Tag: energy policy

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 15JUN2023 – Energy Haves and Have-NotsXYZ

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A side story on California’s stupidity on renewable energy:

Last fall the state energy commissioner, or whatever the “very important state official” who is in position to announce proclamations from on high to us peasants had dire news. The problem? Energy consumption between the hours of 4pm-10pm needed to be drastically reduced due to the whole sun going down effect. No sunlight, no solar charging-easy concept. The call was put out with advice on appropriate temperature settings for A/C, and the avoidance of activities that might strain the electric grid across the state.

Imagine the surprise that night to see So-Fi Stadium in Los Angeles fully lit up in anticipation for the NFL game being played. The irony was not missed on what the state considered their priorities to be during this alleged crisis. And yes, it was put out with an attitude that this could result in blackouts (brownouts?) across the state.

Those unfamiliar with Los Angeles weather should know that it is quite mild for most of the year. If this was such a desperate situation surely a football game should not have been that important to warrant the amount of wasted energy to light up a small village. The game could have been rescheduled to be during the daylight hours. But no. Priorities you see.

If This Goes On … Then What? – Part 3

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So, after the rainbow crusade the next most important article of the woke faith is the climate change crusade.  And the real-world consequence that this delusion engenders is the energy crisis that we are currently suffering under.

Starting in Europe but now picking up steam here in America, the Left is attempting to criminalize the use of hydrocarbon fuels.  And especially they’re trying to take them away from private citizens.  So even though the bulk of electrical generation is powered by natural gas in this country, the federal government and states like California are legislating against the use of gasoline powered cars and other equipment like lawn mowers and at the same time, against the use of natural gas for cooking and eventually home heating.

And indicating to the oil companies that they are going to be phased out has had the predictable effect of curtailing their efforts to keep the price of gas and oil stable.  Instead, this plan has unleashed the OPEC cartel’s efforts to maximize their profits in the short term and ignore Washington’s pleas to help it along with making the transition quiet so that it becomes a fait accompli.  And even though the adoption of electric vehicles is already becoming a nightmare for the power grid in California, the feds have doubled down on making this all happen by 2030.

First a word on the technical aspects of this plan.  As a chemical engineer I can say categorically this is a stupid and wrong-headed plan.  Charging electric cars from a grid that is basically powered using fossil fuels is incredibly wasteful.  Over a third of the energy that even reaches the grid is wasted as heat during transmission.  That’s not even taking into consideration the difference in efficiency between the internal combustion engine versus the combination of the turbine electric generators and the battery charging and discharging efficiency.  It’s absurd.  And they call it “green.”

So how does this end up?  Well, you know the drill.  Let me throw out some scenarios and I’ll make my guess and then you follow up on the poll.  Here goes.

The worst-case scenario is that this whole thing is accomplished.  The people of the United States act like good little sheep and just acquiesce in this whole stupid plan.  And in order to compensate for all the inefficiencies and fallacies in the plan we all end up losing a whole lot of freedom and affluence.  With much more expensive electricity and with the supply insufficient to allow everyone to recharge their cars every day, trains and busses will become the mandated form of transportation for ordinary people.  So, forget about auto trips and vacations.  Probably car ownership will become too expensive for anybody not in the upper middle class.  Even home heating will become a real problem.  Expect that people will walk around their homes in coats and hats in the winter and insulation will become a matter of life and death.  And enjoy living in the desert southwest without air-conditioning.  And the cost of food will also increase drastically and the variety of foods will go away.  No more fresh fruits in the winter except for the very well off.  The peasants will make do with whatever can last from the fall.  No more meat.  Unless you consider crickets meat.

The middle scenario is a much slower rollout and the realization that nuclear power plants can be sold to the climate zealots as “green energy.”  Having a reliable and economical high density power source could ameliorate some of the sins that battery cars create and leaves open the scenario where hydrogen fuel for cars is affordable.  And likewise, affordable energy could prevent the other problems like expensive food and home heating

The best-case scenario would be the American people revolting against the stupidity of the green agenda and voting for a combination of fossil fuels in the here and now and research into long term energy solutions like nuclear and other more exotic sources like geothermal.

For once I’m not guessing that the middle scenario will occur.  I think the American people are sheep that will be led to the slaughter.  I’m guessing we’ll get the whole green agenda and we’ll be eating bugs and taking the train in the future.  The ultimate humiliation for a once free people.

Leave your guess below.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 30MAR2023 – Confiscations

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The day the feds start gun confiscation is the day the 2nd US civil war begins.

I believe Biden and the left are purposely trying to destroy the USA on behalf of their owners, the Chinese, Russians and Soros.

Biden’s plan to stop gas sppliances such as cook stoves, furnaces, clothes dryers, and water heaters will only serve to further erode the power grid. California is already at the point of rolling brownouts. Imagine taking away all gas appliances and adding in mandatory electric cars to boot? Grid meltdown. Add on anything else such as a good-sized earthquake or solar flare and California will have massive blackouts and, as a result, lots of deaths. California is broke. And remember, the hospitals, etc, will be forbidden gas or fuel powered backup generators.

I have a natural gas standby generator, a gas water heater (looking at an on-demand unit to replace the tank type), gas range and a gas clothes dryer. That reduces my electrical load during outages and puts less stress on the generator, so I can basically run my whole home as if I still had line power. I can cook, wash and dry clothes and the rest on a smaller generator. All circuits are available, not just an essential few. Big Daddy Joe wants to take that from me. Good luck.

Reinforcing Stupid

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Every bad thing that’s happening right now is the result of Democrat stupidity, either direct or indirect.  In fact, some of them are the result of cascading stupidity that just keeps ricocheting against other examples of former stupidity lying around.  For instance, look at energy costs.  The original anti-petroleum executive orders, like cancelling the pipeline and cancelling the exploration leases got the ball rolling and started gas prices soaring.  And then for laughs Mushmouth Joe decided he wanted to fight a war against Russia the largest provider of energy to the West.  Then just to make doubly sure there was no way to undo the damage, he blew up the Nord Stream pipelines that provide Russian natural gas to Europe.  And when he insulted the Saudi foreign minister a year ago, he set himself up for OPEC to kick him while he is down.  That’s why they just announced a three million barrel a day reduction in oil output just to make sure prices stay high.

It’s true.  No one should underestimate Biden’s talent for hapless destruction.  But there could be a silver lining in this whole situation.  The grownups won’t be able to fix any of the stuff Biden has mucked up for a pretty long time.  He’s still got over two years to destroy our economy.  That might be long enough for the people who believe in green energy to get a real good look at what life in a green economy is actually like.

The people in Texas got a taste of it last year when the grid failed because of dependence on wind turbines that froze up.  There’s nothing scarier than losing power in a real winter storm when you don’t have your own generator and emergency fuel.  Sitting in the dark with no heat and no water is a bad feeling.  And if it becomes a recurring thing it will disrupt your life.  So much so that you’ll go out and install an expensive generator just to get back to a sense of normalcy.

Now imagine if you’re a greenie and you’ve always felt that gasoline and oil and natural gas are the devil’s own brew.  But then imagine if it turns out that your very own gas-powered generator is the only thing saving you from misery.  You might start to get confused about where your priorities were with respect to this whole climate thing.

And the first time one of those cute little electric cars gets stuck in a snow storm and runs out of charge on the road and has to be recharged by a gas-powered generator that a gas-powered truck had to haul out to do the job maybe the Gaia worshipper who gets stuck might start to put the dots together and realize he could just skip a step and buy a gas-powered car.

Of course, these are feeble hopes.  Gaia worship is a cult that seemed to get started in fifth grade when the proselytizing starts.  Really the only hope is that most of these people will need to freeze to death in a sudden storm that takes out the power and leaves them inside their well-insulated walls as the temperature reaches minus twenty.  Hopefully they’ll be too eco-pure to ask to stay with their climate denier neighbor with the 25-kW generator and large oil tank.  After all you just can’t virtue signal too much when you’re an eco-warrior.

The ZMan Has a Bit to Say About Energy

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He runs through the ins and outs of how our whole world runs on cheap energy.  My favorite thought is, “The real reserve currency of the world is the BTU and the dollar is the physical manifestation of it. The war on Russia, like the war on Iran, is as much about protecting the control of energy as it is ideology. What we are seeing is that the countries with vast energy wealth are starting to figure out that they are better off as partners rather than as competitors.”

Ah, the British Thermal Unit.  Metric units be damned.

It’s about time Westerners figured out that windmills and solar panels mean poverty for them and their descendants and start figuring out where the energy source for the year 2200 is going to be.  The Germans are pretty smart maybe they’ll start taking those nuke plants out of mothballs after they freeze their own balls off this winter.

I have a hunch geothermal energy and hydrogen as a vehicle fuel is the way things will go but you never know.  Funny things can happen.  But windmills it won’t be.

Let’s go Brandon!

 

 

 

OPEC Body Slams Biden for the Mid-Terms

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OPEC has decided to lower oil production for November.  And just stating is going to raise the price of heating oil and gasoline just when Biden needs these prices to go down before the Mid-Terms.  The way Creepy Uncle Joe keeps getting mugged by reality you’d think I might be starting to feel sorry for him.  Well, I feel sorry for us.  We have to live with runaway inflation and a recession all at the same time.  And we have to worry about the threat of nuclear war on top of that.

But as far as feeling sorry for Dopey Joe I couldn’t care less.  I want all the idiots who voted for him to stew in the regret they are feeling.  His green energy boondoggle is the most disastrous policy since the establishment of Prohibition in the 1920s.  It has singlehandedly brought the Western World to its knees this year and this winter may actually bring parts of Europe back to the Ice Age.  Well, good!  These idiots are getting what they voted for and as the expression go they should get it good and hard.

I bought a cap for my fuel oil prices for this winter.  It looks like I’ll need it.  Keep going Joe.  At this rate you’ll be acclaimed the WOAT president even before your one term is done.  Before you know it even the people who run the Democrat Voter Fraud Machine will be voting for the Republicans just to save themselves from freezing to death.

despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

Update:

Chemist comments:

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”-Robert Heinlein

Both Nord Stream Pipelines Have Been Sabotaged

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Apparently underwater sabotage has rendered both Russian Nord Stream gas pipelines inoperable for the foreseeable future.  This is going to make the current energy situation in Germany and Central Europe untenable.

Theories on who is responsible range from the Russians to the Ukrainians to the German Greens to the CIA.  You know, I can begin to see how this crisis is beginning to spin out of control.

I am reminded of the Obama era operative who said “Never let a crisis go to waste.”  It looks like someone has decided to push this thing into the crisis range.  Maybe it will force Germany to reactivate their nuclear power plants.  Or maybe it will cause a humanitarian crisis of mammoth proportions that will plunge the people of the European Union into revolt against their elites.  But either way they’re about to find out how windmills and solar panels work in a European winter.

We shall see.

Nuclear Power is Coming Back

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Even that animated haircut Gavin Newsom realizes that shutting down the nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon would get him bounced out of his job as governor of the stupidest state in the union.

He’s put the closure on hold until 2030 when he’ll be safely out of politics and doing harm in some other capacity.

And this same realization is coming to all the other geniuses who thought windmills and solar panels could replace the gigawatts of power we currently use to fuel a modern civilization.

“Across the United States, according to the fifth annual ecoAmerica survey, support for nuclear energy has risen to 60% (up from Gallup-reported 51% in 2015. Business Wire says support for nuclear has never been higher, though the survey also reported a majority still harbor fears about nuclear solid waste disposal, health and safety, security and weaponization, and cost.”

And overseas other nations are changing their minds about nuclear power.

” The British – who are even calling for fracking and renewed oil and gas exploration and development in the North Sea – are bullish on nuclear energy today despite plans to close five of its eight old reactors. France, Japan, China, India, Finland and Hungary are also building new nuclear plants, and Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic want to go nuclear.”

Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Austria have still maintained their pledges to shut down their existing nuclear plants but even the Germans with their dominant Green movement, are probably starting to wonder if reality will allow them to do this in the face of the loss of Russian natural gas.

The hippies dealt the US nuclear industry a seemingly lethal wound after Three Mile Island.  But now the hippies are in nursing homes and maybe their just as stupid children may be forced to decide which they hate more fossil fuels or nuclear power.  They’re going to have to choose one.  Tilting at windmills won’t keep the lights on.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 02SEP2022 – Green Fantasy

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I confess I am mystified by Germany and the rest of Europe’s attitude.
They earnestly believe that burning fossil fuels will warm the planet and lead to global Armageddon. Well, unless those fossil fuels come from Russia. Then it is somehow OK.

Nuclear power plants produce zero CO2 and, if done right, are the safest of all power generation methods. (The US nuclear fleet has a perfect safety record going back over 50 years.) Oh, but Japan had an Earthquake followed by a tsunami which caused the pumps to fail at a nuclear plant leading to (Checks notes) zero deaths?
Never mind the fact that Germany is not on an ocean and is not subject to tsunamis, they decided to shut down all of their nuclear plants.

So they put all of their resources into Chinese made solar panels and windmills. Again, the fact that these items are only made by burning tons of fossil fuels (most far dirtier than European fossil fuels) is somehow ok.
They did this knowing that there was no way these “Green” methods could serve their needs. I guess the plan was to make up the difference with that “Green” Russian natural gas which they would still be happily buying if Vlad hadn’t had the bad taste to invade Ukraine.

Tucker is right. They will freeze. The question is – how many governments will fall>

Tucker Carlson Tells America That Europe Will Freeze This Winter

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Tucker reviews the disaster that is energy policy in Europe.  Between the embargo of Russia and the “Green Energy” initiatives like Germany shutting down its nuclear power plants, Europe will be freezing in the dark this winter.  The fact that the price of natural gas has gone up 700% and Germans are scouring their forests for scrap wood to turn into wood chips to heat their homes this winter is somewhat shocking.

Carlson makes a very good point when he says clearly that wind and solar were never going to be even close to a replacement for coal, oil and gas for heating and electricity.  But the Russian embargos are happening just at the right moment to create a perfect storm.

And so far, the Russians are still selling some gas to Europe (about 20% of what they could be sending).  If they cut off the supply altogether it will shut down German industry altogether.  So far the politicians are maintaining their stance on the Ukrainian war.  But it’s still summer.  We’ll have a better idea how things will go in January.

Now, we’re in better shape than Europe.  We produce a lot of fossil fuels.  But our energy prices have skyrocketed and they will increase again this winter.  This should have some effect on the November elections I think.