Author Topic: Environmental issues  (Read 134899 times)




Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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G M

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Re: Mexico bans single use plastic bags
« Reply #306 on: January 01, 2020, 09:27:33 PM »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: China's rivers and plastics in the oceans
« Reply #309 on: January 04, 2020, 03:44:34 PM »

Crafty_Dog

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DougMacG

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Re: Plant trees!!!
« Reply #311 on: January 13, 2020, 05:23:17 AM »
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/how-many-trees-to-plant-to-stop-climate-crisis/#.XglpJmdapro.facebook

And maintain our forests better than Calif and Australia do.  There is a lot of warming released in a forest fire.

Imagine all that money spent on falsifying data put into planting seedlings.`

It would be a setback for Big Pharma if we address the issue instead teaching children the planet will die before they grow up.


rickn

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Australian Brush Fires
« Reply #313 on: January 15, 2020, 07:14:22 AM »
Interesting video about the Australian bush fires.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_tn8f0uaB4
« Last Edit: January 15, 2020, 07:27:10 AM by Crafty_Dog »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Environmental issues
« Reply #314 on: January 15, 2020, 07:46:32 AM »
I went to post it on FB and was told by FB:

"Independent fact-checkers at Science Feedback say this post has false information. To help stop the spread of false news, a notice will be added to your post if you decide to share this.
Pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see their overall distribution reduced and be restricted in other ways."

I posted anyway.

« Last Edit: January 15, 2020, 07:49:01 AM by Crafty_Dog »

Crafty_Dog

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DougMacG

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Re: Environmental issues
« Reply #316 on: January 15, 2020, 08:41:48 AM »
I went to post it on FB and was told by FB:

"Independent fact-checkers at Science Feedback say this post has false information. To help stop the spread of false news, a notice will be added to your post if you decide to share this.
Pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see their overall distribution reduced and be restricted in other ways."

I posted anyway.

What is the "false information"?  Arsonists lit the fires?  Lack of fire breaks allowed the spread?  All true.  Lack of warming shown on a specific December chart he cites?  That's false(?) but the adjusted NOAA data is true?  Says whom?  Not the thermometers in Australia:
https://realclimatescience.com/2019/09/australia-shows-no-warming-since-1876/

Can you post a warning to warn to warn of their warning? 

False information spread by mis-named,"independent fact-checkers" along with repeated curtailment of our ability to communicate here without interruption will result in reduced future market share for biased proprietary websites. 

  * For Environmental Posts with a different set of fact checkers, please visit:
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?action=recent
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?board=4.0
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?board=5.0

DougMacG

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Re: Ecuador sold 1/3 of its rain forest to China
« Reply #317 on: January 15, 2020, 08:47:53 AM »

ccp

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Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: The Green Leap Forward in Action
« Reply #320 on: January 17, 2020, 11:25:38 AM »
The Best-Laid Energy Plans
The feds bet $737 million on a salt tower for solar power. You’ll never guess the result.
By The Editorial Board
Jan. 16, 2020 7:03 pm ET

Government planning and subsidies will make America the world’s green-energy superpower, create millions of jobs, and supercharge the economy—or so we’re told. The reality is closer to Crescent Dunes, a Nevada solar-energy plant that has gone bust after receiving a $737 million federal loan guarantee.

An inconvenient truth is that the sun sets each day, but the Obama Administration’s green planners had an app for that. They decided to invest in the Crescent Dunes facility that would use molten salt to store heat from the sun, produce steam, and generate electricity even at night. The utility NV Energy had already agreed to buy the electricity. Government support would carry the project to sunny success.

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In September 2011, the Energy Department described how the 110-megawatt facility would “be the first of its kind in the United States and the tallest molten salt tower in the world,” powering more than 43,000 homes a year. The precedent was Solar Two, a small pilot plant decommissioned in 1999 that had shown it was technically feasible to use molten salt to store and generate power. But in a 2006 report the Energy Department said the 10-megawatt facility “was never expected to be a viable commercial-scale plant and, in fact, did not validate economic feasibility.”

No worries. It’s only taxpayer money, and the feds jumped into Crescent Dunes anyway. The Department of Energy finalized its loan guarantee on Sept. 23, 2011, a week before the federal loan program expired. A month earlier Nevada had approved $119.3 million in tax abatements for Crescent Dunes over 20 years. The plant also received some $140 million in private investment.

Crescent Dunes began by missing the deadline established by its agreement with NV Energy, becoming operational months late. Commercial operations began in November 2015, but less than a year later the facility went offline because of a “massive leak in the hot salt tank,” according to SolarReserve, a partial owner of Crescent Dunes.

Through the first half of 2017 the plant generated no electricity and no sales, according to its disclosures to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Yet in April 2017 the Department of Energy proclaimed Crescent Dunes a “success story” taken from “mirage to reality,” “a milestone for the country’s energy future,” and a global “blueprint for solar projects.”

In a fact sheet advertised as “up-to-date as of June 2017,” the Energy Department claimed Crescent Dunes was “operational” and projected energy generation of up to 482,000 megawatt hours a year. The plant never generated that much power in the entirety of its operations. An Energy Department spokesman declined comment.

Crescent Dunes resumed operations in the latter half of 2017, but problems persisted. In a June 2019 report to the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada, NV Energy described how the plant “has experienced frequent and prolonged outages.” Crescent Dunes’ performance problems were so severe that they posed “the most significant risk” for NV Energy’s ability to meet its renewable portfolio standard obligations, the utility said.

Last summer Crescent Dunes’ hot salt tanks “suffered a catastrophic failure, which caused ground contamination and required the removal of the solar tower that is essential to the plant’s ability to generate any electrical power to function as designed,” SolarReserve said in recent court filings.

Operations halted again. The Department of Energy sent a formal default notice in September. Weeks later Crescent Dunes’ sole customer, NV Energy, terminated its power purchase agreement. The plant has no prospective clients and couldn’t supply energy even if it found a buyer. Even if the plant began running again, it would face competition from solar photovoltaic projects. Crescent Dunes’ average price was more than $132 per megawatt hour, but Techren Solar II in Nevada’s Eldorado Valley offered the same unit of power for $31.15 in the fourth quarter of 2019.

SolarReserve, which did not respond to requests for comment, is now suing for the equitable dissolution of Tonopah Solar Energy LLC, the entity created to run Crescent Dunes. In November SolarReserve told a federal court that “the plant is moribund—neither generating energy nor revenue” and that Tonopah is “insolvent,” has debt of more than $440 million with “assets of much less value,” and is “unable to pay its debts as they come due.”

Scores of new businesses fail, but private investors lose their own money. Government investments turn on politics more than feasibility. Hand the energy economy over to the government in the name of climate change, and there will be countless more Crescent Dunes fiascoes.

Crafty_Dog

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China banning single use plastics?
« Reply #321 on: January 22, 2020, 12:17:16 AM »

DougMacG

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Re: Environmental issues
« Reply #322 on: January 22, 2020, 05:37:38 AM »
I agree.  Like some of my tenants, you shouldn't be allowed to use plastics if you can't successfully land them in a garbage can.


DougMacG

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Re: Environmental issues
« Reply #324 on: January 23, 2020, 09:58:20 AM »
https://audioboom.com/posts/7394528-1-2-five-hundred-climate-scientists-to-the-unsg-no-climate-emergency-natural-factors-cause-war

Great post, great points made.  This is not denial; it is realism.

* Main points
1 Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming.
 2. Warming is far slower than predicted.
 3. Climate policy relies on inadequate models.
 4. CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a plant food that is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
 5. Global warming has not increased natural disasters.
 6. Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities.
 7. There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would add that fracking has reduced emissions more than wind and solar and that new nuclear power along with greater world prosperity could virtually end man-made emissions - if anyone really cared.

More than half the reported problem is falsified, "adjusted" or manipulated data.  You will change behavior voluntarily after you gain people's trust.  So far, they are only trying to change behavior coercively.

Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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Re: Environmental issues
« Reply #328 on: February 02, 2020, 08:14:24 PM »
KISS-- aluminum cans instead of plastic bottles.

DougMacG

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Re: Environmental issues
« Reply #329 on: February 03, 2020, 09:26:23 AM »
KISS-- aluminum cans instead of plastic bottles.

Yes, looks like recycling alum uses the least energy:
https://homeguides.sfgate.com/much-energy-recycling-save-79720.html

Fill the oceans with aluminum?  Big problem is cultures using rivers for garbage disposal.  The mess is tied to poverty.

I like re-using glass.  Single use, it seems to me, is not optimal.  Clean it and refill it.  Problem is I keep dropping and breaking them.  Also, freeze-ups are tough on glass.




Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: The case for plastic bags
« Reply #333 on: February 18, 2020, 02:42:27 PM »
Plastic Bags Help the Environment
Banning them provides no benefit other than to let activists lord their preferences over others.
By John Tierney
Feb. 18, 2020 12:54 pm ET
SAVE
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ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN KOZLOWSKI
Why do politicians want to take away our plastic bags and straws? This moral panic is intensifying even as evidence mounts that banning plastic is both a waste of money and harmful to the environment. If you want to protect dolphins and sea turtles, you should take special care to place your plastic in the trash, not the recycling bin. And if you’re worried about climate change, you’ll cherish those gossamer grocery bags once you learn the facts about plastic.

During the 1970s, environmentalists wanted to restrict the use of plastic because it was made from petroleum. When the “energy crisis” abated, they denounced plastic for not being biodegradable in landfills. They blamed it for littering the landscape, clogging sewer drains and global warming. Plastic from our “throwaway society” was killing vast numbers of sea creatures, according to a 2017 BBC documentary series. The series prompted Queen Elizabeth II to ban plastic straws and bottles from the royal estates, and it galvanized so many other leaders that greens celebrate what they call the “Blue Planet Effect,” named for the series.

More than 100 countries now restrict single-use plastic bags, and Pope Francis has called for global regulation of plastic. The European Parliament has voted to ban single-use plastic straws, plates and cutlery across the Continent next year. In the U.S., hundreds of municipalities and eight states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon and Vermont—have outlawed or restricted single-use plastic bags. Greens in California are pushing a referendum to require all plastic packaging and single-use foodware in the state to be recyclable, and the European Union has unveiled a similar plan.

Popular misconceptions have sustained the plastic panic. Environmentalists frequently claim that 80% of plastic in the oceans comes from land-based sources, but a team of scientists from four continents reported in 2018 that more than half the plastic in the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” came from fishing boats—mostly discarded nets and other gear. Another study, published last year by Canadian and South African researchers, found that more than 80% of the plastic bottles that had washed up on the shore of Inaccessible Island, an uninhabited extinct volcano in the South Atlantic, originated in China. They must have been tossed off boats from Asia, the greatest source of what researchers call “mismanaged waste.”

Of the plastic carried into oceans by rivers, a 2017 study in Nature Communications estimated, 86% comes from Asia and virtually all the rest from Africa and South America. Some plastic in America is littered on beaches and streets, and winds up in sewer drains. But researchers have found that laws restricting plastic bags and food containers don’t reduce litter. The resources wasted on these anti-plastic campaigns would be better spent on more programs to discourage all kinds of littering.

Another myth—that recycling plastic prevents it from polluting the oceans—stems from the enduring delusion that plastic waste can be profitably turned into other products. But sorting plastic is so labor-intensive, and the resulting materials of so little value, that most municipalities pay extra to get rid of their plastic waste, mostly by shipping it to Asian countries with low labor costs. The chief destination for many years was China, which two years ago banned most imports. It now goes to countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. Some of the plastic from your recycling bin probably ends up in the ocean because it goes to a country with a high rate of “mismanaged waste.”

Yet single-use plastic bags aren’t the worst environmental choice at the supermarket—they’re the best. High-density polyethylene bags are a marvel of economic, engineering and environmental efficiency. They’re cheap, convenient, waterproof, strong enough to hold groceries but thin and light enough to make and transport using scant energy, water or other resources. Though they’re called single-use, most people reuse them, typically as trash-can liners. When governments ban them, consumers buy thicker substitutes with a bigger carbon footprint.

Once discarded, they take up little room in landfills. That they aren’t biodegradable is a plus, because they don’t release greenhouse gases like decomposing paper and cotton bags. The plastic bags’ tiny quantity of carbon, extracted from natural gas, goes back underground, where it can be safely sequestered from the atmosphere and ocean in a modern landfill with a sturdy lining.

If the goal is to reduce carbon emissions and plastic pollution, we can take some obvious steps: Repeal misguided plastic-bag bans. Stop exporting plastic waste to countries that allow it to leak into the ocean. Help those countries establish modern systems for collecting and processing their own plastic waste. Send plastic waste straight to landfills and incinerators. Step up enforcement of laws and treaties that restrict nations from polluting the ocean and prohibit mariners from littering the seas.

Plastic bans are a modern version of medieval sumptuary laws, which forbade merchants and other commoners to wear clothes or use products that offended the sensibilities of aristocrats and clergymen. Green activists have the power to impose their preferences now that environmentalism is essentially the state religion in progressive strongholds. They can lord it over the modern merchant class and corporations desperately trying to curry social favor. The plastic panic gives politicians and greens the leverage to shake down companies afraid that they’ll be regulated out of business.

Most important, the plastic panic gives today’s elites a renewed sense of moral superiority. No matter how much fuel politicians and environmentalists burn on their flights to international climate conferences, they can still feel virtuous as they issue their edicts to grocery shoppers.

Mr. Tierney is a contributing editor of City Journal, from whose winter issue this was adapted.

Crafty_Dog

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G M

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G M

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Re: CA Waterboard on keeping trash out of the waterways
« Reply #337 on: March 23, 2020, 11:29:24 AM »
https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/03/22/adriana-cohen-bay-states-plastic-bag-ban-dangerous-amid-covid-19-pandemic/amp/



https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/publications_forms/publications/factsheets/docs/trash_fs.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2sO49UXQ2XigDh8sX9TYXk9Ftr4DL5CfAXWERyKb8cQPYeNBDprxRmCuc

Keeping the waterways clean is a good thing. Trying to ban everything that might be used to litter isn’t the correct approach. I would be willing to bet that a lot of the “vibrant diversity” California welcomes is disposing of trash in the same ways commonly done back in their sh*thole countries. But that truth is unpalatable, so virtue signaling via plastic bag and drinking straw bans will have to suffice.



Crafty_Dog

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Richard Epstein: Trump helps the Environment by Enraging Environmentalists
« Reply #340 on: July 31, 2020, 09:51:23 AM »
Trump Helps the Environment by Enraging Environmentalists
His plan to reform NEPA would speed replacement of old, dirty projects with cleaner new ones.
By Richard A. Epstein
July 30, 2020 6:50 pm ET


Train cars carrying coal roll into an unloading facility in Newport News, Va, May 22, 2014.
PHOTO: PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Trump administration recently published the first comprehensive revision of federal regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. Environmental groups predictably denounced the initiative. Among its many detractors, the Wilderness Society insists that these regulations will “essentially gut” NEPA by putting “polluters in charge of environment protection.” This objection wholly overlooks NEPA’s deeply dysfunctional features.

From its inception in 1970, NEPA had two basic objectives: first, to require all new projects to receive a thorough and transparent vetting of potential environmental risks; second, to expand democratic participation in the review process via public hearings.

Five decades later, it is clear that NEPA has achieved neither. The most obvious sign of institutional distress is the long time—4.5 years on average—to complete the elaborate environmental impact statement before work can commence. Today’s NEPA behemoth is far from its 1970 origins, which is why the Trump administration’s update is overdue.

Environmentalist critics work on the flawed assumption that the longer the review period, the greater the environmental protection. But that’s untrue for the large majority of important projects. As I detail in a report for ConservAmerica, these new projects typically replace older, more dangerous projects and use superior technologies unavailable generations ago. When NEPA review delays a state-of-the-art pipeline, for instance, that requires greater shipment of fossil fuels by rail and truck, which is far more likely to cause major spills with extensive collateral damage.

As drafted, NEPA requires the government agency in charge of a review to consider “every significant aspect of environmental impact,” a clear impossibility for complex multibillion-dollar projects. Typically the truncation of that open-ended inquiry leads officials to become preoccupied with small defects and overlook the major improvements in both consumer welfare and environmental safety that new roads, bridges, airports and other projects promise.

Ostensibly, the report released in July by the Trump administration is concerned only with NEPA’s extensive procedural provisions. It contains many useful proposals on how to coordinate and streamline a cumbersome process often divided haphazardly among multiple agencies. One set of needed changes is strict timelines and page limits on environmental impact statements to speed up and focus the review process.

But by far the most important proposal is to soften the devastating consequences that flow from any asserted NEPA violation. Courts have wrongly created a strong presumption that any deviation from NEPA’s exacting requirements, however trivial, requires that the permit be denied. The endless rounds of NEPA reviews led to the abandonment of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline this month before construction could begin, and to shutting down for the flimsiest of reasons the Dakota Access Pipeline after three years of successful operation.

NEPA rules also deviate from sound judicial practice. An injunction is appropriate only when a plaintiff can show irreparable harm, which can’t be demonstrated solely by showing that the project developer does not yet have in place a perfect plan for containing oil spills that are unlikely to occur in the first place. Ironically, NEPA’s laborious process undercuts the statutory objective of making informed public decisions. Trying to decide everything at the initial stage of review requires speculation and invites errors in judgment. A far more sensible process would allow work to begin while these details are ironed out through project upgrades, backed by public and private inspections, strong liability protections and extensive insurance policies. These sensible precautions would sharply cut down both the frequency and severity of adverse environmental impacts.

As drafted, NEPA was intended to invite all segments of the public to submit comments to improve decision making. But in 1971, in Calvert Cliffs’ Coordinating Committee v. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia invited a flood of new litigation by holding that any disappointed party may challenge an agency approval in federal court. Even if the bulk of informed opinion supports a new project, an extreme outlier can sue to stop it. NEPA includes no provision establishing a private right of action, but the practice has become so ingrained that it can’t be undone by regulation.

Congress should act to stop the hijacking of the permit process to block the use of fossil fuels throughout the economy. Informed, democratic decision making requires consistent environmental regulation, not a patchwork of dubious judicial decisions that turn NEPA into a legal swamp that now must be drained.

Mr. Epstein is a law professor at New York University, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: CA's Green Blackouts
« Reply #341 on: August 21, 2020, 11:44:33 AM »
California’s Green Blackouts
If you eliminate fossil fuels, power shortages are inevitable.
By The Editorial Board
Aug. 19, 2020 7:20 pm ET


Millions of Californians have lost power in recent days amid a brutal heat wave, and state regulators warn of more outages in the days and perhaps years to come. Welcome to California’s green new normal, a harbinger of a fossil-free world.

“These blackouts, which occurred without prior warning or enough time for preparation, are unacceptable and unbefitting of the nation’s largest and most innovative state,” Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Monday while ordering regulators to pull out all stops to keep power on. “This cannot stand.”


Mr. Newsom is demanding an investigation, though he can start with his party’s obsessions over climate and eliminating fossil fuels. Even former Gov. Gray Davis admitted the culprit is the state’s anti-fossil fuel policies. “The bottom line is, people don’t want lights to go down,” he told Politico. “People also want a carbon-free future. Sometimes those two aspirations come into conflict.” They certainly do.

California’s Independent System Operator (Caiso) has been warning for years that the state’s increasing dependence on intermittent renewables, especially solar, is making it harder to ensure reliable power. Renewables currently make up about 36% of California’s electric generation, and Democrats have set a 60% mandate for 2030 and 100% for 2045.

Caiso in part blamed cloud cover, weak winds and failures at a couple of power plants for this weekend’s power outages. But this happens when you rush to shut down power plants to meet government diktats and reduce the amount of reliable baseload power. Unlike fossil-fuel plants, solar and wind can’t ramp up quickly when other power generators go down. Solar power also plunges in the evening, and the state didn’t have enough backup power to compensate to meet high demand.

Dozens of natural-gas plants that can ramp up power on demand have closed since 2013—enough to supply about four million households—so California is relying more on energy imported from other states when needed. In normal times it imports about 15% of its energy. But the Golden State’s neighbors are also experiencing heat waves, and many have also been replacing fossil fuels with renewables too.

Over the weekend, Caiso imported hydropower from the Pacific Northwest, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released emergency water flows from the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River to generate hydroelectricity. Californians are fortunate that reservoirs were relatively full this year after a somewhat wet winter.

California's Renewable Ramp-Up
Percentage of California's electricitygenerated by renewables
Source: California Energy Commission
%
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power, which draws nearly 20% of its electricity from out-of-state coal, also chipped in supply. And Mr. Newsom on Monday waived the state’s emissions standards to allow businesses and utilities to run fossil-fuel generators, many procured for emergency power outages during wildfire seasons.

The power outages will get worse and more frequent as the state becomes more reliant on renewables. The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has directed utilities to triple their battery storage for electricity by 2026. But this won’t make up for the natural-gas and nuclear plants that are slated to shut down in the interim—or the state’s power shortfalls during the heat wave.

Batteries are also expensive and present their own environmental hazards. Caiso has warned that the PUC isn’t accounting for battery recycling and replacement costs or how several days of cloudy weather could reduce solar energy storage. Batteries need to be replaced after 10 or so years, and disposing of their toxic metals is expensive.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the capital costs for a solar plant with an attached battery system run between 50% and 150% higher than for a new natural-gas plant. Natural-gas plants are still much less expensive after accounting for fuel costs, and they generally have a lifespan of 30 or more years.

***
Mr. Newsom on Monday acknowledged “gaps” in reliability amid the state’s transition to renewables while affirming the state remains “committed to radically changing the way we produce and consume energy.”

In other words, Democrats in Sacramento are so committed to ending fossil fuels that the hoi polloi are simply going to have to make some sacrifices—such as living with blackouts as if the state were a Third World country. So shut up and broil, and wait for the Green New Deal to do this for the rest of America.

DougMacG

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Re: WSJ: CA's Green Blackouts
« Reply #342 on: August 22, 2020, 04:17:50 AM »
WSJ, correctly associate blackouts with becoming a third world country.

Biden', Harris, Democrats promise green new deal, code for making us a third world country with energy outages, shortages, wild price swings and blackouts.

After all the turmoil since the seventies, America became energy independent and the world's number one producer of gas and oil. We don't rely on Middle East war or oil anymore. The switch to natural gas has been the biggest greenhouse gas advancement in modern history.

Democrats promise to chuck that all away.

Thinking you can do it all with wind and solar without interruption is truly Flat Earth material, that the Earth doesn't rotate and that the sun and the wind stay up all night, every night.

Sorry, just not so., deniers of science.

Amidst all that, they are afraid to utter the words build.new.nuclear.plants.
« Last Edit: August 22, 2020, 04:25:11 AM by DougMacG »


DougMacG

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Re: Environmental issues, wildfires
« Reply #344 on: October 11, 2020, 05:12:59 AM »
https://fee.org/articles/3-inconvenient-truths-60-minutes-forgot-to-mention-in-its-story-on-california-wildfires-and-climate-change/

As of October 5, fires have consumed 7.8 million acres of land in the US over the last year. That’s less over the same period that burned in 2017, 2015, 2012, and 2011. Moreover, it’s a small fraction—about 1/4th—of the yearly average between 1926 and 1952, according to the official historical data.

Fires were MUCH bigger before "climate change".  Isn't THAT inconvenient?
Chart is too large, scroll across to see current years:



California is 4.3% of US landmass—but has 50% of its burn area in 2020

Texas is Hotter Than California and Has More Forests, but Far Fewer Megafires
« Last Edit: October 11, 2020, 07:18:26 AM by DougMacG »

G M

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Re: CA Waterboard on keeping trash out of the waterways
« Reply #345 on: January 04, 2021, 10:32:44 AM »
https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/03/22/adriana-cohen-bay-states-plastic-bag-ban-dangerous-amid-covid-19-pandemic/amp/



https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/publications_forms/publications/factsheets/docs/trash_fs.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2sO49UXQ2XigDh8sX9TYXk9Ftr4DL5CfAXWERyKb8cQPYeNBDprxRmCuc


http://ace.mu.nu/archives/covid%2020210104%2001.jpg





Keeping the waterways clean is a good thing. Trying to ban everything that might be used to litter isn’t the correct approach. I would be willing to bet that a lot of the “vibrant diversity” California welcomes is disposing of trash in the same ways commonly done back in their sh*thole countries. But that truth is unpalatable, so virtue signaling via plastic bag and drinking straw bans will have to suffice.

DougMacG

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Re: CA Waterboard on keeping trash out of the waterways
« Reply #346 on: January 05, 2021, 06:56:08 AM »
G M:  "Keeping the waterways clean is a good thing. Trying to ban everything that might be used to litter isn’t the correct approach. I would be willing to bet that a lot of the “vibrant diversity” California welcomes is disposing of trash in the same ways commonly done back in their sh*thole countries. But that truth is unpalatable, so virtue signaling via plastic bag and drinking straw bans will have to suffice."

   - Yes.

Like the hammer and the nail, government knows coercion.  Tax it, regulate it or ban it, that's governing, even if the government is allowed to do it itself, like gambling and the state lotteries.  But one size fits all isn't right or best for most things.  If a hospital or an ambulance driver have a sanitary purpose for a plastic bag, then a lobbyist and a technocrat get together and carve out exceptions and pretty soon plastic bags are banned for some, legal for others, depending on how those in control view the [political] importance of their subjects' needs. Like the frog enjoying the warm water before it boils, they hope you don't notice we aren't fighting over straws, bags or masks.  It's all about who controls whom.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2021, 06:59:33 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Biden re=enters the PCA
« Reply #347 on: January 21, 2021, 02:22:59 AM »
China and India are essentially exempt.  Prediction:  The Chinese will use provisions of the PCA to mess us up with litigation in our courts.

ccp

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"The Chinese will use provisions of the PCA to mess us up"
« Reply #348 on: January 21, 2021, 04:48:58 AM »
I could not believe my ears while listening to someone on CNN
Anderson Vanderbilt's show last night tell him and USSRAxelrod

that he now believes China now will look at America getting it's "mojo back"

now that Biden will fix our leadership in the world and work with other countries (not go it alone and America first etc)

I could not believe my ears -