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You are here: Home / Open Threads / You Can’t Make This Shit Up

You Can’t Make This Shit Up

by @heymistermix.com|  December 23, 201911:34 am| 221 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Now he’s tilting at windmills:

Trump has complained about windmills throughout his presidency, slamming the technology everywhere from the G7 conference in France this year to a Republican fundraising dinner speech that he used to claim windmill noise causes cancer. Scientific studies have not identified any human health risk.His hatred of windmills stretches back even further than his political career, when he spent years battling the construction of wind turbines near his golf course property in Scotland.

Open thread.

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Reader Interactions

221Comments

  1. 1.

    Brendan in NC

    December 23, 2019 at 11:36 am

    Who does he think he is, Don Quixote???

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    December 23, 2019 at 11:38 am

    @Brendan in NC:  Pauncho Santa

  3. 3.

    patrick II

    December 23, 2019 at 11:42 am

    @Brendan in NC:
    That would require rudimentary knowledge of literature.

  4. 4.

    gene108

    December 23, 2019 at 11:43 am

    Saw his latest rant at TPUSA.

    He does rightly point out that a lot of windmills are made in China, some in Germany, and not many in the USA.

    He doesn’t have a clue as to why that is, and how we ceded a 40 year head start on renewable energy to the rest of the world.

    At some point, we just need to move to another planet. Preferably pristine, that we can take over. I don’t like our long term survival* chances on this one.

    * Meteors, plate tectonics rearranging land masses, sun going red giant, etc.

  5. 5.

    MattF

    December 23, 2019 at 11:46 am

    It’s worth reading the linked article, if only to see the full measure of Trumpian lunacy. Bear in mind that he will never, never ever retreat on the subject. Never.

  6. 6.

    PenAndKey

    December 23, 2019 at 11:49 am

    For a second I thought you wrote that he said windmills cause noise cancer, then a re-read it. I didn’t re-read it because such an idiotic statement surprised me, but to make sure I knew his exact quote. He may have said something marginally different, but it’s certainly just as idiotic.

  7. 7.

    Gin & Tonic

    December 23, 2019 at 11:50 am

    So I posted downstairs, Phil Bump of the WaPo must be atoning for many prior sins, and was tasked with trying to explain these babblings to the rest of us.

  8. 8.

    LarrytheRed

    December 23, 2019 at 11:50 am

    All roads don’t lead to Putin. The rest lead to Trump’s pocket.

  9. 9.

    Fleeting Expletive

    December 23, 2019 at 11:56 am

    It bothers me a lot that somehow this is all going to depend on how Chief Justice Roberts himself decides it is to happen, either in presiding over the impeachment trial or becoming the fifth vote  on witness’ testimony (Kupperman?,  Bolton?, all the others) in the Supreme Court case.  What an odd confluence of jurisprudence.

  10. 10.

    Yarrow

    December 23, 2019 at 12:00 pm

    @LarrytheRed: Same thing since the Russian mob (Putin) owns Trump.

    You could listen to any rightwing radio show or talk to any random Trump voter and hear a version of this windmill stuff. The mistake people make is thinking the words mean things. They don’t. Trump just emotes their anger and fear in his word salad. His followers pick up on the emotion. It’s why they love him.

  11. 11.

    Bill Arnold

    December 23, 2019 at 12:04 pm

    For those who care, re Trump’s obsessions about wind turbines:
    Donald Trump’s 16 Obsessive Letters To ‘Mad Alex’ Salmond About Wind Turbine ‘Monsters’ In Scotland – ‘Green ink’ attacks revealed in full for first time. (21/12/2016, Graeme Demianyk)
    Some really choice material. His mind has obviously decayed a bit since 2011 when the letters were exchanged.

    Also, from last night’s threads, this directly addresses DJT’s false claims:
    Wind Turbines Are Not Killing Fields for Birds (Sep 3, 2019)

    Wind turbines have not been found to diminish home values of nearby properties or cause cancer. According to numbers aggregated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, cats are a bigger scrooge to the overall bird community than wind turbines. The most recent estimate places the number of bird deaths at the paws of cats at 2.4 billion. Collisions from wind turbines on land killed a small fraction of birds in comparison to the damage that cats and glass buildings cause to the general bird population. Land wind turbines were responsible for over 200,000 bird deaths while collisions from building glass are estimated to be responsible for nearly 600 million bird deaths. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not provide estimates for deaths resulting from offshore wind turbines.

  12. 12.

    chopper

    December 23, 2019 at 12:05 pm

    but he’s studied windmills ‘more than anyone’, so suck it libs.

  13. 13.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 12:07 pm

    @MattF:

    It’s worth reading the linked article, if only to see the full measure of Trumpian lunacy. Bear in mind that he will never, never ever retreat on the subject. Never.

    Trumpian lunacy is a good description.  What I continue to find shocking and appalling is how the supportive crowds he addresses eat this shit up. I have not often seen supposedly rational people shut their minds, or this strange group surrender to nonsense.

    It’s no longer just right wing nut jobs clinging to guns and religion; they are now clinging onto Trump as though their very lives depended on him.

  14. 14.

    Yarrow

    December 23, 2019 at 12:11 pm

    @Brachiator:  It’s a cult. The smart thing for the rest of us to do is to recognize that and treat it accordingly. It’ll take cult deprogramming to get to these people.

  15. 15.

    leeleeFL

    December 23, 2019 at 12:13 pm

    @Brachiator: I see it all the time.  Educated, uneducated, well-off, barely surviving.  Doesn’t seem to matter.  The kool-aid is working, non-stop.  It makes my stomach turn and I fear that the Country will not recover from this.

  16. 16.

    JPL

    December 23, 2019 at 12:17 pm

    @Brachiator: If he cared about birds so much, he wouldn’t  be building skyscrapers.

  17. 17.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 12:20 pm

    @Yarrow:

    It’s a cult. The smart thing for the rest of us to do is to recognize that and treat it accordingly. It’ll take cult deprogramming to get to these people.

    I don’t know what it might take to get through to these people, but you are never going to have any kind of mass political deprogramming of citizens.  I wouldn’t even want it.  This kind of “cure” is as bad as the disease.

  18. 18.

    Anya

    December 23, 2019 at 12:20 pm

    How does anyone who cares about our country support this man? And I am not talking about the average Trump supporters.

  19. 19.

    Kelly

    December 23, 2019 at 12:23 pm

    I have listened to right wing acquaintances and relative rant about ugly bird killing windmills. All other environmental or aesthetic concerns are a scam. Heard it before Trump rose to prominence. I think there’s a relationship to the climate change is a scam stuff.

  20. 20.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    December 23, 2019 at 12:27 pm

    OT but this is soooo BJish. It a FB site where UPS drivers post pics of dogs on their route.

  21. 21.

    ruemara

    December 23, 2019 at 12:29 pm

    @Kelly: Actually, it’s environmentalism is a scam. The corollary is that Jesus will return soon and they’re going to die and go to heaven so why bother?

  22. 22.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 12:30 pm

    @JPL:

    If he cared about birds so much, he wouldn’t be building skyscrapers.

    I don’t know if Trump cares about birds.  But he is a bird brain and his idiotic ramblings about wind is for the birds.

  23. 23.

    JoyceH

    December 23, 2019 at 12:32 pm

    Open thread stuff – I just published book 4 of my Regency Mage series, Mary Bennet and the Shades of Pemberley.

    You can find it here –  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08319YFJS/

    (Not sure if I’ve created a clickable link here – if not, you’ll have to cut and paste.)

  24. 24.

    The Dangerman

    December 23, 2019 at 12:32 pm

    Perhaps California needs to announce that it is going to power it’s high speed rail with windmills (if anything sets the typical CA Reichwinger off, it’s HSR).

  25. 25.

    Mo MacArbie

    December 23, 2019 at 12:33 pm

    After trying to decipher the lunacy, I’ve decided that the fumes are the key.

  26. 26.

    chopper

    December 23, 2019 at 12:34 pm

    in hell, trump’s bathroom is going to be a low-flow toilet powered by a fucking windmill.

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 12:34 pm

    @Yarrow:

    It’s a cult.

    Yep.  The Republicans have been a cult looking for a leader at least since the days of Reagan. They tried to make Reagan the cult leader, but his Alzheimer’s had progressed too far for him to be a really active leader by the time they started, which is why the cult of zombie Reagan has been so important.  Bush Sr., Dole, McCain, and Romney lacked the right personality to be good cult leaders.  Bush Jr. went pretty far down that path, but I think he didn’t have his heart in it.  Palin tried to lead the cult but was too lazy and got loser stink all over her.  With Trump they finally have someone who’s eager to lead a cult and who actually managed to win the presidency.

  28. 28.

    Jinchi

    December 23, 2019 at 12:34 pm

    @gene108:

    I don’t like our long term survival* chances.

    * Meteors, plate tectonics rearranging land masses, sun going red giant, etc.

    You know the whole sun going red giant thing is about 2 billion years in the future, and we’ve survived the last several billion years of plate tectonics, right?

  29. 29.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 12:36 pm

    @JPL:

    If he cared about birds so much, he wouldn’t be building skyscrapers.

    He would also be trying to enforce environmental laws.  Birds are in far more danger from pollution and habitat loss than from anything else.

  30. 30.

    Ruckus

    December 23, 2019 at 12:37 pm

    @JPL:

    That of course is the answer, he cares about absolutely nothing other than himself or how others can bolster his standing. For him the world really, really does revolve around him and nothing else matters. If he was in any way competent at anything he still wouldn’t be any more dangerous. And he is dangerous because his stick is to get people to believe that he is what he says he is. You notice of course that he only gets the worst people to believe him and that’s because no one else will have them. Most people offer something to the world. It generally won’t be a dramatic something, because most of us are not capable of dramatic. But it can be something to help the world operate and move forward. trump offers nothing to do that, he only offers bullshit to people who believe in bullshit. The worst people like him because he’s one of them even as he tells himself that he’s far better than the rubes that like him. He’s not, he’s exactly one of them. Who has managed to make himself, very, very superficially look like money. Which is power to them. The how is never important only the basic, the superficial is important. Actual good means nothing to them, they are the selfish, amoral buttocks of the world. He is their leader.

  31. 31.

    waspuppet

    December 23, 2019 at 12:37 pm

    You know, on some level, writing for CNN is probably pretty good: You’re widely read, and it probably pays OK. On the other hand, you have to write crap like how Trump’s hatred of windmills “stretches back” to decades ago when they potentially kept a couple of dollars out of his pocket, and pretend like maybe there’s some other reason that’s developed since then.

    So, not that CNN is asking me to write for them anyway, but no thanks.

  32. 32.

    Yarrow

    December 23, 2019 at 12:37 pm

    Heh.

    Sméagol never understoods winds precious! No no we knows ALL bout windmills we does! Smokey fumes bursts, bubbles! Spouts up and burns! Smokes out the windmills! Smokemills precious? YESSSS! Up over lands! Tiny Liddle lands that’s part of bigly Realm! Windmills WICKED! And false!— Gollum J. Trump (@realGollumTrump) December 23, 2019

  33. 33.

    brantl

    December 23, 2019 at 12:39 pm

    The only thing that is going to cure Trumpism in the US is education, and it will have to be a generational cure. My in-laws eat this fecal material up.

  34. 34.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 12:39 pm

    @leeleeFL:

    I see it all the time. Educated, uneducated, well-off, barely surviving. Doesn’t seem to matter. The kool-aid is working, non-stop. It makes my stomach turn and I fear that the Country will not recover from this.

    Yeah. Sadly, I know exactly what you mean.

  35. 35.

    Yarrow

    December 23, 2019 at 12:41 pm

    @Brachiator:  Mass deprogramming isn’t going to happen nor would we want it. Looking at cult deprogramming for how to approach these people can be helpful, though. Also useful, looking at how German dealt with its Nazi history. Also, looking at countries like Sweden and Finland that are successfully teaching people about disinformation and propaganda and how to combat it.

  36. 36.

    Mike in DC

    December 23, 2019 at 12:42 pm

    The tipping point politically will be the moment when the renewable energy industry spends more on lobbying than the fossil fuel industry.   That moment is coming soon. Whether it’s soon enough is an iffy proposition though.

  37. 37.

    Bill Arnold

    December 23, 2019 at 12:43 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Re Philip Bump’s good piece, and his (convincing) argument that Trump does not understand global heating:

    A quick review of the record, though, suggests another reason the president talks about clean air when asked about climate change: He may not actually understand the mechanism that is warming the planet.

    A basic (very basic) greenhouse effect diagram can easily be drawn from memory on a napkin at a party or on a whiteboard.
    https://images.slideplayer.com/19/5742133/slides/slide_13.jpg

    Supplement with these which can also be drawn from memory:
    Blackbody radiation absorption by trace gases, major components labeled (roughly):
    https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20190808121958971-0796:9781108674614:48163fig5_2.png?pub-status=live
    Another showing both solar inbound radiation (sun is a blackbody at 5887 degrees K) and outbound infrared (not directly reflected) radiation from the much colder earth.
    https://www.planetforlife.com/images/blackbodyco2.jpg

    And for the more mathematically inclined,
    Learning from a simple model (gavin, 10 April 2007)

  38. 38.

    Quinerly

    December 23, 2019 at 12:44 pm

    @chopper: ?

  39. 39.

    Yarrow

    December 23, 2019 at 12:46 pm

    @chopper:  How about a composting toilet and his two hours of electricity a day are run by the windmill that he lives under.

  40. 40.

    CarolPW

    December 23, 2019 at 12:47 pm

    I’ve been working on wind farms doing permitting, environmental surveys and public education since 2002. One of the dumbest things I heard was some idiotic woman in Palm Springs claiming the turbines were sucking Valley Fever germs into Palm Springs from the valley. I guess she thinks that the operators power them up and use them as fans. People also think if you stand underneath them you will be dodging falling dead birds all day. I’ve found dead birds (and one bat) under wind turbines, but never had one hit during the eight hour survey work I do under turbines. I’ve also found similar numbers of dead birds in locations remote from turbines, including in by back yard.

    The real scandal is no one actually knows how many birds turbines kill. During post-construction surveys (which can cost millions in large facilities) they search for dead birds and bats under and around turbines. They do not do pre-construction surveys or search equivalently-sized areas remote from turbines during the post-construction surveys. In other words, these “studies” do not use control sites.

  41. 41.

    kindness

    December 23, 2019 at 12:48 pm

    I made the mistake of going over to the linked The Hill article (I can’t stand The Hill) and reading the comments.  There is a reason I don’t go there much as the comments border on everyone is a paid Russian Troll type comments.  Worthless.

  42. 42.

    Travels with Charley

    December 23, 2019 at 12:48 pm

    @JoyceH: I love this series and have recommended it to friends!  Thank you!!

  43. 43.

    Ruckus

    December 23, 2019 at 12:48 pm

    @chopper:

    With a combination lock on the door……

  44. 44.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 12:50 pm

    @Mike in DC:

    That’s a big ask so long as Exxon-Mobil, BP, Chevron, et al are so vastly wealthy.

    I’m also appalled at how busy the Aussie PM is, keeping himself tied into knots defending their coal industry, who are totally not responsible or have anything to do with their record high temperatures and millions of burnt acreage.

  45. 45.

    WhatsMyNym

    December 23, 2019 at 12:51 pm

    In my neck of the woods, bald eagles have a bad habit of eating road kill in the middle of the night and are too stupid/greedy to get out of the way when a vehicle comes along at 55mph, until the last minute. Then they fly across the path of the oncoming vehicle.

  46. 46.

    Eunicecycle

    December 23, 2019 at 12:57 pm

    @JoyceH: Great! I just downloaded it. I am in a waiting room while my husband has some minor surgery and needed something to read beside refreshing BJ and Twitter.

  47. 47.

    Chip Daniels

    December 23, 2019 at 12:57 pm

    This made me giggle:
    Trump campaign plagued by groups raising tens of millions in his name
    https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/23/trump-campaign-compete-against-groups-money-089454

     

    The grifters get grifted.

  48. 48.

    Ruckus

    December 23, 2019 at 12:58 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    I think it’s been far longer than Regan. I think that was just opportunity knocking. Since WWII we’ve had Joe McCarthy, WF Buckley, Regan, Bush the lessor, Newt, Rush L, and now trump, all with hangers on. All of them carnival barkers, trying – and succeeding – in selling bullshit as a staple of politics and building that carnival upon each other’s bullshit. And to the point that even they don’t seem to notice any longer that it is bullshit. They believe it as much as the crowds of followers have.

  49. 49.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 12:59 pm

    @CarolPW:

    Same here–I’ve worked on turbine farm permitting and construction plans. Not only do they perform avian (and bat) kill surveys, some of the surveys have “salted” corpses to ascertain survey accuracy.

    Early turbine farms, clustered along coast range ridges, did kill a lot of birds. More careful placement and today’s larger, taller turbines seem to diminish this significantly. IIUC there are also better ways to add nav lights required at night so as to not attract migrating birds.

    I suspect off-shore wind farms will play a significant future role, especially in places like California with our populations primarily hugging the coast. The best winds in CONUS are in the upper prairies, quite far from the user base and reliable winds in the Pacific states are not easy to come by.

  50. 50.

    chopper

    December 23, 2019 at 1:00 pm

    @Mike in DC:

    yeah but we can’t shift away from fossil fuels, what about all the employees? and the companies, it’ll really make the s&p take a big hit.

  51. 51.

    Warblewarble

    December 23, 2019 at 1:01 pm

    tRUMPOV embodies the inchoate rage and fears of his cult,underestimate that one crucial fact at your peril. Only those who can recognise and counter with conviction and clarity can turn back this dark tide. the cult cannot be reached,cannot be reasoned with. They can only devour,they have made their choice and trust tRUMPOV to feed you to them.The age of canabilism is to be their Golden Age.

  52. 52.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 1:04 pm

    @Brendan in NC: He’s Don the Soviet shitpile mobster conman who was a massive loser of the popular vote.

  53. 53.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 1:08 pm

    @PenAndKey:

    For a second I thought you wrote that he said windmills cause noise cancer, then a re-read it. 

    You just wait!  He’ll get around to saying something that stupid.

  54. 54.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 1:11 pm

    Thankfully, Donald Trump is using the powerful platform of the American presidency to advance his one-man crusade against … those "monsters" called windmills… https://t.co/2a2M3jsKIQ

    — Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) December 23, 2019

  55. 55.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 1:12 pm

    Roosevelt: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
    Kennedy: Ask not what your country can do for you.
    Trump: You know we have a world, right? https://t.co/DZFXseYRyw

    — Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) December 23, 2019

  56. 56.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 1:12 pm

    i might just be naive but it has been genuinely shocking to me how, faced with repeated evidence that president trump does not have the capacity to do his job, the american political establishment has collectively decided to pretend otherwise https://t.co/Pr1WzRP26P

    — b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) December 23, 2019

  57. 57.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 1:13 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: I don’t know what Bump’s many prior sons are, but it sounds like he’ll be trying to attone for a while.

  58. 58.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 1:14 pm

    Turning Point USA Student Action Summit

     

    “when all the boomers die out, everything will be OK”

  59. 59.

    Martin

    December 23, 2019 at 1:15 pm

    Boeing finally fired their CEO. My faith they will find one not optimized to run the company into the ground is about zero, but one step at a time.

  60. 60.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 1:16 pm

    It is ironic that Governor GW Bush pushed Texas towards becoming a wind power leader. I’m sure Republicans are all “Ixnay on the Ush-bay ower-pay” now.

  61. 61.

    Immanentize

    December 23, 2019 at 1:17 pm

    Is Raven around?  And also you other fellow travelers?  I just read that Ram Dass died (age 88).

     

    ETA I wonder if he and NotMax were friends….

  62. 62.

    delk

    December 23, 2019 at 1:19 pm

    Round like a circle in a spiral like a wheel inside a wheel never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel.

  63. 63.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    December 23, 2019 at 1:21 pm

    @Immanentize: Love the “Be Here Now” perspective that Ram Das helped popularize. I hope his final moments were peaceful and full of love.

  64. 64.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 1:22 pm

    @Immanentize:

    Some early reviews of his comedy:

    https://oldshowbiz.tumblr.com/post/189823199334/oldshowbiz-ram-dass-also-known-as-richard

  65. 65.

    Immanentize

    December 23, 2019 at 1:22 pm

    @trollhattan: not in Texas.  It’s kinda schizophrenic.  On one hand you have oil guys and builders like Bobby Jack Perry who maximized energy use to increase profits.  They do not like renewables.  Then you have a bunch of ranchers and electric grid people in Texas who are like, “what’s more Texan than making money from the wind and sun?”. It’s a fascinating split.

  66. 66.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 1:25 pm

    @trollhattan:

    I suspect off-shore wind farms will play a significant future role, especially in places like California with our populations primarily hugging the coast.

    Probably not here in California.  The seabed drops off too steeply to make off-shore wind farms work well here.  You ideally need to locate them a few miles offshore, and the water here in California is deep enough that it drives the cost up a lot.  We do better putting them in inland mountain passes, where the topography creates strong winds.

    As a practical matter, though, California has a lot more good solar sites than wind, so that’s probably going to be our big source of renewable energy.  I’ve read that they’re starting to put in big solar plants on some of the Central Valley farms that are having trouble getting enough irrigation water.  The land is already cleared, it’s relatively cheap because it’s losing its value as farmland, and it’s less environmentally sensitive than the pristine desert areas they’ve otherwise been looking at.

  67. 67.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 1:26 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Awesome!  Thank you!

    Hahahahahaha

  68. 68.

    Immanentize

    December 23, 2019 at 1:26 pm

    @germy: like Mort Sahl?  I guess he didn’t make it to Mrs. Maisel heights at Kutchners.

  69. 69.

    Martin

    December 23, 2019 at 1:27 pm

    @Bill Arnold: Trump says things that he believes makes his opponents upset. It has no meaning to him. His rants on toilets and sinks was almost a direct breakdown of California regulations on water usage. It was nonsensical to anyone who didn’t know the CA regs – he thinks he’s owning Cali that way. Same with immigration. Same with turbines. Same with fuel standards. Same with sending firefighting aid to Russia and denying it to CA. We’re his enemy, we denied him a popular vote win.

    Don’t try to make sense of it.

  70. 70.

    Yutsano

    December 23, 2019 at 1:29 pm

    @Immanentize: I believe no less an oilman than T. Boone Pickens was switching his investments over to wind energy. Heck there are parts of Texas that would boom going massive solar generation plants. Despite the stereotypes, Texans aren’t total idiots, especially with money. Unless you count their tax structure. Yikes…

  71. 71.

    Martin

    December 23, 2019 at 1:30 pm

    @Roger Moore: Actually, we should start seeing offshore wind now that they’ve worked out really good methods for doing floating turbines.

    We have enough wind potential to meet 2x the state energy needs (same as with geothermal) and we probably need to stop building grid solar given residential is pushing us out of balance. I think 2023 is estimates for first build-out of offshore wind.

  72. 72.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 1:31 pm

    @Immanentize:  Back then, anyone who wore a sweater while doing comedy was compared to Mort.

    If a comedian held a newspaper in his hand, he was also compared to Mort.  But Will Rogers was doing newspaper comedy back in the 1920s.

  73. 73.

    chopper

    December 23, 2019 at 1:34 pm

    @mrmoshpotato:

    “i hear they cause nose cancer!”

  74. 74.

    Martin

    December 23, 2019 at 1:34 pm

    @Immanentize: There’s a fuckton of wind in Texas. Pretty much the only other state beside CA that regularly runs negative electricity rates.

    But CA pairs its renewables with conservation, so that the renewables aggressively offset fossil fuels. In Texas it’s just more cheap power to waste, which they do pretty aggressively.

  75. 75.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 1:34 pm

    A Saskatchewan school division has apologized after parents raised concerns a Christmas concert last week had an anti-oil agenda.

    On Thursday, the Oxbow Prairie Horizons School’s annual concert featured a show titled: “Santa Goes Green.”

    This didn’t sit will with some audience members, as Oxbow is a community where a good number of workers are in the mining and resource industries. In fact, the town’s logo prominently contains a pumpjack.

    Mike Gunderman, whose daughter was in the show, took to Facebook to express his concerns about the play, saying the concert was a “kick in the groin” to anyone working in the struggling oil industry. The post has since been shared more than 650 times.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/oxbow-christmas-concert-controversy-1.5406381

  76. 76.

    Immanentize

    December 23, 2019 at 1:35 pm

    @Yutsano: my father in law lives in a sub division west of Houston.  Sort of McMansion on man made lakes place, but not as tacky as many.  Lots of liveoaks.  But all the houses, per HOV restrictions, must have dark shingles roofs — which are sloped and vast!  Like it’s the Alps.  But rooftop solar which could power the neighborhood is strictly prohibited.  Fucking Perry homes.

  77. 77.

    Martin

    December 23, 2019 at 1:38 pm

    @Roger Moore: The central valley should be building greenhouses. Not because they need the climate control, but they can save a substantial amount of water and reduce needs for pesticides and fertilizers.

  78. 78.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 1:39 pm

    @germy:

    Some groins warrant kicking. Including Canadian groins.

  79. 79.

    gene108

    December 23, 2019 at 1:40 pm

    @Jinchi:

    You know the whole sun going red giant thing is about 2 billion years in the future, and we’ve survived the last several billion years of plate tectonics, right?

    1. Sun’s going red giant in 5 billion years, per modern science.
    2. Homo sapiens have only been around for 200,000 years. We’ve survived a few ice ages and that’s it.
    3. Crocodiles, alligators, trees, and insects have survived changes due to plate tectonics.
    4. Evidence for multi-cellular life only goes back 500-600 million years. Multi-cellular life hasn’t been around long enough to survive “several billion years of plate tectonics”. Multi-cellular life survived the formation of one Pangaea, and the break-up of one Pangaea.

    People underestimate how much of this planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and universe in general is basically designed to kill us. It’s amazing any sort of life ever arose, anywhere.

  80. 80.

    Martin

    December 23, 2019 at 1:41 pm

    @Immanentize: But rooftop solar which could power the neighborhood is strictly prohibited.

    Not only is it illegal to ban solar in CA, starting next month it’s mandatory that all new homes have them. So, there’s a pretty easy fix to that problem.

  81. 81.

    Jay C

    December 23, 2019 at 1:41 pm

    @Martin: yeah, saw that about the Boeing CEO.

     

    One  thing we can sure of: whatever model plane they make, a golden parachute for execs is still going to be standard equipment.

  82. 82.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 1:42 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: Yes, he should attone for his sons too.  Damn you autoincorrect!

  83. 83.

    cmorenc

    December 23, 2019 at 1:42 pm

    Trump researches his information in his Assopedia.  That’s where he pulls lots of his alleged facts and quotes from.

  84. 84.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    December 23, 2019 at 1:42 pm

    Iowa has a lot of wind farms. Something like 35% of the state’s electricity is generated by wind.

  85. 85.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 1:43 pm

    @Martin:

    Yep, there are working floating wind farms now and we seem happy to let the Euros work out the details.

  86. 86.

    danielx

    December 23, 2019 at 1:43 pm

    I suppose his “windmills cause cancer” schtick is no more improbable than the almost physical pain I feel every time he opens his pie hole.

  87. 87.

    boatboy_srq

    December 23, 2019 at 1:44 pm

    @Brendan in NC: That Cervantes guy got deported back to Mexico, right?

     

    /s

  88. 88.

    boatboy_srq

    December 23, 2019 at 1:46 pm

    @patrick II: He doesn’t even have a rude mental image of littering.

  89. 89.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 1:47 pm

    @chopper: No.  That’s too intelligent in that you can get nose (skin) cancer.

  90. 90.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 1:48 pm

    @Martin:

    Not only is it illegal to ban solar in CA, starting next month it’s mandatory that all new homes have them.

    There are all kinds of other pro-solar laws here, too.  For example, I can demand my neighbor trim their trees if they’re blocking the light to my solar panels.

  91. 91.

    Yutsano

    December 23, 2019 at 1:49 pm

    @Immanentize: Isn’t Texas supposed to be some bastion of freedumb? And why in Hades would you want a dark roof in Houston where it can get over 90 degrees and bakingly humid? HOAs are dumb. It’s one other reason I don’t want to own a house.

  92. 92.

    Mike in DC

    December 23, 2019 at 1:50 pm

    @trollhattan: The growth rates for wind and solar over the past 15 to 20 years have been phenomenal,  and the electric car industry is also growing rapidly. Together they constitute a counterweight to the fossil fuel industry,  and to the extent they have common cause with the environmental lobby, they will soon be able to stalemate the FFI, and after that,outright beat them.

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 1:50 pm

    @Martin:

    Boeing finally fired their CEO. My faith they will find one not optimized to run the company into the ground is about zero, but one step at a time.

    They’ve got challenges ahead.  The 737-max might never fly again. Could Boeing survive, or survive without a major bailout?

  94. 94.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 1:51 pm

    @germy: Or “School apologies for changing times that they can do nothing about” Dinosaur juice use will eventually go to way of the dinosaurs.

  95. 95.

    Mart

    December 23, 2019 at 1:51 pm

    But they’re manufactured tremendous — if you’re into this — tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere.

    Siemens built a very large wind blade plant in IA that I visited many times. They moved into an old truck trailer manufacturing plant that they have expanded several times. The blades are formed in enormous plywood molds and are made of fiberglass. Modern chemistry minimizes the fumes generated when curing the fiberglass, but yes, fumes do get made – collected and scrubbed. Of course once cured, no more fumes for the 20 year life of the blade. Siemens also built a generator plant in KS – the cell that sits behind the blade wheel. They bake the copper windings in some goo that gives off some fumes, but again once assembled, no fumes.

    I am fascinated by them. Over the years they have added shark fins to help the blades slip through the wind. The blades are designed to twist in high winds to minimize overspeed. The blades at the time were 56 and 59 meters in length. They have the entire country mapped out as to where the best winds blow. Should put a tower up near Balloon Juice central.

  96. 96.

    Warblewarble

    December 23, 2019 at 1:51 pm

    Donkey Quioxote (with apologies to all donkeys)

  97. 97.

    Yutsano

    December 23, 2019 at 1:53 pm

    @Brachiator: Eh. Boeing has had downturns before. There was a massive layoff in the 70s that was so bad it was like everyone was leaving the Seattle area. Plus they have all that sweet sweet defense contract money still. The commercial division might be hurting for a while, but the company itself should limp along here.

  98. 98.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 1:53 pm

    @Immanentize: Haha!  Morons.

    On a related note, I love reading about Phil Plait’s solar installation on his home in Boulder, CO.

  99. 99.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    December 23, 2019 at 1:54 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    PG&E cutting power must spur some solar installations too.

  100. 100.

    Suzanne

    December 23, 2019 at 1:54 pm

    @Brachiator: It’s no longer just right wing nut jobs clinging to guns and religion; they are now clinging onto Trump as though their very lives depended on him.

    Their sense of superiority over Teh Liburulz depends on him.

  101. 101.

    gene108

    December 23, 2019 at 1:56 pm

    @germy:

    Turning Point USA Student Action Summit

    “when all the boomers die out, everything will be OK”

    Anybody, who thinks there’s going to be some “demographic saving grace” is fooling themselves.

    As urban areas become more diverse, there isn’t that much changing for the better in rural areas, so we really aren’t gaining any ground, where we need to, in order to really change things.

  102. 102.

    WhatsMyNym

    December 23, 2019 at 1:57 pm

    Ford invested $500 million in Rivian in April and plans to help it begin production in Normal in 2020.

    “We want to maintain a meaningful value in the ownership and future of that company,” Ford spokesman T.R. Reid said on Monday about Rivian.

    In November, sources told Reuters a battery-powered Lincoln SUV, due in mid-2022, would be the first Ford vehicle to be built on the Rivian skateboard*.

    They are using a former Mitsubishi Motors Corp plant in Normal, IL. Ford will also be helping Rivian with the production of 100,000 EV delivery vans at that plant for Amazon.

    *Skateboard is name Rivian uses for their chassis that will be shared across multiple body styles.

  103. 103.

    rikyrah

    December 23, 2019 at 1:58 pm

    @Brachiator:

     

    It’s no longer just right wing nut jobs clinging to guns and religion; they are now clinging onto Trump as though their very lives depended on him.

     

    Because their support for him defines THEIR LACK OF CHARACTER.

  104. 104.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 1:58 pm

    @gene108:

    Anybody, who thinks there’s going to be some “demographic saving grace” is fooling themselves.

    And yet I see that logic, again and again.  Including here.

    Jokes about old people on mobility scooters, watching fox news.  As if when they finally pass, there’ll be a liberal awakening.

    Meanwhile the proud boys and others like them march in the streets.

  105. 105.

    Geoduck

    December 23, 2019 at 1:58 pm

    Maybe this has been covered, but with the Shaitgibbon and windmills.. He doesn’t just spew this to please his idiot base like he does with a lot of stuff. Because of the business with his Scottish golf course, it’s personal. And he never, never lets go of a grudge.

  106. 106.

    sgrAstar

    December 23, 2019 at 1:59 pm

    @Martin: They’re replacing Muilenberg with the Board chair, who is also the head of BlackRock. Just…NO. Boeing is fucked.

  107. 107.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 1:59 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    The trick is having to add battery storage to the panels if you want to ride out blackouts. Effectively doubles the cost or more, presuming you want to run the entire household.

    You can wall off a critical fraction of your household wiring and just power key items like lights, medical equipment and the like. That requires a much smaller system.

    All of this is much cheaper built in to the house from the start, as compared to adding it.

  108. 108.

    rikyrah

    December 23, 2019 at 2:00 pm

    @ruemara:

     

    @Kelly: Actually, it’s environmentalism is a scam. The corollary is that Jesus will return soon and they’re going to die and go to heaven so why bother?

     

    That’s their excuse for everything, isn’t it?

    Jesus is going to return soon…so, why care about being a good steward for this world.

  109. 109.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 2:01 pm

    @Martin:

    Not only is it illegal to ban solar in CA, starting next month it’s mandatory that all new homes have them.

    It’s estimated that this will add $8,000 to $10,000 to the cost of homes.  It will be interesting to see what the overall impact may be.  California already seems to be pushing out the middle class.  This might make homes less affordable and add to the ongoing housing shortage.

  110. 110.

    Searcher

    December 23, 2019 at 2:04 pm

    @gene108:

    He doesn’t have a clue as to why that is, and how we ceded a 40 year head start on renewable energy to the rest of the world.

    That was one of the original “owning the liberals” moves, back when Reagan beat Carter by dog-whistling a symphony.

  111. 111.

    rp

    December 23, 2019 at 2:05 pm

    Why would a windmill kill a lot of birds? Do people think it spins around like a P-51’s propeller or a Vitamix blade?

  112. 112.

    Mary G

    December 23, 2019 at 2:05 pm

    Somebody will probably front page it, but Olivia Nuzzi’s article about her martinis with Rudy Giuliani in NY Mag

    Over a sweater, he wore a navy-blue suit, the fly of the pants unzipped. He accessorized with an American-flag lapel pin, American-flag woven wallet, a diamond-encrusted pinky ring, and a diamond-encrusted Yankees World Series ring (about which an innocent question resulted in a 15-minute rant about “fucking Wayne Barrett,” a journalist who manages to enrage Giuliani even in death).

    is possibly even more nutballs. He claims to be more Jewish than George Soros. He drools. Only the best people.

  113. 113.

    gene108

    December 23, 2019 at 2:06 pm

    @Mike in DC:

    the electric car industry is also growing rapidly.

    It is growing rapidly, but plug-in electric vehicles account for around 1% of cars, in the USA and maybe 3% to 4% in CA.

    Nowhere near enough to counter the petroleum industry.

    The problem with plug-in electric cars is the time it takes to “refuel” them. Since most people don’t have residences, with garages or even driveways, getting an electrical hook-up is prohibitive.

    Either we sink a lot of money into recharging stations for every neighborhood or we work extra hard on technology that can improve petroleum fuel efficiency.

    I don’t see how EV’s can be an actual long term solution, given the number of people, who park their car in a parking lot, or on the street, and walk into an apartment, condo, or even home, in older neighborhoods, and do not have easy access to installing their own electrical hook-up for their EV.

  114. 114.

    sharl

    December 23, 2019 at 2:06 pm

    Hey Mistermix, in case you haven’t already seen this from your old home state: <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>The South Dakota Republican Party chairman <a href=”https://twitter.com/danlederman?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@danlederman</a> has a $10,000-per month retainer to lobby for Saudi Arabia <a href=”https://t.co/njRIPDArYF”>https://t.co/njRIPDArYF</a></p>&mdash; Lee Fang (@lhfang) <a href=”https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1208833730414104577?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>December 22, 2019</a></blockquote>
    <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

    Putin and his crowd deserve all the criticism they get, but it’s a shame other players don’t get the same level of scrutiny.  (But that’s kinda been true for a long time.)

    eta: welp, I need to learn the new site procedures I guess. Here’s a link to the Fang tweet: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1208833730414104577

    The South Dakota Republican Party chairman danlederman has a $10,000-per month retainer to lobby for Saudi Arabia

  115. 115.

    Mart

    December 23, 2019 at 2:10 pm

    @rp: Although they look like the are just taking their time spinning, the blade tip speed is screaming fast – forget and don’t feel like doing the math, but recall a couple hundred mph. My understanding is kill more birds digging habitat for coal, and previously mentioned killer cats are the real bird monsters.

  116. 116.

    Yarrow

    December 23, 2019 at 2:10 pm

    @sharl:  To embed a tweet you first have to click over to the Text tab just above the comment box icons on the right side. Then you can paste the tweet and it will post correctly.

  117. 117.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 2:10 pm

    @Mary G:  And at the end of the interview, he leaves one of his phones behind in the car.  And he’s a cyber security specialist, who charges thousands to give speeches on cyber security.

  118. 118.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 2:11 pm

    @Brachiator:

    It’s no longer just right wing nut jobs clinging to guns and religion; they are now clinging onto Trump as though their very lives depended on him.

    Trump is their religion.  That’s what being in a cult is like.

  119. 119.

    germy

    December 23, 2019 at 2:11 pm

    @Yarrow:  And then if you want it formatted properly, you need to edit the comment, switch to text mode, and paste it in again.

  120. 120.

    rp

    December 23, 2019 at 2:12 pm

    @Mart: I googled it and you’re right. Interesting

  121. 121.

    West of the Rockies

    December 23, 2019 at 2:12 pm

    Trump could declare himself to be the world’s fastest man, and his drooling, farting fans would nod their empty heads and sputter, “Oh, it’s true!  Usain Bolt refuses to race him!  Uh-huh!  Rush and Hannity said so.”

  122. 122.

    gene108

    December 23, 2019 at 2:12 pm

    @germy:

    I don’t think it’s the Proud Boys or TPUSA types that are the real problem.

    It’s the kid in South Dakota or Wyoming, who would stick around, but has been inundated with right-wing news, right-wing politics from parents, etc. that isn’t going to stop voting Republican.

    Basically, liberalism isn’t really filtering into the rural, predominantly white, parts of the country, where a change in voting patterns really needs to happen, in order to change the politics of this country.

  123. 123.

    sharl

    December 23, 2019 at 2:12 pm

    @Yarrow: Thanks!  Maybe I’ll play around with  that in comments to an old post later on.

  124. 124.

    Immanentize

    December 23, 2019 at 2:13 pm

    @Yutsano: Black shingles increase heat which requires more air conditioning which increases electricity use which increases profits for the energy industry.

  125. 125.

    Yarrow

    December 23, 2019 at 2:14 pm

    @sharl:  It’s not hard but you have to remember that extra step. I forget from time to time and if you do that you can edit your comment, click to Text tab and paste it in again there and it will display properly.

  126. 126.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 2:15 pm

    @Brachiator:

    It’s estimated that this will add $8,000 to $10,000 to the cost of homes. It will be interesting to see what the overall impact may be. California already seems to be pushing out the middle class. This might make homes less affordable and add to the ongoing housing shortage.

    This isn’t going to have a big impact on affordability, not when single family homes in the exurbs are selling for half a million dollars.  Besides, that up-front cost will buy those new homeowners reduced utility bills that will largely offset their slightly higher mortgage payments.  That was the basic reason for wanting to have them installed as part of the home construction; it lets people pay for them as part of their mortgage.

  127. 127.

    Omnes Omnibus

    December 23, 2019 at 2:17 pm

    @BGinCHI:  Arggghhhhh!

  128. 128.

    CarolPW

    December 23, 2019 at 2:17 pm

    @rp: At the tip of the blade the speed can be well in excess of 120 MPH. I’ve seen red-tail hawks flying between blades as they spin so they can play around in the turbulence, probably hoping their acrobatics impress a lady-friend (and it looks like a lot of fun). They stay well away from the tips.

    ETA Ha – seems I type too slowly.

  129. 129.

    Baud

    December 23, 2019 at 2:20 pm

    @germy:

     

    Next year, “Santa Rolls Coal.”

  130. 130.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 2:21 pm

    @gene108:

    The problem with plug-in electric cars is the time it takes to “refuel” them. Since most people don’t have residences, with garages or even driveways, getting an electrical hook-up is prohibitive.

    Most people don’t have gas pumps at their houses, either, but we somehow manage to refuel our gasoline-powered vehicles.  Being able to recharge at home is a convenience, but it should be possible to solve the problem of recharging for people who don’t have a parking space where it’s easy to recharge.

  131. 131.

    Baud

    December 23, 2019 at 2:21 pm

    @CarolPW:

    probably hoping their acrobatics impress a lady-friend

    Brings back memories.

  132. 132.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 2:22 pm

    @West of the Rockies: I’d laugh of it weren’t so stupid and true.

  133. 133.

    mrmoshpotato

    December 23, 2019 at 2:26 pm

    @Baud:

    Next year, “Santa Rolls Coal.”

    And blows cigar smoke in babies’ faces.

  134. 134.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 2:27 pm

    @CarolPW:

    IIRC, there were also problems with early generations of wind turbines being much worse for birds.  It was something about the design providing perches that raptors would sit on while looking for prey, only to get whacked by the blades when they took off.  Newer models are designed to discourage birds from perching on the turbine, which greatly reduces the number of birds accidentally killed.

  135. 135.

    Jay

    December 23, 2019 at 2:27 pm

    @Brachiator:

    there is scam “cult reprogramming” sold to desperate people that is a form of psycological and often physical assault,

    and then there is actual deprogramming. Actual deprogramming ususally involves the exact opposite of programming or reprogramming, such as teaching critical thinking skills rather than programming in a belief.

  136. 136.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    December 23, 2019 at 2:27 pm

    @Brachiator:

    What I continue to find shocking and appalling is how the supportive crowds he addresses eat this shit up. I have not often seen supposedly rational people shut their minds, or this strange group surrender to nonsense.

    They never were sane. Trumps is the id of the Bommers, these folks were stoned out of theirs minds between ’68 and ’82. got their shit together enough in the ’80s and ’90s to get a decent retirement and now stoned on prescription drugs.

  137. 137.

    CarolPW

    December 23, 2019 at 2:28 pm

    @Baud: Well, you could use catapult and try it yourself!

  138. 138.

    chopper

    December 23, 2019 at 2:30 pm

    @germy:

    Mike Gunderman, whose daughter was in the show, took to Facebook to express his concerns about the play, saying the concert was a “kick in the groin” to anyone working in the struggling oil industry. The post has since been shared more than 650 times.

    i’d like to kick him in the groin 650 times. yeah, they should have replaced the stupid reindeer with a JATO unit and added a coal-rolling rig.

  139. 139.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 2:32 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    This might make homes less affordable and add to the ongoing housing shortage.

    This isn’t going to have a big impact on affordability, not when single family homes in the exurbs are selling for half a million dollars.  Besides, that up-front cost will buy those new homeowners reduced utility bills that will largely offset their slightly higher mortgage payments.  That was the basic reason for wanting to have them installed as part of the home construction; it lets people pay for them as part of their mortgage.

    If you can’t afford a home in the first place, it doesn’t matter that you can pay for added costs through your mortgage.

    The cost of housing in California is increasing, and pushing out middle class buyers. In addition to the added costs of solar, the limit on the deductions for state and local income taxes, and the new limits on total housing debt that is deductible, is having an impact as well.

    And of course, in Pasadena and other cities, homeowner groups and others are flat out pressuring city leaders to limit affordable housing, even though you can easily see the negative impact, in terms of increasing the numbers of homeless people. But this is a whole ‘nother issue.

  140. 140.

    gene108

    December 23, 2019 at 2:32 pm

    @Brachiator:

    It’s no longer just right wing nut jobs clinging to guns and religion; they are now clinging onto Trump as though their very lives depended on him.

    From a response, to their editorial supporting impeachment:

    Galli’s editorial focused on the impeachment, but it was clear the issues are deeper and broader. Reasonable people can differ when it comes to the flagrantly partisan impeachment process. But this is not merely about impeachment, or even merely about President Trump. He is not the sickness. He is a symptom of a sickness that began before him, which is the hyper-politicization of the American church. This is a danger for all of us, wherever we fall on the political spectrum. Jesus said we should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. With profound love and respect, we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ to consider whether they have given to Caesar what belongs only to God: their unconditional loyalty.

    Let me protect against two misunderstandings. The problem is not that we as evangelicals are associated with the Trump administration’s judicial appointments or its advocacy of life, family, and religious liberty. We are happy to celebrate the positive things the administration has accomplished. The problem is that we as evangelicals are also associated with President Trump’s rampant immorality, greed, and corruption; his divisiveness and race-baiting; his cruelty and hostility to immigrants and refugees; and more. In other words, the problem is the wholeheartedness of the embrace. It is one thing to praise his accomplishments; it is another to excuse and deny his obvious misuses of power.

    https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/december-web-only/trump-evangelicals-editorial-christianity-today-president.html

    CT is still a very conservative magazine, but even they noticed the cult like following Trump has from their own.

  141. 141.

    CarolPW

    December 23, 2019 at 2:33 pm

    @Roger Moore: Yes, I’ve worked on some of those. The old parks also used above-ground lines the birds would hit, and the power poles didn’t have boots or other devices to prevent electrocutions. The line spacing was also close a raptor could easily hit two lines and both electrocute themselves and cause a wildfire. The Altamont was about the worst place to site wind turbines.

  142. 142.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    December 23, 2019 at 2:34 pm

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I protest against having my judgement and morality insulted because of my age.

    ETA: OTOH, if you want to insult me because I said or did something stupid or immoral, go for it! I need an occasional kick in the pants.

  143. 143.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 2:36 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Yup, a percentage point or two of the sale price and there’s an ROI breakeven after not too many years, given CA’s expensive electricity rates. And that’s without factoring in any state and federal tax credits on the PV system.

  144. 144.

    gene108

    December 23, 2019 at 2:36 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Takes 5-10 minutes, at most, to fill a tank of gas.

    Takes significantly longer to recharge a battery.

    Whatever the solution is for people to recharge batteries, we or automakers or some combination, need to invest in it.

    I honestly think some sort of fuel cell or replaceable battery would work best.  Fuel cell running low or battery running low on a charge? Pull into the service station and get new fuel cells or batteries, which are charged and then go on your way.

    The service station sends the depleted fuel cells or batteries away for recharging or maybe they can do it on site.

  145. 145.

    Ruckus

    December 23, 2019 at 2:37 pm

    @Martin:

    Easy here in CA, not so easy in many other states.

  146. 146.

    Bill Arnold

    December 23, 2019 at 2:37 pm

    @Martin:

    Don’t try to make sense of it.

    I’m mainly interested in the techniques he uses when interacting with wingnut audiences. As you say, the content is mostly Cleek’s law vs caricatured liberals.
    Though getting the media to call out these untruths immediately and often is important.

  147. 147.

    JGabriel

    December 23, 2019 at 2:37 pm

    WaPo Headline:

    What Trump was talking about in his baffling rant about wind energy

    Pehaps some one could explain to the editors at WaPo that, if Trump isn’t making any sense, then it’s not their job to translate, or explain what he means, or turn it into sense.

    It’s their job to explain that: he’s not making any fucking sense.

  148. 148.

    Sister Golden Bear

    December 23, 2019 at 2:38 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Murdercorp’s power outages are one reason I’m planning to install solar — although my understanding is that you’re not allowed to have an isolator switch that would “island” your home from the rest of the grid.

    That said, what’s installed after-the-fact… what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

    I’m really just interested in adding the switch in case of planned retaliatory outages and earthquake outages, especially since I’m reliant on a CPAP machine. (I’ve got a battery pack that’ll get me through the night, but then it needs charging.)

  149. 149.

    notoriousJRT

    December 23, 2019 at 2:39 pm

    @MattF:

    Bear in mind that he will never, never ever retreat on the subject. Never.

    Agreed.  Trump absorbs everything that exists in “opposition” to his particular interests as a personal slight.  He then goes on a never-ending mission to avenge those slights.  He must have accumulated tens of thousands of “white whales” by now.  What a pathetic existence.

  150. 150.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 2:40 pm

    @gene108:

    Somewhere on the I-5 corridor Tesla has a station that robotically changes out the battery plate in a few minutes.

    With an industry-standard battery(s) something like that could be implemented fleetwide. Since automakers are teaming up on battery power development, it’s not out of the question.

  151. 151.

    Fair Economist

    December 23, 2019 at 2:41 pm

    @Martin:

     

    we probably need to stop building grid solar given residential is pushing us out of balance.

    There is a Machiavellian side to continuing solar installation. Strong oversupply of power during the day makes baseline power like coal and nuclear even more uneconomic – not just in California, but through the entire Western Interconnect. It kills coal plants in Idaho and creates a powerful incentive for complementary renewables and battery power.

  152. 152.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 2:41 pm

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Trumps is the id of the Bommers, these folks were stoned out of theirs minds between ’68 and ’82. got their shit together enough in the ’80s and ’90s to get a decent retirement and now stoned on prescription drugs.

    Trump is less the id of the Boomers and more the id of white supremacists.  There may be more Boomers who are white supremacists than younger generations- if for no other reason than that the country has been getting less and less white- but there are plenty of Gen Xers and Millenials who voted for him, too.  It’s less about age and more about attitude.

  153. 153.

    Ruckus

    December 23, 2019 at 2:42 pm

    @Yutsano:

    With only two major plane mfg around it’s unlikely that they will go out completely, but they may have a few very bad years.

    If they can get their shit together and not listen to the quarterly profit is the only important fact BS they might just be able to survive and continue. But someone will have to do the work.

  154. 154.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 2:43 pm

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    A Bay Area company (the name escapes me) sells a system that installs after the meter, requiring no permitting and making it invisible to the utility. They offer a battery backup extension to homeowners wanting blackout and nighttime capacity.

  155. 155.

    Kay

    December 23, 2019 at 2:48 pm

    @Mart:

    I’m fascinated by them too. I drive thru this one sometimes:

    Blue Creek Wind Farm is an onshore wind farm located in Van Wert and Paulding Counties, north-west Ohio, US. With an installed capacity of 304MW, it is the largest wind-based power station in its state. The wind project was completed at a cost of $600m in March 2012 and started commercial operation in June.The wind farm generates clean electricity to power approximately 76,000 houses a year. The wind farm eliminates the emission of 1.6 billion pounds of carbon dioxide a year, which is equivalent to taking 114,000 cars off the road.

    A turbine installer bought a house that went at auction on my street. I met his gf- she says he’s gone 3 weeks a month, working all over. Busy.
    I wonder if people will object to how big they are, though. They REALLY dominate the landscape.

  156. 156.

    chris

    December 23, 2019 at 2:51 pm

    @gene108:

    I don’t see how EV’s can be an actual long term solution, given the number of people, who park their car in a parking lot, or on the street, and walk into an apartment, condo, or even home, in older neighborhoods, and do not have easy access to installing their own electrical hook-up for their EV.

    I’m guessing you’ve never been to, say, Edmonton or Fort MacMurray. Outlets everywhere for block heaters in the winter. Much better than the old days when everyone had two sets of keys and just left their vehicles running.
    Two things will accelerate the EV trend IMHO. First a car with decent range at a price that many can afford like a Civic or a Corolla. Second, of course, will be the next oil crisis. Cuz, sorry all you SUV buyers, there will be another oil crisis.

  157. 157.

    khead

    December 23, 2019 at 2:52 pm

    Manchin deserves the credit for the miner pension bill.  Unfortunately most folks I know are giving the credit to Trump, of course.

  158. 158.

    Fair Economist

    December 23, 2019 at 2:52 pm

    @trollhattan: Dunno about PG&E, but SCE offers improved electricity rates for people with a (officially permitted) home battery.

  159. 159.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 2:53 pm

    @Brachiator:

    The cost of housing in California is increasing, and pushing out middle class buyers.

    Yes, but the thing that’s driving home prices is the price of land, not the price of construction.  As long as we insist on limiting large areas of our cities to single family homes, we’ll never be able to build enough housing to satisfy demand, and that will result in unaffordable housing. To put this another way, construction may be more expensive in California than it is in Texas, but not enough to explain why the media home price here is 150% higher.

  160. 160.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    December 23, 2019 at 2:54 pm

    @gene108:

    Basically, liberalism isn’t really filtering into the rural, predominantly white, parts of the country, where a change in voting patterns really needs to happen, in order to change the politics of this country.

    There isn’t enough white kids who stayed beyond to keep the economy going in these places so they have to let minorities in to work these jobs.  That why all the uproar because all these racists Bommers, many of whom at white flight from the cities in the ’70s, told themselves rural America was REAL America because that’s were the white folks are and it’s now that getting the same demographic change.

  161. 161.

    notoriousJRT

    December 23, 2019 at 2:56 pm

    @brantl: Not that I doubt that your in-laws are Trumpers, but I see quite a few young folk at / in line for his rallies.  He is loved by my niece’s husband and perhaps her, as well.  I have other Boomer friends who do not support Trump but have next generation relatives who do.  The country has been trying to age out of this sort of ignorance and bigotry for a long time.  It galls me to think I will probably be dead before we repair the damage inflicted by Bush and Trump.  But, it is what it effing is.

  162. 162.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 2:56 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    If we roll back asshole’s softwood and solar panel tariffs a new house’s material costs will drop many, many thousands.

    Nothing we can do about land prices, though.

  163. 163.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    December 23, 2019 at 2:58 pm

    @chris:

    I assume people get these outlets installed. Where are they? If you have a house, I guess the garage could be wired to have one, but what about street parking or parking lots? How does that work?

    I see occasional charging stations in lots around here but not many of them.

  164. 164.

    ET

    December 23, 2019 at 2:59 pm

    I guess he is still mad about Scotland’s decision? Whatever the reason, he still sounds like someone with cognitive issues and there needs to be an intervention.

  165. 165.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 2:59 pm

    @Fair Economist:

    Our utility rolled out time-of-use rates last summer, which really makes it hard to make back-of-the-napkin calculations, since they’re kind of assuming we now do our laundry and cooking after midnight.

  166. 166.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 3:04 pm

    @JGabriel:

    Pehaps some one could explain to the editors at WaPo that, if Trump isn’t making any sense, then it’s not their job to translate, or explain what he means, or turn it into sense.

    This.  I would add, that if he’s lying, the story is that he’s lying, not the details of the lie.  Repeating the lie as part of telling the story, even if they try to debunk it, is just helping to spread it.

  167. 167.

    The Dangerman

    December 23, 2019 at 3:05 pm

    Not that I’m counting my chickens (OK, maybe a little), but next Holiday Season, Trump is likely a lame duck. I wonder what kind of hellscape Melania will decorate the White House as next time around (although she should be thrilled, she never wanted to move to DC).

  168. 168.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 3:05 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    IIUC you can slow-charge from any 110 outlet, get a 220V fast-charge box installed and commercially, super-fast DC chargers are the quickest.

    The infrastructure is being developed, much faster in coastal states, and there will come a point when charging isn’t much of an issue. Sooner than many think.

    Hydrogen cars are much more prosaic. LA, the Bay Area and Sacto have the only fueling stations in the country.

  169. 169.

    opiejeanne

    December 23, 2019 at 3:06 pm

    @germy:

     

    “when all the boomers die out, everything will be OK”

    Yeah, I left Facebook last week because this bullshit was just getting to be too deep over there.  when one of my friends went after Obama because he is a Boomer, I said, “that’s it, I’m done.”

  170. 170.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 3:07 pm

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    my understanding is that you’re not allowed to have an isolator switch that would “island” your home from the rest of the grid.

    I don’t think this is correct.  What you aren’t allowed to do is to keep your home powered without an isolation switch.  If you don’t isolate your home, it feeds back into the grid, potentially electrocuting line workers trying to fix problems with the grid.

  171. 171.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    December 23, 2019 at 3:08 pm

    @trollhattan:

    Interesting. When I think of it, gas stations didn’t used to carry lead-free fuel either.

  172. 172.

    Booger

    December 23, 2019 at 3:11 pm

    @Immanentize: So, do you think he won’t Be Here Now anymore?

  173. 173.

    gene108

    December 23, 2019 at 3:11 pm

    @chris:

    I’m guessing you’ve never been to, say, Edmonton or Fort MacMurray.

    Nope.

    Only times I’ve ever been to Canada were when I was a kid living in SE Michigan, and going over the bridge to Windsor.

    We could have more charging stations, but that would take a significant investment from somebody, who currently is not raising the money to do this and wanting to spend money to do this.

  174. 174.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    December 23, 2019 at 3:12 pm

    @opiejeanne:

    I remind myself that we used to say never trust anyone over 30.

  175. 175.

    Uncle Cosmo

    December 23, 2019 at 3:13 pm

    @Mary G: “He claims to be more Jewish than George Soros.”

    Joke I saw back in the 1960s:

    Q. What do you call an Italian with an IQ of 160?

    A. A Jew.

    Maybe that’s what Rudy-Colludy Ghouliani had in mind. Unfortunately for him, he’s about 70 points short. (What’s the Italian for Dunning-Kruger, I wonder?)

  176. 176.

    patrick II

    December 23, 2019 at 3:14 pm

    @gene108:

    I don’t see how EV’s can be an actual long term solution

    Things change quickly. Toshiba has a new battery that charges in six minutes. It will be just like stopping at a gas station.

  177. 177.

    CaseyL

    December 23, 2019 at 3:14 pm

    @leeleeFL:

    I fear that the Country will not recover from this.

    It won’t.

    And if you look at the past few decades of how the US has dealt with the world – propping up horrible regimes, starting endless wars of choice everywhere and committing endless war crimes in the process –  that could actually be a good thing…for the rest of the world.

    For us? Very bad for this generation and next.  By which point GCC will have rendered much of the country uninhabitable.

    I don’t see the US, in its current form, still around 20 years from now.  The people that want an ethno-state oligarchy control the Senate and the Court system, and own the MSM.

    Even if the Dems take the Senate, they can’t undo what the GOP has done to the Courts, unless they have the intestinal fortitude to impeach and remove every single judge the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society have had confirmed (spoiler alert: the Dems do not have that kind of intestinal fortitude).

  178. 178.

    Sister Golden Bear

    December 23, 2019 at 3:15 pm

    @trollhattan: Thanks, I’ll keep a lookout for that.

    I’ve thought about a battery back-up, as well, but current prices are a bit too steep for me to do a “just in case” installation.

  179. 179.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 3:18 pm

    @trollhattan:

    Nothing we can do about land prices, though.

    We can’t lower land prices, but we can allow more homes to be built per area.  This is why there’s a big effort to take control away from individual cities and centralize it in Sacramento.  As long as we allow each city to decide how much housing to build, they’ll bow to local homeowners who don’t want to see their neighborhoods change, and we’ll never get enough new homes to meet demand.  I don’t think the new granny flat law will make a big enough difference, but it’s a decent start.

    The recent decision by the Southern California Association of Governments to push for new home construction close to the coast is going to be a huge deal.  Instead of putting most of the new homes in the Inland Empire, they’re demanding cities in LA County do their part.  There’s going to be a lot of screaming in Beverly Hills, though I predict they’ll eventually meet a lot of their requirements by allowing mansions to add servants’ quarters.

  180. 180.

    Fair Economist

    December 23, 2019 at 3:19 pm

    @trollhattan: The SCE rates are pretty easy to understand. The rate system for homes with batteries or electric vehicle is 12 or 13 cents most of the time with a high premium for 4 PM to 9 PM. With a battery and a little planning for laundry we could basically never pay those premiums. We were looking at getting a battery but since we’re pretty thrifty with electricity anyway and our solar roof is leased (which complicates the government rebates) it wasn’t worth it.

  181. 181.

    Bex

    December 23, 2019 at 3:21 pm

    @Martin:  Have they talked to Jared yet?

  182. 182.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 3:21 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I see occasional charging stations in lots around here but not many of them.

    They’re becoming very common here in Southern California.  My employer has installed charging stations in a few percent of the total spots, and those are reserved for electric vehicles.  Right now, they let people recharge for free, but it should be relatively straightforward to make charging stations with credit card readers so they can recover the cost of electricity used.  Adding the infrastructure is expensive, though.

  183. 183.

    gene108

    December 23, 2019 at 3:23 pm

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Demographic changes aren’t going to be uniform enough to have the impact we need to have happen.

    That’s the point, I’m trying to get at.

    It’s not going to fix much of anything by itself.

  184. 184.

    Sister Golden Bear

    December 23, 2019 at 3:24 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Chargers in parking lots are becoming pretty common here in NorCal. My office park has 2-3 per building, and I see them in many grocery store parkings lots and parking garages.

    It’s fee-for-charge (I think, I haven’t used them myself), so I assume the economics make it worthwhile for the charging companies to put them there.

    @Roger Moore: Not islanding during a power outage makes far more sense. But this is PG&E we’re talking about…

    When the solar company comes out in February to do a site survey — yes, they’re that backed up — I’ll ask about the details around this.

  185. 185.

    Aleta

    December 23, 2019 at 3:26 pm

    @Kay: I don’t know if this is still the case, but some years ago Ohio friends (rural central OH) said a wind farm near them was greatly disturbing cows with its vibration noise.  They were surprised to find themselves on the other side, in opposition.

    (Imaginary,  winter dreaming) In my area in the winter I like to imagine a personal-size windmill hooked up to heat my  floor.  The harder the wind blows (it’s pretty constant in winter) the warmer the floor.  Or  I imagine neighborhood-size installations of wind +  solar, each supplying E  to  surrounding homes for a couple of blocks.

  186. 186.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    December 23, 2019 at 3:27 pm

    #Windmills (a poem)

    I never understood wind.
    You know, I know
    Windmills very much.
    Gases are spewing
    Into the atmosphere.

    You know we have a world, right?

    So the world is tiny
    Compared to the universe.
    So tremendous
    Tremendous amount
    Of fumes
    And
    Everything. https://t.co/Ri74s0mcmb
    — Matthew Webber (@thegreatwebber) December 23, 2019

  187. 187.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 3:32 pm

    @Fair Economist:

    AC demand and premium rate period (5-8 p.m.) are the bugaboo here. $0.2835 versus $0.1166 midnight to noon and $0.1611 the balance. I suppose a smart thermostat might figure out how much to blast it before 5 in order to keep the house sufficiently cool until 8. This used to be simpler when we had base supply at one rate and premium pricing for going over that amount. That, I could steer around pretty well because there was no time component.

  188. 188.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 3:34 pm

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    Not islanding during a power outage makes far more sense.

    It would seem like not islanding would be a good idea, since it would let you provide power to your neighbors, but it creates a whole new set of problems.  As I mentioned above, it’s incredibly dangerous to people working to fix any problems with the grid, since they expect the high voltage lines to be powered off.  It also creates the fire danger the utility is trying to avoid by powering off the grid.

  189. 189.

    Aleta

    December 23, 2019 at 3:34 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: thanks.

     

    (There could be multi-volumes of such poetry mined from the darkness.)

  190. 190.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 3:35 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Yes, but the thing that’s driving home prices is the price of land, not the price of construction. As long as we insist on limiting large areas of our cities to single family homes, we’ll never be able to build enough housing to satisfy demand, and that will result in unaffordable housing.

    Again, in the Los Angeles area and Pasadena, recent projects for multi-family housing units pressured local politicians to limit the number of affordable units in the projects.  And low income housing just is not being built in sufficient numbers. It’s not just about single family homes.

    Also, related to this, in Pasadena, an Avon distribution center that shut down would have been an ideal site for affordable housing.  I think a Home Depot is moving in.  But the site was also designated to be historically significant or something because of the architect who designed it.  This is BS.  The architect may have been noteworthy, but the building is nothing special. However, the designation prevents certain types of uses.

    There have recently been announcements for a number of commercial and mixed residential and commercial projects in the Pasadena area. None of them include significant amounts of affordable units, even though there are laws which supposedly encourage this.

    In Los Angeles, there are battles over making sure that city owned properties include affordable housing as part of development efforts.  Again, various entities are fighting like hell to prevent this.

    And of course, increasing rents are pushing people out of homes.  Heck, there was even a recent story in Long Beach about a senior citizen mobile home park which sought to jack up rents by 35 percent.

  191. 191.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 3:36 pm

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    IIUC most are fee-based. Tesla S and X models charge free at Tesla stations while Model 3 owners pay.

    Friends recently bought a Model 3, which they charge for free at SFO because they’re pilots and it’s a perq. They absolutely love that car.

  192. 192.

    danielx

    December 23, 2019 at 3:42 pm

    @CaseyL:

     

    I wish I could disagree with you. But I fear for the world our descendants will inherit.

  193. 193.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 3:44 pm

    @trollhattan:

    IIUC most are fee-based. Tesla S and X models charge free at Tesla stations while Model 3 owners pay.

    Are Tesla charging stations proprietary, or could you charge any kind of electric vehicle there?

  194. 194.

    CaseyL

    December 23, 2019 at 3:49 pm

    @danielx: What’s not-so-funny is that, as an undergraduate in the late 1970s, I did a PoliSci research paper on “the inevitable Balkanization of the United States.”  (An old PolicSci Professor said I wrote the strongest research papers he had ever seen in an undergrad.  I often wish I had stayed on that path.)

    @Brachiator: IIUC, each electric car has a different “plug,” and SFAIK charger stations installed and maintained by a specific maker (e.g., Tesla) have outlets that only fit their own plugs.  Maybe you can get and use an adapter.

  195. 195.

    trollhattan

    December 23, 2019 at 3:49 pm

    @Brachiator:

    Not yet, but per this cross-compatibility is on the way.

  196. 196.

    Kay

    December 23, 2019 at 3:49 pm

    @Aleta:

    said a wind farm near them was greatly disturbing cows with its vibration noise.  They were surprised to find themselves on the other side, in opposition.

     

     

    I’ve heard that too. Also that the shadow patterns created by the blades are crazy-making. I sometimes don’t think people take into account the scale of these things- rising out of a corn field they’re giant- the highest thing for miles. I’ve seen them in western Michigan (they have a quite a few around Lake Michigan). Those are even bigger. But- supposedly they have fixed some of the problems with shadows and vibration using better siting for the turbines and orientation of the blades. In western Michigan they produce power which is then stored in an elaborate dam system which also includes a landfill. It’s pretty wild. It’s rural and there’s huge sand dunes, these giant wind turbines and a massive storage system consisting of water that drops and releases the power.

  197. 197.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 3:58 pm

    @Brachiator:

    I live in Pasadena, so I’m deeply aware of what’s going on with housing here.  There is a very strong NIMBY contingent that is constantly pushing to limit or eliminate any new housing using whatever tools they have at their disposal.  The old Avon distribution center is a classic missed opportunity.

    I’m more upset about the attempts to block construction in the old Spacebank Storage area.  It’s a perfect place to put new home construction.  It’s a site that has been grossly underused, and it has outstanding connections to transportation: it’s on a major thoroughfare, close to a freeway entrance, and near a major public transportation hub.  The complaints about pollution were clearly a pretext for blocking construction rather than a serious attempt to protect anyone.  Yes, the site is probably contaminated by past users, but building something new there and requiring the builders to clean the site up is actually better from a neighborhood pollution standpoint than leaving it be.

    There have recently been announcements for a number of commercial and mixed residential and commercial projects in the Pasadena area. None of them include significant amounts of affordable units, even though there are laws which supposedly encourage this.

    I’m sensitive to the desire to require more affordable units in any new construction, but there are limits.  Most of the new construction I’ve paid attention to does include affordable units at the level legally required to get various zoning bonuses, and the way the laws are written prevent the city from demanding more.  That said, I think holding up construction of market rate housing (or mixed market rate and affordable housing) to try to force them to build more affordable units is deeply problematic.  The LA area needs to build at least a million new units to meet demand, and delaying every proposed new structure to try to get in a few more affordable units is just slowing things down.  It’s far more often used by NIMBYs who are trying to make new construction impossible than it is to actually get more new affordable units.

    In the long run, I think the problem is the bigger problem is that it isn’t profitable for builders to try building lower priced housing for its own sake.  As long as we’re only getting affordable housing by twisting developers arms, we’re going to have a long-term shortage.  We need to change the economics so builders can make a reasonable profit building lower priced housing rather than forcing them to subsidize affordable units by making luxury housing more expensive.

  198. 198.

    Another Scott

    December 23, 2019 at 4:06 pm

    @Brachiator: As I understand it, Southwest was a huge customer of the Max8 and they wanted a better version of the 737 that didn’t require any new training (so that any of their 737 pilots could fly it).  But the larger diameter engines messed all those plans up.

    Boeing should have put taller landing gear on the plane if they wanted to keep it like a previous 737.  But that probably would have messed up all the ground facilities.  So that was out.

    Long story short, hundreds dead, Boeing’s in trouble, and Southwest won’t get the magic plane they wanted (exactly the same but better).  They’ll eventually have to bite the bullet and actually pay for relevant training or different ground facilities.  Poor babies.

    Grrr…

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  199. 199.

    Yutsano

    December 23, 2019 at 4:49 pm

    @The Dangerman:

    I wonder what kind of hellscape Melania will decorate the White House as next time around

    As soon as he loses she’s on the next plane to New York and drafting divorce papers. There’s no way she sticks around putting up with his meltdown.

  200. 200.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 4:49 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    In the long run, I think the problem is the bigger problem is that it isn’t profitable for builders to try building lower priced housing for its own sake.

    I don’t think this is the main problem.  Residential and commercial rents are rising.  Commercial landlords are happy to push out tenants and let a property sit vacant for years, knowing that they will still be able to make it up later.

    A wave of gentrification is encouraging landlords to raise rents and to build upper income housing. Recently, I saw a story about a commercial property hanging hands for $195 million even though the property has only a 60 percent occupancy rate.

     

    ETA: A bad gateway error ate my original reply.

  201. 201.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 4:49 pm

    @Another Scott:

    The problem with the 737 Max went beyond just the airlines not wanting to retrain their pilots.  There was also an issue about there being a different certification process for extensions of existing designs versus completely new planes.  Boeing very much wanted to avoid having to certify a completely new design, so they bent, folded, spindled, stapled, and mutilated the rules to claim the 737 Max was just an extension of the existing line.

    It’s clear to me that a huge part of the problem is the neutering of the FAA as an effective regulator.  Yes, Boeing is at fault for trying to stretch the design beyond the logical stopping point, but a major point of having regulatory agencies is to stop that kind of thing.  An effective regulator both stops this stuff directly and scare the industry into not trying for fear of what will happen when the regulator finds out.  It should be clear that the FAA is no longer capable of doing either of those things to the extent they need to.

  202. 202.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 5:04 pm

    @Another Scott:

    Boeing should have put taller landing gear on the plane if they wanted to keep it like a previous 737. But that probably would have messed up all the ground facilities. So that was out.

    Some knowledgeable people have claimed that the 737-max design is inherently unstable, because of the size and placement of the engines, I think, compared with the standard version of the plane.  The software is a complex way of addressing the issue. But the fundamental problem remains.

    If this is the case, I am not sure that there is a good resolution to this that does not involve retiring this version of the aircraft.

  203. 203.

    chris

    December 23, 2019 at 5:06 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Yep, parking lots and street parking too. It gets really, really cold.

  204. 204.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 5:31 pm

    @Brachiator:

    As I understand it, the problem is the engines are too big; they don’t fit properly when they’re hung under the wing the way they were on previous generations of the 737.  They made them fit by pushing them forward, which changed the weight balance and the thrust balance of the plane, which is what made it unstable.  They could also have solved the problem by extending the landing gear so there would be space under the wings, but that caused other problems with support on the ground.  The reason the A320 didn’t have the same problem is it was always a bit taller than the 737, so they could fit in the same engines without having to change the basic design the same way.

  205. 205.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 5:52 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    They made them fit by pushing them forward, which changed the weight balance and the thrust balance of the plane, which is what made it unstable.

    I think this is what I heard/understood.  So, inherent instability, complex software, and the issues and training was not clearly communicated to and made available to pilots…???  Insanity.

  206. 206.

    Lee

    December 23, 2019 at 5:57 pm

    Most people do not have EV chargers at home but where are most people during the day when the sun is shining. People are at work. Most chargers will be at work because that is where the cars are when the sun is shining. Solar panels at work and business to power the building A/C and to charge cars.

  207. 207.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 6:01 pm

    @Brachiator:

    So, inherent instability, complex software, and the issues and training was not clearly communicated to and made available to pilots…???

    The idea was that the new software would automagically make the new plane fly just like the old one so pilots wouldn’t need any new training.  That was both good from the airline’s standpoint (no need to keep pilots current with multiple models) and Boeing’s (able to certify the design as an extension of the 737 series rather than a new design).  It would have been great if they had managed to make it work, but the lack of adequate regulation meant they were able to fool themselves into believing the system worked better than it did.

  208. 208.

    Chris T.

    December 23, 2019 at 6:06 pm

    @Brachiator: You need to (1) look at who’s doing this estimating and (2) realize that the average home electric bill in CA is currently over $200/month. The actual cost of a 4kW system installed at construction time is about $6k and it knocks about $100/mo off the electric bill, so it saves $1200/year or $12k in ten years.

  209. 209.

    Ruckus

    December 23, 2019 at 6:10 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    We also have over 100 yrs of infrastructure built up for gas powered cars. And 100 yrs ago there was no real conscious on which would be best, gas, electric or steam. Gas won because of battery technology of the time and steam was a pain in the ass and not at all dangerous to use.// Gas cars could be mass produced and operated rather easily.

    Nothing that moves mass and weight will ever be cost free to use, the issue is balance of range, ease of use, cost to purchase and operate.

  210. 210.

    Chris T.

    December 23, 2019 at 6:11 pm

    @rp: The first ones that went up here (Altamont Pass near Livermore, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Pass_wind_farm) really did spin pretty fast, and also had protuberances on the towers that birds thought made great perches while the birds watched for mice.

    Those early wind turbines were just a few tens of kW each.  Modern ones are over 1 MW each, use better pylons, spin slower, and generally kill far fewer birds. You can’t kill zero birds: radio tower guy wires kill birds, tall buildings kill birds, and so on. They fly right into the glass at speed and, bonk, stunned bird. If the building is tall, stunned bird hits pavement and becomes dead bird.

    There’s a reason for the “bird-brain” insult…

  211. 211.

    Ruckus

    December 23, 2019 at 6:17 pm

    @Brachiator:

    Most planes are relatively unstable by themselves. They have to be trimmed to fly level, depending on load, speed, weather. Trimmed they can fly fine by themselves, for a while. The concept here was also that the computers would bring the stability. Except there was one small problem, they didn’t get it right, depending on the conditions of some flights/loads and that not getting it right meant that the pilot had to do the opposite of what they had been taught to make it work. Had they trained the pilots properly rather than trust the computer…….

  212. 212.

    Ruckus

    December 23, 2019 at 6:19 pm

    @Chris T.:

    Aren’t the blades much longer now, so they can spin at lower RPM and run a bigger generator, but the tip speed is still rather high because of the diameter?

  213. 213.

    Chris T.

    December 23, 2019 at 6:23 pm

    @Sister Golden Bear: … my understanding is that you’re not allowed to have an isolator switch …

    Sure you are. They are called transfer switches. You’ll need a differently-designed inverter on your house-side of the transfer switch, though: the usual grid-tie inverter ones work by first sensing the grid power voltage and frequency, then matching up to it. No grid power = no soup power for you!

  214. 214.

    Chris T.

    December 23, 2019 at 6:26 pm

    @Ruckus: Yes – but the birds used to perch on the pylon (well, its little protuberances) and fly through the (shorter, faster-moving) blade sweep area. Now if the birds manage to perch on the pylon at all, they’re flying through a sweep area that is, in general, not near the faster-moving tip.

    (The power generation is limited by the actual power, which is torque times RPM, at the generator. The long blades provide high torque so lower RPM gives you the same power.)

  215. 215.

    Lee

    December 23, 2019 at 6:30 pm

    @Chris T.:  Probably less than ten years. You did not include future price increases for grid supplied power or gasoline.

  216. 216.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 6:32 pm

    @Ruckus:

    We also have over 100 yrs of infrastructure built up for gas powered cars.

    Yes, and we have over 100 years of infrastructure built up to deliver electricity to practically every home and business in the country.  The charging stations are just a new appliance that builds on a system that we already have.  It’s a huge advantage for electric vehicles over other alternatives.

  217. 217.

    Brachiator

    December 23, 2019 at 6:34 pm

    @Chris T.:

    You need to (1) look at who’s doing this estimating and (2) realize that the average home electric bill in CA is currently over $200/month. The actual cost of a 4kW system installed at construction time is about $6k and it knocks about $100/mo off the electric bill…

    If a high purchase price is too much of a hurdle, it may not matter what later savings might be. We will see if the new law has any impact on home sales.

  218. 218.

    Lee

    December 23, 2019 at 6:40 pm

    Today, on a monthly basis, Tesla is predicted to be selling more electric cars than all monthly car sales of ICE cars shipped by Porsche and Jaguar together. And Tesla is still ramping up. The China Tesla factory just started production and there will be a German factory soon.

  219. 219.

    Ruckus

    December 23, 2019 at 6:43 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    This is true as well, the basic infrastructure is there to allow slow charge but fast charging requires a higher voltage, to handle the current. It isn’t impossible for sure just not as cheap as it could be.

    Just remembered that my landlord in Pasadena installed fast chargers in the underground garage just before I moved. A couple of all electric cars were purchased after that. You had to pay for the electricity and I think the city required them to be installed, my landlord wouldn’t have spent the money on his own. Pasadena had their own electric car rebate thing going. I didn’t purchase an electric car when I had to buy in 2016 because I couldn’t afford it and had no place to charge one. And once again it would be almost impossible for me right now, although there are several charging stations not that far from me. I did look at hybrids, but just didn’t see the advantage for my use. Of course that has changed over the last 3 yrs. Who coulda known?

  220. 220.

    Chris T.

    December 23, 2019 at 7:30 pm

    BTW I have an EV (and before that, a plug-in hybrid) and can tell you allllll about all the silliness with charging stations.  Let’s start with this…

    There is a standard (called SAE J1772) for “overnight” charging on 240V power. If you own a home, you just have an electrician come in and put in an electric dryer / central air conditioning / RV outlet, at 30 to 50 amps, at 240 volts, to set one of these up. (Put it indoors or outdoors near to where you can plug your car in. If you have a garage you can park and charge in, this is best for many reasons, including that you don’t need to get the fancier and more expensive weatherproof hookups. More amps = more expensive, and your house feed needs to be big enough to support whatever you plug in, but 30 will usually do fine.) Then you buy what is called an “EVSE”, Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. It plugs into your dryer/AC/RV outlet at one end, and has one of these J1772 standard plugs on the other.  Let’s see if I can insert an image … no, but here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772#/media/File:SAE_J1772_7058855567.jpg

    This EVSE basically negotiates a little bit with your car so that it (your car) can say “I can take 240 volts at (amps)” and it (your EVSE) can say “ok, I can give 240 volts at (amps)” and then, voila, power goes into your car. A 30 amp dryer outlet can supply 24 amps.  Why can’t a 30 amp dryer outlet supply 30 amps?  Don’t ask. :-)  They’re all overrated, you have to multiply by 0.8.  A 50 amp unit can therefore supply 40 amps.

    Multiply volts times amps to get watts. Divide by 1000 to get kilowatts, kW. So 240 volts times 24 amps = 5760 watts = 5.76 kW.  That’s how fast you can charge: watts are a unit of speed, like mph (km/h for Canadians and the rest of the world) or gpm (litres per minute for the rest of the world, again).  The energy you need, like gallons in a bucket, and the rate at which you fill it, determine how long it will take.

    If your car has a 50 kWh battery and you’re filling it at 5 kW, it will take at least ten hours to fill.

    The wall socket I had them put in here is 40 amp, so that gives me 32 amps x 240 volts = 7680 watts = 7.68 kW.  So that’s how fast I can fill mine.

    Like your cell phone, with a fast charger cable, you’ll find it fast-charges to about 80%, then slows down.

    Most days, I don’t fill from anywhere near empty. If I did, well, my EV has a big battery, and it would take at least 12 hours, not counting the slowdown at the end. In practice it should take about 13, maybe 13.5.  I’ve never actually done that; the longest I had was spaced out over two days and was about 10 to 11 hours, I think. Being in California and on an EV rate I only get 8 hours a day of cheap ($.14/kWh now) electricity; the rest of mine is at up to $.50/kWh. (You can see why I have solar PV.)

    If I ever replace my EVSE—it’s pretty old now, I got it in 2012—I’ll probably have get my outlet upgraded to 50 amps instead of 40, but maybe not, because so far it’s never been a problem to just charge over two nights. Most days’ usage is recharged in 1 to 3 hours.

  221. 221.

    Roger Moore

    December 23, 2019 at 7:50 pm

    @Chris T.:

    Why can’t a 30 amp dryer outlet supply 30 amps? Don’t ask. :-)

    Technically speaking, a 30 amp dryer outlet can supply 30 amps, but only for “discontinuous” loads, i.e. loads that won’t draw the full current for hours at a time.  For most home applications, you’re switching things on and off frequently enough that you don’t have to worry about that.  For things like charging an EV, where you know you may have to do it overnight, you have to calculate everything for 80% of the rated load.

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