Environment

Behind the Banking Crisis.

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I want to recommend a good piece at Conservative Tree House, which I read every day.

It is this post which connects a few dots.

This is where we need to keep the BRICS -vs- WEF dynamic in mind and consider that ideologically there is a conflict between the current agenda of the ‘western financial system’ (climate change) and the traditional energy developers. This conflict has been playing out not only in the energy sector, but also the dynamic of support for Russia (an OPEC+ member) against the western sanction regime. Ultimately supporting Russia’s battle against NATO encroachments.

The war in Ukraine, which probably would not have begun if Trump was president, led to a war of economic interests. The western democracies have invested their future in “climate change,” which used to be “global warming” before the failure to warm made that slogan obsolete. Climate change has evolved into a war on energy production. The Biden regime now has even gone after gas stoves. Since I just bought one, I have an interest. Now, they seem to be going after washing machines. Ours has failed recently so I had better be quick to replace it.

The recent Credit Suisse bank crisis is complicated by the refusal of its largest shareholder, the Saudis, to help with a bail out. Why would this be ? This brings up the topic of BRICS. This is a new financial combination made up of Russia, China, Brazil, India and South Africa.

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The Hard “Nope”

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It was a post at Bookroom Room that led me to jump aboard this particular train of thought that most of us have certain concepts embedded in us so firmly that absolutely nothing will ever get us to violate them. As Bookworm put it, “Because as I’ve contended for years, every person has one absolute truth. It’s the one thing they know to their bones is true and the world must align with that truth … For my mother, who would have been a fashionista if she’d had the money, style and beauty were her truths. She sucked up all the lies about Barack and Michelle Obama until the media talking heads said that Michelle was the most beautiful, stylish first lady ever, above and beyond even Jackie Kennedy. That ran headlong into Mom’s truth and, after that, she never again believed what the media had to say about the Obamas.”

It’s a concept worth considering our own truths, which we will stubbornly hold on to, refusing any threats or blandishments. It varies from person to person, of course. Some have only small and irrelevant truths, which are never seriously threatened, and there are those who have no real truths at all, save perhaps self-aggrandizement but even so, for some keeping to their truth is a hard struggle, deciding to hold to that truth against everything – especially if they have status or a living to make, in denying that truth.

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Nuclear News

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Some nice nuclear news, and some not-nice nuclear news.

First, the nice nuclear news–the newly-crowned Miss America, Grace Stanke, is an aspiring nuclear engineer and a promoter of nuclear power.

She is a nuclear engineering major at the University of Wisconsin, worked as a co-op at a nuclear fuels vendor (Exelon), and does promotional work for the American Nuclear Society.   Here’s a piece she wrote on breaking down misconceptions about nuclear power.

Now, on to the not-nice nuclear news.   People in 30 questions were asked how much CO2 is produced by nuclear power plants.   52% of the French answered “a lot” or “quite a lot.”   For Germans, the corresponding number was 43%.   And for Americans, the number is 54%.

Here’s the complete set of survey results–all in French, though.   If someone who understands that language well could read and comment on the document, it would be helpful.

A lot of public education and opinion change is necessary if nuclear is to fulfill its potential as an energy source.

This Seems Significant

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California regulators are considering changes to the ‘net metering’ rules, which allow owners of home solar panels to sell excess electricity back to the grid.   These changes may include a connection fee of several hundred dollars per year.

People who have rooftop solar–and who also have grid connections–usually expect the grid to be there for them, with whatever power they need, when night, clouds, etc cut their solar output to a low level. This certainly implies capital costs for the utility power generators and transmission/distribution companies.  The concern is that those who get solar when it’s available, but rely on grid power at other times, are not paying their fare share of the infrastructure’s capital costs.

As an indicator of these costs, a modern combined-cycle gas turbine plant costs about $970 per peak kilowatt..  So a simplistic analysis would suggest that if a homeowner has a peak demand of 10 kw, he is driving $9700 in capital costs for the grid.  This is probably somewhat excessive, since everyone’s peaks won’t occur at exactly the same moment…but the number is not trivial.  A lot of assumptions would need to go into estimating a ‘correct’ cost, and those assumptions will surely be argued about fervently in California in the near future.

Key question: Could this be a turning point leading to a more realistic understanding of wind/solar costs in situations where reliable electricity is important, as opposed to the simplistic narratives about wind/solar’s ‘cheapness’?  I mean, if even California is seeing a need to do something that would surely slow the uptake of ‘renewable’ energy…

Sources:

Zero Hedge

Reuters

 

 

The Political Economy of Environmentalism

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“People, like any creature with no natural predator, will continue to spread beyond the capacity of their environment.”

Should I live to 80, the global population will have increased fourfold in my lifetime, more than double the population when the Club of Rome called for zero growth in 1972. For the average non environmental scientist, it is easier to divide the environment into the original Greek elements: fire, water, earth and air. Fires are currently raging, considered (unscientifically) as evidence of “global warming,” modified to “climate change” when the planet started cooling. Land use is also a serious global problem as the run-off into rivers and oceans is unbounded.

People respond to visual cues: when the Cuyahoga River  burned in downtown Cleveland for weeks, America cleaned up its rivers. When scientists vividly described a hole in the ozone layer, consumers replaced chlorofluorocarbons in cars and refrigerators in 1987 as part of the  Montreal Protocol.

Unlike the Cuyahoga River fire, environmentalism today is rather like the US debt, another intergenerational transfer that also reflects human nature. Current sacrifices can potentially reduce the projected magnitude of sacrifices forced upon future generations, but some economists argue based on UN income forecasts that future generations will be so wealthy  that the high costs we would bear today will be relatively painless in the future, the environmental equivalent of “growing out of the debt problem.”

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