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I agree with Bill gates ''going to Mars is a waste of money'';;
[Partial disclosure; i did get a lot of my earth childhood rocks + minerals collection.
But if Mr Musk strikes oil on Mars + figures out away to pump it cheap, OK by me
]
Signs of Ford Collapse
- Thread starter VicBee
- Start date
I agree with Bill gates ''going to Mars is a waste of money'';;
[Partial disclosure; i did get a lot of my earth childhood rocks + minerals collection.
But if Mr Musk strikes oil on Mars + figures out away to pump it cheap, OK by me
]
and how, pray tell, will he pump hydrocarbons off a planet that's never held life?%%
I agree with Bill gates ''going to Mars is a waste of money'';;
[Partial disclosure; i did get a lot of my earth childhood rocks + minerals collection.
But if Mr Musk strikes oil on Mars + figures out away to pump it cheap, OK by me
%%
I dont even know he became a billionare off EVs;
but it seems he has better than average discretion
''ESG, the s = satanic '', Mr Musk noted.
Saturn has hydrocarbons pools on it;
i have no idea what kind of life Saturn has, but looks like God has plenty of hydrocarbons in the universe, a lot more than the peak oil boys ever predicted
First blast a fack-load of fat azz bovines there.
"Is there any such thing as a demonstration project on any scale — small, medium, or large — to vindicate these claims that such a future system would be “low cost”? Absolutely not. I would say that everybody with even half a brain knows that Jacobson is a charlatan. But then we have our President, not to mention the entire federal bureaucracy backed by trillions of dollars of annual taxpayer largesse, buying into his nonsense.(The Daily Upside)
ENERGY
America’s Push for EVs Could Leave the Power Grid Feeling Drained
(Photo Credit: Matthew Henry/Unsplash)
Electric vehicles existed in the early 1900s, believe it or not — there were more than 4,000 of them — but they were not built for highways, which of course didn’t exist back then. So if you lost power 10 miles outside of town, you had to get ready to do some pushing.
And while the US is now outfitted with tens of thousands of charging stations, the 21st Century proliferation of EVs could be too much for our national grid if adoption rates continue at their current pace, according to The Wall Street Journal.
So either infrastructure needs to adapt, or we need to remember how to push.
Need More Power
EVs are all the rage today and appear to be the wave of the future, but they began life in the mid-1800s, right around the same time cars with combustion engines debuted. Despite being quieter, having better handling, and not requiring a hand crank to start the dang thing, EVs lagged behind gas-powered cars for the same reason they struggle today: America’s power grid just wasn’t, well, powerful enough. Will the grid become a choke point yet again as EVs look to take over?
Multiple brands like Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo plan to be EV-only in roughly the next decade. Ford recently jumped into a war with Tesla and slashed prices for its new Mustang Mach-E. And last week, amid the White House’s aggressive push for greener transportation, the US Department of the Treasury rewrote the rules for EV tax breaks, allowing even more vehicles to be eligible for government subsidies.
Car makers and DC could have bitten off more than the country’s energy sector can chew:
• EVs currently make up about 7% of cars on the road in the US, but that could increase to a third or even half of all light vehicles sold annually, according to the WSJ. The good news is that right now, EVs really don’t consume all that much energy. A study by the Argonne National Laboratory, found that the roughly 2.1 million EVs on the road in 2021 accounted for less than a percent of electricity consumption.
• While many energy experts believe the US’s power grid will be up to the task, it will require a lot of money. Charging a vehicle at home is not like turning on a light or plugging in a phone. You need a huge boost in electrical-transmitting capacity at the local level. Power industries nationwide might need to spend $10 billion through 2030 updating their infrastructure to charge all the new EVs, Thomas Baker of Boston Consulting Group told the WSJ.
Some parts of the country are already hitting speed bumps. Last September, California asked residents to not charge their cars in the evening during a heat wave. That might be the plan for the foreseeable future in some areas — charging at only certain hours of the day.
Give a Little, Get a Little: In Michigan, DTE Energy has a pilot program where the power company can pause charging during hours of high demand. Duke Energy and Pacific Gas & Electric are testing a method where EVs can actually add energy to the power grid, and then drivers get it back when the demand has eased. While it’s already hard enough to keep road rage under control, get ready to start shouting “Serenity Now” before you’ve even left the driveway.
-Griffin Kelly
Nobody would be happier than me to see a demonstration project built that showed that wind and solar could provide reliable electricity at low cost. Unfortunately, I know too much about the subject to think that that is likely, or even remotely possible."
We Must Demand a Demonstration Project of a Mainly Renewables-Based Electrical Grid
2 hours ago
Guest Blogger
23 Comments
From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN
Francis Menton
Could anybody possibly be stupid enough to believe the line that wind and solar generators can provide reliable electricity to consumers that is cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels? It takes hardly any thought about the matter to realize that wind and solar don’t work when it is calm and dark, as it often is, and particularly so in the winter, when it is also generally cold. Thus a wind/solar electricity system needs full backup, or alternatively storage — things that add to and multiply costs. Surely, our political leaders and top energy gurus are fully aware of these things, and would not try to mislead the public about the cost of electricity from a predominantly wind/solar system.
If you think that, you must have missed the State of the Union Address yesterday. Nor is Presdident Biden alone in peddling the preposterous fantasy of cheap electricity from the wind and sun The internet is filled with seemingly authoritative voices asserting with complete confidence that wind and solar generators are the answer to providing consumers with cheaper electricity.
No amount of pointing to the failed experiments of places like Germany, the UK and California seems to get any traction. We need to demand a working demonstration project of a fully wind/solar system so that the full costs can be shown for all to see.
So there was President Biden last night talking about his great green energy plans.
Look, the Inflation Reduction Act is also the most significant investment ever to tackle the climate crisis. Lowering utility bills, creating American jobs, and leading the world to a clean energy future.
It’s so spectacularly contrary to reality that it doesn’t nearly do it justice to call it just a “lie.” In Germany and the UK, energy transition fantasies have led to electricity bills three times and more the U.S. average, and continuing to increase, and millions of ratepayers thrown into energy poverty. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the costs explode. They can build thousands of wind turbines and solar panels, but they can’t get rid of any of the dispatchable power plants because they are all needed for backup. So now they are paying for two duplicative systems. Then they must pay the dispatchable plants enough to cover their capital costs at half time usage. Then they must buy the fossil fuels for backup on spot markets where production has been suppressed by, for example, banning fracking.
But as I said, it’s not just President Biden who is too dumb to figure this out. Consider Mark Z. Jacobson, Professor at Stanford and tireless promoter of his WWS (water, wind and solar) system as the “low cost” way of the future. No amount of debunking of Jacobson’s models can keep him from endlessly repeating the same ridiculous claims. He got another shot just yesterday in the Guardian, headline “We don’t need ‘miracle’ technologies to fix the climate. We have the tools now”:
Wind, water and solar energy is cheap, effective and green. We don’t need experimental or risky energy sources to save our planet.
Jacobson goes on with endless mumbo jumbo about how his fantasy system can deliver electricity at low cost. Excerpt:
When combined with electricity storage, heat storage, cold storage and hydrogen storage; techniques to encourage people to shift the time of their electricity use (demand response); a well-interconnected electrical transmission system; and nifty and efficient electrical appliances, such as heat pumps, induction cooktops, electric vehicles and electric furnaces for industry, WWS can solve the ginormous problems associated with climate change at low cost worldwide.
Is there any such thing as a demonstration project on any scale — small, medium, or large — to vindicate these claims that such a future system would be “low cost”? Absolutely not. I would say that everybody with even half a brain knows that Jacobson is a charlatan. But then we have our President, not to mention the entire federal bureaucracy backed by trillions of dollars of annual taxpayer largesse, buying into his nonsense.
Nobody would be happier than me to see a demonstration project built that showed that wind and solar could provide reliable electricity at low cost. Unfortunately, I know too much about the subject to think that that is likely, or even remotely possible.
For the full article click here.
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Good, thoughtful points;
even though frankly wind power is real killer on birds+ song birds .
Henry Ford knew how to cut a loss; + never kept overloading Ford dealers with the Edsel
,EVs maybe a good idea for crowded cities + fossil fuel industry; takes plenty of fossil fuels to charge batteries + mine the metals + minerals.
let me correct (as I knew there was methane out in the universe but was lazy to make the case); how pray tell will he pump crude where there's never been life?%%
I dont even know he became a billionare off EVs;
but it seems he has better than average discretion
''ESG, the s = satanic '', Mr Musk noted.
Saturn has hydrocarbons pools on it;
i have no idea what kind of life Saturn has, but looks like God has plenty of hydrocarbons in the universe, a lot more than the peak oil boys ever predicted
This morning's price movement is wild.
My option strike prices have all moved
and the values are all listed at 0.
Huh?
My option strike prices have all moved
and the values are all listed at 0.
Huh?
permitting and environmental impacts are not a union thing though? What, you think a company gets a pass on regulation if they claim to be saving the planet?