In this year’s twelve-pack of predictions for 2023, I forecast that the attacks on the U.S. power grid would continue, and the media would desperately attempt to blame their ideological opponents as extremists. Yawn. The attacks certainly risk public welfare, safety, and security, but what’s behind them? I took a couple of hours to investigate. Terrorism The Time article I referenced includes a quote, “’ Domestic terror groups understand that citizens losing power from gunfire or sabotage is an easy way to receive media attention, which they crave,’ says Brian Harrell, a former Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection at the…
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A Twelve-Pack for 2023 Last year Las Vegas booked my predictions at 1:1.5 odds. This year I’m being more aggressive and expect something closer to a 3:1 weighted average. Below, I include my estimates for each forecast. Ukraine War I’ll get the tough stuff out of the way first. The Ukraine war will not end peacefully with a desirable outcome as long as the bipartisan U.S. congress keeps laundering money through the military-industrial complex (and others) in this proxy war with Russia. (Odds: 1:2) There is no exit strategy. Thirty billion here. Forty billion there. When that runs out, we’ll…
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Last week a Yahoo News reporter headlined an article, Biden Administration Seeks to Lower Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions-and-That-Won't Be Easy. My first reaction: It won’t be easy to decarbonize any sector: residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation, although I did see that, like wind energy, the passenger blimp is making a comeback (say whaaat?). Will it replace passenger jets? I don’t think so. I focus on the above-linked article and industrial electrification and decarbonization in this post. The Yahoo author references the chart below for shares of GHG emissions. I assume that emissions from electricity generation are not double counted into…
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This week in concert with critical thought prompted by the EPRI electrification conference, I introduce Rant Revelations. Some are not new, but it is time to start a list. Profit Rules Decarbonization can only happen if it is profitable. That is how we decarbonized to current levels. Whether it’s production tax credits for wind energy that make coal not competitive or high natural gas prices that make coal competitive, profit wins. In time the piper will be paid as intermittent and subsidized renewable energy will run out its string of lowering energy prices requiring new thermal generation to avoid grid…
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There are no such things as unintended consequences. There are consequences and ignorance, and as I’ll show in this post, you really have to ask yourself how some people are promoted to their level of incompetence. First, let’s start with an example fellow blogger Joel Gilbert, aka Captain Obvious, posted, Tone Deaf, Are They? The source of the post is an op-ed from The Wall Street Journal in which they describe John Kerry’s concern for climate change as Vladimir Putin is pummeling Ukraine. Kerry is quoted, “I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to…
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I’m breaking my word from last week’s natural gas shakedown in which I noted I would write about customer intolerance for high energy prices this week. Since then, a kerfuffle has broken out in the Eurasian landmass. I was asked if I might be interested in writing about that, especially regarding energy. No! I don’t know much about it; it won’t impact our energy supply, and we should not get involved. After listening to some podcasts and news clips, my Gallup “strengths” got the best of me. My top four strengths are posted on the left, with a layperson’s definition…
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