday season.