Media coverage of the CA wildfires is designed to do 2 things: 1) Get us to ignore the fundamental role of "green" forest mismanagement in causing the out-of-control fires. 2) Get us to ignore the CA blackouts and the fundamental role of "green energy" policies in causing them.
California is experiencing blackouts because of "green" policies that reward or mandate unreliable electricity from solar and wind and punish or outlaw reliable electricity from nuclear, natural gas, coal, or hydro. We need to understand and apply this lesson this election.
Fact: electricity producers know how to produce enough reliable electricity for virtually any situation--certainly plenty for the heat wave CA has been experiencing this year. All you need to do is build enough reliable power plants: nuclear, natural gas, coal, or hydro.
CA, attempting a mini-mini-Green New Deal, decided to mandate that a lot of the electricity generated in the state had to come from unreliable, "renewable" solar and wind electricity. We shut down reliable gas and nuclear plants to hit our renewable targets.
While California was boasting about its increasing use of "unreliables"--@KamalaHarris called it a "model"--the reality was that it was becoming an electricity parasite, hugely dependent on reliable gas, nuclear, and coal plants from neighboring states such as AZ, NV, and UT.
What happens to a state trying to rely on "unreliables" when there’s a regional heat wave? The wind dies down. The sun dies down daily. This meant CA needed more electricity from the states with “reliables”--but they need more, too, so they sent CA less. Surprise...blackouts!
Everyone needs to learn from CA's blackouts--and fast. Policies mandating unreliable solar and wind electricity are making our electricity grid more unreliable every year. If we do not make reliability a priority we will become a third-world grid with frequent blackouts.
Nationally we face the prospect of frequent "green blackouts" thanks to a cocktail of 3 bad policies: 1) mandating unreliables (solar and wind), 2) prematurely shutting down ultra-reliable coal and nuclear plants while 3) stopping the construction of natural gas infrastructure.
What is @JoeBiden's answer to the CA blackouts? His "plan" would make them nationwide and frequent via 1) more mandating unreliable solar and wind, 2) more shutdowns of ultra-reliable coal and nuclear plants, and 3) more obstacles to urgently-needed natural gas infrastructure.
Blackouts aren't the only problem with green energy policies. The main problem is cost. Because wind and solar are unreliable they can’t replace our reliable power plants, only duplicate or supplement them at tremendous cost. Even when CA electricity is working it's expensive.
Every candidate who supports mandating "unreliables," let alone the Green New Deal or @JoeBiden Plan, should be reminded of the utter failure the mini-mini-GND/Biden-Plan has caused in California. I hope @realDonaldTrump raises this in the debates and uses the term "unreliables."
There is no world in which mandating "unreliables" makes sense. If you want to lower CO2 emissions, decriminalize reliable nuclear energy--something the @JoeBiden plan completely fails to do. For a real, pro-freedom, pro-nuclear energy policy go to EnergyTalkingPoints.com.
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Truth: Elon, through Tesla, has been one of America's biggest advocates of direct and indirect EV subsidies—and of punishments for Tesla's competitors.
🧵👇
Elon Musk likes to tell us that he is against all energy subsidies, including EV subsidies.
Yet the company he runs is one of America's biggest and most successful advocates of EV subsidies.
What gives?
Tesla under Elon Musk's leadership has consistently advocated for EV subsidies in various forms, including:
1) Biden's EV mandate (the most extreme form of subsidy) 2) Biden's EV subsidies (a direct EV subsidy) 3) Biden's heightened "CAFE" standards (an indirect EV subsidy)
Why are leading institutions so biased against fossil fuels?
Because their operating “anti-impact framework” causes them to view fossil fuels, which are inherently high impact, as intrinsically immoral and inevitably self-destructive.
A summary of Fossil Future, Chapter 3 🧵👇
An Anti-Human Moral Goal and Standard
Our knowledge system’s opposition to fossil fuels while ignoring their enormous benefits can only be explained by it operating on an anti-human moral goal and standard of evaluation that regards benefits to human life as morally unimportant.
Outside the realm of energy, an example of an anti-human moral goal at work is the scientists who, operating on the anti-human moral goal of animal equality, oppose animal testing for medical research and disregard its life-saving benefits to humans.
If you ever hear anyone favorably compare solar and wind to coal, gas, or nuclear by citing a low LCOE—"Levelized Cost of Energy"—you are being scammed.
LCOE explicitly ignores "reliability-related considerations" and is therefore a garbage metric. 🧵👇
You've heard it over and over: "Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels."
You might suspect something is wrong here, because if solar/wind were so cheap their developers wouldn't always be asking for subsidies, or claim the sky is falling when subsidies are taken away.
The suspicious claim that "Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels" is usually justified using an intimidating-sounding metric called LCOE: "Levelized Cost of Energy."
LCOE is used all the time in prestigious publications and in government.
Our “knowledge system”—the people and institutions we rely upon to research, synthesize, disseminate, and evaluate expert knowledge—consistently ignores the massive, life-or-death benefits of fossil fuels.
A summary of Fossil Future, Chapter 1 🧵👇
Save the World With…Fossil Fuels?
I am going to try to persuade you of something that might seem impossible: that one of the best things you can do to make the world a better place is to fight for more fossil fuel use—more use of oil, coal, and natural gas.
Questioning the “Expert” Moral Case for Eliminating Fossil Fuels
We're told rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is the expert consensus, but consider: 1) sometimes the alleged “expert” view is wrong, and 2) eliminating fossil fuels is a radical and potentially disastrous change.