By Bob Hoye ——Bio and Archives--June 1, 2023
American Politics, News | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
For thousands of years, society’s standard of living and longevity have advanced based upon a built-in drive to improve one’s condition. That’s for food and shelter and the improvements have been understood as well as enjoyed. And most advance themselves by providing goods and services that the market wants at an affordable price. Opposing this has been authoritarian movements by control freaks who are compelled to intrude upon other peoples’ lives. At a lesser level are union leaders and their rank and file who with strikes advance themselves by denying goods and services. Small but always disruptive. But the iniquities become huge when governments become authoritarian and are driven to control every aspect of everyone’s life. Which means disrupting the voluntary and natural way of market forces providing what is wanted to impose what may not be wanted. Such dictates may not be practical nor popular, requiring ruthless political enforcement.
Indeed, as seen with the East German Stasi, the more unpopular the policy, the more brutal the imposition. That Germans were prevented from working hard was amazing.
History provides riveting examples of consequences of imposed authority. Union strikes are small-time. Big time is the former Soviet Union providing instruction today for those with curiosity, as well as instruction for those who are on the power trip. Democrats in the US and Liberals in Canada. Both are driven by the age-old compulsion to control. Not so long ago, when life was freer, the main political parties tailored their campaign platforms to attract the most votes. But hey, this would place political control back in the hands of the electorate, which is verboten. And their desires may not align with those of the control freaks. Thus, in key swing states there have been two sets of ballots—those of the voters and those of statists.
This was most egregious with the 2020 presidential election, whereby half the voters on November 8th went to bed in America and woke up in Venezuela. One simple event brings down the notion that there was no rigging. At 10:30 PM in key states vote counting was halted. Never happened before. So, there were two set of ballots; real and unreal, and the latter corrupted the election results.
The next subject of duplicity is power generation whereby ambitious promoters with the notion that “renewables” such as solar and wind are relatively “free”. What’s more that these are patently intermittent was not at the forefront. So, to keep the grid going, each unit of such power requires the equivalent in stand-by power that will always be there, when needed. Why, then, bother with intermittent power?
Today’s nuclear, coal and natural gas fueled electrical plants are remarkably efficient with little insult to the environment. But – not so – to the mob that remains convinced that atmospheric CO2 is “evil”. In order to impose “evil” controls.
In the old days, with essentially no risk from intermittent sources the grid would fail. The worst that could happen to the electrical grid had been a devastating weather event. Or a technical “glitch” as with the massive shutdown in the Northeast, including Ontario, in August 2003. That was a combination of both.
Again, in the same region, on November 9, 1965, temps plunged prompting a jump in demand. At 5:17 PM, an upstate NY generator, a small variation of output tripped a relay, disabling a major line to Ontario. So, suddenly there was too much power going where it shouldn’t and the shutdown was massive.
Unlike the 1977 example there was no rioting with little looting. While hitting at the Manhattan cocktail hour, sources note that stories about a baby boom some nine months later were “unsubstantiated”.
These are examples of outages when the grid had very little faddish but disruptive passions about power. Nowadays, it is vastly more vulnerable. And in this case a practical system cannot be established isolated from the deliberately vulnerable system. Due to politics, disruptive failures could occur more frequently.
Of course, electrical engineering has been distorted to accommodate popular superstitions about CO2. Geologically speaking even at 400 ppm, this is unusually low and what’s more at 150 ppm all life on our otherwise hospitable planet will shut down. Nevertheless, the mania against carbon dioxide continues. Further in looking behind the banners, this issue is not so much CO2, but that the hysteria about a trace gas essential to life is all about control.
Support Canada Free Press
And their visions consider that electric vehicles are “pure”, with no regard for amount of CO2 used in assembly, let alone for the environmental insult of mining the exotic materials needed. Beyond this are the immense size of a wind turbine. Above ground the tower weighs 200 tons, nacelles weigh some 56 tons, with the blades coming in at 36 tons. Below ground the footings require up to 400 tons of concrete and steel rebar.
Times how many of the monsters.
Similarly, solar farms also require vast amounts of exotic materiel and real estate.
The energy output from both low-density systems may not capture the energy required to build them.
Because of natural inefficiencies, this form of energy production requires immense space and can’t be placed close to cities. Which requires lengthy power lines and the longer the lines the more the transmission losses.
In cities, gas stations use only a small corner of a city block. But with electrical charging being so slow, with cars plugged in for hours, such stations may require half a block.
Climate hucksters have noticed that their preferred power is intermittent and call for battery storage, which adds another layer of expense. And making batteries also requires mining of some nasty substances.
Another example of doing it the hard and costly way twice.
Fortunately, authoritarian disruptions could be prompting another reformation. In-your-wallet and in-your-face governments are becoming “too much” and a recession could accelerate the need for reform.
And as we all know, one heat wave or a negligent bird shorting out a transformer could dislocate an efficient grid. What can happen to an intentionally fragile grid? And how often?
View Comments
Bob Hoye (BobHoye.com) has been researching investments for decades, which eventually included the history of financial and political markets. He considers now to be the most fascinating time for both since the Great Reformation of the 1600s. Bob casts a caustic eye on all promotions and, having a degree in geophysics, is severely critical of the audacity that a committee can “manage” not just the economy, but also the temperature of the nearest planet. He has had articles published in major financial journals and, as a speaker, has amused assemblies in a number of cities, from London to Zurich to Tokyo.