Showing posts with label solar power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solar power. Show all posts

Friday, October 3, 2025

October, 2025, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Another Failed Solar Project, More United Nations Failures, Corrupted Government Statistics, and A Small Drug Cartel Win

 There is a lot going on in the world: Obama and Russiagate findings, Middle East powder keg, the Russian/Ukrainian war, Federal government shutdown, etc. But through all this, the American political class continues to constantly deliver its own special brand of insanity, stupidity, wasteful taxpayer spending, and ineffective government programs.


1)Democrats and liberals have been yelling at us for over thirty years relative to the myth of climate change/global warming. All of their hand wringing and yelling has turned  out to  be mythical: temperatures have not gone through  the roof, the  ice caps have not melted, coastal lands  have  not been  flooded  over, etc. In  fact, their global warming forecasts turned  out to be so wrong that they had to do a whole rebranding effort to evolve from global  warming  hysteria to climate change hysteria.


In many liberal parts of the country such as California, politicians went overboard and tried their hardest to get rid of traditional sources of energy and replace them with  renewable sources of energy. This has resulted in Californians having the highest energy and gas prices in the country as the climate change plans the politicians embarked on were not practical or cost efficient. They continued wasting money on climate change efforts despite the fact that the myths of  global  warming and climate change have been pretty clear to just about  everyone else.


The latest debacle of the state’s renewable energy push has recently come crashing down:


  • Eleven years ago, the state of  California spent $2.2 billion to build a huge solar energy plant.

  • Federal taxpayers donated $1.6 billion of the $2.2 billion cost.

  • Unfortunately, 11 years after being put into service  it is already being shut down because it never met the original promises of clean energy.

  • Beside not meeting expectations, the technology that was put in place  is  already deemed outdated.

  • Not  only did the power generated disappoint, but the  technology has been responsible for at least 6,000 bird deaths each year.

  • The technology used massive movable mirrors (over 173,000 of  them) to  focus the sun on  a central facility that resulted in tremendous heat, heat that was used to turn water into steam and to power steam turbines that produced the energy.

  • However, birds that flew into the focused sun rays immediately burned up.

  • Back in 2011 when  the project was proposed, Obama's Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz called it “an example  of how America is becoming a world  leader in  solar energy.”

  • Obviously, he was wrong if the whole project is being shut down in just 11 years.


This was obviously a Rube Goldberg approach to solar energy:  spread out 173,000 mirrors  over acres and acres of ground, try to accurately focus the sun to bounce off of 173,000  moving mirrors as a day progressed and the sun moved across the sky, focus the reflections off  of a large steam generator. What could go wrong?


Let’s do  some simple  math: the project cost $2.2 billion:


  • A  rough estimate says that it costs about $22,000 to put solar panels on a typical American  home.

  • Thus, that $2.2 billion could have put solar panels on about 100,000 homes.

  • The typical warranty for home solar cell installations is at least 25 years, often more.

  • Putting this all together means that, in theory, that $2.2  billion could have  solar powered EVERY home in a city such as  Fort Lauderdale/Florida or Irving/Texas, or Little Rock/Arkansas for at least 25 years with simple  roof top solar panels  installations, a process that would  not kill 6,000 birds a year.


But rather than go simple and  effective, the politicians in the state and Washington  went grandiose, expensive and doomed to failure. The Washington  political class  cannot run a  postal  system effectively, they cannot run a "National  Do  Not Call” list effectively, they cannot operate within the  confines of the tax dollars they collect. What makes anyone think that they can  manage the climate and the technology they think is critical to the future of the planet?


2)Let’s face it, the United Nations has been almost a total  failure since its creation after World War II, failures that continue today:


  • Failure to end the Ukranian/Russian.

  • Failure to bring peace to the Middle East.

  • Failure to end  terrorism.

  • Failure to improve the lives of mankind.


The list goes on but the list of  notable  failures far outweighs the list of any type  of success. As a result, American taxpayers pay out big bucks every year to support the UN but get and see anything worthwhile in return for their investment:


  • A recent Gallup poll shows that a  lot of Americans hold a pessimistic view of the UN.

  • 63% of those polled perceive the UN’s performance as “poor.”

  • Only 32% believe it  is doing a “good” job.

  • 60% consider the UN as necessary but that number is trending downwards.

  • Republicans hold a much more pessimistic view of the  UN  than  Democrats.


The old saying says that the  definition of insanity is doing the same thing  over and  over and  expecting different results.  For 80 years the American taxpayer has basically underwritten the financial  viability of this organization that has no real accomplishments to speak of for over 80 years. And yet, the American taxpayer continues to pay for nothing.


3)We have talked many times about the many failures of  the Biden administration. The latest two conversations on this topic can be  accessed at:


https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-ever-growing-list-of-biden-failures.html


https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-ever-growing-list-of-biden-failures_24.html


To these lists we should add another failure and  corruption of the  governing process in Washington:


  • The Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington issues monthly estimates of how many jobs the  economy has created the previous month.

  • This is a critical measurement  process since it is an important measurement of  the  health of the economy and how well Americans are doing financially from a job availability perspective.

  • Thus, timely accuracy is  critical for businesses  and residents to  make economic decisions.

  • Up until the Biden  administration, one rarely questioned the integrity of the estimates or how they were calculated, a  run of success  that ended  with  the Biden  administration.

  • It looks  like the Bureau of Labor Statistics artificially inflated the number of jobs  created by Biden’s  economic policies.

  • And the inflation was not a small number since the Bureau eventually reduced the estimated number of jobs created in the  country during  the Biden aera by a whopping 818,000 jobs.

  • Thus, it looked like the Biden economy was doing much better than  it actually was at the time  of  the estimates when in  reality the  estimates were inflated.

  • The Bureau eventually reduced their estimates much later by the 818,000 number mentioned above.

  • This was the largest downward revision in 15 years.


When the government manipulates numbers and  estimates for political purposes, everyone loses. People and businesses  make  decisions based on faulty data just because someone wants to improve their political careers. It  also brings  doubt into people’s mind that if this government  statistic is tainted, what other government  statistics are also  tainted.  A sad commentary on government integrity.


4)As a nasty, and a very often fatal aspect of Biden’s failed immigration policies, is the reality that Mexican drug cartels were able  to flood personnel and deadly drugs into the country, setting up operations around the country. This not only resulted in thousands of Americans dying from drug overdoses but the enrichment of the cartels,  making them even more of a violent threat to their enemies and future drug addicts.


However, there was some recent good news  in the effort to curb drug trafficking and the resultant overdose deaths:


  • A recent  successful operation by the Federal government and Trump administration resulted in the arrest of over 600 alleged cartel operatives across the  country.

  • Many of those arrested were associated with the Mexican Sinola drug cartel, a cartel that has  flooded the  country with fentanyl, meth, cocaine, and counterfeit pills.

  • The crackdown operation spanned five days and that short time the Feds uncovered over half a ton of fentanyl powder among other heavy volumes of other drugs.

  • Since two milligrams of fentanyl  is enough to kill a person, half a ton can theoretically kill millions of Americans.

  • And the arrests were not just at the southern border, they were throughout the country.

  • In Franklin,  New Hampshire, 27 people were arrested in connection with drug trafficking in that town.

  • In all  of New England, far from the southern border, 171 people were arrested, $1.3 million in cash was confiscated, and more than 22,000 fake pills were taken off of the street.


The good news  is that mega amounts of deadly drugs have been  taken off of the streets, some very bad people were arrested, and the cartel cash flow was at least temporarily curtailed. The bad  news is that the battle to protect Americans from all  types of illegal  drugs is still a big job that will  continue as long as there is a demand for the drugs in his country. Beating up the supply of illegal drugs is good but the real battle is won when the demand for those drugs dries up.


Enough for today: a small victory against the Mexican drug cartels, destroying government statistical integrity, the United Nations history of failures continues, and another solar energy project dies a premature death.


**********************

If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



**********************


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


Wednesday, September 2, 2020

By The Numbers: California Has A Numbers Problem, Virus Crisis Stimulus Screw Up, and The Virus Numbers Are Looking Different

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post in this series where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us. 

1) We have often talked about what a disaster the state of California has become because of the idiocy of the ideas and actions of the state’s political class:
  • Housing prices have skyrocketed due to insane and cumbersome regulations at all levels of California government.
  • The state government has untold hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities in the future.
  • The state’s infrastructure is crumbling.
  • The state government’s attempt to build a high speed rail line ended in failure after tens of millions of dollars had been spent with nothing of value in return.
  • Idiotic and wrong conservation measures have turned the state into a never ending forest fire. 
  • About half of the country’s homeless population live in California and the density of homelessness in Los Angeles has seen the rise of at least one Medieval disease, typhus.
  • On average, the state is one of the poorest states in the country despite the wealth in Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
  • The state’s public schools on average do a terrible job of educating the state’s kids.
  • In many cities in the state it is not illegal to defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs in public.
  • The state is now faced with rolling blackouts as political mismanagement of the energy industry leaves the state without enough electricity on a recurring basis.
You get the idea, it is not the ideal dream world to live in it once was with now outward migration of residents higher than the inward migration of new residents, a reality that has not happened for a very long time, if ever.

Given this backdrop, what do some of the numbers say about California:
  • The state has the highest state income marginal tax rate in the country at 13.3% with some state politicians wanting to raise it even higher to 16.3% and make it retroactive to the beginning of the year.
  • The state is number one when it comes to highest sales tax and ninth when it comes to highest other local state taxes.
  • State politicians' insistence that electric utilities get more and more of their energy from renewable sources has caused the state to currently get 33% of its electricity from renewables with plans to get that number to 60% by 2030 and 100% by 2045.
  • But when it is dark (solar power) or not windy (wind power) the state either has to cause intentional blackouts or buy energy from other states on the spot market, often at up to 10 times the normal price.
  • This results in Californians on average paying 55% more for electricity than the rest of the country.
  • Since 2011, California electricity rates have increased five times as fast as the national average.
  • But it is not just electricity that costs more, state residents pay the 3rd highest amount for their water.
  • One reason why the state has such a high level of unfunded liabilities is because of the salaries it pays government workers with a recent news article uncovering the reality that a Oakland city DEPUTY Sheriff makes $287,000 a year in salary.
  • In Menlo Park, California, teachers AVERAGED $106,986 in salary in 2018 before they got a 5% raise.
  • California has the sixth highest unemployment rate.
  • The stupid AB15 bill that became law as of January 1 has endangered the jobs of 500,000 Uber and Lyft drivers, not to mention the jobs of thousands of freelance writers, artists, truck drivers, and other gig industry workers.
Job destruction, outrageously high public employee salaries, high water costs, high electricity costs, high taxes, the numbers are not pretty. No wonder residents are leaving the state in droves for greener, cheaper and better life styles.

2) Here are good news/bad news numbers. As you may recall, when the virus crisis hit, the Federal government printed up some money and sent it out to Americans to help with those that lost their jobs or had their work hours cut. This was generally a check for $1,200 per person. 

The bad news is that the Federal bureaucracy malfunctioned as it always has since it sent out a whopping $1.6 billion to dead people. The good news is that the Treasury Department thinks it has recovered $1.2 billion of the $1.6 billion that it sent out to dead people.

The bad news is how many other screwups did the Feds do and waste billions and billions of taxpayer wealth on other aspects of the virus relief that we do not know about. I can say with certainty that $1.6 billion is not the only wasteful spending that the Federal government committed.

3) Early in the virus crisis, the experts and politicians decided that we had to shutdown the whole country and the economy in order to avoid catastrophic virus death rates and carnage. This has caused millions and millions of Americans to become unemployed and economic activity to take a nosedive. Schools were closed, churches were closed, businesses were closed or went out of business, and the politicians of the country acted so stupidly in so many different ways.

As of recently, the official national death toll from the virus was over 180,000 that were classified as dying because of the virus. But not so fast, according to the recent pronouncement from the CDC:
  • According to the CDC, only 6% of the deaths currently classified as caused by the virus were actually caused only by the virus.
  • This does not mean that the virus did not contribute to deaths but it was only a contributing factor associated with another health issue, not the sole cause of the deaths.
  • According to the CDC: “For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death,”
  • Thus, the death toll solely from the virus is not over 180,000 but possibly only 11,000 or so, 6% of 180,000.
For comparison to that 11,000:
  • About 38,000 Americans die in auto accidents in the country every year.
  • About 72,000 Americans die from drug overdoses every year.
  • About 250,000 Americans die from medical errors every year.
And yet we do not shut down the country for auto accidents, drug overdoses, and medical errors. I realize that at the beginning of this whole virus thing we had no idea what was going to happen so playing it safe was the right move.

But the need for keeping draconian shutdown measures in place across the country by overbearing and dictatorial politicians is probably not necessary if the CDC analysis is right. The virus was bad, it contributed to deaths, it caused deaths by itself but it is nowhere close to the disaster we are being told it was and still, the CDC numbers say so.

So, the numbers show how bad life is in California, the Federal government still mishandles our taxpayer dollars, and the CDC says the virus was maybe not that bad after all, the numbers don't lie.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:



Sunday, July 23, 2017

July, 2017, Part 5, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Wind Power Is Not The Answer and China Hits The Jackpot In The Paris Climate Agreement

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:
  • Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
  • Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
  • Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control of our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.
To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical posts listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) While global warming advocates have always been big supporters of solar energy, we have shown research, numbers, and realities over this past week that proved the production and destruction of solar panels cause more total environmental damage than fossil fuel driven energy sources. This obviously should kill the lust of global warming advocates for solar energy.

But what about that other great savior of the Earth, wind power? Maybe that source of clean energy is the great salvation of humanity from manmade global warming and climate change without the destructiveness of solar panel mining, manufacturing, and destruction activities.

Unfortunately, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2016 Key Renewables Trends research and report, wind power is probably not the salvation of the Earth that Al Gore types hoped for:
  • According to the 2016 report, from a total energy perspective (i.e. not just electricity production), wind power provided about .46% of the global energy consumption in 2014 (solar and tidal energy sources were even less productive at a combined .35%).
  • This paltry .46% was achieved despite decades worth of government and taxpayer subsidies for wind power generation.
  • While about 14% of the world’s energy is from renewable sources, the vast majority (75%) of that renewable source consists of energy from biomass including sticks, logs, charcoal, and dung burned for energy by the poor around the world.
  • Another large chunk of that renewable energy is from hydroelectric sources, not wind and solar.
  • The International Energy Agency estimated that world energy demand grew 2% in 2014 or almost 2,000 terawatt hours.
  • This means if we wanted to deploy wind turbines just to cover that incremental 2%, about 350,000 wind turbines would have to be installed just to cover the increase in energy consumption, not replace the energy from other sources.
  • Since only about two thirds of that amount of wind turbines exist today, having been built over the past decades, it is highly unlikely that enough wind turbines could be put in place to even handle the year over year growth in energy needs.
  • Given that 50 acres are needed for each megawatt of wind energy produced, 350,000 turbines would cover half the landmass of the British Isles and doing the same thing for 50 years to cover the annual growth in energy needs would eventually require a landmass the size of half of Russia.
  • This energy source would of course still be subject to the whims of the local weather, no wind = no energy.
  • And land availability is just one problem with wind energy; other problems include the pollution and CO2 created by the manufacturing, shipping, and installation of wind turbine parts and cement needed for their foundations and the other environmental issue of mining impacts on the environment from mining rare earth metals needed for the magnets of the turbines.
  • Oh, and let’s not forget the biological impacts of the untold number of birds and bats killed every year from flying into the turbine blades.
A more detailed discussion of these numbers and other highlights of the International Energy Agency’s findings, including how much dirty coal has to be burned to build wind turbines, can be accessed at:


So yes, let’s talk about global warming and climate change but let’s do it in the context of looking at ALL of the data and ALL of the research, including the tremendous downsides of solar and wind energy courses.

2) A lot of liberals and global warming advocates went nuts when Trump pulled us out of the illegal, un-Constitutional, and stupid Paris climate agreement. One of the primary reasons to pull out was the reality that the U.S. would have been making all of the sacrifices and paying blackmail to other countries not to pollute while other major players in the world economy would have had none of those same burdens placed on themselves.

The primary beneficiary of such a stupid agreement that Obama negotiated was China which was probably laughing all of the way to the bank with what it got away with in the agreement, as outlined by a Heritage Foundation article Michael Bastasch on June 2, 2017:
  • Under the Paris agreement, China would be able to and plans to raise its coal powered energy generation capacity (remember, coal is a VERY big contributor to global warming) from 900 gigawatts in 2016 to as high as 1,100 by 2020, just three years from now.
  • That would make China’s COAL generated energy larger than the TOTAL energy capacity of Canada.
  • But this massive 22% increase in coal burning was somehow legal under the Paris agreement since China is allowed, under the agreement, to allow its greenhouse gas emissions to rise, in absolute terms, for another 13 years until 2030.
  • In other words, China’s economy and citizens would not experience any global warming inconvenience or economic hardships for at least another 13 years, i.e. how badly did Obama handle that negotiating point with a major economic power and competitor and major CO2 emitter?
  • China did promise to cut CO23 emissions per unit of output but that really does not matter if the total CO2 emissions is growing fast, i.e. “China can reduce its emissions per unit of output while increasing overall emissions—that’s what matters in terms of global warming. It’s almost like it is gaming the whole Paris Agreement.”
  • The Energy Information Administration estimates that China’s total emissions will grow a whopping 32% between now and 2040 and the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate will increase 34% over 2012 levels by 2030.
  • Much of this new energy will be coming from coal powered power plants inside China.
  • Oh, and by the way, not only is China getting away like highway robbers relative to its domestic energy production within the Paris agreement, but it is also exporting its coal production expertise around the world, having recently signed an agreement with Pakistan (according to a Reuters report) “to spend around $15 billion over the next 15 years to build close to a dozen coal power plants of varying sizes around the country.”
Bottom line is that the Paris Climate Agreement was a really crappy agreement from a U.S. perspective, an agreement that even Al Gore has publicly admitted would have virtually no impact on the environment. But it would allow countries like China to go along their merry way with little or no negative impact on their economies and citizens while burdening the U.S. and its taxpayers with economic hardships. It is a crappy, illegal agreement that should be ignored.

That will do it for this month’s review under the theme “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” Climate is a difficult animal to understand, made even more difficult and dangerous when people like Al Gore ignore the realities, data, science, and research that do not fit their pre-conceived notions or agendas. The purpose of this theme is to uncover what is real and then decide what, if anything, should be done. More doubts next month.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w