Life in a Realm of Scarce and Expensive Energy

by

In one of the Hornblower novels, set in the early 1800s, the protagonist is staying in a hotel. Thinking about the bill he is going to have to pay on checking out, he realizes that there is going to be a significant item for ‘light’…ie, candles.   I believe this is historically accurate–candles were expensive enough that they could not just be given away free with the room.

Whereas for most of the last 100 years in America, you could just turn on the lights in your hotel room without worrying about what the added charge on your bill was going to be.   And–much more significantly in terms of energy use–you could adjust the heater or air conditioner to suite your temperature preference, again without worrying about added charges.

With the unrealistic energy plans of the Biden administration and of most European governments, such luxuries may soon be a thing of the past.   I doubt that you will actually have to pay extra for keeping the lights on, but it’s entirely possible that you may have to pay extra if you want it cooler than, say, 78 degrees in summer or warmer than 64 degrees in winter–perhaps with those thresholds adjusted according to the balance of total grid power demand and availability, so that an extreme air-conditioning surcharge kicks in at 88 degrees on an especially hot and windless day.

And not just in hotels. It’s likely that stores, restaurants, etc will get significantly cooler in winter and warmer in summer.   And unless you can afford to not worry about your electricity bill very much, you will likely have to adjust your home temperatures to fit the current supply/demand profile on the grid–indeed, in some jurisdictions, it may be prohibited to violate the required limits no matter how much you are willing to pay.   (With likely exceptions for certain ‘public servants’.)

Above and beyond the impact on individual citizens and families, you can expect that many kinds of energy-dependent businesses, especially manufacturing businesses, will become increasingly uncompetitive in the US.   Again, there will likely be an exception for certain politically-well-connected businesses. But overall, expensive US energy will likely drive a new wave of offshoring.

And I haven’t even talked about transportation.

The above is not carved in stone, of course, there is still a good chance to escape it, as people begin to perceive (from experience) the realities behind all the idealistic talk, theories, and harangues.   But it will be a close-run thing.

93 thoughts on “Life in a Realm of Scarce and Expensive Energy”

  1. It is of course climate change that drives these changes across the world. Those who just don’t believe it is real, will of course call these plans crazy, and those who do, can see its too little too late.

    I am fortunate to live where we already have clean power and lots of it. Just next door we have Alberta, a climate crime, if you look at what they have done to extract oil from Tar Sands.

    So we have an ongoing battle between Alberta and the rest of Canada over what to do about climate change. Most of Canada is transitioning away from oil and gas, so the people in Alberta feel threatened. Really we need the oil for so many things. So not burning it is good idea, but shutting down all production is not.

  2. I’m a bit surprised we have not already seen this prediction already happening. As a parallel, I think of expecting without request or charge water to be served at restaurants. Typical, thus far, in the U.S. Not so in Europe.

    Physics powers tanstaafl plundering politics.

  3. I keep my thermostat at 78 here in Tucson AZ in summer. I bought a new air conditioning system a year ago and my summer electric bills were cut in half. Still, the last one was $314., half of the summer bills when the old A/C was running. The weather here has been a little above normal with the highs this week around 108. In winter, we keep it at 75 since we are both acclimated to warm weather. It get cold enough around Christmas and January to snow. I considered adding solar since we are in a perfect place for it but the behavior of solar salesmen is suspicious enough that I have avoided it. I did talk to a very honest salesman last year who told me I needed to replace my A/C before solar to see what my real needs are. Now, I can’t find him.

  4. I should add that I have given serious thought to a generator as Tucson Electric is into green delusions. A/C in this climate is serious business.

  6. Well the internet crazies will tell you that “emergency powers” and suppression of “disinformation” and rule by decree of “experts” is all going to be applied to “climate change” next and they’ve been right about most everything covid but I’m sure they’re wrong now and there’s nothing to worry about.
    (By the way, France just starting shutting down public events due to heat, i.e., “climate lockdowns”, so in case you’re looking to dismiss the crazies, you might reconsider.)

  8. “Above and beyond the impact on individual citizens and families, you can expect that many kinds of energy-dependent businesses, especially manufacturing businesses, will become increasingly uncompetitive in the US.”

    Prices for energy are very cheap in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world. If you look at places where the prices are much lower, you’ll see that it is because of government subsidies. It’s the cost of using energy at scale in the form of environmental compliance that has driven things like metal refining off shore. This is a subsidy as well, paid by those forced to breat what air is left over. Most of this has happened long ago with some “reshoring” taking place as they find the drawbacks in terms of other infrastructure in the places willing to let them burn unlimited amounts of coal without scrubbers outweigh the savings. Most of the cheap hydro has long been developed and, as has been illustrated abundantly, you can’t run real industries on solar and wind, costly by themselves and even more costly when the necessary backup is included.

    As the present uproar over the cost of gas and diesel show, the great majority of Americans are willing to be “Green” as long as it doesn’t cost them anything personally. A summer with spotty air conditioning isn’t going to help that sentiment. I expect the number of soon to be unemployed politicians to underscore that point.

  9. The signs that this is a mania, rather than a fact? They lie all around us, and the idiots aren’t even smart enough to spot the contradictions within the ravings of the “climate crisis” loons.

    Exhibit one would be all the “Woe is us, melting glaciers…” bullshit. Note well that they’re describing the crisis as melting glaciers, ‘cos of all those Medieval mines and such that are reappearing as the ice sadly melts. Or, the forests revealed, some of which existed within modern historical periods, not geologic terms.

    This is often in the same freakin’ article where they’re talking about the “climate crisis” as evidence for how badly things are going, what with the warming. Not recognized by any of the morons writing these press-release news stories? The fact that the Medieval miners weren’t going up there and burrowing under the ice to do their digging; those currently melting glaciers weren’t there when they were mining… Which sort of points out the lie that this is a.) unprecedented, and b.) caused by modern SUV drivers. The Medieval Climate Optimum was real, and the fact that we’re still not back to where they were, in terms of melted-out glaciers and being able to grow cereal crops on Greenland? Might point out that we’re living in another climactic optimum, and we should enjoy it while we can, because if it gets colder, rather than warmer? We’re screwed worse than by hot weather, because more people will starve and die in the cold.

    The BS has always been there, but so few of us are historically literate. The Romans wanted Britain because it was such a congenial place to grow wine grapes, when they conquered it. When they abandoned it? Largely due to the fact that they couldn’t make an economic case for defending it, what with the increase in cold and the draw-down of their preferred agricultural activity that was transportable enough to make money. The contraction of Empire was largely climate-driven, and it wasn’t heat that did it in, it was cold. Rome expanded with the warming…

    None of the numpties decrying the climate these days are historically literate enough to recognize these facts. They think that things have always been as they are today, and that they should and will remain static forever. That is not how it works. At. All. The western Americas have been prone to periodic droughts and flooding since forever, along with incessant earthquakes and volcanic activity–Which probably goes a long way towards explaining why the only places in the Americas that really grew organized civilizations were in Central and South America, where things were a bit more stable.

    The essential idiocy of the climate crisis types is stunning. Most of them have no earthly idea that the historical record says what it says, or that things were different in earlier years. They also fail to recognize that an awful lot of the crisis-mongering is based on relatively recent achievements in the technology to measure these things, or that the science behind that is so easily swayed by cherry-picking the datasets. You point out the inconsistencies to them, and all they do is go “REEEEEE!!! REEEEEE!!! The man in the lab coat told me!!!!”, never recognizing that they’re as essentially stupid and “faith-based” as the average Bible-thumping Baptist who thinks the world was made in 4,000 BC…

    There. Is. No. Climate. Crisis.

    Other than the failure to observe and recognize that the climate is not some fixed and unchangeable thing; it is in a constant state of flux, and a lot more complicated than we can currently understand. The computer models are entirely inadequate, as is most of the politically-motivated “science” going on with it. If you’ve observed this crap as long as I have, you can see the outlines of the politics–Global Warming theory started out back during the Reagan Administration mostly because there were noises being made by people in that administration about cutting the budget for things like NOAA and other “climate science” line items in the budget. They then did trial balloons, looking for what would resonate with the public, and hit on “It’s GETTING WARMER!!!!!” as the one, because of what was going on with the weather at that time. Reality? You can only see a “crisis” if you look at their manipulated data. Actual warming hasn’t happened for at least the last 20 years, nor has there been actual observable rise in the sea levels.

    We keep getting told that the end times are near, but the date keeps receding into the dimly-lit future. None of the predictions made by any of these Ehrlich-oid prognosticators have come true, but somehow, they keep getting screen time and mindspace, because everyone wants the end times to be coming. It makes them feel good, because they want to be special. It feels virtuous to talk about banning fossil fuels prematurely, ‘cos that’s the modern-day version of wearing a hair shirt and flagellating yourself. The reality is, if these f*cking felching morons were interested in actually fixing the problem, they’d be working out how many nuclear reactors we need to generate power for the electric cars they want to build, and they’d be able to tell us how much copper we need to mine in order to build out the grid. They’re not doing that, though, are they? All they’re doing is banning what we know works, fossil fuels, and planning on being our lords and masters during the coming self-induced hard times, telling us how much we need to suffer for our sins.

    It’s going to end with environmentalists and their fellow-travelers dangling from lamp posts. Do not expect people to live miserably because someone tells them they must, especially when the evidence is essentially fraudulent.

  10. MCS…true that US energy prices are cheap compared with most other countries, for example, I read about a Chinese textile company that moved to South Carolina because of lower electricity prices. But US locations have plenty of other kinds of disadvantages compared with many foreign alternatives, labor costs being only one of them. The higher US energy prices get, the harder it is to overcome these other negative factors.

    Interesting comparison of two steel companies: Algoma Steel Group is located in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, and is refocusing on the electric-arc process, taking advantage of cheap hydropower. US company Steel Dynamics has recently completed a new EAF mill in Sinton, Texas. I don’t know what their deal with the power providers looks like, but Texas electricity comes mostly from gas, coal, and nuclear, plus the highly-variable wind and solar sources. EAF steelmaking, of course, needs an absolutely reliable source of power…it’s hard to believe that Algoma isn’t going to have an energy cost advantage over STLD, regardless of whatever advantages STLD has that operate in the other direction.

    https://buildsteel.org/news/steel-dynamics-sinton-texas/

    https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/US-TEX-ERCO?utm_source=electricitymap.org&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=banner

    (I’m an Algoma shareholder)

  11. David,
    I presume that both companies were able to secure satisfactory power commitments or they would have gone elsewhere. Both decisions were years ago and things may have changed, but they probably got fairly solid guarantees for the life of the plant.

    At the bottom of the Steel Dynamics article there were links to two other planed mills, one in Arkansas and one in West Virginia. To listen to some, these shouldn’t exist because everybody knows we import all that stuff.

  12. Elon Musk is already harvesting solar power in 3,000 or so satellites and beaming it to point of use on earth.

    He calls it Starlink. At the moment it is very low energy as received. Milli watts or maybe microwatts. It is used for communication rather than power.

    But it is still solar power from satellite to earth. It is a considerable engineering challenge to scale it. But it is not a physics problem.

    This is not a new idea. Heinlein wrote a novel a about nuclear power stations in orbit in the early 40s. Arthur Clark proposed geosynchronous satellites in 1948 or so. Telstar may have been the first (at least early) satellite to do this in 61.

    Nikola tesla demonstrated wireless power transmission 120 years ago.

    Musk has all the pieces (and then a miracle occurs) I suspect that in less than 10 years we will be getting economically feasible power from space.

  13. In the meantime we need to be commissioning gigawatt size nuclear power plants at about 1 every month or faster.

    We will need 300 additional gw of generation to convert gas powered cars. (double that for diesel trucks, trains, tractors etc) 1 a month gets us there in only 25 years.

    I think getting the 300gw from space is more realistic than any other alternative.

  14. Michael,

    I have done cogeneration at megawatt industrial scale. Easy peasy and fully practical and common.

    I’m pretty sure it can done at the 10-15kw residential level but don’t know if it makes economic sense when the grid is available

    Basically you run the genny full time for power. Maybe add cheap lead-acid batteries so you don’t have to run continuously.

    @60% of engine heat goes out the exhaust and radiator. Capture it in an absorption chiller to make cold water for a/c

  15. Penguin, I think you are in BC, right? Where does your clean power come from?

    I’m guessing hydro, right?

    It might work in BC where you have small population and a huge watershed.

    We’ve pretty much done all the potential hydro sites in the USA. Environmentally, one can argue and many do, hydro is a horror show. Look at Quebec Hydro’s James Bay project. It drowned an area twice the size of Scotland and has a capacity of only 16gw. It has a capacity factor of less than 50% meaning it is really more like 8gw.

    It also created acid rain. Thanks, Canada.

  16. John Henry…”It has a capacity factor of less than 50% meaning it is really more like 8gw.”

    Is that because there isn’t enough water to generate 16gw all the time, or is it because the shape of the demand curve is such that average demand is only 50% of peak?

  17. ‘Elon Musk is already harvesting solar power in 3,000 or so satellites and beaming it to point of use on earth.’

    The Chinese have an ongoing experiment to do just this. they have been at it since 2014. They have now built a tower, and other things to test this.

    I think you are in BC, right? Where does your clean power come from? “I’m guessing hydro, right?

    Indeed. We are about 98% clean because of this. We make about 50,000 GWh this way and buy another 20% or so from private providers. We have managed to avoid Site C which will tear up a fair bit of BC, I think because of the genius idea, to require BC Hydro to buy clean power from anyone in the province who could make it.

    We are in better shape than most electrically, and are actively implementing both Electric Cars/Transportation and Hydrogen which most people ignore, although you can use any excess power you might have to make some.

  18. David, I suspect a combination of both but have no knowledge of why. I had a hard time just finding a figure for what the capacity factor is. It said nothing about why.

    Hoover dam also operates at a pretty low capacity factor. 23% according to Wikipedia just now. I think it used to run around 50.

    Hoover, and Glen canyon and other Colorado River dams were built for irrigation and flood control, electricity is a by-product.

    In the 70s and 80s Canada was hoping to sell james bay juice to the US. We didn’t want to buy it, or at least as much as they wanted to sell.

    As part of a propaganda/marketing campaign, the Canadians pretty much invented the concept of acid rain to hobble or shut down US coal and oil power.

  19. the progs are on a campaign against hydro electric power, as well, specially in the northwest part of the country, they want to make the electrical situation as desperate as possible, specially in places like California

  20. I looked up BC. They get about 90% from hydro. Who cares about a bunch of DEAPs getting flooded out so people in Vancouver can have cheap juice?

    The rest doesn’t seem very clean. Mostly biomass and landfill gas. Landfill gas is basically natural gas. Relatively clean but still emits co2. All the co2 captured by biomass (trees, I assume) as it grows is given up to the atmosphere slowly by decay, quickly by burning.

    So kudos to Canada for capturing and reusing this energy that would otherwise go to waste. I’ve been advocating this and other alternative energy since the early 70s.

    But it is not “clean” if one considers co2 a pollutant (I don’t) other than displacing other, non-waste, energy sources.

  21. “I looked up BC. They get about 90% from hydro.”

    Where did you find that number. The lowest I can find is 95% in 2014. Ah you are a hedge fund manager, of course. ;)

    If you look you will see the portion of bio mass is under 3% now, and is really the best way to deal with the wood waste generated by our forestry operations. In BC we have almost 50% of Canada’s biomass production. It is considered carbon neutral done properly. Its also used by the mill that produces it usually. The rest of the private providers are more hydro, and some 4% wind power.

  22. Can’t find the link that showed 90% but here’s one that shows 87% in 2019 Figure 2

    https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-british-columbia.html#s1

    Doesn’t really matter if 87 or 94 it is a huge amount and good on Canada for doing it. (subject to caveats about environmental damage from hydro)

    As for the others, good on Canada for them to. I am all in favor of any alternative energy and have been for more than 50 years since before it was even a thing.

    I even pioneered some energy conservation law (alcon v. PREPA) that allowed for creation of microgrids and some other good stuff in the us. Alcon was my cogen project, PREPA was until recently the local utility

    Story and link to decision here https://darkislandpr.blogspot.com/2017/12/alcon-v-prepa.html

    But you talk of “carbon emissions”. Am I missing something or do you mean co2? Two completely different substances. One is an elemental solid, not alleged to be a greenhouse gas. Or even a gas, normally.

    Co2 is a gaseous compound that is alleged to be a greenhouse gas at 0.04% of the atmosphere.

    Whenever people talk about “carbon” in this context I assume that they are either ignorant or propagandizing.

    I think you know the difference between C and CO2 so I assume you are wittingly or unwittingly propagandizing.

    It is not a good look for anyone. You should stop.

  23. Side comment:

    Pretty much anytime I see anyone talk about atmospheric CO2, I see it expressed in PPM. Usually rounded to 400PPM. 400PPM can also be expressed as 400/1,000,000 or 0.04%

    I have almost never seen any other atmospheric gas concentration expressed as ppm. Universally they are expressed as percentages. 78% nitrogen, 21% hydrogen, 0.9% argon and so on.

    I seldom see 780,000ppm nitrogen, 210,000ppm 9,000ppm argon and so on. And by seldom, I mean pretty much never, I can’t remember ever seeing it.

    I’ve never heard a good explanation for why CO2 is the exception. My personal theory is that it is done this way to look scarier. Most people have no idea what ppm means and 400 looks like a big number. Certainly much bigger than 0.04% or 400/1,000,000

    Seems like pretty much pure propaganda.

  24. Among all the other educational problems, the social studies/environmental approach dos not appear to have emphasized either weather or geography. This might be something, with some objectivity, that the home schooling/charter schools could add. It would give those students a real head start on thinking about present policies, the future, and give them a sense of time that is not always easy to get our minds around.

    I’m unusually ignorant, but I hadn’t even known that the homesteaders in part of the west went in a wet season and many left in the more common dry years. Every museum in the middle west (including central Texas) is likely to emphasize the common dinosaur bones were pushed south by the glaciers, but relating that to periods of warmth and temperate years isn’t as often discussed. Koonin talks about the effect of changing climate, CO2 levels, etc. on the evolution of man – again, helps us begin to grasp timelines.

    Without energy, much work is likely to be that of the subsistence kind – isn’t energy, cheap, efficient, consistent, what makes first world institutions, cultures, freedoms possible? I thought our goal was to raise the 3rd world to 1st world status, rather than lower the 1st to the 3rd.

  26. “I thought our goal was to raise the 3rd world to 1st world status, rather than lower the 1st to the 3rd.”
    Who is “our”? The watermelons who run the West don’t share that goal with the rest of us…

  28. If they were actually on lithium, it would be better. It was one of the earliest psychoactive drugs and is used as a mood stabilizer. LSD seems more likely.

  29. “It is not a good look for anyone. You should stop.”

    If you came by here a bit more often, you might notice the almost complete lack of respect I have for this place.

    Carbon neutral means that your whole operation comes out as a Carbon wash. Or the CO2 you produce is balanced by the CO2 you remove. Simple enough for you?

  30. “If you came by here a bit more often, you might notice the almost complete lack of respect I have for this place.”
    Kinda shocking if this wouldn’t get you a permaban…

  32. as you should have guessed fingal, these carbon schemes are a solution searching for a problem,

  33. So you say “carbon” in place of “carbon dioxide” or co2 as witting propaganda? Not from ignorance?

    Since you apparently know the difference, just why do you continue to speak of “carbon”?

  34. everything is carbon based, fossil fuels are derived from organic material, so why pretend otherwise, unless you want to turn citizens into peons and serfs

  35. If you came by here a bit more often, you might notice the almost complete lack of respect I have for this place.

    We have been hoping that you would leave us alone. I think Sgt Mom is the only one here who deletes your comments. I have considered it.

  36. “If you came by here a bit more often, you might notice the almost complete lack of respect I have for this place.”

    And yet you keep coming back.

    Penny isn’t a very good troll, he doesn’t rant or call people names, he even, on very rare occasions, makes a semi cogent point, so even his lack of respect is defective. As a guest, it would be presumptuous for me to suggest that another guest be expelled. I do note that he seems to have gotten under the skin of Sgt. Mom to the point of being banned from her posts. For the most part, he’s just something I scroll past and no harm done.

    The thing about the AGW mania that should raise the most doubts is the need to reduce it to the level of a three year old. One of the most pernicious manifestations is; “coal=bad, trees=good, therefore: burning coal=bad, burning trees=good.”. The idea that burning a tree and releasing the carbon sequestered for a hundred years or more in a few seconds is “carbon neutral” is the kind of accounting that only a politician or journalist is credulous enough to swallow. Most of Northern Europe was deforested to make charcoal to smelt iron before coal was discovered. Only a few old forests remain and they have long been relegated to the least fertile land by agriculture. Those trees won’t be back any time soon and will require a lot of energy in the form of fertilizer to boot.

    The newest wheeze is something called pyrolysis oil or wood oil. It is an incredibly noxious material produced by wood or other bio-mass heated in the absence of air, to produce something that may be eventually upgraded to a refinery feed stock.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis_oil

    The first paragraph sums it up fairly well. Again, by the purchase of Holy Indulgences, magically rendered “carbon neutral”.

    It may have been meant as a joke but all the energy from Star Link added to all the energy from all the other satellite transmitters received on Earth could probably recharge a standard E-bike in around a thousand years. The Star Link Earth Stations on the other hand require about 120 watts each to operate, all terrestrially generated. Satellite solar has a very long way to go before it can become a power source. Even then, it will require many rectennas, each measured in square miles.

  37. Language and framing is important in propaganda.

    I discussed the reasons for 400ppm vs 0.04% in speaking of co2. It’s a scarier number.

    But at least, however uncommon, it is technically correct.

    Using carbon instead of co2 is just bizarre. But, it is effective propaganda.

    Carbon is coal, soot, smoke(sort of) graphite. It is dirty. Dirty in the sense that you need to wash your hands after handling it.

    Co2,on the other hand is food. It causes plants to grow, bread and donuts to rise, beer champagne and soft drinks to be bubbly.

    It is useful for putting out fires, refrigeration (often in solid form as dry ice) and many other uses.

    Where carbon is seen by the public as dirty and icky, co2 is friendly. Much easier to get people stirred up about carbon than co2.

    Ahhh… But it’s easier to say carbon than co2, is pretty much the only non-propaganda reason I’ve ever heard. Seems pretty specious to me.

    It is propaganda and anyone calling co2 carbon should at least realize and admit that it is propaganda and a lie.

    Perhaps they believe the lie is justified.

  38. but it rests on a premise that carbon is evil, hence anything that emits it is as well, ultimately people are the problem hence zpg, this is the notion that paul ehrlich came up with, thanos is the distillation of this ethos, so if you deprive people of fuel and then fuel, well then current population is ‘unsustainable’

  39. I guess ‘carbon’ could be justified either just as a shortcut (2 syllables vs 3 for CO2) or based on the point that you get CO2 when you burn carbon-based substances…but I think a high % of people who hear ‘carbon’ think *particles* and picture some sooty substance emerging from smokestacks.

    There have been photos showing *water vapor* emerging from cooling towers, but with lighting conditions making it look dark, almost black, in color.

  40. ‘make room, make room’ the basis for soylent green, was set in 2022, if memory serves, what a dreary film this is what 70s scifi was like, until star wars, then they went apocalyptic with mad max and other derivatives,

    in that world new york had something like 40 million people, calcutta or cairo type density, the oceans had dried up, and they were using bicycles to run the lights,

  41. Mcs,

    I did not mean what I said about starlink as a joke. You are correct about how little power it is sending to earth.

    But unlike atomic energy in the 30s, we don’t just have theories that it will work.

    We know how to transmit solar power from space to earth. We’ve also in known, from Nikolai Teslas demos 120 years ago that usable power can be transmitted wirelessly.

    Scaling it, making it safe, practical, and economical is “just” an engineering problem. A huge one to be sure. But we know all the ingredients, we just don’t know the recipe.

    Yet.

  44. The idea that burning a tree and releasing the carbon sequestered for a hundred years or more in a few seconds is “carbon neutral” is the kind of accounting that only a politician or journalist

    Actually it is carbon dioxide neutral. In the sense that the co2 released in the few minutes of burning or hundred years of decay is the same co2 that was absorbed over the life of the tree.

    There is a difference in timing, when the co2 was removed and when it went back. There us no difference in amount. It is co2 neutral.

    Btw: same thing with coal, crude, peat, natural gas. All co2 neutral over a long enough time span.

    I think what penguin meant was burning scrap wood. Branches and trash left from logging, scraps and sawdust at the mill, liquor at the pulp mill and so on.

    When this waste is burned or digested for heat and power, it reduces the amount of co2 that would be released by burning the coal, oil etc it replaces.

    Regardless of co2, it is a good idea because changing waste to resource is always a good idea when it can be done practically.

  45. There have been photos showing *water vapor* emerging from cooling towers, but with lighting conditions making it look dark, almost black, in color.

    I’ve noticed that the greens will very often take pictures of these plumes of water vapor – with as many plumes shoehorned into the picture as possible- and use it as a backdrop for some hysterical claim that the world will end next Tuesday unless we ban combustion right now.

    But only in the West. They have nothing to say about emissions in the rest of the world and I suspect many of them have no idea that there is anything there except rain forests and indigenous people oppressed by the hated white devils. This goes back at least as far as the Kyoto treaty of the 90s, which would have imposed crippling restrictions on the US economy and no notable burdens anyone else.

    This is a political problem, not an engineering problem. Unless and until the greens can defeated politically, engineering doesn’t matter. If one problem is solved, they’ll simply move the bar and issue a new set of demands.

    In my view the real motivation isn’t concern for the earth, or whatever. It’s a bitter resentment that people in the West live almost as well as the so-called elite.

    People have vehicles, electricity, air conditioning, plentiful food, indoor plumbing, etc- and the upper crust hate that with burning passion.

    But since the West still has elections, they can’t just say that out loud- yet, anyway. They need some phony baloney justification for their idiotic policies.

    Hence, the environmentalist insanity we’ve been forced to endure, for decades. It’s not about the environment and it never has been. It’s about a return to serfdom. No thank you.

  46. Henry Ford implemented pollution control in the 1920s. Partly for environmental reasons but mainly financial.

    Soot is valuable for making carbon black, used in paint and other things. He realized he had one plant making soot/carbon black and another wasting carbon black/soot. He thought that was economically crazy.

    Model T steering wheels were originally made from cut pieces of wood from Ford’s Michigan forests. He tasked his engineers to come up with a kind if plastic made from the scrap. Then developed a process to mold it over steel to make the steering wheels.

    Ford, as an environmentalist made the current greens look very pale indeed. His book, Today and tomorrow is almost an environmental screed. Really eye opening

    If anyone wants a PDF of this or his other books drop a note to johnhenry@changeover.com

  47. Xennady,
    People like pengun never seem to have any problem drowning hundreds of thousands of square miles of forest (twice the size of Scotland for James bay) and displacing DEAPs and others in the process if it gives them cheap juice in Vancouver and Montreal.

    They also seldom think of the climate impact of changing cast swathes from sun absorbing forest to sun reflecting water.

    Screw ’em. Who gives a shit about DEAPs or Africans or Chinese or Indians or….

  48. Carbon content of the fuel source is exactly the point because it is what, when combined with oxygen during combustion, produces the CO2. It’s the CO2 that is the culprit in the greenhouse cult. In this respect, coal is essentially 100% carbon, natural gas is 75% carbon, gasoline about 84% carbon and diesel is about 85% carbon. Actually, since one ton of carbon produces 3.7 tons of CO2, tons of CO2 would be better from a propaganda point. It is the substitution of natural gas for coal and heavy fuel oil (that has a higher carbon content than diesel) that has produced all of any reductions in “green house gasses” achieved to date.

    When you get down to it, the real figure of merit should be volume as it’s the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere that counts. And if you want to be technical, it’s the upper atmosphere where the action is, this would allow the volume to be multiplied for even bigger scare numbers. If the various scare mongers weren’t innumerate and and scientifically illiterate they would be better at confusing things.

  49. Ford, as an environmentalist made the current greens look very pale indeed.

    But he was also willing to drain swamps to build factories and didn’t decide no one should have their own car. Quite the opposite. Today’s greens are not the same.

    They also seldom think of the climate impact of changing cast swathes from sun absorbing forest to sun reflecting water.

    Albedo what could it be? This is yet another reason why I say it isn’t really about the environment- they simply aren’t interested in too many things which are known to affect the climate and don’t want to do certain things which by their own words would help solve their complaints- e.g., nuclear power.

    Screw ’em. Who gives a shit about DEAPs or Africans or Chinese or Indians or”¦.

    Points taken- but I note that the vast swarms of foreigners all have their own governments to give a shit about them and don’t need the West to care for them.

    We need our governments to start caring about us and stop pretending that they’re responsible for the entire world. They are not.

  50. “Penny isn’t a very good troll”

    Now that hurt. ;)

    The very common “It is not a good look for anyone. You should stop.” and it’s ilk, often used by people like AVI and John Henry, gets the answer it deserves.

  51. The other thing about CO2? It isn’t as if it is a blanket-effect thing; there’s a limit to how much energy it absorbs or blocks.

    Don’t believe me? How about an actual bona-fide physicist, William Happer?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA1zUW4uOSw

    If you don’t want to watch the whole thing and learn something from an actual expert on these matters, just watch from around 22:00 to 30:00 on the video.

    The “climate change” BS is pure panic-mongering, and if you are someone who has paid attention to this crap since the 1970s, you’d know that. The same assholes who were demanding we shut everything down and give power to “science” because of the oncoming Ice Age are the same one who claimed it was Globull Warmening later on, when that made more people panic because of a normal upturn in climate.

    It’s a scam, people. One that’s costing us trillions, and destroying people’s lives in the name of “saving the Earth”.

  52. “It’s a scam, people.”

    A scam? Or a very perverted religion?

    One thing is for sure — there is no testable science behind the AGW Scam, only faith; blind faith, impervious to observation or reason.

  53. In all the reading and experience I’ve had with organized religion, down the years of my life? I find a lot of contiguity with the confidence men I’ve encountered, and a whole lot of similarity in modus operandi.

    Religions start as cults, become domesticated to the purposes of the secular authorities, and then morph into institutions. You can see this with regards to the path taken by the early Christian churches that morphed gradually into the bureaucratic nightmares of the various denominations of the Orthodox and Catholic faiths. No doubt, in a few years, you’ll be seeing similar things happen with the environmental loons.

    I’ve often said it, and I’ll repeat it again: Humans need something utterly irrational to “believe” in. Most of us cannot function with the space that religion and spiritualism being unfilled. If you don’t have something irrational to go in that space, nature abhorring vacuum, something will wind up filling that space. Like New-age crystal healing or some other mumbo-jumbo BS.

    It’s unfortunate for us that the traditional religions have done such a poor job of fulfilling their roles, because it’s fairly obvious that something needs to do that in society, or you wind up with the varied forms of nutters we have trying and failing to run things along the lines of their delusions. My guess is that there’s a life-cycle to such things, and that when you reach a point along the curve wherein the hypocrisy and dysfunction in the institution reaches that of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, then sh*t happens. We’re back there, again, I fear; we need another revitalization of the religious/spiritual aspects of our lives, and if we don’t get one, well… It’s gonna get spectacularly weird while belief systems audition for social mindspace.

    It would be a corollary of this that the environmental whacko types are doing just that, at the moment. So long as they keep failing in the real world, and demonstrating that they’re not actually about improving people’s lives, I suspect they’re doomed to failure. What else might be lurking out there in the underbrush of our social consciousness? No idea, but I think I’d rather be dealing with the traditionally religious rather than some random flaky cult that will take generations to calm its weirdnesses down.

    If you think I’m full of crap about this, take a look at the trajectory of the Mormon faith. It’s gone from cult to mainstream religion within historical memory, and the manner in which it has proceeded ain’t all that different than what the Orthodox or the Catholics did in their time.

    Fascinating history, if a little depressing. Too many people are willing to kill for ideas, but that’s the story of the human race. One wonders what, exactly, led to the burial of those temple/religious complexes in Turkey, like Gobekli Tepi. I’ll wager that the outline of that wasn’t too far off that of many of our current religious nutteries, Catholicism through to Gaia-worship…

  55. [Henry ford] didn’t decide no one should have their own car

    Quite the opposite. Ford Motor Company vision statement @1908. Design philosophy for the Model T. Not that he called it a “vision statement” it was just a statement of fact. .

    “I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one…”

    Ford also saved forests by cutting less wood because he used all of what he cut with little waste. He reduced air pollution by recognizing smoke as a resource, not waste. And tens of thousands of other waste reductions. Ford is my hero. He didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk

  56. My dad’s favorite Henry Ford story was that the Model T’s transmission was shipped in a crate that broke down to form the floor boards.

  58. David,

    Like I said. There’s a stunning set of similarities between your classic proselytizing vegan and the missionary Mormon. The irrational belief mechanism seems to be there in every human, it’s just that it’s expressed differently in detail. There’s apparently some dopamine reward mechanism going on, because I’ve seen the same set of behavioral responses in your typical Crossfit nut as I’ve seen in snake-handling Pentacostal fundamentalists. It’s some sort of transcendent chemical/spiritual phenomenon that certain minds are susceptible to. I’ve had these experiences, myself, but I’m apparently too analytical and self-aware to really take advantage of them and start killing people over the warm fuzzy I get when I experience those moments.

    I’d speculate that there’s a threshold level of self-awareness past which these electro-chemical moments of transendence are essentially harmless, but below which lead to all sorts of mischief. It’s about like experiencing drugs or alcohol without being aware that they’re what they are, external chemical manipulations of your mind and perspective on the world.

    I think Terry Pratchett postulated something akin to the way I’ve always looked at the world, which is the opposite of drunk: “Knurd”, he called it: “The opposite of being drunk, it is as sober as you can ever be. It strips away all the illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then, after they’ve screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again”

    There’s a reason I look at the rest of the human race side-eyed, and this is it: I’ve always tended towards this, even before I read Pratchett. Not that I’ve always managed to maintain a full state of knurdiness, but I’ve had enough flashes of it to see some things fairly clearly. The similarity between your average vegan/crossfitter/LGBTQWTFBBQ is one of those things. There’s a contiguity of faith-driven certainty there that isn’t at all coincidental. And, it’s really odd to observe the “crisis of faith” in someone who’s a fervent Crossfit enthusiast that has exercised themselves into permanent injury and rhabdomyolysis. It’s so similar to what a Mormon that goes all Jack Mormon on you does that it’s not even funny, which is why I think that both manias occupy the same mental void in all of us.

    I’ve tried to figure out what is filling my “faith hole”, but about all I can come up with for something that I take as rock-solid is my utter belief that nothing is certain, and that the whole thing is some sort of macabre cosmic joke perpetrated by forces beyond mine or anyone else’s ken… I look forward to the afterlife, because I will be entirely unsurprised to find that the whole thing is actually run by the Great Jujube of the Congo, whose last living worshipper died out during the period the Belgians ran the place. Also, won’t surprise me a bit if Belgians are thus automatically consigned to an eternity in the slime pits of the Jujube version of hell…

    Cultivate a sense of the absurd, I’ve always said: It may not explain the universe, but it’ll enable you to laugh at the whole things as you endure it.

  60. LOL… So long as it isn’t Cthulu, I’ll be able to retain some equanimity about the whole thing. The more absurdities piled on, the better.

  61. In for a penny. As a life long follower of the Buddha, I have made an attempt to make the path accessible to anyone who has an interest.

    This universe is one. Its the evolving product of a big bang, and is still that singularity, evolved. As a tiny viewpoint created by this evolving unity and elvolved to intelligence, its not surprising one might be a bit confused.

    It is the unity of existence, that you partake of, that offers you that path.

  62. }}} (With likely exceptions for certain ‘public servants’.)

    And you can rest assured that the Rich Bastards won’t suffer at all, as they WILL have ample expensive solar power on tap, despite the cost, to allow them to ignore the restrictions.

  63. }}} It is of course climate change that drives these changes across the world. Those who just don’t believe it is real, will of course call these plans crazy, and those who do, can see its too little too late.

    Oh, bovine excreta, Pengy.

    If all they cared about was AGW, then they would be pushing the forefront of inherently safe 4th gen nukes. Since said nukes are generally much much smaller, in the 100-500mW range, instead of the multi-gW range, there is the added benefit of taking power AWAY from the Big Utils as well as many other Big Businesses, such as the oil companies… which is in-line with their claimed desires, e.g., “Small is Beautiful”.

    Moreover, it also then takes further power away from the Big Oil companies, by putting more electrical support for electric cars on the road.

    But no, they push bogus “green” power to the exclusion of all other forms, as though it was even vaguely profitable to do so (German consumer bills went up by a factor of 3, almost immediately)

    No, their goal is to destroy the US economic base.

  64. }}} }}} (With likely exceptions for certain ‘public servants’.)

    }}} And you can rest assured that the Rich Bastards won’t suffer at all, as they WILL have ample expensive solar power on tap, despite the cost, to allow them to ignore the restrictions.

    …Aaaaaaand speak of the Devil…

    Obama Installing 2500 Gallon Propane Backup at Marthas Vineyard

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/06/17/president-obama-installing-2500-gallons-of-fossil-fuel-backup-at-marthas-vineyard/

  65. Well douglas adams and the myth of the star goat that drove a third of a civilization off world

  67. “If all they cared about was AGW, then they would be pushing the forefront of inherently safe 4th gen nukes.”

    This is an argument you believe?

    Well done Miguel you found it. I thought it fit better in the Classics and the Public Sphere myself.

  68. Ohbloodyhell

    Or 1st Gen nukes which have been operating safely since 1954. In shippingport PA.

    More people have drowned in ted Kennedy’s car than from nuclear power in the US.

    Only a few more, 5, worldwide.

    I do agree with you about modular Gen 4 nukes. Better, more efficient cheaper. But nuclear power has been safe since inception.

  70. Nuclear power in the us is expensive because of regulatory capture.

    Utility companies are guaranteed a specific rate of return. Say 10% on approved costs.

    So if you are the utility building a 1gw plant, nuclear or other, do you triy to do it for$1bn returning $100mm per year.

    Or do you try to goose the cost to $2bn,returning $200mm?

    And you do this by going to the regulator and saying “SAFETY!! requires that we use gold plated piping” and bingo, as soon as you say safety, they ask “are you sure 18k gold is OK? Why take a chance? Go for 24kplating”

    Much more complex than this. Like the Schleswig-Holstein war, only 3 people have ever fully understood it. 2 are dead and the other went mad.

    Modular, standardized design will go a long way to ending this racket.

  71. Cleanliness requires cheap energy. If hotels charge by the drop of water or photon of light, heat, & air conditioning, they will soon find themselves renting slums.

  72. Sanitation is what makes cities possible. Imagine New York or L.A. and the number of trucks it would take just to haul the night soil. As was, the advent of the automobile is what saved cities from becoming an insurmountable pile of horse manure. Imagine a high rise with all the toilets on the ground floor or the job of cleaning the latrines. This is what tells you that China is still a third world country if you get away from the big cities, open and semi-open latrines everywhere.

  73. We built more than 50 nuclear reactors at what is now Idaho National Laboratory in little over a decade in the 50’s and 60’s. Two of them were breeder reactors. Now it’s virtually impossible to build even one in this country, The only one now under construction in Georgia is projected to cost $30 billion. It, and all the others currently in operation in this country are conventional designs, grossly wasteful of their nuclear fuel. Terrapower has high hopes for a more rational design to be built in Wyoming, currently scheduled to come online in 2028. Good luck with that. They’ll be lucky if they’re halfway through the NRC’s regulatory process by then. We’re apparently incapable of building new oil refineries as well. It’s an open question how long it will take before this fossilization of our ability to bring major new facilities of any kind online will finally reduce the supply of goods and services that have kept us fat, dumb and happy for so long to levels below the national pain threshold. Of course, at the moment it’s still feasible to simply print paper money and hand it out to other countries in exchange for the stuff we need. We’ve been doing that for decades now. Maybe we’ll be able to keep doing it forever. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

  74. The population of South FL has ~ tripled since the ’80s. The local power company has a nuke plant near Miami. Thank God. Around the time they built the plant, circa 50 years ago, they got permission to add a second reactor which they are installing now. Thank God they already have permission. The local greens hate the power company (with some reason but what’s the alternative? they don’t have one). They oppose the second reactor. They oppose all other kinds of power plants as well. They opposed all plans to build additional power lines to bring electricity from the new reactor to local homes and businesses (happily, the state govt worked out a reasonable compromise to run power lines down the middle of a major road). The greens offer no alternatives for power generation except, of course, solar and wind, and I’m guessing that even if those technologies could somehow provide enough power the greens would oppose building sufficient numbers of solar panels and windmills, for obvious reasons. Meanwhile people keep moving here and they all expect plentiful, cheap electricity to charge their Teslas and keep their many ACs and computers, and of course the street lights and hospitals and other municipal services, running.

  75. The Greens want you and yours dead, ideally. Their worldview is a planet empty of people; that’s their fantasy.

    Not really sure how you square that circle, but that’s the way it is. They have a lot in common with the nutters who were fairly common during the early Christian Church, and probably before–The early ascetic millenarians were something else, setting up small communities just like the communitarian idiots such as the Shakers, and then dying out from not breeding. You can find Roman commentary discussing the issue, saying that it wasn’t a major worry, in that the nutters weren’t exactly breeding and would die out in a generation or two.

    Same mentality. I suspect someone will see the parallels in the future, and write many a learned paper on the idiocy.

  76. In case anyone’s not paying attention, yesterday loony lefties continued to “protest” at Supreme Court justices’ houses, which is completely and totally illegal, with zero repercussions, and the FBI seized the phones of the head of the Nevada GOP.
    And of course the GOPe says and does nothing, except go along with “gun control” so the Dems won’t say mean things about them anymore.
    Tick tock, GOPe, you don’t know what time it is…

  77. Kirk..: I suspect someone will see the parallels in the future, and write many a learned paper on the idiocy.:

    Already a pretty good analysis of this, in Claire Berlinski’s 2006 book ‘Menace in Europe’. From my review:
    ***
    One of the book’s most interesting chapters is centered around the French farmer and anti-globalization leader Jose Bove, whose philosophy Berlinski summarizes as “crop worship””¦.”European men and women still confront the same existential questions, the same suffering as everyone who has ever been born. They are suspicious now of the Church and of grand political ideologies, but they nonetheless yearn for the transcendent. And so they worship other things–crops, for example, which certain Europeans, like certain tribal animists, have come to regard with superstitious awe.”

    The title of this chapter is “Black-Market Religion: The Nine Lives of Jose Bove,” and Berlinski sees the current Jose Bove as merely one in a long line of historical figures who hawked similar ideologies. They range from a man of unknown name born in Bourges circa AD 560, to Talchem of Antwerp in 1112, through Hans the Piper of Niklashausen in the late 1400s, and on to the “dreamy, gentle, and lunatic Cathars” of Languedoc and finally to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Berlinski sees all these people as being basically Christian heretics, with multiple factors in common. They tend appeal to those whose status or economic position is threatened, and to link the economic anxieties of their followers with spiritual ones. Quite a few of them have been hermits at some stage in their lives. Most of them have been strongly anti-Semitic. And many of the “Boves” have been concerned deeply with purity”¦Bove coined the neologism malbouffe, which according to Google Translate means “junk food,” but Berlinski says that translation “does not capture the full horror of bad bouffe, with its intimation of contamination, pollution, poison.” She observes that “the passionate terror of malbouffe–well founded or not–is also no accident; it recalls the fanatic religious and ritualistic search for purity of the Middle Ages, ethnic purity included. The fear of poisoning was widespread among the millenarians”¦”
    ***
    I don’t understand Claire’s political thinking in recent years, but ‘Menace in Europe’ contains a lot of very perceptive thoughts.

    See also this piece on environmentalist ritualism as a means of coping with anxiety and perceived disorder.

    https://reason.com/2014/08/22/environmentalism-and-the-fear-of-disorde/

  78. “I don’t understand Claire’s political thinking in recent years”
    That’s just code for “Trump melted her brain” isn’t it?

  80. well the fair claire, was party to the grapevine campaign against anwar ibrahim, directed by malathir mohammed, plus she had an aversion to palin, so preexisting condition, her first two novels were good, the first one she was South Asian languages CIA recruit, the second was a roman a clef, with herself as a character in paris,
    but when it comes to those who challenge prog orthodox shes decidedly goldie locks,

  82. RE: Claire Berlinski…

    One of the really annoying things about the Euros, when you talk to them about how “weird” the US is with its varied and sundry little manias and general madness? It’s how blind they are to their own little issues like this guy Bove, and the entire cultural matrix surrounding him. OK, I don’t like McDonalds much, either, but… Why doesn’t your mindset go towards saying “Hey, I can do food better…” and then build up your own restaurant chain to compete with them and offer an alternative? Why the hell does Bove go to this crazed “Imma gonna burn it all down!!!” as his path forward?

    I dunno if anyone has ever heard that old joke about the guy who went bear-hunting, and wound up being raped by the bear 3 years running, but the punch line is the bear sidling up to him and asking “You’re not here for the hunting, are you?”

    That’s the question I’d like to ask the various Boves of the world, and yes, yes we do have many of our own: “You’re not here because you hate the food, are you?” I think it’s a lot more about the frisson of delight these types get from being transgressive and “fighting the Man” more than it is the causes they espouse.

    In my observation, there are a lot of people out there who do things because they’re “putting it to the Man”, rather than because they’re really into their little “cause du jour”. I know a lot of gay/lesbian types whose sexuality never, ever comes up, and whose personal choice in sex partners left me a little surprised, since they never mentioned it. Usually, with the LGBTWTFBBQ types, there’s no doubt about their sexuality, because they’re just like vegans or CrossFitters–They’ll tell you all about it within moments of meeting them. These are the sort I suspect are doing it all for effect, and they get off rather more on the transgression than the fact they’re boinking someone of the same sex. Which leads one to wonder just how their partners feel about it, if they’re not similarly transgressive. I mean, how would one compete with that mindset, when the partner is more in love with pissing off the world than with you…?

    I knew a guy who was gay, and observed him interacting with another putatively gay male, and the conversation went about like this “No, I’m not interested in you, because you’re more interested in pissing off mommy and daddy than you are in me…”

    There’s are reasons I think there is a lot of undiagnosed mental illness on the part of many on the left, and this is one of them.

  83. yes it’s a pet peeve, when it graduates to vandalism it’s a problem, who was that idiot that was all about super sizing burgers, teh horror, and other mooks, I like my burgers standard size, that’s large enough, but its a choice, but it’s not about health, it’s about the arrogance that we have a choice, so food must be scarce,

  84. They’ve got “oppositional-defiant disorder” in the catalog of mental dysfunctions, but I think they need to add “insistent obedience disorder” in there… Some people just have to tell other people how to live their lives, and without the joy and the endorphin hit they get from successfully imposing their will on others, they’re lost and bereft.

  85. “Some people just have to tell other people how to live their lives, and without the joy and the endorphin hit they get from successfully imposing their will on others, they’re lost and bereft.”
    Yeah, they’re called politicians.
    I remember a few decades ago hearing David Brin say that we should test all politicians for psychopathic tendencies, to try to weed out the pathological cases from the ones who actually want to help people.
    I forgot about him for a long time until reading a few things from him a couple years back, and was sad to see that hatred for Donald Trump had completely destroyed his brain. Oh well.

    As for more violent “activists”, it is beyond clear now that antifa is simply a part of the federal government. They’ll be brought out again under the next GOP president to serve their purpose of making the normies feel like things are all falling apart, until and unless the FBI is ripped to pieces and scattered to the winds.

  86. The problem is that almost all of your more effective leaders at anything are usually somewhere well along the spectrum between “normal” and “sociopathic/psychopathic”.

    Reasonable people who have self-doubts and are self-aware? They generally a.) do not want leadership roles, knowing that it basically means their decisions are going to hurt people they care about, and b.) want nothing to do with all the games we make necessary to attain those leadership positions. Which, of course, are made necessary by all the other sociopaths/psychopaths who’re already in those positions…

    It’s a vicious, self-selecting circle. My reference for who I want running things? It’s the guy edging towards the door when the decisions are being made about who is going to have their names on the blame line… ‘Cos, sure as sh*t, if the dude is up in front, begging for the job? He’s the last guy you want in charge. Of anything.

    You have to be able to project a certain assurance and certainty of your convictions in order to even become a leader. Most of the people who can do that are lying their asses off to themselves and everyone else. What’s really unfortunate is that our subconscious usually programs us to take the outward signs of this assurance as indicators that we should trust and follow the guy demonstrating them, while that is often exactly the wrong thing to do.

  87. If I recall correctly, Brin’s idea was that you see who gets a massive endorphin rush from being up on stage in front of an applauding audience. They’re the ones you want to keep as far from power as possible. Probably best to take them out back and get rid of them. The ones who feel awkward, nervous, etc., or even just plain normal, are the ones you want to allow to run things (with some tests for competency, of course)…

  88. I’m not sure that would be where I’d put the discrimination point. Adulation and admiration can be endorphin triggers for decent people who just like the attention. Some performers come to mind…

    I’d set it a lot lower, personally… Figure out some way of observing the things that trigger endorphin release, and then watch what happens when these asshole types are put into certain situations. If they get endorphins whenever they successfully bully and dominate someone, like a checkout clerk or a waitress…? Also, set up a situation where they have the opportunity to pull a low-level swindle or subterfuge, and they get off on that?

    Bang, right in the back of the head, no trial. No exceptions.

  89. “I don’t understand Claire’s political thinking in recent years”

    I do. I read her for years before Trump.

    She’s an idiot.

  90. The local greens hate the power company…

    I’d just like to note yet again that unless the greens are defeated civilization will not survive, at least in the West.

    They oppose essentially every sort of development- new power plants, new dams, new desalination plants, new power lines, steel mills, etc- all thanks to their an insane dirt-worshipping religion.

    But it’s worse, because for all practical purposes these fanatics have somehow obtained the power to actually put their insane ideas into practice.

    It’s as if the Shakers were able to force everyone to stop reproducing and make furniture. Foreign archaeologists would eventually find nice hand-made chairs, but no Americans.

    Again: These maniacs need to be crushed and their power to destroy the US economy needs to be taken away from them, forever and all time.

  93. The activist greens are watermelons, commies on the inside with an environmental veneer to appeal to suburbanites, but commies all the same.

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