90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, May 21, 2022

Visage à trois #252

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #420

Biden’s Big Lie: ‘Green’ Energy Doesn’t Save Money, It’s 4 to 6 Times MORE Expensive

Joe Biden keeps claiming that wind and solar energy are going to save money for consumers. But more government subsidies to “renewable energy” is a key feature of the White House anti-inflation strategy recently announced by Biden.

He probably got that idea from John Kerry, the administration’s climate czar, who recently claimed that “solar and wind are less expensive than coal or oil or gas.” Pete Buttigieg, the Biden Transportation secretary, makes the same claims about the thousands of dollars that motorists can save if they buy electric cars.

This couldn’t be more wrong.

Proponents of “green” energy boondoggles are often masters at playing with the numbers, because that is the only way that wind and solar electricity generation make any sense. Advocates such as Kerry love to focus on the low operating costs of solar and wind since they don’t require constant purchases of fuel. Ignoring the relatively short lifespan of solar and wind components, as well as the high initial investment, can make it appear as though solar and wind operate at lower costs than fossil fuels or nuclear power.

Let’s get the facts straight. The cost isn’t just what you pay at the retail level for gas or power. It also includes the taxes you pay to subsidize the power. A 2017 study by the Department of Energy found that for every dollar of government subsidy per BTU unit of energy produced from fossil fuels, wind and solar get at least $10.

That’s anything but a money saver.

The reason the subsidies are so high is that solar and wind have additional costs compared to their more reliable competition. “Green” energy sources are non-dispatchable, meaning their output can’t be changed to match demand. The wind doesn’t blow harder, and the sun doesn’t shine brighter, just because electricity use is peaking.

Conversely, fossil fuel entities—such as a coal plant—can ramp up generation when we need it most and ramp down when demand falls.

Widespread adoption of solar and wind generation would necessitate expensive batteries on a large scale to ensure that people still have power when the wind stops blowing or when the sun stops shining—like it does every single night.

So, unlike reliable and flexible natural gas, solar and wind require large-scale storage solutions: massive banks of batteries that are hardly environmentally friendly but are also extremely expensive. And since batteries don’t last forever, they add to both the initial expense and maintenance costs during the life of a solar or wind energy generating station.

The same problem exists with electric cars. The sticker price on EVs is considerably higher than for conventional gas-operated cars, and the so-called savings over time assume that the electric power for recharging is free. But it isn’t and power costs are rising almost as fast as gas prices.

Factors such as these are consistently ignored by Kerry and other “green” energy activists.

To genuinely evaluate dissimilar energy sources and provide an apples-to-apples comparison, the U.S. Energy Information Administration uses the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) and the Levelized Cost of Storage (LCOS). These measures consider the initial costs, the lifespan of generation and storage systems, maintenance and fuel costs, decommissioning expenses, subsidies, etc., and compare that to how much electricity is produced over a power plant’s lifetime.

The numbers don’t lie: “green” energy is a complete waste of resources.

The LCOE and LCOS for solar and on-shore wind farms are four times as expensive as natural gas. But offshore wind takes the cake—it’s six times as expensive as natural gas.

Imagine paying four to six times as much every month for the same electricity! That’s the green paradise world that the Biden administration wants for America.

Yet, it’s even worse than that because electric power costs greatly affect the cost of producing nearly everything else. In the case of producing aluminum, for example, a third of the total production cost is...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got a nasty surprise on Friday when her 2016 campaign manager, Robby Mook, testified during the Michael Sussmann trial that she “agreed” to leak allegations that the Trump Organization had a secret communications channel with Russia’s Alfa Bank.

During a cross-examination by government prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis, Mook was asked whether the campaign believed the allegations against former President Donald Trump and whether they had planned to release the evidence to the media, according to National Review.

He recounted that he was first briefed about the Alfa Bank issue by campaign general counsel Marc Elias, who at the time was a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie.

Mook testified that he was informed the data came from “people that had expertise in this sort of matter.”

Mook claimed under oath that he was not sure of the evidence’s credibility at the time. He justified the leak to the media, claiming the purpose of it was to get a reporter to “run it down” further and “vet it out.”

The Clinton acolyte asserted that he discussed the matter with senior campaign staff and then he “discussed it with Hillary as well” and that “she agreed to” hand the evidence over to the press.

The trial revolves around Michael Sussmann, who is a former partner at the Perkins Coie law firm. He allegedly lied to then-FBI general counsel James Baker in the fall of 2016 when he presented debunked evidence of Russian collusion with Trump.

Prosecutors are contending that Sussmann gave the purported evidence to Baker and tech executive Rodney Joffe. He ostensibly told Baker that he was handing over the evidence to “help the bureau.” That evidence included Domain Name System (DNS) data that allegedly showed frequent communications between servers associated with the Trump Organization and Russia’s...

Visage à trois #251

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #418

First World Countries Don't Have Baby Formula Shortages...

When Joe Biden became president, the United States was coming out of the worst pandemic in more than a century. The country needed a steady hand who could unify everyone. Biden promised to be that kind of president.

But instead of implementing sound policies, Biden trashed the country. He declared open war on the U.S. energy industry on day one. He also pushed plans to print trillions more dollars and pump them into the ailing economy. It doesn’t take Warren Buffet to predict the impact of just those two decisions. It doesn’t take Jeff Bezos to recognize where this would end up, but belatedly Bezos has. Biden now finds himself lashing out at someone who is merely observing reality.

Squeezing the supply of the energy on which the modern economy depends while demand rebounded from the Democrat pandemic lockdowns would inevitably push energy prices higher. That’s middle-school level economics. Pumping trillions in funny money into the economy would make the dollars already in circulation -- and in your bank account -- worth less than they were worth yesterday.

Both of these inevitably led to the worst inflation that has wracked this country since the bad old days of Jimmy Carter. This is eating away at your savings while also making it more expensive for you to eat. This was predictable. In fact, Obama Treasury Secretary Larry Summers specifically warned the Biden administration. They didn’t listen.

Another side effect of lockdowns has been the supply chain mess. Biden laughed that one off too, then tried blaming Trump but the mess is his and he hasn’t put any serious effort into fixing it.

Biden is also not putting any serious effort into a side effect of the supply chain mess: the baby formula shortage.

As the shortage reached crisis levels last week, and young moms and dads (Including myself: I have a four-month-old) found themselves scrambling and sending out family across whole regions of the country futilely searching for the formula their infants need to stay fed, the Biden White House took a political trip and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took questions from reporters on the plane. When asked about what the Biden government was doing about the shortage, Jean-Pierre laughed nervously and offered nothing useful. Was the White House putting a point person in charge of the response, reporters asked. Jean-Pierre laughed and said she’d get back to them.

Biden’s Food and Drug Administration belatedly sued Abbott, the nation’s leading baby formula manufacturer, to get its closed plant in Sturgis, Michigan, open and producing again. But it will still take weeks before any formula from that plant is on grocery store shelves. The Biden administration knew of the problem for months, as it has admitted, but only acted when it could no longer ignore the problem.

This White House isn’t serious because it’s not run by a serious man and isn’t staffed by serious people. Everything, including your ability to feed your...