All over the world the Green Blob and the Global Warming Theorists are pushing for schemes that decrease the reliability of electricity and increase the costs.
What happens when that happens?
I think there are two “existence proofs” at the moment that illustrate it exactly.
Pakistan
First up, a “heat wave” in Pakistan. I’m sure the Global Warming Theorists will try to paint this as some kind of AGW Caused Horror. But what does the news report?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33251100
From the BBC, so we can be sure that they are unbiased in favor of Natural Weather POV… Bold bits mine.
Pakistan heatwave: Death toll over 800 in Sindh
24 June 2015
The death toll from a heatwave in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province has passed 800, hospital officials say, as mortuaries reached capacity.
At least 780 people have died in Karachi, BBC Urdu reported. Another 30 deaths were reported elsewhere in the province, state owned PTV said.
The Edhi Welfare Organisation told AFP that their mortuaries had received hundreds of corpses and were now full.
[…]
On Tuesday as temperatures reached 45C (113F), Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for emergency measures, and the army was deployed to help set up heat stroke centres.
Temperatures in Karachi have dropped to 34C (93F) thanks to wind from the sea but there is anger among local residents at the authorities because days of power cuts have restricted the use of air-conditioning units and fans.
Karachi resident Muzzafar Khan told the Associated Press: “The electricity hasn’t been working since seven this morning and even during the night there were frequent breakdowns.
“We are forced to sleep in the streets. Ours are small houses; the power supply cables get damaged frequently and nobody is dealing with this situation.”
Matters have been made worse by the widespread abstention from drinking water during daylight hours during the fasting month of Ramadan.
(For Serioso, here is a link to the NYT version of it. Even though their page load goes on forever and it still ‘spinning’ even now.)
One immediate “take away” is that last line. Abstaining from water for religion during a ‘heat wave’ is a bad idea…
But lets look at the temperatures. It was 113 F and dropped to 93 F when the wind started up. I grew up in that kind of heat. Typically I’d say “It’s 110 in the shade and there ain’t no shade” to describe it. The warmest I personally remember was a 117 F day in Marysville, California. Oh, and we did not have an A/C until I was about age 12 or so (maybe older…). Typically we used a swamp cooler, or just sweated it out. BTW too, we often went out running around and playing outdoors in that heat. Oh, and did I mention that I worked in the warehouse of a peach cannery where cans from the cooker went overhead (240 F exit temp) and fork lifts blew radiator heat on us and there was no A/C? Sweat runs off you like a waterfall…
August was the worst. Often up in the 110 F+ range. One August I painted our entire 2 story house. Many days were spent a bit dizzy and flushed red… eventually I learned to paint only in the mornings, not in the noon-afternoon window.
The point is that I’ve lived in exactly that kind of heat. It is relatively normal in much of The West, including California. But A/C and/or a fan helps A LOT! And when folks are used to having a fan, and are not very well hydrated, loss of electric power can be lethal.
And that is why the locals are restless about the power cuts. They know that it is the power outages that’s harming them and that the weather is “typical” even if cyclical. Clearly laying blame at the feet of those responsible for the unreliable electric supply.
Hot weather is not unusual during the summer months in Pakistan, but prolonged power cuts seem to have made matters worse, our correspondent reports.
Sporadic angry protests have taken place in parts of Karachi, with some people blaming the government and the city’s main power utility, K-Electric, for failing to avoid deaths, our correspondent adds.
The prime minister had announced that there would be no electricity cuts but outages have increased since the start of Ramadan, he reports.
The all-time highest temperature reached in Karachi is 47C, recorded in 1979.
I note that they are still 2 C lower than the record, and that is from early in the warming out of the 70s New Little Ice Age Scare. (So much for “warmest ever”…)
Note, too, that the people are having “angry protests” and they are aimed squarely at those in the government and the utility company. Anyone pushing for electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket” and for grid instability via too much wind and solar ought to keep that in mind.
I would also point out that when California had unstable electricity thanks to the works of Democratic Gov. Gray (out) Davis; we recalled his ass and tossed him out; effectively ending his political career. The wiki tries to pretty that up with statements about him fast tracking a power plant build and trying to blame Enron. The simple fact is that Enron could only exist because of the idiotic law Democrats passed that mandated we buy all electricity on the “spot” market and could not enter long term contracts nor could the power company own generation capacity.
Davis’ second term, which lasted only ten months, was dominated by the recall election. Davis signed into law several controversial measures during the closing weeks of the recall campaign, including one granting drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens. Davis also signed legislation requiring employers to pay for medical insurance for workers and legislation granting domestic partners many of the same rights as married people. He vetoed legislation that would have given undocumented immigrants free tuition for community college. Many of Davis’ opponents were furious over the signings of these measures so late in his administration. Some political observers see these efforts as an attempt to reinforce support from Hispanics, labor union members and liberal Democrats. Ultimately, Davis did not have as much support from Hispanics and union members in the recall election as he did in his 2002 re-election.
And despite handing out political favors like chocolates, he still got a kick out the door. Politicians: Keep that firmly in mind. Mess with the A/C and TV Sports, you are “Outta There!”…
Armenia
Yes, Armenia. (No, not all Armenians live in the USA now… {A Firesign Theatre Joke…})
So there, electricity prices went up. What happened? Oh, nothing much, just riots. In the capital. Hey politicians, want riots in your front yard? Jack up electricity costs…
http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/armenia-police-disperse-protest-over-power-price-hikes-774382
Yerevan, Armenia: Riot police in the Armenian capital early today used water cannon to disperse several hundred demonstrators protesting a government hike in electricity prices, an AFP journalist reported.
On Monday some 4,000 protesters marched towards the presidential palace to protest against a 16-per cent hike in power tariffs for households, accusing President Serzh Sarkisian’s government of failing to stem poverty in the landlocked Caucasus nation.
Several hundred people remained overnight, holding a sit-in and blocking traffic.
Scores of riot police moved to disperse the demonstrators in the early morning hours today, beating some with rubber batons and shooting water cannons to force the crowd to leave.
Dozens of people were detained and plainclothes police beat journalists, destroying or confiscating their equipment.
So, all you journalists pushing the Green Blob higher electricity agenda, you might want to think about the end game of beatings and broken equipment.
Also note that it was “just” a 16% hike in prices. Here in the USA or even in the EU, that will likely not cause a riot. Then again, we’re talking more like 100% (a doubling) planned in the tariff increases already in the suggestion box.
In Conclusion
I think it’s pretty clear what the take away is here. But I’m going to spell it out for those who need it clearly stated.
When the electricity goes unstable and / or the price starts rising too much:
1) Politicians are blamed. Some of them lose their jobs. Others have a worse fate waiting.
2) Some people die. Their families are prone to anger…
3) Riots happen. Folks get angry even over just the price. Journalists can be beaten, their equipment broken. Any politician is likely to become “fair game” to the mob.
4) Angry mobs in riot are not prone to productivity and the entire economy suffers (see current events in Greece…). Not a lot of money is made off of an angry mob in riot.
5) See point #1 above. Notice that in Greece the power was shifted to someone more in line with the mob. Remember that “tar and feathers” or just “pitchforks” or their modern equivalent are always available.
With that in mind, I would strongly suggest that anyone advocating for a “necessarily skyrocket” electricity price plan; or even just one with a “double” as planned for California right now; or even just one with over 20% solar and wind where the grid goes unstable (like in Germany right now with Polish reaction.); really really needs to think again.
The consequences are likely to be far worse than expected. And not just for the folks on the buying end of electricity.
Musings from the Chiefio 
E.M.
Reminds me of Len Dighton’s observation in “Fighter” of another political awakening –
“Bombing could kill voters. Accurate bombing could actually kill politicians”.
Now that reality is starting to leak past the guardians of “consensus scientific knowledge”, we need to immediately ask radiation physicists and radiation oncologists to evaluate Galen Winsor’s video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ejCQrOTE-XA&feature=player_embedded
I suspect Galen is right, but the very survival of humanity may depend on reliable information about nuclear radiation if Earth starts to cool. Oliver
I thought the cuts in power were bad enough, but the part about not drinking water floored me.
Glenn,
If God told me not to drink water (or eat), even when its hot and I’m thirsty, then I would do my best to not drink water (or eat) either. I guess I’m lucky that God only tells me to be nice (for me, that is actually harder than not drinking water).
Followers of religious cults are not logical.
I don’t care if they wish to destroy their own lives.
What really irritates is that they demand the ruination of mine. pg
Maybe Pakistan will see the return of the Punkawalla.
Things hotting up in Greece (no pun intended). What’s weird is that after the handshake with Putin, the “creditors” announced that they actually sat down and read the Greek proposal and found enough there to possibly do a deal, and then it all seemed to go pear shaped from there with one after the other, starting with the IMF, backing away. Even the Irish chief muppet, Enda Kenny, said words to the effect that Greece should manup and take it.
From what I can read about it, the Greeks have already cut public sector pensions by 48%, public sector wages by 38%, will be introducing higher corporation tax and VAT in order to put themselves on a steady path, so I’m not sure what more they are supposed to do. To make it even weirder, the Greek government announced that they are going to hold a referendum on a deal that has now been withdrawn. They’ve also announced a bank holiday, but there is no telling when those banks will reopen.
If there is a default, the IMF will make the biggest loss in their history along with French and German banks having to take a €200bn hit on their books, which will likely be paid for by ordinary European taxpayers somewhere along the line. The Greeks will go back to their Drachma, which will be hammered, but in five years time, it will be as if nothing ever happened to them. They’ll be super-competitive and their economy will be growing again, probably at the fastest rate in Europe. Just like the Icelanders and the Finnish before them.
My current hearing loss is also in the high frequency end, both due to age and spending too much time on a hi-power rifle team. But even in 4th grade, I had a devil of a time with spelling.
Teacher would say, sound it out!
And I would respond — I did that is why I spelled it that way.
She would say it sounds like the “xxx” in so and so not the “xyz” in such and such and I would say, both sound exactly the same to me.
Why one used an e and the other an a or i and y or my favorite ae and ea was purely a memorization thing for me. I could not hear any difference and never got any spelling construction rules for spelling and sounds that made sense except for a couple basics like i after e except after c, or qu was almost always right.
medieval vs the older mediaeval, both are acceptable but the first is now preferred.
I always want to spell it mideval or midevil, or mideaval, I know they are wrong and look wrong, but only the first will give the correct option in spell check . To my ear almost everyone actually pronounces it as if it is the later. There are a few rarely used words (usually technical or medical terms with are rarely included in standard spell check dictionaries that I have spent 10+ minutes or more doing a brute force crack trying to figure out the acceptable spelling. Some times I just give up and use a synonym that almost has the same meaning, or restructure the sentence to say it in a different way.
I did eventually find one trick with spell checkers. Most spell checkers based on word length (number of letters in the word) . If you are trying to spell a word and the spell checker is coming back with totally unrelated options try adding or removing a letter to your test spelling. When you have the right word length in characters for the proper word even really bad misspellings often return the right option. If you are long or short, the chances of getting a good option go down very quickly. So sometimes if I am getting nonsense options I will just double one of the letters or drop a letter and see what happens.
Did I mention that I absolutely hated spelling tests in school?
The only testing modules I struggled with and failed to get high percentiles like 97-99 on standardized tests were the “clerical” test areas that dealt with things like spelling and punctuation.
crap last post in the wrong thread should be in the hypocrisy thread.
By a strange coincidence, the 2009 Climategate emails, the Green Blob and the Global Warming Theorists have exposed the REALITY frightened world and religious leaders hid from themselves and from the public for the last 500 years:
http://junkscience.com/2015/06/28/you-are-known-by-your-allies-big-popey/comment-page-1/
Perhaps, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous!”
@Larry:
No worries. It’s not like folks will be trying to find the right thread for our grousing about spelling rules ;-) If so, they can look here:
@OManuel:
Yeah, the Pope has, IMHO, stuck his foot in it with the embrace / wet kiss to the wealth redistribution socialists. I know my “contribution” to the plate will be zero as long as he is in place. (Spouse is a Catholic, and I attend mass about once / month with her. I usually put in the plate about what I’d spend for the same duration of movie or show… but not now.)
@Paul Hanlon:
Yes, Greece is having a “hit the wall” moment. The IMF tried to strong arm the elected government into a “do what we tell you” position as the EU is “in charge”. The elected government representatives bargained in good faith for the best deal on offer, then told the EU folks “now the true sovereigns, the population, will say yes or no (and we recommend no)”. That scared the begeezus out of the EU folks as first off they only recognize themselves as sovereign over anything, second as the idea of having strong armed someone into a weak position that they would then just say “OK, but I’m going to have someone not being pressured by you decide” just gut punches their approach. Finally, they know that the deal they offered was a crap deal for the people of Greece. The intent was to screw the people of Greece and enrich the EU bosses… so they had a “WTF” moment and decided to take their offer and go home.
At that point the Greek leaders basically said “OK, we’ll have the vote anyway; but if you quit, we the leadership get what we wanted, so this is bad how?”
So Greece is going to “hit the wall”, the banking crisis will be pretty rough, but then a real recovery happens. Biggest question now is just will Greece exit the EU and how fast…
Hi Chiefio,
Sorry about going off topic on this thread. Thanks for putting up the link on the other (proper) thread.
It’s quite likely that anything I say now will be moot tomorrow. It looks like Greece will default on its €1.6bn payment to the IMF, but who knows, PIIGS might fly :-). The IMF / Eurogroup issued the details of the deal they were negotiating with Greece. It is a mish-mash of micromanagement and contradictory directives, with timelines that are frankly a joke.
I think if Greece stays within the Eurozone, they will have the worst of all worlds. They will still be saddled with all the inefficiencies and costs that membership of the Eurogroup brings. They’ll have little or no control over their own destiny. They’ll have “little emperors” like our own chief muppet having a dig at them and taking the moral “high ground”.
If they leave, they face a calamity as big as the Russians faced when the Soviet Union collapsed, with their savings more or less wiped out, but they’ll be free to choose their own destiny, more or less. And they’ll be competitive again. So you’ll have the paradox of the European governments trying to highlight how nasty things are for the Greeks while their own citizens swamp Greece during the holiday season. A double whammy for the Portuguese, Italians and French as their tourism industry suffers while they also continue under austerity. You couldn’t possibly make this up.
The fiscal conservative in me says Greece should try harder because this will make things (a little) harder for the rest of us, and also because taking on debt behooves the debtor to pay it back, while the social liberal in me says take the one off inflationary hit that going it alone will incur and get on with their lives, while the less nice bit of me will take great pleasure in seeing the po-faced European elites get a good (and well deserved) smack in the teeth.
@Paul Hanlon:
Just remember, though, that this was the kind of thing that lead to the USA Civil War…
Some States wanting to disolve the Union, others not. The Texas legal decision has been cited as precident for a no exit treaty of union…
DonM
I always thought that religious dictates were predicated on the idea that certain actions were for the benefit of the tribe, one that would lead to increased success for the followers of that religion, ultimately creating a strong and vibrant society/city/state.
ELECTRICITY:
1. Seems Obummer and Co. nixed the proposed nuclear plant here in NC.
2. Duke closed down the Cape Fear Coal plant and then blew it up a couple months ago.
3. Under the North Carolina Renewable and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS), Duke Energy is required to satisfy 12.5 percent of its customers’ power needs with renewables or energy efficiency by 2021. Municipal utilities and electric cooperatives must meet a target of 10% renewables by 2018. (My power is supplied by a Coop. )
The schedule is:
* 2014: 3%
* 2015: 6%
* 2018: 10%
* 2021: 12.5%
4. We got stuck with a ‘smart meter’ or a $30/mo fee. We stuck the smart meter on the barn and are paying NOT to have a smart meter on the house. (The hype and outright lies in the face of printed evidence was enraging.)
5. Shortly after these changes the transformer out by the road blew-up and the surge protector for the computers caught on fire. I have also had to replace my fridge and my freezer…. GRRRRrrrrrrr
6. Another commenter at StevenGoddard’s also had a transformer blow with ensueing havoc.
Ain’t engineering by politicians great. A power systems engineer commented on WUWT:
“Letting non-professionals get involved in the power grid is like giving the keys to the family car and a bottle of whiskey to a 14 year old boy and his pals. If the renewables were viable, we’d adopt them by the train-load and build them so fast your head would spin.”
Boy did he ever have that correct.
I got a “smart meter” stuck on the house… Doesn’t do a damn thing for me (they send me nag SPAM in the bill about how to change when I use power to make them happier… I ignore it.)
On my “someday todo list” is take the parts for my Gov. Gray (out) Davis standby power system (missing only the battery) and put it together. Then have my power consumption strongly stabilized by the battery / inverter combo. So power from “smart meter” goes to charger that keeps battery float charged. Inverter powers all modest power circuits in the house. Lights, electronics, fridge, outlets. Left on raw utility power: AEK (though burner set to be replaced with gas “soon”. Gas is plumbed to it and I’ve got the burner set, just need time to install.) and washer / dryer and AC motor. Three large surge dominated electric motors, and a big surge oven / burners. They can know when it’s cold, and when I’m cooking… and not one of the devices will ever take ‘orders’ from the grid…
As I’ve already moved a fair amount of cooking to fuels (wood in BBQ, propane in grill / BBQ, kerosene stove / oven sometimes and the occasional white gas stove just for fun) the AEK is a dropping part of the mix anyway. Climate here rarely needs the heater (about 6 to 8 months a year it does nothing; and when it is used, it’s more sporadic than consistent). Then if I feel cranky, I can just add more batteries to the battery box and put the charger on a timer ;-)
The isolation of darned near everything from “the grid” via a charger / battery buffer ought to also prevent surges from doing anything that is too damaging. (Charger is not that expensive or hard to fix.) (Fridge runs with entertainment center and lighting from my 1 kW Honda generator, so not a big load… easy to run from battery box / inverter.)
My “average consumption” is about 1 kW / hr, so if I put a regular car battery charger on the battery box, it would tend to even out the consumption over time all by itself. Minus the cooking and heater and washer / dryer, it’s likely about 500 W to 750 W or less. FIgure a 50 Amp 12 VDC charger (or about 5 wall amps). Maybe swap to more at midnight if the pack was run down during the day at all… Frankly, I think it would be fun just to randomly shift my apparent consumption by jumping around to various 10 hour charging blocks ;-)
Oh Well, not enough time and it’s too low a priority to spend time on it… yet… but if the rolling brownouts / blackouts we had under the Dimocrats “back then” return; well, it will become a priority again.
And yes, I find “Politicians playing Engineer” about as offensive and broken as when we have “Politicians playing Economist” and “Politicians playing Businessman”… They really lack all three skill sets and have catastrophic impacts from the intersection of hubris and incompetence. And now I guess we’ll need to add “Politicians playing MD” to the list as Obammascare brings medical rationing and death squads to a hospital clinic near you…