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Worldwide Energy Crisis

Honestly you can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting a Suburban or Yukon - albeit most don't have my 6.2L V-8
But the wife's MB GLE does get much better gas mileage.
In my neighborhood, it's 90% Truck or SUV, plus 3 Minivans (and a constant point of ridicule for their owners)
A Duramax-powered Suburban/YukonXL wouldn’t be a bad rig… 👍🏼
 
A Duramax-powered Suburban/YukonXL wouldn’t be a bad rig… 👍🏼
Yeah it was almost another 20k on top of the 78K I paid, now that I've got 38k miles on the 6.2 gas guzzler, I am thinking the Diesel would have been the correct choice...
 
Honestly you can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting a Suburban or Yukon - albeit most don't have my 6.2L V-8
But the wife's MB GLE does get much better gas mileage.
In my neighborhood, it's 90% Truck or SUV, plus 3 Minivans (and a constant point of ridicule for their owners)
People love to rip on minivans despite many of them having the same capabilities or more than a light truck.

Loved my old 2006 Nissan Quest. V6, could carry as much in it as a truck basically when you folded down the seats, and could take 8 in one go. Went places off road in that beast that many trucks wouldn’t dare to go.
 

Net Zero to follow FRES and FCS into the technological history books?
 

Net Zero to follow FRES and FCS into the technological history books?
and we're on the hook for what, 35 billion? Perhaps if we can get some pipelines approved and installed we can maybe rejuvenate our moribund economy
 
Meanwhile, record levels of global debt. I wonder how we're all going to pay for all that with unicorn farts ;)

Debt is just 1s and 0s in the electronic world. It’s all meaningless when you can just hit the delete button.
 
Its all just numbers on a spread sheet now, my understanding is the gold standard is gone. So its value is quite imaginary.

Hit the delete button on that column and see what happens ?
One person's debt is another person's asset.

Hit the delete button and all the people who are already grasshoppers will go on being grasshoppers, while the ants will be reduced to being grasshoppers as well and have a strong disincentive to bother trying to become ants again. None of the things people think they are entitled to contractually would be worth anything unless someone's willing to work to provide the entitlements, and the strongest motivator for work is property rights.
 
One person's debt is another person's asset.

Hit the delete button and all the people who are already grasshoppers will go on being grasshoppers, while the ants will be reduced to being grasshoppers as well and have a strong disincentive to bother trying to become ants again. None of the things people think they are entitled to contractually would be worth anything unless someone's willing to work to provide the entitlements, and the strongest motivator for work is property rights.
And who can enforce those rights…
 
And who can enforce those rights…
Certainly not the plebes. Today they are fat and lazy and will continue to be so until they start starving and getting mean and lean. At 70, I don't expect it in my lifetime.

th-5.png
 
California....

Gas and Nuclear

California energy regulators on Thursday voted to extend the lifespan of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant by five years, moving the shutdown date from 2025 to 2030. The 2025 date was agreed to back in 2016 as California Democrats attempted to purge nuclear energy from the state’s grid.

... Diablo Canyon alone provides roughly 9% of the state’s electricity, leading even Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) to reverse his previous opposition to the plant and advocate its extension.

It isn’t just nuclear energy that is getting reevaluated either. Newsom went from campaigning to shut down the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility to pushing for it to be expanded. Natural gas comprised about 47% of the state’s energy in 2022, compared to just over 26% for wind and solar combined. This now marks four years of California turning to natural gas to avoid blackouts, with Newsom now taking a more proactive approach to avoid additional headlines about, for example, firing up temporary gas-field generators to keep the grid running.


Add another one to the "Not Yet" pile.
 
The lack of reliable energy is a key contributor to international migration.
Net zero is impossible.
Shifting jobs from the west to China does not reduce emissions.
Nuclear power and Natural Gas are solutions.
World Bank will not lend for Nuclear Power and has just started lending for Natural Gas

And much, much more....


There may be a pay wall.
 
California....

Gas and Nuclear




Add another one to the "Not Yet" pile.
but don't expect OW to learn any lessons from it. Damn the icebergs, full speed ahead
 
One by one they crumble, the net zero targets that were dreamed up without any regard to their cost and practicality. The latest one to go, it seems, is the so-called boiler tax a rule which, from April, was going to force boiler manufacturers to ensure that at least 4 per cent of their installations were heat pumps. Should they have failed, they would have been liable to pay a fine of £3,000 for every boiler installation above the target. But the Government has now pulled back, perhaps having realised – to its apparent amazement – that boiler manufacturers were starting to raise prices in order to cover the fines they knew they would have to pay.

You can set targets all day, but that doesn’t mean they are magically going to be realised. You might hope that setting a target will nudge manufacturers and consumers to veer towards heat pumps, and that that will help to bring down prices, but that is not going to happen if there is something fundamentally wrong with the technology. And the problem with heat pumps is that for all the public money which has been thrown at them over the past decade they remain too expensive to install. Moreover, while there seem to be some happy customers there are far too many homeowners complaining that their homes are lukewarm and that the devices cost too much to run, too. Heat pump manufacturers themselves have said that they are not suitable for some homes.

All this may change, of course. The high temperature heat pumps required to heat older, less well-insulated properties will hopefully become more efficient. Someone may well find a way to bring down the cost so that a heat pump becomes the natural choice of anyone looking to replace an oil or gas boiler. No-one would be happier than me were that to happen. But for the moment it is quite plain that even government grants of £7,500 per installation are insufficient to make heat pumps competitive. To start imposing fines on the heating industry on the grounds that engineers haven’t yet got around that problem is not a smart green policy but simply a way of extracting more tax revenue from homeowners.


And Britain is warmer than Canada in winter.
 
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