Information On The True Cost Of Electricity From Wind And Solar Is Just Not Getting Out There

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  • Over the period from November 2018 to March 2019, I wrote a series of posts on the subject of the true costs of trying to get electricity from intermittent wind and solar sources.

  • The gist of all this was that you can’t realistically evaluate the cost of getting electricity using the intermittent renewable sources just by looking at the cost of making a kilowatt-hour of electricity when the source happens to be working at its best.

  • Sure, a solar panel may generate some very cheap kilowatt-hours around noon on a sunny June 21. But now that you’ve invested a few billion in solar panels, what is the plan to provide the electricity people need on an overcast December 21, when the panels may work at only 3% of capacity during the day and nothing at night?

  • If your plan is a backup system of fossil fuel facilities, now you are paying for both the solar panels and the fossil fuel plants, so you’ve close-to-doubled the cost of electricity no matter how cheap the power from the solar panels may be on the June day; plus your fossil fuel plants will still be running most of the time, and your emissions reductions will be minimal.

  • If you want serious emissions reductions, you will need to push past 50% and on to 100% of your power from renewables, so you will need to phase out the fossil fuel plants. And replace them with — what?? And at what cost?

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How Confident Are You That "Justice In This Country Is Dispensed Impartially"?

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  • Last week, the Justice Department overruled the line prosecutors on the Roger Stone case, and withdrew an extraordinary sentence recommendation of 7 to 9 years; and President Trump issued several tweets supporting that action and criticizing the prosecutors. Immediately, the reaction from the left moved into high hyperbole.

  • It’s some combination of total lack of self-awareness and complete confidence that the progressive media will never call out how ridiculous this is. Even if you are twirling along with the media spin, it’s impossible not to notice the difference in treatment between say, Andrew McCabe on the one hand (investigation dropped), and George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn on the other (coerced guilty pleas for far less serious conduct).

  • But these are just the most recent and most high-profile cases. It’s easy to forget the large number of politicized prosecutions from just the last several years brought by Democrat prosecutors and targeting Republicans. . . .

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How Did Architecture Get To Be A Left/Right Political Issue?

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How Did Architecture Get To Be A Left/Right Political Issue?

  • You’ve got to hand it to President Trump for his talent to capitalize on issues that force the political left to show its worst totalitarian tendencies and contempt for ordinary people. For a recent Exhibit A, see the State of the Union address.

  • We now have an excellent Exhibit B, a draft Executive Order on the subject of the architectural style of federal buildings. The document is titled “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again.” Let’s call it the MFBBA.

  • The draft MFBBA was first reported by Architectural Digest on February 4, and comes with a legend declaring it to be “DELIBERATIVE/PRE-DECISIONAL/PRIVILEGED.” As far as I can determine, it has not been issued in final form, and it may never be; or it might be changed substantially before final issuance.

  • But in its current form it is certainly not designed to avoid controversy. It begins with a brief history of federal architecture:

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Is The United States Economy "Working" For Everyone?

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  • At his various speeches and rallies, President Trump likes to tout a particular list of recent indicators of a strong U.S. economy — relatively robust growth, very low unemployment (including for women, African Americans, and other minorities), and a booming stock market.

  • Meanwhile, the recurring theme of his Democratic rivals is that the economy is somehow not “working” for average Americans. All the Democratic candidates propose massive increases in government spending and programs supposedly as the way to make the economy “work” better for the average family.

  • Without minimizing any of the statistics cited by the President, there is an even more revealing place to look to get a true idea of the overall success of the American economy, including success for those toward the lower end of the income distribution. That place is the statistics for per capita GDP and income. . . .

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Evaluation Of Mike Bloomberg As A Presidential Candidate (2)

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  • Part of my service to readers is the ongoing evaluation of the various candidates for the Democratic nomination for President, with emphasis on those candidates who seem to have some reasonable chance of rising into the top ranks and maybe even getting the nomination.

  • Previous posts have focused mostly on Joe Biden (nine posts) and Elizabeth Warren (four posts). Both of those two now seem to be fading in the polls and in early results. (Can I claim some of the credit?)

  • Mike Bloomberg could be the guy who is now going to step in to fill the breach. Certainly, he has enough personal cash to far exceed the spending of the very best-funded candidate who relies on money raised from third parties. He is spending big in the Super Tuesday states, and focusing on behemoth California. So don’t count him out.

  • As things have heated up, Mayor Mike has started to go toe to toe with his rivals by putting out various plans and proposals to define his candidacy. . . .

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The Democrats Are Trying To Get Trump Re-elected

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  • Unlike in many recent years, I actually watched a good piece of the State of the Union address last night. It seemed that it might be interesting to see how Trump would deal with the challenge of delivering this speech with the “impeachment” still technically pending.

  • Granted, the most important function of the modern SOTU is to give the sitting President an opportunity to force members of the adversary party, in front of a large national audience, to admit by their conduct (failure to applaud or stand) their opposition to many of his most popular policies. But the question is, is Trump just better at this game than his predecessors? Or is it that he really is not much different from his predecessors — certainly, not much different from Obama on this subject — but that the Democrats are so crazed in their hatred of the man that they fall time after time right into his trap?

  • Surely, the Democrats in general, and Nancy Pelosi in particular, given an hour to think about it, could easily have predicted sixty to eighty percent of the points that Trump was going to make in the SOTU. After all, Trump almost certainly chose most of his points by their results in poll-testing. When Trump made an easily-predicted point that was non-controversial, the Democrats could have coordinated and agreed to offer some half-sincere smiles and at least a smattering of polite applause. They then could have saved the folded hands and frowns for points of real disagreement.

  • But no. With the camera unforgivingly fixed on Pelosi (sitting behind the President) for almost the entire time, we got that unflinching scowl, nearly from beginning to end of the speech. In the instances when the camera cut away to focus on other Democrats, almost always they were following Pelosi’s lead. On point after point that I thought few to none would oppose, Pelosi sat there motionless and scowling away. . . .

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