Blog
This is the place for campaign news and announcements, and whatever seems worth posting.
This is the place for campaign news and announcements, and whatever seems worth posting.
If you’re someone who doesn’t want to read a long blog or article, good news, here’s a video on pumped hydro in, well, video form.
Even if you do read long articles, here’s a chance to hear my dulcet tones and see my beardy face explain why we need energy storage to allow renewables to replace fossil fuels, and why we should invest in pumped hydro.
MNGOP Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka has handed us an issue to help motivate our base by reviving the controversy over gay conversion therapy. The House passed a ban in the last legislative session, but the Senate declined to take it up. At least, that’s generally all that was heard on the issue. Was it a matter of running out of time, or dickering over the particulars of different House and Senate versions?
No. It was quite pointedly blocked by Gazelka, who got into the Senate by running on an anti-gay agenda, specifically making sure the one openly gay Republican legislator lost the party nomination for reelection. It turns out Gazelka subjected his own child to gay conversion therapy, and he evidently believes his job in the Senate is to impose his Christian fundamentalist beliefs on everyone else.
Though I propose Minnesota invest in pumped hydro energy storage partly because it’s existing technology, don’t take that to mean I’m against investing in research for new technology. I just don’t want to wait for new technology when we can do something now, and global warming seems not to be sitting around waiting. But research on new technologies, absolutely.
I recently read about a new proposed technology, frozen air. This would store energy by using the renewable electricity that can’t be used to cool air to compress it, and then release it when needed. It’s being proposed in Vermont, and that’s as much as I can explain. I refer you to the Scientific American article I read, To Store Renewable Energy, Try Freezing Air:
A British company called Highview Power proposes a novel solution: a storage system that uses renewable electricity from solar or wind to freeze air into a liquid state where it can be kept in insulated storage tanks for hours or even weeks.
The frozen air is allowed to warm and turn itself back into a gas. It expands so quickly that its power can spin a turbine for an electric generator. The resulting electricity is fed into transmission lines when they are not congested.
“Vermont has transmission issues,” explained Salvatore Minopoli, vice president of Highview’s USA affiliate. “It’s a situation that many places in the U.S. are dealing with where renewable energy is being deployed more and more. It’s power that’s intermittent. They need something to balance their system out.”
Much as I wish I could pump up my ego by claiming to be the only one to think of covering freeways, that’s not the case. I’ll settle for being one of the first. Better than patting myself on the back is to point out a couple places this has already been done:
Freeway lids are not a new concept. Cities are increasingly building new parks and public spaces on lids not only as connective tissue, but also as magnets for private investment and sources of tax revenue.
Two of the most successful lid projects are Klyde Warren Park, which covers the Woodall Rogers Freeway in Dallas, and Chicago’s Millennium Park, constructed over a railyard, both of which were studied as models by the ULI Minnesota panel. In addition, Bill Lively, who secured philanthropic support for Klyde Warren, and Hugh Murphy, former project manager for Millennium Park and now executive vice president at JLL, served on the panel.
The first campaign video is up. Being able to record video on a phone makes it quick to produce something. It definitely has that “produced in-house” look, but it seems to actually help in this case. The freeway noise helps make the point in a way just words don’t. Here it is embedded, but you can click the “Youtube” logo in the lower right to open it on the Youtube site. Remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell to get notified when we put up a new video.
Just to be clear, I’m under no misapprehension about what office I’m seeking, nor do I have the bizarre idea that state legislators get to vote on impeachment. I’m writing about the biggest issue facing our country at this moment because, frankly, that seems reason enough.
Something else I’m utterly clear about is that there’s no chance Republicans in either house of Congress will vote against their dear leader. Republicans have turned into an authoritarian party devoted to power ahead of democracy or rule of law. Feel free to suspect they’re lost in the personality cult of Trump, though I expect they would put the interests of their president and party first no matter who led them at the moment. They’ve simply changed over the last decades in way many failed to see until Trump made it impossible to miss. The upshot then is that Trump is not, and never was, under threat of being removed by conviction in the Senate. So why bother with impeachment at all?
There’s no intention to mislead I’m sure, just a misunderstanding of particulars about how caucuses and primaries work in the Star Tribune article, 15 Democrats qualify for Minnesota’s presidential primary ballot. Specifically, readers could be misled by this bit into thinking there aren’t caucuses this year:
Minnesota dropped its presidential caucuses in favor of a primary election for 2020. It is one of more than a dozen states and jurisdictions selecting nominees on Super Tuesday, four weeks after caucusgoers in Iowa kick off the race for delegates. Early voting in Minnesota begins on Jan. 17.
I’m excited to announce that I am seeking the DFL endorsement for state representative in House District 63B. I used to think “excited” was just hyperbole candidates used in their announcements, but since deciding to run, I’ve learned it’s actually the right word. A chance to get things done is actually exciting, at least to me.
I’m running because we face some large problems which need some big ideas to solve, and I have some big ideas.
I mentioned on the climate section of the issues page that pumped hydro is already in use. Wikipedia has an article that explains how it works and some issues with it. A tl;dr version is that it’s in use generally in naturally hilly areas, and has been for over a century, so this is existing proven technology, not cutting edge stuff waiting on technology breakthroughs or startup funding.