Tag Archives: fossil fuel energy

Approaching Caveman Status

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From what we know, the cavemen lived in caves heated by firewood in the winter and naturally (somewhat) cooled in the summer. Based on what our government has planned for us in the future, we might want to consider similar options.

On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the energy policies of the Biden administration.

The article notes:

The mark of a developed country is reliable, affordable energy. Despite this undeniable fact, the Biden administration and what Robert Bryce calls the anti-industry industry are rushing pell-mell to destabilize our electric grid, while charging Americans more and more for less and less electricity. This impoverishment of ordinary Americans is not an unfortunate by-product of liberal energy policies. Rather, it is the central goal of those policies.

Bryce writes at Substack about the deliberate devastation of our electric grid:

On May 4, members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission delivered stark warnings to the members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The agency’s acting chairman, Willie Phillips, told the senators, “We face unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system.”

FERC Commissioner Mark Christie echoed Phillips’ warning, saying the U.S. electric grid is “heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.”

The problem with the administration’s energy policies is that they are designed to change from fossil-fuel generated electricity to electricity generated by wind farms and solar farms. There are a number of problems with that–the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine–not to mention to disposal problems, the Chinese manufacturers and the children in Africa working in the mines. Brownouts will become a way of life for Americans if the Biden administration continues down this path.

The article concludes:

Exactly one week after that May 4 hearing, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed rule that could force the closure of every coal-fired power plant in America as well as most of the natural gas plants if they cannot cut their emissions by 90%. Here’s how Politico reported on it: The new rule will require, “most fossil fuel power plants to slash their greenhouse gas pollution 90% between 2035 and 2040 — or shut down.”

At the link, Bryce explains why that can’t possibly be done. We are on a collision course between “green” dreams and reality, and reality is going to win. The situation would be dire even if demand for electricity were to stay constant, but of course that is not what the Left has in mind:

[T]he top people and key agencies that oversee the operation of the electric grid — FERC, NERC, and PJM — are all warning that our most important energy network is becoming less reliable. That declining reliability is happening at the same time the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex is spending tens of millions of dollars on campaigns to “electrify everything.” Those measures include bans on natural gas for heating and cooking in homes and businesses. The alt-energy push also includes, of course, electric vehicles. And again, the timing matters. The EPA’s May 11 announcement about power plants came less than a month after the same agency announced pollution rules that could require up to two-thirds of all the new vehicles sold in the country to be electric by 2032.

We are driving off a cliff, and American prosperity–our status as a developed country–is at stake.

Please follow the link to read the entire article.

It Will Be Interesting To See What The Punishment For This Will Be

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We all remember the images of January 6th. Actually, there were two sets of images from January 6th–the ones we were initially shown that looked somewhat scary and the ones the court made the Justice Department release that showed the police inviting people into the Capitol Building. Nevertheless, there were some people on January 6th that did things that were illegal and should have been dealt with by the legal system. Unfortunately, as we have seen, those arrested were not dealt with in a manner consistent with equal justice under the law.

Today The U.K. Daily Mail is reporting that dozens of climate activists forced their way into the Interior Department building demanding that President Joe Biden cease approvals for fossil fuel infrastructure and lead a renewable energy transformation.

The article reports:

The dramatic scenes came during five days of demonstrations in the capital organized by a Native American climate group calling itself ‘People vs Fossil Fuels’, which is demanding that President Joe Biden cease approvals for fossil fuel infrastructure and lead a renewable energy transformation. 

Footage shared by Washington Post reporter Ellie Silverman shows protestors pushing their way into the Interior Department, while chanting ‘sign the treaty’ and ‘protect the water’.

…Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was traveling Thursday and was not in the building during the chaotic protest.

Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico, is the first Native American Interior secretary. 

‘Interior Department leadership believes strongly in respecting and upholding the right to free speech and peaceful protest,” Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for Haaland, said in a statement. 

‘Centering the voices of lawful protesters is and will continue to be an important foundation of our democracy. It is also our obligation to keep everyone safe. We will continue to do everything we can to de-escalate the situation while honoring First Amendment rights.”

She said protesters who were arrested were taken in for booking. 

The article notes:

Capitol Police said 78 people were arrested on obstruction or crowding charges. Three of those arrested also were charged with assault on a police officer.

Does anyone want to speculate on whether or not any of those arrested will be placed in solitary confinement? Does anyone want to speculate on whether or not any of those arrested will still be in jail nine months from now? The way this situation was and is being handled in contrast to the way the January 6th protest was handled tells us all we need to know about the priorities of our current Justice Department. We have become (or are in serious danger of becoming) a banana republic. Our First Amendment rights are only being upheld when they align with the current political administration. Americans need to learn how to stand up for their First Amendment rights or we are going to permanently lose them.

How To Lie With Statistics

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Yesterday Forbes posted an article analyzing the claim that green energy creates more jobs than the fossil fuel energy.

The article cites an article entitled, “Jobs? Investing in renewables beats fossil fuels,” by Allan Hoffman, a former bureaucrat in the U.S. Department of Energy.

The article in Forbes reports:

Hoffman summarizes his article by writing, “If a primary national goal is to create jobs in the energy sector, investing in renewable energy is considerably more effective than investing in fossil fuels.” Supporting his argument, Hoffman writes, “Solar Foundation data indicated that in 2016 the U.S. solar industry (8,600 companies) employed 260,000 workers.”

Comparing solar industry jobs to conventional energy jobs, Hoffman writes, “How do these numbers compare with numbers in the fossil fuel industries? In 2015 workers employed directly in oil and natural gas extraction numbered about 187,000.”

Well, not so fast. When you look at how these numbers were calculated, you see a very different picture.

Forbes reports:

For solar jobs, Hoffman references data reported by the solar power industry. I looked up and found the Solar Foundation paper Hoffman references. What Hoffman defines as “workers” who are “employed” by the U.S. solar industry are actually defined by the Solar Foundation as jobs which the solar industry “supports.” The Solar Foundation liberally defines jobs “supported” by the solar power industry as to include every component on the solar industry chain, plus additional jobs like lawyers, lobbyists, public relations professionals, government employees overseeing the solar power industry, permitting officers, plumbers, electricians, salesmen, land acquisition specialists, and financiers.

For natural gas jobs, by comparison, Hoffman limits his definition to “workers employed directly in oil and natural gas extraction.” Hoffman does not include lawyers, lobbyists, public relations professionals, government oversight employees, permitting officers, plumbers, electricians, salesmen, land acquisition specialists, and financiers, as he does for the solar power industry. Even more importantly, he does not include construction workers who build natural gas power plants, workers who operate natural gas power plants, workers who survey and find natural gas deposits, workers who build equipment for natural gas power plants, etc.

Further proof that you can make statistics prove anything you want them to as long as you carefully choose the numbers you use.

The article at Forbes concludes:

Public policy officials, do not be duped. The next time somebody claims wind and solar power create more jobs than natural gas and other conventional energy sources, ask them for specific definitions and parameters of the job numbers cited. If they falsely claim the definitions and parameters are similar, call them on it. If they truthfully answer that the definitions and parameters do not match up, ask them why they are presenting deliberately misleading data.

This is another reason consumers of news need to be very skeptical of anything they read–any data can to skewed to reach the desired conclusion.