California’s energy policies are using its population as sacrificial lambs
California is obsessed with the concept that JUST electricity from wind turbines and solar panels can replace fossil fuels. All the policymakers of the State are oblivious to the reality that wind and solar can ONLY generate “electricity”, as they CANNOT make any products for society.
Energy literacy starts with the knowledge that crude oil is the basis of our materialistic society. Conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just “ELECTRICITY” from renewables, and the “PRODUCTS” that are the basis of society’s materialistic world. All the parts for wind turbines and solar panels are themselves MADE from oil derivatives, and only generate occasional electricity from favorable weather conditions but manufacture NOTHING for society.
California remains intent on following Germany’s “green” Energiewende” plan that has German consumers paying the highest electricity prices in the world. The California population of 39 million represents only about 0.5% of the world’s population of 8 billion. The other 99.5% are mostly in poorer developing countries with miniscule environmental policies to limit their emissions.
Germans have been forced to come to grips with the sober electricity of its Green Revolution that has made their electricity prices among the world’s highest, so it’s no wonder that the country’s economy is hemorrhaging economically, and companies are shutting down and moving out.
Since all hospitals, airports, communication systems, militaries, planes, trains, and vehicles are based on the products that did not exist before the 1800’s, that are now made from fossil fuels, Governor Newsom will not discuss his plan to support a supply chain of the products and fuels demanded by today’s materialistic society and economy, as America reduces its dependency on crude oil.
Governor Newsom will never discuss how to maintain the supply chain of cost-effective PRODUCTS that are essential to the materialistic demands for human flourishing.
California policymakers pursuing net-zero emissions are oblivious to the reality that wind turbines and solar panels do different things than crude oil, thus Mandatory Emissions To Achieve Net-Zero Is A Fool’s Game.
Latinos make up about half of Californians living in poverty, despite being less than 40% of the population. By comparison, about 10% of white Californians live in poverty.
For the growing poverty of the State of California, a State that only represents 0.5% of the world’s population, California continues to demand that its residence continue to “pay” for green policies to set an example for the 99.5% of the world’s 8 billion that do NOT live in California.
Affordable and reliable electricity is of major importance to the poor, because they spend the largest percentage of their income on electricity and fuels and are harmed the most by high energy prices.
Green policies are the primary cause for the escalating California electricity and fuel prices.
The San Onfre Nuclear Generating Station closed I 2013, that was also providing continuous uninterruptible electricity.
Today, California imports more electricity than any other US state, more than twice the amount of Virginia, the second largest importer of electricity. California typically receives between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply from outside of the state.
Electricity prices have increased more than 98% over the last 15 years.
The Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the state’s last nuclear plant, that also provides continuous uninterruptible electricity has been scheduled for closure.
Newsom, by continually decreasing in-state oil production, continues to force California, the 4th largest economy in the world, to be the only state in contiguous America that imports most of its crude oil feedstock to refineries from foreign countries.
That dependence, via maritime transportation from foreign nations for the state’s crude oil energy demands, has increased imported crude oil from 5 percent in 1992 to almost 60 percent today of total consumption.
NATURAL GAS:
Prices are high because the state has long discouraged local production (like the States’ success at discouraging oil production), importing more than 90% of its natural gas from other states. There is also a shortage of natural gas storage facilities.
With the average debt in this country greater than $100,000 per person (across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans and student loans), and with more than half of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, society is facing an unsustainable problem where those “financially challenged” will never pay off their continuously increasing debt.
Many have no retirement savings, as a graying America is worrying more and more about how to make ends meet. Everyday expenses and housing costs, including rent and mortgage payments, are the biggest reasons why people are unable to save for retirement. Thus, with the loss of just one paycheck, there are many millions of people on the verge of joining the growing homeless population.
California is already home to more than 180,000 homeless people. With the average person in heavy debt and unable to save for retirement, California leaders refuse to forecast how fast the States’ homeless population is expected to GROW and its impact on businesses and the economy.
When we look outside California and the few wealthy countries, we see that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than six billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity, politicians are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity. Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21st century. We should not take energy for granted. The financially stable folks within the wealthy countries may be able to bear expensive electricity and fuels, but not by those that can least afford living in “energy poverty.”
California, desperately need dependable, affordable electricity AND THE PRODUCTS AND FUELS MANUFACTURED FROM FOSSIL FUELS to create jobs, lift families out of poverty, modernize homes, schools, and hospitals, provide clean water, and replace wood and animal dung for cooking and heating.
Even today, millions of parents and children in poorer developing countries die from respiratory and intestinal diseases that are unheard of in wealthy countries, because they don’t have electricity nor any of the 6,000 products made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
Like Germany, the “Greener” California gets, the bloodier its economy becomes as the “green” polices are the primary cause for the escalating cost of electricity and the escalating cost for the products and fuels from crude oil. Costly California looms as an example of poor energy policy with the states’ population being used like sacrificial lambs to set an example for the 99.5% of the world’s 8 billion that do NOT live in California
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New study confirms GWPF reports on declining climate disasters
A new scientific study has confirmed what GWPF reports and statements have emphasised for some time: Natural and climate-related disasters have been declining rather than increasing during the 21st century.
For years, international agencies such as the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Red Cross (IFRC) have been issuing reports claiming that climate-related disasters are currently escalating (Weather, climate disasters surge fivefold in 50 years, says UN report).
For years, the GWPF has been pointing out that such claims are wrong and contradicted by empirical data. The UN agencies’ misleading claims arise from a failure to account for the major increase in disaster reporting engendered by the arrival of new technologies since the 1970s.
Not only has the annual number of climate-related disasters trended downwards over the last 20+ years.
The number of people killed by natural and climate-related disasters has also been falling steadily over the past 120 years.
Source: Alimonti & Mariani (2024)
In a new study, analysing temporal trends in the number of natural disasters reported since 1900, two Italian scientists confirm that the 21st century has seen “a decreasing trend to 2022” which is “characterized by a significant decline in number of [disaster] events…"
Source: Alimonti & Mariani (2024)
"The statement that we are facing an increasing trend of natural disasters, as claimed in the three official reports by UNDRR and FAO on the basis of the same EM-DAT dataset […] are not supported by data” (Gianluca Alimonti & Luigi Mariani (2024) Environmental Hazards, 23:2, 186-202).
The authors emphasise that the empirical data “sits in marked contradiction to earlier analyses by two UN bodies (FAO and UNDRR), which predicts an increasing number of natural disasters and impacts in concert with global warming. Our analyses strongly refute this assertion as well as extrapolations published by UNDRR based on this claim.”
In their conclusion, the scientists emphasise that they “are concerned about the misrepresentation of the natural disaster trend because such claims have been uncritically broadcast by many different media and by FAO itself, thereby deforming the perception of the public on the risk of natural disasters…
Misinterpreting the trend of natural disasters is a very serious matter because exposes the world population to the risk of inconsistent policies at both a national and an international level, thereby wasting resources or diverting them from the resolution of much more concrete problems.”
Dr Ralph Alexander who has authored a series of critiques of erroneous climate disaster claims said:
“The new study by Alimonti and Mariani vindicates what we said in a GWPF report three years ago – climate-related disasters are not on the rise, despite global warming. Claims to the contrary have been made for years by several international agencies. Yet, these agencies failed to recognise that the apparent increase in natural disasters since the 1970s simply reflects a major increase in disaster reporting due to new technology.”
GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser said:
“There is a famous saying that sums up the GWPF’s efforts to set the record straight on disaster trends and climate disasters: ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they join you
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The big renewable energy lie
Always be suspicious of an expert report that appears to serve a crude ideological purpose. Always be on the lookout for the big lie dressed up in the language of science.
On May 22, the CSIRO’s latest GenCost report was released. It claimed that large-scale wind and solar are the lowest-cost electricity generation technologies, significantly under-cutting nuclear power alternatives. Chris Bowen was quick to seize on this: ‘Our reliable renewables plan is backed by experts to deliver the lowest cost energy,’ he said, on the day of its release.
Debate on the GenCost report has focused on its treatment of nuclear power. But commentators have missed a fatal flaw in the report’s methodology. Its reliance on a cost metric (the so-called Levelised Cost of Electricity or LCOE) that, by its authors’ own admission, is no ‘substitute’ for ‘more realistic’ ways to analyse electricity generation costs, including cash flow analysis.
Buried on page 64 of the report, this gives the game away. LCOE is an accounting metric, not an economic one. It measures the total unit costs a generator must recover to meet all expenses – plant, equipment, land, raw materials, and labour – including a return on investment. It says nothing about the revenue side of the commercial equation: What prices can the generator earn on the wholesale market and, given their costs, what profits can be earned?
For economists, nothing sensible can be said about a service’s economic value, and therefore economic cost, without this additional information.
Think about it. An unreliable car that costs far less to make than a reliable one could not be said to be ‘cheaper’ than the latter if it has no value for consumers. If, as is almost certain, it could not be sold at a profit, society would be in fact worse (not better) off for devoting capital, land and labour to its production. It is value-subtracting from an economic point of view, not value-adding (unless any external benefits it brings outweigh them).
By the same logic, an inherently unreliable source of power, like solar or wind, cannot be said to be cheaper in an economic sense than a reliable source of power, regardless of how much it costs to supply when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, which as we know is only 20 to 40 per cent of the time.
To make the same point in a different way. For the 60 to 80 per cent of the time when intermittent power cannot be supplied at any price, its economic cost can be said to be infinite.
As the eminent MIT economist Paul Joskow has pointed out, the LCOE metric ignores the decisive commercial advantage dispatchable power, in whatever form, enjoys over wind and solar generation.
An operator of a coal, gas, and indeed nuclear power facility can gear their operation to meet expected consumer demand as reflected in wholesale market prices. In contrast, for intermittent wind and solar, consumer demand can only ever be satisfied – and profits earned, leaving subsidies to one side – by accident. Literally as a quirk of prevailing weather conditions.
In this respect, wind and solar are more akin to agriculture than manufacturing, liable to suffer from gluts (when it is sunny and all solar capacity is operating), droughts (on cloudy or windless days), and mismatches (when it is windy at times when power demand is minimal). Intermittent revenues, absent guaranteed returns, are inherently unreliable.
When combined with the very high fixed capital costs of renewable projects, this fact explains why wind and solar developers need huge subsidies despite their very low marginal costs. Why, in the absence of this taxpayer support, large-scale wind and solar operators would go out of business.
The GenCost LCOE measure blinds us to this inconvenient truth. It asserts that wind and solar are cheap, but cannot explain the subsidies they need. On this ground alone, it should be rejected. From the public’s perspective – from the point of view of consumers – it obscures and indeed misleads rather than enlightens. A private business using this marketing trick would never get away with it, yet government ministers go uncriticised.
When the Australian economy was collapsing under the economic weight of protectionism in the late 20th Century, the Productivity Commission’s predecessor agencies courageously publicised the economic costs of this policy. At first these reports were ignored, as both the Coalition and Labor politicians proudly boasted of being protectionist (the term didn’t become a pejorative one until the 1970s), but eventually they were taken notice of and influenced policy.
Today, the same critical spotlight should be applied to the costs of wind and solar power, which include: 1. the direct cost of subsidies for them; 2. the system-wide costs – including transmission, storage and back-up dispatchable power – they impose (this would include the cost of subsidies to keep coal-fired power stations operating); 3. the uncompensated economic, social and environmental losses wind, solar, and new transmission lines are inflicting farmers and others living in regional communities (an unprecedented expropriation of property rights); and 4. the welfare costs of a more volatile and less reliable grid (given that additional storage, with current technologies, cannot smooth things over if the renewable share continues to rise).
This renewable energy audit should be embraced by all in the community, regardless of their views on climate change, Net Zero and the merits of nuclear energy. It should be demanded by not only the opposition, but all Labor people who worry about the mounting economic pain being caused by the government’s renewable-only crusade.
Of course, the renewable industrial complex – which reaches deep into the bureaucracy, corporate world, the media and our academic institutions – can be relied on to bitterly oppose such an exercise.
For them at least, this form of sunlight would not be the best form of disinfectant. Rather, it would lay bare the billions of dollars of rents a select few are extracting from the rest of the community, possibly the biggest deliberate transfer of wealth from low to high-income Australians we have ever seen.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/the-big-renewable-energy-lie/
*************************************************Australian "Greens" becoming hard Left antisemites
Hard antisemitism always comes from the Left. Marx despised Jews even though he was one and Hitler was an extreme socialist
Over the past decade, Daniel Coleman tried to address what he and other members of the Greens had identified as a growing problem: antisemitism within the party. He helped found the Jewish Greens Working Group in Victoria and along with the late David Zyngier, a local government councillor and respected party figure, worked to develop policies and educate party members about the ancient hatred.
In the days and weeks after Hamas’ atrocities in southern Israel, the muted response from the party’s elected officials convinced him the project had failed. The Greens had not adopted a policy on antisemitism proposed by the working group and, more distressingly, he says the party appeared to give little thought to the Jews murdered, raped and taken hostage by terrorists.
“It was brought home to me after October 7 that Jewish lives were just not a concern to the Australian Greens party,” Coleman says from his Melbourne home. “It really became untenable for me to continue as a member.
“I believe that had it been any community other than a Jewish community subject to that sort of attack, the Greens would have spoken out.”
When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton rose this week in federal parliament, one after the other, to condemn the Greens for seeking to exploit for political ends social divisions created by the war in Gaza, there were party politics in play. But what Albanese and Dutton said went beyond electoral calculus. The raw anger in the PM’s voice sliced through the usual cant and theatrics of question time.
Greens leader Adam Bandt described the politicians’ attacks as outrageous, saying his party had drawn a clear line between peaceful protests and any actions which escalate into violence or destruction of property. He reiterated what has become his party’s three-point mantra. “The Greens condemn antisemitism. The Greens condemn Islamophobia. And the Greens condemn the invasion of Gaza.”
Coleman believes it is an empty slogan.
The Greens’ abhorrence of the catastrophic loss of life in Gaza, eight months into a conflict that continues to frustrate the diplomatic efforts of neighbouring Arab states and the Biden administration to broker a ceasefire, is genuine and heartfelt. So far, more than 36,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed in Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accused of using starvation as a war tactic.
Less than a month after October 7, Coleman was dismayed when Bandt posted promotional material for a “stand with Gaza” rally in Melbourne. In the accompanying image, Israel is wiped from the map and replaced by a “Free Palestine” taking in all of Gaza, Israel and the West Bank.
Coleman says this is contrary to Greens’ policy, which supports a two-state solution.
“They have done nothing to combat antisemitism or to acknowledge it within the party or to call out and oppose the terrorism of Hamas,” Coleman says.
“It is really all about winning elections. They are looking for votes and they want to shore up the far left as their base. If you like Hamas, your party of choice is going to be the Greens.”
The influence of this shift in the Greens is evidenced by the party’s embrace of a pro-Palestinian protest movement that, in the eight months since October 7, has progressively adopted slogans, chants, dress and symbols favoured by Hamas and other militant Palestinian organisations.
A graphic example was left outside the electoral office of Labor MP and former ACTU president Ged Kearney last Friday by keffiyeh-wrapped members of Darebin4Palestine, a protest group centred in Melbourne’s deep-Green local government area.
Amid Palestinian flags, an invitation for Kearney to “resign, genocide” and “F--- the ALP” graffiti on the walls of her office, a placard made a play on the well-known Palestinian liberation chant: “From the River to the Sea, Death to the ALP.” The placard also carried an upside down red triangle; iconography used by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas which carried out the 7 October attacks.
The vandalism outside Kearney’s office was part of a “Day of Action Against the ALP” co-ordinated between pro-Palestinian groups and promoted by one of the Greens Victorian State MPs, Gabrielle de Vietri, to her Instagram followers.
Khalil says every citizen has the right to protest government policy but the Greens, in their determination to harvest votes from a tragic conflict and loss of innocent life in Gaza, were putting something else at risk.
“I am really concerned and this goes beyond politics. As elected representatives, we have a responsibility to unite Australians and protect our democracy and ensure community safety and cohesion. You have got a political party that has representatives in parliament who are fanning the flames of hatred and division and grievance and tearing asunder the social fabric for short-term political gain. It is not the party of Bob Brown any more. That’s for sure.”
RedBridge pollster Kos Samaras said the Greens strategy was working among young voters, with his latest survey showing that 28 per cent of voters between the age of 18 and 34 say they will vote Green at the next federal election. The flipside, he says, is that the party is losing support among older voters.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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