Tag: energy policy

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.

Will America Pass the Test?

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We live in troubled times.  Many very strange ideas are loose in the world.  For the last hundred years or so Western Civilization has become increasingly unstable.  And now most of the first world has embraced its own destruction.  The idea of eliminating the majority of humanity from the planet in pursuit of some ecological paradise is a common philosophy among millennials.  And the belief that subsistence conditions that include eating bugs and giving up mobility and things like climate-controlled homes is being promulgated by the government and “thought leaders.”

I think we will find out very soon whether the majority of our countrymen agree with these ideas.  After all we are a “democracy” or something like one.  If the ayes have it, we’ll get bugs and electric cars.  But something leads me to believe that the whole world won’t succumb to this plan.  I have to believe that there remains a substantial group of people that aren’t fools and know that human ingenuity is substantially more capable of overcoming problems than what’s currently on display from the “green revolution” crowd.

I guess the question will be where will that ingenuity be allowed to flourish.  Up till recently the United States was the premiere center of innovation.  And we were also a magnet for entrepreneurs from across the world who were looking for a chance to pioneer new concepts in everything from robotics to medicine.  But now this trend is reversing.  Many innovators are returning home to their own countries to launch new companies and build factories.  Places like China and India are rejecting the green revolution in response to the need to reap the benefits of twentieth century technology that was made possible by fossil fuel powered industry.

Wind mills and solar panels are being deployed in the West but the rest of the world is burning coal, oil and natural gas.  And if things continue in the direction they’re going, eventually nuclear power plants will also become a common sight in the non-Western countries.  When that happens where will the center of innovation be located?

That’s the main question.  Which culture will have the confidence to continue the legacy that the Western World has already bequeathed to humanity?  What a strange thought that maybe in fifty years Europe and North America will be living in some kind of post-modern poverty with a marginal economy based on some socialist model while some currently third world country takes the lead and raises the standard of living of their people even higher than what we currently enjoy.

Strange or not, it might be the future.  I’m far from confident that Americans will come to their senses and demand better for their children than the message of deprivation and mediocrity that we’re being fed by the Democrats and their corporate allies.  We’re currently at a very critical juncture in our history.  We’ve recently been given a vision of energy prices becoming unsustainable while the government is using huge subsidies to convince Americans to buy electric cars.  And at the same time foods like meat and milk are also becoming prohibitively expensive.  This would be the time for angry consumers to lash out at the Democrats and punish them at the polls.  But what if they don’t?

That would tell me that the old America is gone for good and the current crop will be led by the nose to whatever fate the elites have planned for them.  And that will be a good time to start looking around and figure where the new center of human flourishing will end up.

I hope we don’t fail this test.  My whole world is anchored to this country.  All my relatives and especially my descendants are all here.  I want them to be part of the best society on the planet.  And so, I pray there are still enough people with common sense to keep us on the right track and moving into the future.  But from where I’m standing it looks like a fifty-fifty shot.

Tax Time and Other Painful Realities

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Today is the day.  This afternoon I’ll bundle up my wretched documentary evidence and head off to the tax accountant for another government mandated pummeling.  It’s like heading for the dentist with a toothache.  You know there will be pain and annoyance.  But what choice do you have?  Well painful realities seem to be the order of the day.

This morning I was listening to an interview Tucker Carlson had with a farmer about what the cost increases on fertilizers will do to the price of food.  The numbers were staggering.  He said that fertilizer prices had skyrocketed already and that natural gas prices were driving it.  Part of this increase in natural gas prices stem from the Biden administration’s shutting down of coal powered electrical plants.  Add to this the decision by the Europeans to shut down their nuclear power plants and you see the perfect storm that is driving energy and food prices to unsustainable levels.

You know, I’m starting to believe there is a chance that Biden will be forced to make an about face on his stupid “green energy” policies.  When people start suffering extreme hardship, actual hunger, that amount of anger might drive a revolt on both sides of the political street.  November might be more than just a “bloodbath.”  If we see blue states flipping their congressional delegations, I have no doubt that Dopey Joe will flip his script and discover his inner conservative.

I know this sounds far fetched but there is currently a perfect storm of economic conditions that will hammer home how delusional green energy really is.  Wind and solar power generators provide single digit percentages of our electrical capacity and even these low percentages are of low quality and necessitate additional gas turbine capacity to jump in when these green utilities inevitably peter out.

And as much as this is hammering the American people, I think it could be an even bigger catastrophe for the Germans.  They’ve buckled under the pressure from the Biden administration and agreed to the sanctions against the Russians and cancelling the start up of the Nord Stream 2.  What happens if the Russians stop sending them gas?  They’ll be buying it from the Saudis.  And it will not be cheap.  Add in the likelihood of a recession associated with all of this sticker shock for energy and food and you’ll see a manufacturing country like Germany experiencing extreme economic pain.

Of course, there won’t be any joy in my heart as I too suffer the consequences of Biden’s madness.  We’ll all be reeling from the effects of inflation on our lives.  But if any good can come from this it should be the realization by young people that idealistic and simplistic approaches to complex and deadly serious aspects of life are disastrous.  Powering an industrial economy can’t be achieved by wishful thinking and good intentions.  It’s the work of engineers and industrialists who have to work within the constraints of available resources and real-world tradeoffs between costs, environmental damage and reliability.

Maybe it will take an actual economic depression to pound home to these idiots the real world we live in.  We never seem to make any permanent progress.  Why are they called progressives anyway?  Because they grow progressively more stupid?

 

Update:

Chemist – “The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us… Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business.” -Ronald Reagan