Utopia, you are standing in it!

One of the solutions that our Minister of Energy proposes for the energy transition is interconnectivity. In the webinar she gave at the end of 2020 (see previous post) she was pleased that Belgium got connected to the German grid and therefor could start to take advantage of the electricity produced by solar and wind in Germany. I am less optimistic about that. As I found in some previous posts like for example here, here and here, Belgium and Germany are neighbor countries and therefor have similar patterns of solar and wind production.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that no gains could be made by this interconnection. There will be times when Belgium could use the solar/wind overproduction of Germany, but when Germany has a excellent intermittent production, then generally Belgium does too. The same when Germany has only little intermittent production, then Belgium generally experience the same. The…

The climate/RE cult’s latest mantra “net-zero”, apparently means wind and solar connected to batteries or pumped hydro. The notion has it that wind and solar’s hopeless intermittency can be overcome by a few TWh’s worth of giant lithium-ion batteries or, where geography and hydrology permit, pumped hydro systems.

The latter model involves using wind and solar to pump water uphill into turkey’s nest dams so that, when the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in, hydro power will merrily fill the inevitable daily gaps in wind/solar power production and keep the grid up and running.

Well, that’s the story, anyway.

The wind/pumped hydro model is at the heart of the “net-zero” energy generation systems being pumped by politicians and rent seekers, alike.

In a cooking show, ‘here’s one we prepared earlier moment’, a large-scale wind and pumped hydro experiment has been playing out on an island in the Atlantic, El…

Industrial wind turbines create at least 2 critical dangers for flyers: 1) wake turbulence; 2) collision with blades and towers. The air turbulence generated by hundreds of 50-60m blades with their outer tips travelling at around 350km/h (wake turbulence) messes with the pilot’s ability to control their aircraft (see our post here). Slamming into them, often in bad weather, ends with reasonably predictable results.

Results such as the 4 killed in South Dakota, when the plane depicted above slammed into a turbine in foggy conditions.

Here’s another example of the deadly threat wake turbulence poses to pilots, their aircraft and passengers.

Plane crash blamed on ‘turbulence’ from wind farm
BBC
10 March 2022

A pilot injured in a crash landing has claimed a “violent” gust which caused him to lose control of his plane may have been caused by a nearby windfarm.

The 66-year-old man crashed off the…

On April 15, the 63rd Anti-tank Regiment and the 11th Armoured Division of the British army liberated about 60,000 prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

One of the soldiers, 21 year old Corporal Ian Forsyth, called it “A place of darkness and death.” What the British troops encountered was described by the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby, who accompanied them:

“…Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which… The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them … Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live … A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk…

Henry IV (c. April 15, 1367 – March 20, 1413), also known as Henry Bolingbroke, was King of England from 1399 to 1413. He asserted the claim of his grandfather King Edward III, a maternal grandson of Philippe IV of France, to the Kingdom of France. Henry was the first English ruler since the Norman Conquest, over three hundred years prior, whose mother tongue was English rather than French.

Henry was born at Bolingbroke Castle, in Lincolnshire, to John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster. His epithet “Bolingbroke” was derived from his birthplace. Gaunt was the third son of King Edward III.

Blanche was the daughter of the wealthy royal politician and nobleman Henry, Duke of Lancaster, a member of the Plantagenet dynasty and a direct male descendant of Henry III.

Gaunt enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of his own nephew, King Richard II…

Lincoln was the third American president to die in office, and the first to be murdered.An unsuccessful attempt had been made on Andrew Jackson 30 years prior, in 1835, and Lincoln had himself been the subject of an earlier assassination attempt by an unknown assailant in August 1864. The assassination of Lincoln was planned and carried out by the well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, as part of a larger conspiracy in a bid to revive the Confederate cause.

Booth’s co-conspirators were Lewis Powell and David Herold, who were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt, who was tasked with killing Vice President Andrew Johnson. By simultaneously eliminating the top three people in the administration, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to disrupt the United States government.

In the turmoil that followed the assassination, scores of suspected accomplices were arrested and thrown into prison. Anyone discovered…

US President Abraham Lincoln was the third American president to die in office , and the first of four presidents to be assassinated. The other three were James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) and John F. Kennedy (1963). Lincoln’s death came in the closing days of the American Civil War, and a day after he was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an American stage actor.

Booth was the 9th of 10 children born to the actor Junius Brutus Booth. John Wilkes Booth was outspoken in his advocacy of slavery and his hatred of Lincoln.

The original plan of Booth and his small group of conspirators was to kidnap Lincoln, and they later agreed to murder him as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward.

On the morning of April 14, 1865, Booth had found out that Abraham Lincoln was going to to attend an…

Hubris and arrogance are essential character traits for those pretending that we’re well on our way to an all-wind and sun-powered future. Helpfully, the terrible events unfolding in Ukraine have exposed that whopping lie, for all to see.

Energy self-reliance is back on the agenda, with a vengeance, and that means fossil fuels and nuclear power are back in vogue, like long-lost relatives.

But, not for want of trying, the Democrats and their senile leader would have Americans believe that all is well with their Great Green Reset aka the Green New Deal.

Jerry Shenk retorts in fine style, below.

Sow the wind (power), reap the whirlwind
The Mercury
Jerry Shenk
14 March 2022

The Law of Supply and Demand is as consistent as gravity.

Americans who understand the benefits of ample supply — seventy percent — favor producing more domestic oil and gas.

Nonetheless, President(ish) Joe Biden, his administration…

I still think Emmanuel Macron will win reelection, but it is going to be a closer fight than most prognosticators expected before this past Sunday’s first round. In the results of that vote, Macron has the expected plurality, and it was a few percentage points higher than he got in 2017 (27.8% vs. 24.0%). His runoff opponent in both 2017 and later this month, Marine Le Pen, also improved a bit over last time (23.3% vs. 21.3%). What is new–or really accelerating a trend that was already there–is the total collapse of older established parties. The Republican (mainstream right) got 20% in 2017 but only 4.8% this time, fifth place. The Socialists were already in dire shape in 2017 with 6.4%, but did even worse this time, 1.75%, despite (or because?) of running the mayor of Paris. Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise, a far left group, made the race…

Folks on the left tell us that they want to help the less fortunate.

I sometimes wonder if their real motive is to penalize success and punish the “rich,” but let’s be charitable and assume that many of them truly wish to help the poor.

That’s a noble sentiment, to be sure, but this is why it’s also important to look at the consequences of policy, not just the intentions.

I explained last year that certain left-wing fiscal, regulatory, and monetary policies actually harm the poor and help the rich, and I augmented that analysis earlier this year by showing how farm policies line the pockets of upper-income people.

Let’s now add to this research by looking at a new study (h/t: Tyler Cowen) from Mario Alloza of University College London. Here are some of the key findings from the study’s abstract.

Household panel…between 1967 and 1996 is employed…