RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/the_real_cost_of_wind_and_solar.html

The entire renewable electricity industry is actually a government boondoggle

The main problem with either wind or solar is that they generate electricity erratically, depending on the wind or sunshine. In contrast, a fossil-fuel plant can generate electricity predictably upon request. Blackouts are very expensive for society, so grid operators and designers go to a lot of trouble to make sure that blackouts are rare. The electrical grid should have spare capacity sufficient to meet the largest demand peaks even when some plants are out of commission.  Plants in spinning reserve status stand by ready to take over if a plant trips (breaks down). Injecting erratic electricity into the grid means that other plants have to seesaw output to balance the ups and downs of wind or solar.

Adding wind or solar to a grid does not mean that existing fossil fuel plants can be retired. Often, neither wind nor solar is working and at those times a full complement of fossil fuel plants, or sometimes nuclear or hydro plants, must be available. Both wind and solar have pronounced seasonality. During low output times, as for summer wind, the fossil-fuel plants are carrying more of the load. Of course, solar stops working as the sun sets.

Wind behaves erratically hour to hour. Even though the Texas 18,000-megawatt system has thousands of turbines spread over a wide area, the net output is erratic changing by thousands of megawatts in a single hour. These shifts must be balanced by fossil-fuel plants slewing their output up and down to compensate and keep load matched to generation.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/trump_is_right_science_doesnt_know_the_problem_is_that_supposed_journalists_dont_care.html

Here are some facts that most of the media, scientists, entertainers, and other Democrats choose to ignore as they indoctrinate the public, especially the children about ‘science’: 

Environmentalists and politicians have mismanaged forests for decades in California and elsewhere. They won’t clear cut, clear out brush and leaves, allow logging or build in firebreaks. It leaves the area much more vulnerable to heat, lightning, wind, accidental or intentional fires to combust wildly. The fires are clearly not caused by oil use.

The Earth has had many lengthy warming and cooling periods throughout its history, long before humans and oil use could have had any effect.

Floods, storms, and droughts have been extensive throughout the Earth’s history. How else would it be covered by so many deserts and so many deep seas?

The English Channel was formed around 400,000 years ago because of massive floods.

The Sahara Desert used to be lush and green before it became a desert around 9,000 years ago. It has essentially been in a 9,000-year drought.

California has had decades long severe droughts before man or petroleum use could have had any effect. That is why it is covered by so much desert.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=416f8107a0

Back at the beginning of the Trump administration in January 2017, it was all the rage for media on the left to accuse Trump and his people of being “anti-science.” I compiled a collection of such accusations in a post on January 27 of that year, using the title “Who Again Is ‘Anti-Science’?” Among those I cited as making the accusation was the venerable magazine Scientific American, which had published a piece on January 18, 2017 with the title “Trump’s 5 Most Anti-Science Moves.”

If you look at that 2017 Scientific American piece, or the other articles that I cited in my post, you will see that those commenters are conceiving of “science” not as a special methodology, but rather as something more like: “science is what people who call themselves scientists do.” The basic complaint of the commenters was that Trump was “anti-science” because he was listening to or appointing people who disagreed with — or worse, sought to de-fund — functionaries in the government who called themselves scientists.

I have a different definition of the term “science.” Here’s my definition: “Science is a process for understanding reality through using experiment or data to attempt to falsify falsifiable hypotheses.” Those are my words, but I have tried there to capture the gist of the classic conception of the scientific method articulated by philosopher Karl Popper. For a somewhat longer articulation of the same thing, here is an excerpt discussing Popper’s principles from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. When theories are falsified by such observations, scientists can respond by revising the theory, or by rejecting the theory in favor of a rival . . . In either case, however, this process must aim at the production of new, falsifiable predictions. . . . [Popper] holds that scientific practice is characterized by its continual effort to test theories against experience and make revisions based on the outcomes of these tests.  By contrast, theories that are permanently immunized from falsification by the introduction of untestable ad hoc hypotheses can no longer be classified as scientific.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/09/environmentalists-destroyed-californias-

The catastrophic fires that have immolated millions of acres of forests in the Golden State were preventable, and for decades, everyone knew what had to be done.

Millions of acres of California forest have been blackened by wildfires this summer, leading to the usual angry denunciations from the usual quarters about climate change. But in 1999, the Associated Press reported that forestry experts had long agreed that “clearing undergrowth would save trees,” and that “years of aggressive firefighting have allowed brush to flourish that would have been cleared away by wildfires.” But very little was done. And now fires of unprecedented size are raging across the Western United States.

“Sen. Feinstein blames Sierra Club for blocking wildfire bill,” reads the provocative headline on a 2002 story in California’s Napa Valley Register. Feinstein had brokered a congressional consensus on legislation to thin “overstocked” forests close to homes and communities, but could not overcome the environmental lobby’s disagreement over expediting the permit process to thin forests everywhere else.

Year after year, environmentalists litigated and lobbied to stop efforts to clear the forests through timber harvesting, underbrush removal, and controlled burns. Meanwhile, natural fires were suppressed and the forests became more and more overgrown. The excessive biomass competed for the same water, soil, and light a healthier forest would have used, rendering all of the trees and underbrush unhealthy. It wasn’t just excess biomass that accumulated, but dried out and dead biomass.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/09/will-americas-return-to-nuclear-power-kill-the-dems-green-new-deal-lets-hope-so/

While the media focus on the chaos in American cities and the COVID-19 shutdowns, you might have missed this good news on the energy front: The federal government just approved a new, smaller, safer nuclear power plant design, putting nuclear back on the nation’s menu of energy choices.

It might not seem like much, but until this decade, the last nuclear power plant built in the U.S. was 1977. Today, there are an estimated 96 nuclear power plants producing 20% of all our electricity and half of our non-carbon-based power.

If that sounds impressive, consider this: As recently as the 1990s, we had 116 nuclear plants. Utilities, tired of the non-stop trouble of justifying a perpetual source of clean, CO2-free energy to radical green groups and burdened by enormous regulatory costs, have been decommissioning older plants.

But late last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a new plan for what’s called a “small modular reactor,” or SMR, designed by Portland-based NuScale Power.

Small, yes, but cheaper and safer, too. And it may be an avatar for an avalanche of new nuclear technologies in the works, including thorium and molten-salt reactors that use spent fuel, which will further cut costs and decrease reliance on fossil fuels.

Some of these are well beyond the drafting board stage.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/while_california_chases_climate_change_chimeras_danger_looms.html

California has been in the headlines a lot lately. In the first half of the year, it hogged headlines because Governor Newsom imposed some of America’s most draconian lockdown rules on Californians (although they naturally didn’t apply to protests). While these headlines applied equally to other Democrat-run states, California blazed a new trail in August, when a heatwave caused the state to have rolling blackouts, followed by raging fires.

What was significant about both the blackouts and the fires was that they could have been prevented. Both resulted from California’s obsession with climate change and mindless environmentalism. Now, though, it appears that California is also due for an imminent apocalyptic flood. California can work to save itself, but it’s spending money in all the wrong places.

Although the media were excited about an allegedly record-breaking heatwave this August, the reality is that California has meltingly-hot heatwaves at least twice a year. To the extent some years are hotter than others, the temperatures differ by the single digits.

What made this year different was that the power grid failed over large parts of California. The grid didn’t fail, though, because the heat was too great. It failed because Pacific Gas & Electric company, a California public utility, has bowed to the climate change fanatics and put all of its energies into renewables. Even Governor Newsom had to concede that, when people needed A/C, solar energy failed.