California Gov. Gavin Newsom: Time to ‘Sober Up’ About Green Energy’s Flaws

| August 18, 2020


Flawed Energy Sources

Economic realities concerning “renewable” energy sources have finally hit home in California, and Governor Newsom (D)is forced to face the realities. The over-reliance on solar and wind power has resulted in outages for hundreds of thousands of consumers when those sources failed to produce.

Poetrooper sends.

Author: JOEL B. POLLAK

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state had to “sober up” about the fact that renewable energy sources had failed to provide enough power for the state at peak demand, and needed “backup” and “insurance” from other sources.

Newsom addressed journalists and the public in the midst of ongoing electricity blackouts that began on Friday, as hundreds of thousands of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customers in northern and central California lost power.

There is currently high demand for electricity across the state, as the entire West Coast has been hit by a heat wave and record-breaking temperatures.

One reason the state lacked power, officials admitted, was its over-reliance on “renewables” — i.e. wind and solar power.

There was not enough wind to keep turbines going, Newsom said, and cloud cover and nightfall restricted solar power.

“While we’ve had some peak gust winds,” he explained, “wind gust events across the state have been relatively mild.”

That was good for fighting fires, he said, but bad for the “renewable portfolio” in the state’s energy infrastructure. In addition, high demand for electricity in the evening hours, coupled with less input from solar plants, created strain.

On Friday, Newsom said, the state had fallen about 1,000 megawatts short; on Saturday, it fell 450 megawatts short. Sunday saw only “modest or minor” interruptions. But on Monday, he said, the state would be 4,400 megawatts short of “where we believe we need to be.”

“This next few days, we are anticipating being challenged,” Newsom said, as the heat wave was predicted to last through Wednesday.

Being challenged by providing citizens with basic services like electricity- who didn’t see this coming?
Read the entire article here: Breitbart

Thanks, Poe.

Category: "Teh Stoopid", Democrats, Guest Link, It's science!

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ninja

You Reap What You Sow.

Also from the article:

“In 2019, Newsom canceled the state’s high-speed rail project — long seen as a key “green” project — because he said it “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.”

There are too many entitled Liberals who probably never set foot in another Country where that Country does not give a mouse’s teehooty about “Saving The Planet”.

Those Left Wingers think that if the US did all the energy-saving AOC hocus pocus Green New Deal stuff, that our Planet would be “saved”, while completely forgetting the US in NOT the only Country to occupy our World.

I feel for those Californians who are NOT Leftist Liberals who do not have the financial means to relocate to another State. Unfortunately, they have to put up with all of this.

So easy for Plastic Woman Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and some in Hollywood to embrace AOC and others on the Green New Deal. It seems those folks spend most of their time living OUTSIDE of California.

Remember: Ole Plastic Woman bragged about her designer ice cream that she stored in her $25,000 Freezer.

A Proud Infidel®™

“In 2019, Newsom canceled the state’s high-speed rail project — long seen as a key “green” project — because he said it “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.”

While I wonder just how many D-rat fatcat donors made huge amounts of money off that boondoggle as well as how many politicians got sweet kickbacks on the Contracts?

7711C20

Nope, its still alive and they are still working on it, slowly, especially after a major bridge built had a little problem with suspension cables snapping, but the Trump administration did try when it cut about a billion dollars from the Feds in May 2019. But hey its California.

My, My, My

Newsome, and the D’s in general, blow smoke to the cattle to whom they think they lead.

From a green new deal perspective, wind/solar, they are already preparing to send more jobs/manufacturing outside the country. China holds the 10 ten manufacturing positions in the solar space, and 8 of the top ten when it comes to wind turbine perspective(GE (US) is number 6). In my simple mind, f AOC, Newsome, etc.

MI Ranger

So what happened to that city in California that was going to completely switch to renewables?…Ohh, wait it couldn’t afford the batteries required to store enough electricity for a day.

The Other Whitey

Newsom is waking up to the fact that 39-1/2 million people here in California want his head on a spike. Now he’s backstroking like Michael Phelps in a “Please don’t recall me!” frenzy. In doing so, he’s pissing off both his hardcore loony-lefty base and his billionaire patrons in San Francisco. It’s mildly entertaining.

A Proud Infidel®™

Can’t wait to see that show, I’m all stocked up on popcorn…

George V

“…nightfall restricted solar power.”

Trump blamed for nightfall restricting solar power in 3…2..1….

Kidding aside, it appears the collapse of the CA energy system is inevitable. Renewables just don’t seem to produce enough power when the conditions are not optimum.

Extrapolate this out to the objectives the Dems are pushing nationally, like 100% renewable by 2030, and imagine the consequences.

Heck, just sit alongside a major interstate that carries a lot of commercial traffic, like the Pennsylvania or Ohio turnpike. Do you think all those trucks are gonna be electric in 10 years? And if they are, ya think there will be enough wind and solar electricity to charge them up plus keep your beer cold and your soup hot?

Hack Stone

Hack did some internet research that did not involve porn, and a standard automobile would take anywhere from 30 minutes to 8 hours to fully charge (depending on battery size) with a range of 300 miles in optimum conditions. Now multiply that by 20,000 residents who have to flee their homes due to a natural disaster such as an approaching hurricane, wildfire or earthquake. Assuming that there even are functioning charging stations available, are you going to wait in a line 100 cars deep in the off chance that there will be power remaining when you get to the front? Good day sunshine, my ass.

The Other Whitey

Horses are by far a superior alternative.

Roh-Dog

I’ve got a great idea: “Communist/Socialist organizations, such as credit unions and building societies” can take lead on these ‘green energy’ projects.

I f**king sh*t you not, this f**ki g genius…
Warning: make sure you don’t rage-pee yourself and remove throwable objects from arm reach, including small-to-medium pets!!!
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/i8495x/why_dont_we_see_more_communistsocialist/

Roh-Dog

^sized pets.
Reddit’s commie board remind me of the greatness that was DU updates with Claymore.
It’s time to dust that off, imho.

Hack Stone

Well, reading those posts has convinced Hack that communism is the one and only true path to a better world. They all seem to give the same advice; read Lenin; read Marx; read Mao. They spend all their damn time reading, no wonder they don’t have anything to eat.

#MinimumWageWorkersOfTheWorldUnite!

Jeff LPH 3, 63-66

Wind Wind, Blowing Wind and right away I thought of The Wind by the Jesters 1960 on Winley which I think is the better version than the Diablos 1954 version on Fortune.

26Limabeans
26Limabeans
26Limabeans

I went looking for a webpage that shows real time “green” energy data for Californis.
Found it:

http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/CleanGrid/default.aspx

Unfucking believable. All that wind and solar installed and the wind don’t blow.
The sun is going down about now so there goes that.
This is going to be a fun site to watch.

Commissar

This is such bullshit spin.

Green energy requires sufficient investment in energy storage. Which we did not invest in.

Green energy is a fantastic addition to the power grid, but also requires energy storage capacity in order to make it viable as a replacement for fossil fuels.

But that is not how minions that pathologically oppose green energy ENTIRELY for political reasons are spinning the issue.

They are simply spinning it as a failure of green energy.

Despite the fact that blackouts are happening in pro-fossil fuels states as well.

And green energy was not a factor during the 2001 “unprecedented” blackouts. So don’t act like massive blackouts is a failure of green energy. It is a failure of energy planning and management.

rgr769

You are such Progda slurping automaton. I doubt you have ever had an original thought.

Hondo

You need to insert “technically ignorant” before Progda in your comment, rgr769.

Poetrooper

“But that is not how minions that pathologically oppose green energy ENTIRELY for political reasons are spinning the issue.”

As usual, you have it exactly ass-backwards, ass-hat. You never hear fossil fuel supporters calling for the total elimination of renewable energy sources. They do argue against total reliance on green sources for the very good reasons that Newsome is finally and belatedly admitting are valid.

However, you constantly hear green energy ding-a-lings proclaiming that coal, oil and gas usage must be completely done away with or the world will end.

Just more of your typical lib projection…

The Other Whitey

I’ve occasionally worked under overhead like Lars in my career. Guys who tremendously overestimate their own abilities, intelligence, and overall value, utterly convinced that they were utterly essential and the rest of us were mere peons. Anything these dickheads said would be answered with “Yeah, that’s what *you* think.” Fireline assignments from them were almost automatically met with Page 19 of the IRPG (proper refusal of orders), because their ideas ranged from counterproductive to suicidal. They demanded respect, but never made even the slightest attempt to earn it. In the worst cases, a couple of these slapdicks were instructors, which made for plenty of interesting moments when those of us in the class pointed out that said instructors clearly didn’t have the most basic idea what the hell they were talking about.

I’m curious what the guys and gals who were stuck with Lars in the Army have to say about him, though I can easily guess the gist of it.

A Proud Infidel®™

He SO reminds me of a couple of shit officers I helped the CoC get rid of in the litterbox!

Poetrooper

By the way, Rep. Hank Johnson, Dem-AL, is with you on storage capacity:

“We gonna need all them batteries if the sun ever go out.”

Hondo

Um, Poetrooper . . . the “esteemed” Congressman Johnson of “Guam might tip over” fame is from Georgia – not Alabama.

It’s true that both states have produced their fair share of serious dumbazzes (George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Jimmuh “the Peanut” Carter come immediately to mind). But Georgia gets “credit” for Johnson.

Poetrooper

I know–momentary brain fart–perhaps Lars’ tendency to get his facts screwed up is contagious?

Besides, all us Southerners look alike…

Ex-PH2

Perhaps one of you can ‘splain to little old me how anyone can be so awash in utter ignorance of the failures of “green” energy, including the drastic damage done to wildlife by solar farms and the fact that turbine blades are indestructible (don’t fall apart over time), therefore cannot be dropped off at landfills.

The destruction of wildlife, including rare species that can’t be replaced, in California is factual. Anyone who denies it is awash in sheer ignorance and makes it clear that HE DOESN’T REALLY GIVE A CRAP ABOUT THE PLANET AT ALL.

But that’s the SPAPOS, the MOST ignorant ass on the planet about so many things that the list is nearly encyclopedic in its volume.

Maybe you two can explain his wallowing in utter ignorance. It doesn’t make any sense but that’s what comes out of that empty cavity where most people have a working brain.

A Proud Infidel®™

Let’s also not forget that wind turbines kill Birds FAR faster than DDT did!

Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH B Woodman

Also I’ve been hearing about wind turbines vibrating and heating the ground around them. The vibrations I can understand, but the heating?
The Immutable Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again!

Hondo

Vibration is a form of mechanical energy. When the vibrations are damped out by the ground, their energy has to end up somewhere.

There’s also the waste heat from the generator and transmission lines, along with solar heating of the structure during daylight hours. I’d guess that at least a small part of that is conducted through the structure to the ground (though most likely radiates away or is carried away by wind convection). Depending on the ambient temperature, that could either be a net heat source or sink for the ground under the tower.

26Limabeans

“transmission lines”

They generate heat that is the current squared times the wire resistance.
Bigger diameter wire means less loss and less waste heat. Heat is energy.
Higher voltages mean less loss because there will less current and smaller diameter wire can be used. A BTU lost anywhere be it mechanical or electrical
is wasted energy. Lots of wasted energy in green power but it is mostly
due to inefficiencies.

I live near a major windfarm and yes the ground does indeed shake and
the blades make very strange noises as the tips break the sound
barrier on a humid day. You can see it just like a fighter jet in a turn.
Moisture squeezed out of the air by acceleration.

The Dead Man

So what’s your take on nuke power? The policies behind it making a problem? The research forays into thorium reactors that have even less halflife? Can you spell nuclear without referencing my post or googling it?

Also another real question. What’s your take on the strip mining in China required to make the solar panels or the various health and environmental damage done by the wind turbines? How about the long term effects of these ‘green’ supplies when they wear out?

I ask this knowing full well that you’ll squawk “Orange man bad” in reply, but it’s for the other people that actually read.

Hondo

Thorium cycle reactors (which, contrary to what’s implied by their name, actually “burn” uranium – and require enriched uranium or plutonium in order to begin operation) have promise. But many of the technologies required (e.g., reprocessing on an industrial scale) are not yet mature and remain unproven or undeveloped.

India went “balls to the wall” for thorium-cycle reactors years ago. Original projections were that in a decade or so, they’d be fully free of any dependence on enriched uranium or plutonium for fueling same.

They’re now saying around 50 years for that to happen.

Bottom line: promising technology, but doesn’t really work economically today. And using a fast uranium-fueled reactor would have the same primary advantage (e.g., it would burn in situ virtually all of the trans-uranics that pose the greatest long-term waste hazard).

The Dead Man

Forget where, but I’d read 20 years out for for the Thorium Reactors, but I figure 50’s probably more realistic based on a pretty limited understanding myself.

Even with the dependence on current materials, it’s still cleaner than what we’ve got otherwise. If I recall, didn’t they determine storage wasn’t as big an issue? Though to be fair, I’d be worried about human incompetence creating another Chernobyl in some of these places.

On that note. Any chance you’ve seen any updates on the Sarcophagus collapsing and proposed containment that I might’ve missed? Stopped hearing about it a while back and haven’t found anything concrete on it.

Hondo

Thorium-cycle reactors are only cleaner in one respect: they produce fewer long-lived trans-uranic elements. In all other respects (including long-lived fission products), they are essentially identical to current uranium-plutonium fueled reactors. And as I noted above, a fast reactor design would burn the trans-uranics in situ – and if properly designed, would also breed additional nuclear fuel in the form of plutonium. While they don’t produce plutonium that can be diverted for weapons use (theoretically, anyway; plutonium obtained from power reactors is generally a pretty lousy choice for use in bombs), thorium-cycle reactors are still a proliferation risk. Thorium-cycle reactors work by breeding U233 in situ from Th232. U233 is actually a somewhat better nuclear fuel than U235 – and is also a better bomb fuel. Like plutonium, it can also be separated out chemically. Unfortunately, a small amount of U232 is also produced – which has a relatively short half-life and decays to daughter products that are quite intensely gamma radioactive and produce significant heat. That fraction climbs the longer the fuel stays in the reactor (if it stays in the reactor long enough, the spent fuel also becomes quite highly gamma radioactive as well). You thus have an analog of the same issue with plutonium in a thorium-cycle reactor (production of unwanted isotopes that complicate making weapons), albeit ones that produce different complications. The net result is that any spent or reprocessed fuel from a thorium-cycle reactor becomes highly radioactive in fairly short order in storage even if it wasn’t originally. Not impossible to deal with, but difficult (mechanical remote handling is required unless you want your workforce to have a very short half-life as well). Current uranium-plutonium fuel doesn’t have this issue, but has the issue of long-lived trans-uranic elements instead. Pick yer poison. The big attraction in using thorium is that it’s about 3x as common as uranium – except in sea water (uranium is soluble in sea water, but thorium isn’t). So it greatly increases the amount of potential nuclear fuel out there. India has particularly large thorium reserves and very little in the way… Read more »

The Other Whitey

I wonder if thorium reactors hold any promise for the field of nuclear thermal rocket propulsion. My abilities end far short of nuclear physics—I get the mechanical basics of how the system generates power, but the fission reactions, etc. are beyond me. Anyway, I understand that NTRs have the potential to significantly shorten the flight time to Mars, and/or significantly increase the payload that can be efficiently carried back & forth. They might even make a manned mission to the Jovian moons viable.

Who knows, maybe one of these days they’ll work out fusion rocket technology, and then we’ll have something like the fictional Epstein* Drive.

* No relation to the dead pedophile.

Topski
26Limabeans

“energy storage capacity”
Care to expand on that Mr. Edison?

The Other Whitey

Lars is kinda like Edison, if you remove Edison’s intelligence and technical ability (exaggerated though they were) and business acumen, and magnify his arrogance, dishonesty, and general assholery.

Hondo

Was kinda wondering the same, 26Limabeans.

There’s a very good reason that the electrical grid doesn’t do much in the way of storage, and generally depends on things that can be “spun up” quickly (e.g., gas turbines, transmission from underutilized areas) to handle unexpected and/or varying peak loads. And it has nothing to do with “green” – or economics, for that matter.

Put simply: producing electric power is relatively straightforward. However, storing electric power on a multiple-hundred-megawatt-hour basis . . . is not. And the known viable ways to do so on such a scale (such as pumped hydro) have some serious environmental baggage.

A Proud Infidel®™

“There’s a very good reason that the electrical grid doesn’t do much in the way of storage, and generally depends on things that can be “spun up” quickly…”

Like Hydroelectric Dams which can start producing in as little as five minutes after the turbine floodgates are opened versus a coal-fired plant, while reliable, will take at least 24 hours from a cold start on the boilers until they produce their first megawatt.

26Limabeans

Nuke takes a few days to achieve full output but once it’s there it stays there 24/7 and the output does not vary. Just look at graphs and you will see a straight line. Nothing else can do that. I’m a big fan of hydro because as you stated…just open the gates. Control of the output is actually rather good and “run of the river” dams do not deplete their storage. Hydro is “elegant” and simple. Water and gravity. California outlawed natural gas and now they have no reliable “marginal” fuel. The “marginal” fuel is the generation that can follow the load in real time. Sorta like the gas pedal on a car, constantly changing as you drive. In New England it is NG and you can watch it track the load until late afternoon when the “peaking” generation is used to give the NG some price relief. Hydro is great for peaking along with other “instant” sources like Jet turbines. Ever see a jet engine drive a generator? It is awesome. Under a minute to spool up and and there it is. Nuke, NG (except direct turbines), oil and coal are all just steam and you can’t store steam. Even if you could build a battery to store Californias power it would be bigger than the state itself. And you would also need to convert that DC into AC because you can’t store AC. That means inverters at a max efficiecy of about 80%. And while we are at it, wind creates DC, not AC. The generators have permanant magnet fields. The output is jacked up to high voltage DC with a DC to DC converter and then fed to the invereter where it is turned into AC and then filtered before applied to the grid via a substation. The resulting waveform is not stable and that is why the industry had to relax standards (frequency and distortion) in order to allow wind on the same grid that once saw stable and distortion free power. Same for solar. It is not grid ready without very lossy conditioning. I won’t… Read more »

Hondo

Hydro (to include pumped hydro storage) is indeed good from a power perspective. But it has very significant environmental and economic costs.

First, it dramatically alters the riparian environment downstream (no more flood/low cycles). This changes the nature of the downstream environment greatly. While some would term the lack of flooding a benefit, environmentalists don’t seem to. They seem to prefer wetlands and things left “as they were”.

Second: hydro also rather dramatically impacts any aquatic life that migrate (think salmon ladders). Plus, the turbines themselves are kinda hard on any aquatic life that manages to enter them.

Third: hydro inundates large areas and creates huge lakes. These also change the natural environment. Many would consider them beneficial. But not everyone does.

Fourth: downstream flooding risk in the event of dam failure is a concern. It’s generally quite small – but it’s not zero.

Fifth: you need a suitable location. This means a river with a substantial average flow and significant slope that has some place with a relatively narrow area to be dammed. It also should be relatively isolated so that large populated areas don’t have to be condemned and evacuated for the resulting reservoir. Those don’t exist everywhere.

Sixth: they’re quite expensive. And they’re even more expensive when built/used for pumped storage – more machinery is required, and there’s a large overall efficiency loss due to the pumping work required for storage.

I’m sure there are other problems with hydro too. Those are just the six that come immediately to mind.

Personally, I like hydro too. But it’s hardly a panacea, and as I said it carries substantial environmental baggage. That environmental baggage – and the regulation associated with same – has made building them quite difficult.

26Limabeans

The huge late 60’s Dicky Lincoln project envisioned for Northern Maine would have
dammed the St. John River and flooded the Alagash wilderness.
And all for a measley 1200 megawatts. It would also have been state owned (not good).
So yeah, all good points to deny it. I remember the bumper stickers. “lick Dickey Lincoln”.

HMCS(FMF) ret

And your the person that believes that electric cars are really Eco-friendly.

Stop talking, we can here your brains rattling over the internet…

Ex-PH2

Electric cars run on lithium batteries, don’t they? Yeah, that’s really environmentally friendly, especially when they have to be disposed of. Oh, sure, they can be recycled for the rare earth metals, but they mostly end up in landfills instead, where they will spend centuries poisoning the earth.

A Proud Infidel®™

likely contaminating the water table through Soil Percolation.

Mason

Lithium mined by the Chinese Communist Party to the detriment of the Chinese workers and the environment.

11B-Mailclerk

Cobalt, also.

The Chinese Communist Party exploits folks in the “Democratic Republic” of Congo, including child labor, under appalling conditions to supply Cobalt for batteries.

SFC D

“Green energy requires sufficient investment in energy storage. Which we did not invest in.”

So tell me, Einstein. How many Die-Hard batteries does it take to store enough electricity to power California during periods of darkness and now wind? I’m thinking you’d have to stack them three-deep over an area roughly the size of Arizona. That’s efficient. Green Energy is another progressive lie you tell each other. There’s no such animal. We use a variety of electric vehicles in my job. They’re handy for a lot of things. But in this area, they’re actually powered by coal. Yeah, that’s green power. At least it’s organic coal, so we have that going for us. Which is nice.

Mason

This is such bullshit spin.

I do so love when you title your posts so that people know what follows is total “bullshit spin.”

Hack Stone

Meanwhile in the Commonwealth Of Virginia, when Governor Northam is not making full term babies comfortable as he is about to perform a post birth abortion, he is signing legislation putting Virginia on the path for “renewable energy”.

https://amp.benzinga.com/amp/content/17133087

Mason

That guy’s just full of good ideas.

Hondo

Well, IMO he’s full of something. But I wouldn’t call it “good ideas”. (smile)

A Proud Infidel®™

*waving hand in the air calling on Major Moonbat*

YOO-HOO, we have Hydroelectric Dams which produce CARBON-FREE electricity, are reliable and can go online in nearly nothing flat. Oh wait, the eco-kooks want those all demolished to include the ones successfully used for flood control as well because they might interfere with fish migration despite successful steps taken to remediate that.

Ex-PH2

The ecohippies haven’t seen those falls in Alaska that require salmon to leap UPWARD to get to their spawning spots, have they? Well, their ignorance is appalling, but the cure is reality.

Here we have Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park in Alaska, live with real, live bears and everything.

A Proud Infidel®™

Great, now we’ll likely hear eco-kooks screaming “BAN THE BEARS” from eating the Salmon because it keeps them from spawning as much as possible, demanding that they be converted to a vegetarian diet!

Anonymous

No kidding, in recent years they’ve wanted to just that for those reasons in Seattle. (And, before that, it was the “endangered fire ant” at Fort Lewis… )

OldSoldier54

Looking on the bright side, perhaps this will cause enough folks there to realize that the magical unicorn farts the Eco-Nazis have been blowing up everyone’s fourth point of contact, was about as grounded in reality as the mythical critter it came from.

Hopefully, enough to pull back from the abyss. We’ll see.

Green Thumb

Surprised they do not find a way to harness all of the hot air this windbag has been blowing for years.

Talk about a continues and sustainable source of energy…

Anonymous

You peons will live like a third world country and like it– for social justice! Vote for Joe in 2020! (He reportedly said when asked>0

26Limabeans

Remember the old kitchen wall clocks?
They ran on AC using a tiny sychronous motor.
Never had to be adjusted because they tracked the AC waveform which
was considered to be very accurate. You could literally set your watch by it.
It might vary a little bit but the average was always 60 hz on the nose.
Not any more due to wind and solar requiring a much looser tolerance.
The old kitchen clocks of the past would be all over the place today.
Thank you environmental lunatics.

Poetrooper

Beans, in Europe the environmentalist movements, the “Greenies,” are referred to as “watermelons” because while green on the outside, they’re all “Red” on the inside.

There’s a bunch of Marxists posing as Muirists…

OldSoldier54

Yep.

CCO

I found this Real Engineering video awhile back (and there are others) on why California has a problem with renewables. Short answer: It’s hard to store electricity in MWatts. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5cm7HOAqZY.

BTW, 450 MW is about the energy range of a 1950s coal-fired plant; 1,000 MW is the range of a nuke plant.

Hack Stone

The solution to this problem is so obvious Hack is amazed that no one has thought of it. As to (see what Hack did there?) solar panels, just turn on high wattage lamps and direct the light beams towards the solar panels. As far as the wind turbines, just use humongous fans to generate wind, thereby providing a source to turn the turbine blades.

Hack Stone

Mason

Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

SFC D

I recall my dad’s first attempt at explaining the laws of thermodynamics. My ten year old self came up with the idea of using an electric motor to spin a generator which in turn would power the motor which in turn… ad infinitum. I was so proud of myself. Then dad explained about inefficient bearings, line loss due to resistance, inefficient motors, friction, all that stuff that prevents perpetual motion. I was crushed. The moral of the story was “Son, there ain’t no free lunch”.

Hack Stone

You were so devastated, that you went into the front yard at midnight to fly a kite.

Back when IMDB used to allow discussions about television shows and movies, there was a heated discussion about Bart flying that kite. Don’t think the issue ever got settled.

26Limabeans

If only I were strong enough I could stand in a bucket
and pull myself up with the handle.

Poetrooper

Hack, if Biden wins, you’re a lock for Secretary of Energy…

Hack Stone

Step 1: Harness the energy of good intentions.

Step 2: Pour billions of taxpayer dollars into developing a source of renewable energy drinks.

Step 3: Bring Solyndra back into existence. They reason that they failed is that we did not invest enough in them. $535,000,000 is not enough to sustain the lifestyle that prominent Democrat donors are accustomed to.

Poetrooper

With a mind like that, you’re a shoo-in…

5th/77th FA

Thought I saw where Pep Boys had a sale on Batteries? Might of been Auto Zone? Does Radio Shack still have their Battery of the Month Club? Last time I checked Fort Sill had a bunch of Batteries.

TOW made mention up thread about horses being a better alternative. You got a horses ass running the state so you’re halfway there.

Hack Stone

The Radio Shack Battery Of The Month Club took a serious hit when their most notably member attained -6 foot altitude in Florida.