First Hydrogen Economy

In his inauguration speech, incoming President Carlos Alvarado of Costa Rica revealed plans to become the first country to commit to develop the production and exclusive use of hydrogen and other environmentally-healthy forms of energy for transportation and production of electricity. As there are no natural deposits of fossil fuels in Costa Rica, it must constantly earn U.S. dollars to pay for imported oil. Switching to hydrogen would end that liability.

Following is an unofficial translation of President Alvarado’s directive:

May 10, 2018

• Directs institutions within the Environment and Energy sectors to develop a 6-month plan to develop research, production and commercialization of hydrogen.
• President Carlos Alvarado stated that by 2020 Costa Rica should lead the implementation of the Paris accords by becoming a global decarbonization laboratory.

As part of a strategy toward the decarbonization of the economy, President Carlos Alvarado Quesada and Minister of Environment and Energy Carlos Manuel Rodríguez issued a directive to promote using hydrogen as fuel.

“Institutions within the environment and energy sectors are instructed, within the scope of their respective competences, to develop a plan to promote research, production and commercialization of hydrogen as fuel,” states the directive.

It adds that the plan shall be presented to the President of the Republic within the next six months.

In his inauguration speech this past Tuesday, President Alvarado commented that “decarbonization is the great task of our generation.”

“We must propel a determined and coordinated action of all sectors of society to start and irreversibly accelerate the process, not only by promoting transportation, electricity, hydrogen and other technologies, but by updating our institutions,” he said.

He also said that by the UN’s 2020 Conference on Climate Change, Costa Rica should lead the objectives of the Paris accords and become a global laboratory for decarbonization.

The directive issued this Tuesday deals with these objectives and looks to promote research and use of environmentally healthy energy alternatives as stated in the National Plan of Development.

The National Energy Plan 2015-2030 “requires a strategy of transition or path for diversifying the matrix of fuels toward alternative forms of energy other than oil derivatives.”

As proof of a clear political will to join the global trend toward decarbonization of economies to ensure truly sustainable growth, the incoming President and his ministers arrived to the inauguration in a hydrogen-fueled bus developed in Costa Rica by scientist and ex-NASA astronaut Franklin Chang Díaz.

Priorities

May 5, 2018

The Russian/NATO Front
On December 26, 1991 the Soviet Union officially dissolved, and the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. With the threat of impending nuclear war all but gone -it was assumed- the whole purpose of NATO necessarily ceased to exist, and for the first time since President Eisenhower’s 1959 warning, it was suddenly possible for America to rein in its military-industrial complex. Instead, over vociferous Russian objections, NATO expanded to Poland, Bulgaria and Romania –former Warsaw Pact nations- and to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, former Soviet Republics.

Then, following a coup, the Ukraine tilted towards the European Union, and in so doing virtually recreated the Russo/German front as it had been on September 9, 1941. Alarmed, Russia rearmed and annexed the Crimea with its all-important naval base at Sevastopol. It is not known what if anything Russia would do if the Ukraine actually joins NATO (a possibility expressly opposed by the likes of Dr. Henry Kissinger); that would allow the alliance to deploy short-range nuclear-tipped missiles 300 miles from Moscow. On this vein it’s worth remembering that the 1962 crisis was over Russian missiles in Cuba 1,134 miles from Washington D.C., not 300. What is certain is that the threat of terminal war between the two largest (and upgraded) nuclear arsenals in the world has reemerged with a vengeance. Incidentally, Russia’s reaction immediately provoked new tensions with the U.S. and NATO. That effectively -and no doubt coincidentally- ended any lingering thoughts of downsizing America’s military-industrial complex or dissolving NATO.

Enter China
The United States has long relied on two load-bearing pillars to maintain qualitative and quantitative hegemony over its adversaries: its ability to outspend them and technical superiority. The former depends entirely on the petrodollar –the (still) dominant reserve currency of the world- which allows the government to finance its perpetual deficits without raising taxes on those with the means to pay; technical superiority requires a constant stream of a large number of brilliant and innovative STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) students. Today both pillars shudder and groan as they struggle to contend with mediocre public schools, high college tuition, sharply curtailed immigration, and unprecedented competition from emerging economies, particularly China, which on March 26, 2018 launched an oil-futures contract denominated in yuan.

The Education Front
On April 26, 2018 the U.S. Department of labor reported some disheartening and alarming statistics:

• Only 66.7% of 2017’s 2.9 million high school graduates age 16 to 24 were enrolled in colleges or universities in October 2017.
• Fully 16.3 million people age 16 to 24 were not enrolled in school -42.7% of 38.2 million.
• Only about one-fourth of recent bachelor’s degree recipients age 20 to 29 were enrolled in school.
• Among those age 20 to 29, unemployment rates for recent associate degree recipients, recent bachelor’s degree recipients, and recent advanced degree recipients were 5.6%, 8.3%, and 11.9% respectively, much higher than for the general population.
• The unemployment rate for recent high school graduates not enrolled in college was 16.8%, higher than the rate of 10.2% for recent graduates enrolled in college.
• Between October 2016 and October 2017, 530,000 students dropped out of high school, and their jobless rate was 18.9%.

According to another recent report, U.S. colleges are expected to experience a steady decline in enrollment of native-born students primarily because the number of high schools students in both public and private schools is expected to decline through 2030. Reasons for the decline are:

• Rising costs of a college education
• Increasing skepticism that the return on investment of a college education is worth the cost
• Relatively low rates of timely degree completion in both 4-year and 2-year colleges
• Reluctance of many to travel far from home and to bear the cost of that travel
• Reluctance to take on the burden of long-term debt and its effect on new home formation and credit history
• The perception of a relative lack of minority and low-income student social and academic support on campuses
• An increasing number of American students (100,000) studying abroad, mainly in the U.K., Italy, Spain, France and China.

One way colleges attempt to offset the new reality is by accepting more foreign students, who pay full tuition. Their number grew by 7.1%, topping 1 million in the 2015-2016 academic year, with the two largest emerging economies, China and India, accounting for 31.5% and 15.8% respectively.

A country’s strength in science and engineering arises from a skilled STEM-capable workforce and sustained investment in research and development, and we are not doing particularly well in that regard.

• China has rapidly increased R&D spending over time –an average of 18% per year between 2000 and 2015 compared to 4% in the U.S. If trends continue, China will pass the U.S. in R&D by the end of 2018.
• As of November 2017, China claims 202 of the fastest 500 supercomputers in the world, the U.S. 143.
• Globally, bachelor’s degrees in S&E fields totaled more than 7.5 million in 2014, with India, China and the U.S. accounting for 25%, 22% and 10% respectively.
• Between 2000 and 2014 the number of S&E bachelor’s degrees awarded in China rose more than 360%; the U.S. grew by 54% over the same period.
• China increased its production of peer-reviewed S&E articles by 8% annually between 2006 to 2016, compared to only 1% in the U.S. In 2016 China surpassed the U.S. in publications of S&E research papers.

Tectonic Shifts
Not only does China have a population four times larger than the U.S. (and larger than the U.S. and NATO combined), the all-powerful Communist Party has the authority to decide, for better or worse, what to do with the economy. So far their decisions have been nothing short of astounding: their economy is growing at a rate approximately three times faster per year than the U.S. More importantly, they’re investing much of that growth in physical infrastructure, research and development, and education at all levels. It’s not difficult to extrapolate that if present trends continue, by 2050 the U.S. will find itself in a position with respect to China similar to what Germany and Japan currently are to the U.S. Clearly, to avoid falling into the void of irrelevance, profound systemic changes will have to be made, both to the economic system and the very soul of the nation. Specifically, the largest segment of the population –white non-Hispanics- will need to pragmatically embrace and support the ongoing seismic demographic reality.

A Possible New Beginning
The United States must prepare for the day -not far off- when the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency of the world and the government loses its unique privilege to finance its perennial deficits without raising taxes on those with the means to pay. One way to do so is to abandon the (current) obsolete fixation with military hegemony in favor of an unassailable defensive posture. At that point it would become possible to invest the savings in a parallel egalitarian economy based on the production of hydrogen and pure water from solar energy, seawater and gravity and end the world’s addiction to fossil fuels and nuclear fission. Upon achieving hydrogen self-sufficiency, America would export the surplus. That would combat climate change, help with the trade deficit, create much-needed well-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced, and end all oil-related tensions and wars.

Diseases Related to Climate Change in the U.S. Triple Between 2004-2016

May 2, 2018

Source: Centers for Disease Control & Prevention

Yet again another living example of the effects and consequences of climate change. A study from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention warns that illnesses from mosquito, tick and flea bites more than tripled in the U.S. between 2004 and 2016, and nine new germs spread by them were discovered or introduced during that period. Worse, about 80% of vector control organizations lack critical prevention and control capacities.

As a reminder, these diseases, and others yet to come, can infect even those who deny or ignore the reality of anthropomorphic climate change.

Syria

April 22, 2018

The recent bombing of Syria by the U.S., Great Britain and France raised a veritable labyrinth of questions. The purported justification for it was the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian armed forces against civilians in Douma, a rebel-held town on the verge of surrendering to the Syrian Army. Under the circumstances, it’s difficult to imagine how the regime would have benefited militarily from such an attack. Ironically, it may have helped the Russians fine tune their S-400s to track cruise missiles and planes in actual combat -invaluable experience.

The Players
The Syrian civil war is the result of a long simmering socio-political dissatisfaction amplified by drought and its consequences. Now it has evolved into a chaotic struggle where Sunni and Shia militias –backed respectively by the U.S., and its allies and Russia and its allies- fight each other as well as the Assad regime. The wildcard in all this is Israel, America’s closest ally. It reserves the right to violate Syrian airspace and take any military action at any time to prevent Iran from entrenching itself or deploying sophisticated weaponry in Syria capable of destroying Israel. Syria is a powder keg. All it needs is a spark and it will go off.

The Fracture
Looking at it from a global perspective, the de facto frontline between NATO and Russia running from St. Petersburg to the Black Sea closely resembles the Russo-German front in June 1942, with some important differences: NATO has not (yet) ingested Byelorussia; the antagonists have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over; Iran, no longer controlled by Britain or the U.S., has the capacity to destroy Saudi oil terminals and to block, at least temporarily, the Strait of Hormuz; and China, the largest economy in Asia and with a population four times larger than the U.S., is rapidly acquiring the capacity to challenge America’s control of the South China Sea and beyond.

Oil: The Bone of Contention
While consumer nations –among them the European Union, China and India- rely on oil for their everyday needs, for financial reasons the United States depends on it even more. The lifeblood of the American economy is the petrodollar, a fiat currency that allows the U.S. to “print” virtually unlimited amounts of money, incur perpetual budget deficits with impunity, and support a “defense” budget larger than the next ten nations combined. No other nation enjoys this privilege. As it now stands, the addiction to fossil fuels trumps the overwhelming litany of warnings from the scientific community about climate change and its consequences. The addiction is so strong that the plutocrats and oligarchs that run the world are willing to risk a terminal conflagration, if necessary, to perpetuate their oil-based wealth and power.

The End Game
According to the United Nations, the current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050. That’s an increase of 2.2 billion in 32 years. If nothing is done, by that time the water crisis -already severe in many parts of the world including the Ogallala region in the Great Plains, central California, India and China- will have reached catastrophic dimensions. The winds of famine, disease, war, and an untold number of refugees are on the horizon, and our leaders have not yet mustered the political courage to reverse the suicidal course they’ve put us on. They must coordinate efforts to replace fossil fuels and nuclear fission with hydrogen to generate electricity and manufacture the water the world will need to feed itself.

Immigration Facts

April 7, 2018

President Trump’s recent orders to deploy the National Guard along the Mexican border calls for a frank, truthful analysis of the facts. Incidentally, his immediate predecessors did the same thing.

All sovereign nations have the right to seal their borders if they so choose. In fact, two famous precedents exist. Emperor Hadrian built his famous wall to keep the northern barbarians out of Roman Britannia, and the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, connected existing segments previously built by various states to keep nomads from inner Asia out. Notably, in both cases, it was southern empires that acted to keep northerners out. Now, ironically, it will be the other way around.

At issue is whether the trend and volume of illegal immigration thorough our southern border is detrimental to the interests and security of the United States. The chart above shows that, in fact, immigration from Mexico has been declining sharply over the last 14 years; at the same time, immigration from India and China has been increasing. Since these trends predate the president’s tenure, he won’t be able to truthfully claim credit for them.

There are several reasons for this, among them improving economic conditions in Mexico and persistent discrimination, contempt and rejection of Latinos in general, including Mexicans, in the U.S. As for security, there’s no question that violent street gangs must be eliminated. However, since they thrive from the illicit drug trade, it will be difficult if not impossible to do so as long as America’s insatiable demand for illicit drugs remains unchecked. After all, with just 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. consumes fully 80% of opioid global production. One other thing about security: Latinos cannot be accused of mass shootings or terrorist acts.

The real reason behind this desperate attempt to reverse the ongoing profound demographic shift in America is political. It is not that Hispanics will become a majority in the country –whites will remain the largest group- it’s that Hispanics tend to concentrate in pivotal areas. In Texas, for example, they are projected to outnumber whites starting in 2023, and in time the gap will expand simply because the Hispanic population is younger and the white population older. Since by and large Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, the shift has potential seismic consequences for Republicans, who are mostly white, and their philosophical beliefs. There is another side to this. As whites retire and Hispanics replace them in the labor force, it is the latter who will bear the burden of supporting the former.

Not By Accident

April 4, 2018

Costa Rica, a beacon of democracy with just over five million people, is known for its natural beauty, biodiversity, warm oceans, green energy, and surprisingly good football (soccer) players. Now it leads the world in GDP/hour worked, and it’s not a fluke. What makes this tiny country so special? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it has no army, a literacy rate higher than the U.S., and an ardent desire to live in peace. No, it’s not paradise, and yes, it has problems, serious problems. Still, the world should learn from it.

Military Cooperation Between Russia and China

April 3, 2018

While visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Defense Minister Wei Fenghe of China emphasized that the firm determination of their armed forces to strengthen strategic cooperation was coordinated directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Defending the Dollar

Largely ignored by mainstream media, the dollar’s monopoly on global oil transactions is coming to an end. On March 26, 2018 the Shanghai Futures Exchange began trading oil in yuan (or renminbi), China’s currency. The ramifications of this event cannot be overstated. Some keen observers, as in this article, have eloquently analyzed some of its less sanguine financial and economic consequences. The following timeline should be food for thought.

March 13, 2018: Ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo is appointed secretary of state to replace Rex Tillerson. Pompeo’s background: graduated first in his class at West Point; served in the U.S. Army as a cavalry officer from 1986 to 1991, prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall; received a law degree from Harvard University in 1994. Politically, he is known for a hawkish approach toward Russia, Iran, Syria and North Korea and a staunch supporter of Israel. He has praised China but defined it as a significant security threat. In July 2017 he said that “…China has the capacity to present the greatest rivalry to America … over the medium and long term.
March 16, 2018: President Trump signs U.S.-Taiwan travel bill; China urges the U.S. to abide by the “one China” policy and cease official exchanges with Taiwan.
March 20, 2018: In a speech before an annual session of the National People’s Congress that paved the way for him to rule for life, President Xi Jinping warned that China would defend its “one China Principle”, which defines Taiwan as part of China, and that “the Chinese people have been indomitable and persistent, we have the spirit of fighting the bloody battle against our enemies to the bitter end.”
March 22, 2018: President Trump named John R. Bolton, a hard-line former American ambassador to the United Nations, National Security Advisor. An outspoken advocate of military action, he has called for action against Iran and North Korea.
March 22, 2018: President Trump directed the U.S. trade representative to level tariffs on about $50 billion worth of Chinese imports. In addition, the U.S. also plans to impose new investment restrictions and take action against China at the World Trade Organization; the Treasury Department also will propose additional measures.
March 23, 2018: China announced plans for reciprocal tariffs on 128 U.S. products that include pork, wine, fruit and steel to take place in two stages if it cannot reach an agreement with Washington.
March 23, 2018: China’s Ministry of National Defense said the USS Mustin, a guided missile destroyer, entered waters surrounding islands and reefs in the South China Sea before two Chinese vessels identified and warned it off.
March 26, 2018: The Shanghai Futures Exchange begins trading oil in yuan (or renminbi), China’s currency.
March 26, 2018: The Chinese Navy begins massive training drills in the South China Sea that include H-6K bombers and SU-30 and Su-35 fighters. Unlike previous years, when they were conducted only in spring and autumn, in 2018 the drills will take place every month.
March 27, 2018: Kim Jong-un travels to Beijing by special train; meets Xi-Jinping.
March 30, 2018: Russia test-fires the RS-20B Voyevoda (NATO: Satan-2), a new intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with multiple hypersonic warheads capable of destroying an area the size of Texas.
March 31, 2018: South Korea and the United States began their annual joint military exercises involving about 300,000 South Korean and 23,700 U.S. troops.
April 1, 2018: China follows through on tariffs (announced on March 23, 2018) on 128 U.S. products in retaliation for tariffs approved by president Trump on steel and aluminum manufactured in China. Among the affected products are fresh and dried fruits and nuts, steel pipes, wine, ginseng and modified ethanol.
April 1, 2018: At the invitation of Sergei Shoigu, Russian Defense Minister, his Chinese counterpart, State Councilor and Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe began a visit to Russia.
April 4, 2018: China retaliates; levels $50 billion in tariffs on imports from the U.S. that include aircraft, cars, soybeans and chemicals. This matches American tariffs on imports from China (March 22, 2018), however President Trump declares it is not a trade war.
April 4, 2018: Russia and Vietnam sign a military cooperation agreement extending to 2020.
April 5, 2018: President Trump doubles down, orders the U.S. Trade Representative to consider an additional $100 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods (that’s on top of the $50 billion ordered on March 22, 2018).
April 7, 2018: The “Formosa Alliance,” a coalition of political groups inside and outside of Taiwan, is formally established. Its purpose is to hold a referendum as early as 2019 to create a fully independent Republic of Taiwan.

Speaking of Trade

March 20, 2018

Rarely, if ever, are trading partners able to achieve a balanced stasis, even among friends and allies. Today keeping personal, trade, and military secrets is fast becoming a thing of the past. Computers and the internet, like flooding waters, continually disseminate them throughout the world. Witness North Korea, India, Pakistan and Iran (Israel has not yet exploded any nuclear bombs); they’ve demonstrated mastery of the nuclear cycle, unthinkable when the Manhattan Project was in full swing. Iran and China, in particular, currently manufacture a host of civilian and military goods that only thirty years ago were the exclusive domain of North America, Europe and Japan. Clearly, as time goes on, today’s surplus nations are going to find it increasingly difficult to maintain that status as the rest of the world becomes self-sufficient and begins to import less. At that point foreign competition, artificial intelligence and robots will drive unemployment, poverty and inequality up throughout the surplus-dependent nations.

This is not an unsupported extrapolation; the United States went from a surplus country at the end of World War II to today’s perennial trade deficits -the largest in the world- and it’s not President Trump’s fault. Accordingly, his contention that the situation cannot continue indefinitely is correct. In fact, It’s already undermining the degree of global trust (fiat) in the dollar as the de facto reserve currency of the world. This is confirmed by the fact that China is already offering to bypass the dollar and pay for oil with its currency, one which, incidentally, can be used to buy all sorts of Chinese-made consumer and military goods.

That legitimate issues related to trade practices must be addressed, and the trade deficit radically reduced or eliminated is beyond dispute. However levying tariffs is not the answer. Cooler heads must prevail as the current animosity between China and Russia, on the one side, and the U.S., NATO and Japan on the other could easily explode into a terminal -yet avoidable and unnecessary- war. Instead, the U.S. should adopt, with confidence, a more realistic, enlightened approach based on the following:

China is here to stay; it cannot be destabilized or broken up.
Its population is four times larger. They simply have more customers and scientists, the mainstay of any advanced society, and the disparity is likely to increase.
Our public colleges and universities should be nearly free as they once were in the late forties and early fifties. That would allow us to tap the mass of our youth -particularly Blacks and Latinos- and hope to keep up with the growing deluge of Chinese discoveries, inventions and patents.
We must strive to produce that which they might be willing to buy –namely hydrogen to help them produce electricity and water without harming the environment- rather than insisting they buy only what we would like to sell but which they don’t need or want.
The U.S. does not need military hegemony in order to thrive and survive. It is unrealistic, bordering on delusional, to imagine that 5% of the world’s population could do that going forward. As a result, it does not need military expenditures greater than the next 10 nations combined paid for with borrowed money. Instead, it urgently needs to remedy the abysmal (and growing) gap in wealth and income -the steepest among the world’s most advanced economies- to allow us to successfully compete in the global economy without harming the environment.
We must accept and prepare for the day when the dollar will cease to be the preferred reserve currency of the world and the federal government will be compelled to balance its budget.

Differential Pressure Water Electrolysis Apparatus

March 18, 2018

A United States Patent has been issued for a differential pressure water electrolysis that includes high-pressure water electrolysis cells and a pressing mechanism. The high-pressure water electrolysis cells are stacked in a stacking direction. Each of the high-pressure water electrolysis cells includes an electrolyte membrane, a member, an anode current collector, a cathode current collector, an anode separator, and a cathode separator. The electrolyte membrane has a first side and a second side opposite to the first side in the stacking direction. The member has a surface which has an opening and which is in contact with the electrolyte membrane. The anode current collector is disposed on the first side of the electrolyte membrane. The cathode current collector is disposed on the second side of the electrolyte membrane. The anode separator has an anode chamber in which the anode current collector is accommodated. The pressing mechanism is to press the high-pressure water electrolysis cells in the stacking direction.

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