Friday, April 15, 2022

Bigger Pie Forum: The Fog of Energy Ignorance

 The Germans have learned that green energy from windmills is not reliable.  And that depending on Russia for reliable natural gas backup is expensive – and not all that reliable either.

I mentioned these lessons in a recent article about the Mississippi Public Service Commission and Entergy’s solar and wind investments to produce electricity – but which don’t when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.  On-again-off-again green energy intermittency disrupts the grid and causes blackouts.  So Entergy builds duplicate backup natural gas plants to keep the lights on. And customers pay more.

Fortunately, we don’t depend on Russia for natural gas.  We are self-sufficient in natural gas, oil, and coal. At least we were before politicians trashed our domestic energy producers.  Now these politicians are quietly seeking supplemental oil imports from friendly Canada – but not to be shipped through the evil Keystone Pipeline.  And from not so friendly or reliable Venezuela.  And from formerly friendly and reliable Saudi Arabia (before the Saudis quit taking our calls).

Seems $6 gasoline and 6% inflation, supply chain disruptions, prospective food shortages, etc. are evil too.  So energy and food security are more popular now than virtue signaling politicians – here and in Germany.

Facts and reality are mugging the global warming cult and its theories and models that cause high-cost energy.  It’s that ole Maslow Need Hierarchy thing again.  When you are cold and hungry, you don’t worry about some charlatan’s “existential threat” to the planet fifty years from now.  When we can’t forecast the weather two weeks out.

Pipelines are the least expensive way to transport oil and natural gas.  They are a causality of global warming hysteria and energy ignorance.  It’s not just the Keystone Pipeline either.  Energy ignorance is expensive.  Not just in Germany either.

Here are some U.S. examples.  Natural gas from the Marcellas Shale formation which stretches from Pennsylvania to New York sells for about $4/mcf at the wellhead.  Planned pipelines to transport it to New England for less than $1/mcf were cancelled.  So imported Liquified Natural Gas from Qatar and Trinidad now sells there for about $30/mcf. Further south we export LNG at $4.50/mcf from Texas ports to Europe and Asia where it sells for ? (a lot more).  Prices subject to frequent changes – mostly up now.

Speaking of cults, here’s another lesson from Germany via the EUGYPPIUS blog.  Germanys health minister Karl Lauterbach is the equivalent of our Anthony Fauci.

Some say Dr. Fauci saved the world from the scourge of COVID-19.  Others say he funded its development, exaggerated its risk, dictated responses that made it worse and eroded trust in authority.  That he politicized health care and further polarized the country.  And that he profited from the vaccines, concealed their serious side effects, and discouraged early life-saving alternative treatments.

Warp speed development of vaccines ignored the “first do no harm” Hippocratic Oath because testing takes time.  Legal immunity for the shortcuts and failures to disclose their “haste makes waste” consequences discouraged challenges.  Censorship and organized shaming of those who did challenge the narrative threatened their careers.  So more Silent Scientists now. And more vaccine fatalities and other adverse events later.  Hopefully, no thalidomide babies.

It’s hard to believe, but Germany’s health minister may be even more polarizing than Dr. Fauci.  He admits that quarantine rules are useless.  But he keeps them on the books as a signal.  Eugyppius says: “More and more, Corona acquires the trappings of a parareligious cult, with its own perverse liturgy … and pandemicists themselves are forced to admit that much of what we are doing is totally useless.”  The Germans are probably more conditioned and deferential to authority than we are.

But thanks to COVID, we are more conditioned and deferential to authority than we once were.  Our conditioning started with two weeks to flatten the curve – which became two years of destructive dictatorial mandates.  We may be less naive now and more skeptical of official narratives.  But we are not nearly skeptical enough.

Many governors and bureaucrats took advantage of COVID to usurp more authority.  There once was a theory that competent dictators can run efficient countries (e.g., Mussolini made Italy’s trains run on time).  But there seem to be few competent dictators.

From the condition of our economy, our dictators are not competent.  It seems states with authoritarian governors have worse economies and more people leaving.  And states with the most draconian COVID responses have no better health outcomes – even with cooked numbers.  And they may actually have more deaths from all causes – hard to cook those numbers.

At the national level, the more executive orders the President issues, the worse our economy gets.  And the more ad libs from teleprompter scripts, the greater the threats to our national security and to international tensions.  The war in Ukraine was a “look there’s a squirrel” distraction to domestic blunders.

Not now.  It threatens long standing strategic alliances, stalemates, and balances of power.  Our “don’t get involved” involvement is not reassuring.  Economic sanctions cut both ways.  Russia’s energy will find its way to market despite sanctions – because there’s not enough fossil fuel energy to power the world otherwise.  Green energy distractions and roadblocks and ignorance make essential hydrocarbons more expensive.

Pete Buttigieg’s Marie Antionette advice to buy an electric car if you can’t afford gasoline shows energy ignorance and contempt for the poor.  Much of the world lacks electricity. The poor need cheap fossil fuels to enjoy just a fraction of our prosperity.

Ukraine has reminded us of something.  Nationalism is a powerful force.  Our land, culture, language, beliefs, religions, families, flag – are worth defending.  Ukrainians think so too.  Whatever the odds.

Love for country still matters – even in a globalized world where countries don’t.  Especially in a globalized world.

 

This post is authored and sponsored by Bigger Pie Forum. 


10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Humans don’t yet have any better solution to our energy needs than nuclear energy. We have much better nuclear solutions today, than the Light Water Reactors of yesteryear. In fact, France was (at one time) generating enough power to sustain itself and it’s neighbors, including Germany. After the meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, France started dismantling their nuclear infrastructure. Our irresponsible media failed to educate the people and inform them that the disaster at Fukushima was not simply due to Nuclear energy being dangerous. It was due to the failure of Japanese bureaucracy.

A prominent Japanese engineer who worked on Fukushima designed enormous seawalls to be used to surround Japan’s coastal nuclear power generating plants. Some of the plants got the walls. The plant at Fukushima didn’t get the full sized wall and the tsunami inundated the plant and caused the meltdown. This disaster caused fear and panic and even Japan tried to go green with wind and solar. However, Japan has come to realize it is bot enough and has ultimately halted shutting down their nuclear power plants because there is simply nothing better or greener than nuclear!

Anonymous said...

Indeed, build more nuclear power plants. As a bonus, in MS that would grease a lot of political palms, so a win/win.

Anonymous said...

This is industry BS.

Windmills have worked for centuries.
My family has had windmill power on their farm for more than 30 years.
Nuclear energy will work but in the U.S. we need a science, not a political solution for waste storage from our best scientists, not a Bechtel or Halliburton.
The current sites are beyond capacity.

But, sheeple, do keep letting industry paid pundits and every lobbying effort and advertisement effort and unethical human that can be bought, con you.
Study the issue from objective sources or shut the hell up.

Anonymous said...

Yep, nuclear is the answer, except it will hurt the bank accounts of oil tycoons and their personal politicians so unlikely to ever happen to the extent we need. At some point, we have to consider the future ramifications of the damage we are doing to our planet. Active ignorance isn’t the answer.

Anonymous said...

Windmills have worked for centuries
Yeah when they have the perfect wind. When they don’t, you either get no work out of them, or their brakes fail and they spin out of control and we get violent and explosive failures.

Wind Turbine generators are just one piece, but not nearly enough alone.

There is very little waste generated with newer reactor designs. LWR is the dirty technology that should be phased out quickly and replaced.

Anonymous said...

Will the author please learn to write in complete sentences? The failure to follow basic rules of grammar detracts from the message.

Tweety said...

There are "engineers"
Then there are "ignorant ears"
Nuclear is not god
But it is good
...good for continuous run until next refueling, so it is baseload only
Wind & Solar is great
Until the wind and sun abate
So you need to partner them with power storage (battery or pumped hydro, etc) {if not, you have a gas unit rotating as a backup}
...but you can't use battery minerals that only china controls.
You say more EV cars but that doesn't change the amount of power total, it just changes who is in charge and regulates the making it [FERC] {plus you're dependent on china minerals again}
DIVERSITY is a must
Or society will go bust.

Promote Power planner engineers
Demote "plan for their own power" ignorant ears


Anonymous said...

Yeah hold on to your testicles we have three more years of this incompetent nonsense to go. And anyone who thinks windmills are the answer to this democrat debacle have been born missing a large part of their brain. The lies and deceit coming out of this administration are extra ordinary!

Anonymous said...

Isn't Grand Gulf only operating at 25% capacity, per the author in an earlier missive?

Anonymous said...

8.5 percent or so of all the country's electricity is generated by wind power. it's not going away...


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Trollfest '07 was such a success that Jackson Jambalaya will once again host Trollfest '09. Catch this great event which will leave NE Jackson & Fondren in flames. Othor Cain and his band, The Black Power Structure headline the night while Sonjay Poontang returns for an encore performance. Former Frank Melton bodyguard Marcus Wright makes his premier appearance at Trollfest singing "I'm a Sweet Transvestite" from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Kamikaze will sing his new hit, “How I sold out to da Man.” Robbie Bell again performs: “Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Bells” and “Any friend of Ed Peters is a friend of mine”. After the show, Ms. Bell will autograph copies of her mug shot photos. In a salute to “Dancing with the Stars”, Ms. Bell and Hinds County District Attorney Robert Smith will dance the Wango Tango.

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In the spirit of helping those who are less fortunate, Trollfest '09 adopts a cause for which a portion of the proceeds and donations will be donated: Keeping Frank Melton in his home. The “Keep Frank Melton From Being Homeless” booth will sell chances for five dollars to pin the tail on the jackass. John Reeves has graciously volunteered to be the jackass for this honorable excursion into saving Frank's ass. What's an ass between two friends after all? If Mr. Reeves is unable to um, perform, Speaker Billy McCoy has also volunteered as when the word “jackass” was mentioned he immediately ran as fast as he could to sign up.


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This is definitely a Beaver production.


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If you get tired come relax at the Fox News Tent. To gain admittance to the VIP section, bring either your Republican Party ID card or a Rebel Flag. Bringing both will entitle you to free drinks.Get your tickets now. Since this is an event for trolls, no ID is required, just bring the hate. Bring the family, Trollfest '07 is for EVERYONE!!!

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