Blog

I’m not in the electricity storage business, but I can recognize lousy ideas when I see them. Grid-scale battery storage is a bad idea. It will never be anything more than a frequency and voltage regulation technology, although I have to say these are critical functions that batteries can provide. Innovation comes out of leftRead more

My undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum at South Dakota State University included requirements for six credits of humanities and nine credits of social sciences. What is this? Who needs this stuff? Walk on the Slippery Rocks I actually enjoyed most of these courses, one of which was philosophy. What a flaky class. There was no work.Read more

The number of bipartisan political issues that can be counted on one finger is shrinking fast. All this while the definition of bipartisan has been lowered to a single vote from the opposing party. Energy efficiency is not among the bipartisan issue (sic). It is unfortunately limited to the left-wing of the political spectrum asRead more

The topic of climate change is fascinating to me because I love to learn why people believe what they believe. I wrote last week that climate change policy is firmly and forever intertwined in political warfare. Does anyone stand alone on an island isolated from their tribe on anything?  Maybe five out of one hundredRead more

Climate change mitigation policies are firmly intertwined in hot political tribalism like school choice, abortion, taxes, and the minimum wage. I can think of few topics that are supported by both ends of the spectrum, although infrastructure spending and staying out of objectiveless wars seem to be two such things. We know things are atRead more

As children, some engineers liked to take things apart to see how they worked – and maybe even put them back together. That was too much work for me, but I was curious. I would intently watch my Mom as she accelerated the 1970s Ford Galaxy 500[1] down the road. What was she doing toRead more

You are not reading the Rant for a weekly dose of pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers. You read it for the spicy beef jerky – even vegetarians. I mean, vegetarians can’t resist the beef jerky. Nobody wants to eat a vegetarian. Anyway, the Rant is a dose of what you needRead more

Choose a political tribe, and I will tell you their concerns, doubts, fears, and enemies. Those threats I could categorize include climate change, tyrannical government, terrorism, big corporate, national debt, financial collapse, and so forth. Some of those threats are more serious than others and most of them, when mixed with others, produce a muchRead more

Last August I discussed a truce from the left to the right on climate change – Climate Change IV, Diverse Thought Anyone? Last week, to advance the story, I alluded to further potential solutions described by Grist and the “eco right’s” bold idea to advance a carbon tax as a solution. Here we go! ThereRead more

A recent Grist blog post describes the virtues of a carbon tax as a great way to efficiently and effectively curb carbon emissions. That is the source of this post. The Grist post includes the following: A lad from Montana says he will give away a new shotgun to anyone who can prove he’s wrongRead more

The day before Thanksgiving, news and talk shows were chattering about topics to avoid at the Thanksgiving table. Topics included Trump, Hillary, Russia, Russia, Russia, a lot of U.S. House Representatives and Senators, Hollywood, NFL players, and in-laws, to name a few. I think you could easily add climate change to the list. It wouldRead more

Last week, we discussed themes of the 2017 International Energy Program Evaluation Conference, known as IEPEC for short. One of the positive themes included how the industry is beginning to have a constructive approach to fixing climate change, the subject of this post. Liberals have softened their rhetoric on climate change and are moving towardRead more