Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I got to thinking about the way that California prices its electricity, which is never a good thing for a man’s blood pressure.
When I was a kid, the goal of the Public Utilities Commission and Pacific Gas and Electric was to provide cheap electricity. The Bonneville Dam and the Shasta Dam were lauded for bringing cheap, renewable electric power to the farms, just like the renewable electricity the Tennessee Valley Authority had supplied earlier. This cheap electricity was seen as liberating housewives from domestic slavery, and supporting business and manufacturing. It was hailed as the wave of the future and the path to success, and rightly so—cheap energy is the reason the developed world was able to lift itself out of poverty. And since we generated our own electric power when I was a kid, and had to live with the results when it went out, I know all about the ability of electricity to lessen even a kid’s load around a cattle ranch.
So … when did expensive energy become the new goal? When did raising the price of energy become a good thing? That’s topsy-turvy thinking.
I started this train of thought when I had occasion to revisit Anthony Watts’ outrageous electricity bill, which he discusses here.
Figure 1. Why California is circling the drain …
Ninety-two cents a freakin’ kilowatt-hour? The utility companies have a monopoly, and they are allowed to charge ninety-two cents a kilowatt-hour? How can that be? Isn’t the California Public Utilities Commission supposed to stop that kind of thing?
The most aggravating part of all of this to me is that so many people see this kind of pricing as being a good thing. Not the ninety-two cents part, most folks find that outrageous.
But lots of folks apparently approve of the part where the higher the demand for the electricity, the more the utilities charge for it. This is called “Time Of Use” pricing, and a lot of well-meaning people think it’s a good idea … not me. I figure that’s because they just never thought it through all the way, they never saw what’s at the other end of the spoon.
Now, the utilities claim that Time Of Use pricing is a good thing because it spreads the load more evenly over the 24 hours … but why should I care? That’s their business, to provide enough power for all conditions when and as needed … but I digress. Hang on, I can likely find an example of their justification style … OK, they say the reason for Time Of Use Pricing is:
“To ensure greater power reliability and a better energy future”.
Impressive, who wouldn’t want a better future. Can I translate that for you?
“Greater power reliability” means so they won’t run out of power. If they were honest they’d say that they have Time Of Use Pricing “to avoid brownouts because we don’t have adequate generation capacity”. And ensuring a “better energy future” means “we hope we can provide future power but only if we raise prices on you today.” I’ll return to this issue in a moment.
But in any case, what kind of heartless bastards charge you more for something when you really need it? Because with “Time Of Use” pricing, when Anthony’s wife and kids are suffering in the scorching heat in Chico and really need the aircon, Pacific Gas And Electric (PG&E) and the California Public Utilities Commission say “Fine, you folks can turn on your air conditioners … but it will cost you almost a dollar a kilowatt to cool down.”
I never in my life thought I’d see electricity pricing used as a weapon against the poor and the old folks like that. That is criminal. What a plan. The seniors can afford to air condition their apartments or their rooms whenever they don’t need to … but when it’s hot, when they really need to air condition them, they can’t afford to. Catch-22, thy name is legion.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m sure the Public Utilities Commission didn’t intend that outcome. I’m not accusing them of deliberately trying to cook Grandma. To do that you’d need some smarts, and anyone implementing a plan like that clearly has no smarts to spare on Grandma. Sadly, it’s just another case of Noble Cause Corruption, where the noble cause of saving the world from Thermageddon™ has overwhelmed native common sense and compassion.
Seriously, folks, this kind of pricing is madness, it’s unacceptable. If we had a water utility, and they charged 5¢ a glass when you weren’t thirsty, and $5.00 a glass when you came in dying of thirst, everyone would scream bloody murder that as a public utility you can’t screw the customers like that. Pick a dang price for a glass of water and stick with it, you can’t be jacking the price through the roof on someone just because they’re thirsty, that’s not on.
But that’s exactly what’s happening with electricity. Air conditioning in Chico is becoming the province of the wealthy, due to the “Time Of Use” pricing policies of the PUC.
However, the PUC are not the villains here. They are caught in the middle because of the stupidity of the voters and of Governor Brown. The voters put in a very destructive “20% by 2020” plan requiring 20% of the electricity supply to come from renewables by 2020 … then Governor Moonbeam had a Brilliant Idea™, so he unilaterally raised it to 33% by 2020. I don’t know how he jacked it by himself, but his daddy was the Governor and he grew up in the state house, so he knows which side of the bread the bodies are buttered on … these things are mysteries to the uninitiated like you and I.
And of course, it’s nearly impossible to build a fossil-fired plant of any kind anywhere in California anyhow. I hear these days when you apply for a license in California to generate electricity from fossil fuels, the State Government just issues you a couple of lawsuits along with the permits, in order to save time …
So you can’t build fossil plants, and renewable plants are few and far between … and as a result the system operators, a company called CAISO, are always balancing on the edge of a “brownout”, when the power doesn’t go out, but you only get 90% of the voltage, or on the verge of rolling blackouts, the next step after brownouts … and we’ve seen both.
And to put the icing on the cake, somewhere along the line, some congenital idiot ruled that hydroelectric power doesn’t count as a renewable energy source. I hope that person roasts in the place of eternal barbecue and HE doesn’t have the money to run the air conditioner. Truly don’t think I’ve heard a more expensive and destructive ruling than that one, especially after the TVA and Bonneville Dam and Shasta Dam have shown that yes, idiots, hydropower is indeed renewable. Yeah, dams have problems and there’s lots of issues, but last I looked the rain is still working both reliably and renewably …
So by 2020 we’re suppose to get a third of our power from solar, and rainbows, and wind, and hydrogen, and biomass, and methane from the digestive apparati of unicorns, and fuel cells, anything expensive and out of reach will do. The suppliers of these nostrums have the state over a barrel, of course, and demand outrageous prices.
And as you would predict, this unbelievable idiocy has left the state woefully short of power. And as a result, the whole program has gone into reverse.
So now, rather than increasing the amount of cheap electric power available to the consumer like a utility should, we’re going the other way. The PUC and PGE aren’t encouraging people to utilize cheap power in order to better their lives. They aren’t doing their job of ensuring an adequate supply of inexpensive power. Far from it.
Instead, they’re doing whatever they can to push people back into the dark ages, because they are UNABLE TO GENERATE ENOUGH LIGHT OUT OF UNICORN ERUCTATIONS TO FILL THE DEMAND …
So that’s why, when they say the pricing is to “assure greater power reliability”, that’s a lie. They are using that pricing to discourage demand. Have you ever heard a dumber thing than a business working to discourage demand? Who anywhere tells their customers to buy less? Why jack your prices to force them to buy less?
Well, because they don’t have the power generating capacity. And this in turn is because for every two fossil-fueled or hydroelectric power plants you build, you need one unicorn-fueled plant, and those damn unicorns are proving much harder to catch than Governor Moonbeam figured …
But even given that that is the case, and given that the PUC is caught in the middle, there has to be a better plan than cooking Grandma to deal with that problem.
The people pushing these rattle-trap schemes, like “Death Train” Jim Hansen, always talk about the grandchildren … meanwhile, every one of their damn plans, of carbon taxes, and cap-and-trade, and subsidies, and requirements for “renewables”, and regulations, and all the rest, every one of them does nothing but screw Grandma and the rest of the poor.
Those plans do nothing but raise the cost of energy with almost no benefit to the environment.
They don’t reduce CO2. They don’t save the planet. They don’t help the environment. At best, with a following wind they might make a difference of a couple hundredths of a degree in a century. And indeed, because they further impoverish Grandma and the poor, they are actively harming the environment.
And meanwhile in the present, far from the ivory towers where they entertain their century-long fantasies, on the other side of the tracks, out of sight from the houses of the wealthy, the reality of these destructive, ugly policies hit Grandma and the poor of California the hardest. The head of the PUC doesn’t have to worry whether he can afford to air condition his sick child’s room … the CEO of PG&E isn’t losing sleep over his electric bill.
I fear I have no magic bullet to solve this. It will be a slow slog back to sanity. All I can do is to highlight the issues, and trust that at some point people will come to their senses.
So all of you folks that think that fighting CO2 will make a difference decades from now, remember the difference that this pseudo-green insanity is making today. Your actions are cooking Grandma, impoverishing the poor, and harming the environment today, and history will not find your part in inflicting pain and deprivation on society’s weakest members to be funny in the slightest. I truly don’t care if you think the poor in 2050 desperately need help from some imagined tragedy. You are screwing the poor today.
My best Independence Day wishes to you all, and remember, the beauty of America is that you’re all free to air condition your houses … but only when it’s not hot.
w.
Gamecock says:
July 5, 2013 at 10:54 am
I am neither a supporter nor an opponent of thorium, but I don’t understand the claim that it is “not fuel”. See the wiki article Thorium fuel cycle for more details.
w.
Willis, about this: But that’s exactly what’s happening with electricity. Air conditioning in Chico is becoming the province of the wealthy, due to the “Time Of Use” pricing policies of the PUC.
It’s the part of the market that’s actually a market: the price is set by the bidders. The cost is high because decades of obstruction have prevented the construction of cheap supply to meet the demand. If it were a *free* market, then entrepreneurs would probably step in to construct supply to meet the demand.
At those prices, even unsubsidized roof-mounted solar is a good investment for the home-owner or small business owner. You might say that California’s third rate energy regulations justify owners in financing a second-rate solution.
It isn’t just that the California energy environment is awful, but that the most awful policies are extremely popular.
I am blown away by the statement that small hydro plants are renewable whereas as large ones are not, in California.
This makes the designation of “renewable” a political, not a scientific, definition.
So much for science.
Willis Eschenbach: Supply and demand works very well as you point out … except when there are monopolies, including state-allowed monopolies, like with power and water.
The local retailers are monopolies, and CAISO is a monopoly, but the wholesale electricity suppliers are not a monopoly. Your earlier point about restrictions on construction were more pertinent to high cost, I think. California instituted severe restrictions on new power plant construction even as population and electricity demand were growing in neighboring states, so that the regional surplus of electricity was used up. Then there is that ridiculous law that a California utility can not buy from a coal-fired source, even out of state.
Willis’ point was highlighted by Brendan Wagner on Seeking Alpha:
California’s Renewable Energy Debacle
Furthermore, California is obviously “eager” to promote renewable utilities to achieve its prescribed 33% by 2020. See:
Another Large Solar Power Project Canceled in California
Consequence? “Green” organizations raise more “green” $.
More grandma’s will not be able to afford electricity when they need it!
ferd berple says:
July 5, 2013 at 7:04 am
A couple of comments on that.
First, any State has the power to regulate the electricity markets, and if they want to be incredibly foolish, they can follow California’s lead. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be able to regulate the markets. I’m saying that any renewables target is expensive, pointless, a drag on the economy, and damaging to the poor. And I’m saying that a 33% renewables target NOT INCLUDING LARGE HYDRO is suicidal.
Unfortunately, when you do that, you may end up being forced to buy wind-power from Oregon, as California is forced to do … or just blackout your customers.
Now, on top of the damn renewables target, we’re getting “Cap and Trade” legislation as well. But even both of these abominations combined will not have any measurable effect on temperatures, even in a hundred years.
So we’re committing economic suicide for noting. No gain. No benefit. Nothing.
How is this a good plan under any stretch of the imagination?
Anyone?
w.
Matthew: I honestly don’t know. I was there during the build-out of CAISO, and for a few weeks after the go-live. After the effects of Enron and Gray Davis I don’t know how it currently works, just that the Enron debacle was totally foreseeable, and that I, a non-energy person did actually foresee it.
One thing I forgot to mention was that in the old days, the utilities mostly generated their own power and there was a form of energy market to fix up real-time imbalance.
Since the prices were fixed, the utilities were motivated to get it right and not have to top-up with expensive last minute purchases.
That initially carried over to the new, deregulated scheme. But now, in their infinite wisdom, they allow the utilities to dynamically vary the rate. The consumer has no real control over where the power comes from, and the utility ha no real motivation to get forecasting right – if they screw up, that’s ok, they just slam the consumer with the increased price.
David L. Hagen says:
July 5, 2013 at 7:15 am
Indeed, Pointman is a very eloquent spokesman for the realities of the modern hijacking of the environmental movement, and your quote from him is quite apposite:
I would only modify that to say that it is the leading environmental NGOs that are the problem, not “the movement”. The movement contains many people who work long and hard on important local environmental issues, and take no part in the organize lunacy other than being deceived by their leaders.
Other than that clarification, as a dedicated lifelong environmentalist, in response to Pointman’s words I can only say, Amen.
w.
RobRoy says: July 5, 2013 at 6:15 am
Sandor Ferenczi says: July 5, 2013 at 4:57 am
Yet another reason to get the world’s population down to a billion or less.””
Sir, I trust your Sisters, Daughters, Nieces, Wife have all been properly sterilized.
you wouldn’t want to look like a hypocrite…
___________________________________________
Rob, I think you will find that we have indeed already ‘sterilised’ our families, in the Western world — its called contraception. Never heard of it?? You must be from a specific USA and Italian culture. In reality our indigenous populations are already decreasing at a reasonable rate, in the West, and wisely so.
The problem does not lie with the West, it lies with the Second- and Third-World, and certain specific cultural groups where populations are out of control. The population of Anatolia, for example, has increased ten-fold in the last century and a bit, despite several genocides taking place in Anatolia during that time. Such escalations of population are indeed unsustainable, and it is grossely negligent of the West to import this over population problem, and label it as ‘beneficial’.
I would recommend you read Inferno by Dan Brown. It may be a fictional romp, but it does nail the population problem on the head.
.
“See the wiki article Thorium fuel cycle for more details.”
It is a fantasy.
“In a thorium-fueled reactor, 232Th absorbs neutrons eventually to produce 233U.”
Where does it get the neutrons? Thorium is non-fissile, so the reactor is NOT a “thorium-fueled reactor.” It is a physical impossibility.
“Depending on the design of the reactor and fuel cycle, the generated 233U either fissions in situ or is chemically separated from the used nuclear fuel and formed into new nuclear fuel.”
In situ fission of created U233 has NEVER been demonstrated. I don’t believe it will be, but there are certainly people putting big bucks in trying to get it to work.
“At Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s, the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment used 233U as the fissile fuel as an experiment to demonstrate a part of the Molten Salt Breeder Reactor that was designed to operate on the thorium fuel cycle.”
Every gram of that U233 came from the Savannah River Plant. It was in fact produced by breeding in a high neutron flux government reactor. The thorium targets were subsequently run through separations to isolate the U233. None of the created U233 underwent fission, even though the neutron flux in the government reactor was 100 times that of a commercial power reactor. Understand that U233 atoms in a thorium matrix is NOT fuel. The separations process is too involved to be commercial. Other sources of nuclear fuel are cheaper. Only in situ fission would be commercially viable, and it has never been demonstrated. I don’t think it will be because the created U233 atoms will be broadly shielded by the remaining thorium atoms.
ADDITIONALLY, thorium placed in a reactor takes the space of other fuel. Real fuel. After spending $10B to build a nuclear reactor, you don’t want to reduce your production capacity by replacing some fuel with thorium. Reactor core real estate may be the most expensive in the world.
love some of the comments about running the pool pump and night – doesn’t work well with solar heaters…
I’ve got some land with a year round stream and and area that I could easily dam several 100′ acre feet – don’t even think about approaching your local county, let alone the state and federal hoops – that’s just for the dam, now start talking about flow rates and downstream water rights to run a stable hydro source?
Uh, just for grins, here in the Republic of Texas, I pay $ .10 a KwH. and I know some people who are at 9 cents a KwH
Yes, the cited Wikipedia article begins, “The thorium fuel cycle is a nuclear fuel cycle that uses the naturally abundant isotope of thorium, 232Th, as the fertile material. In the reactor, 232Th is transmuted into the fissile artificial uranium isotope 233U which is the nuclear fuel.”
Thorium is not nuclear fuel by the Wikipedia author.
Samuel Glasstone’s Sourcebook on Atomic Energy, 3rd Ed. (AEC, TID, Krieger Publishing 1979), article 15.12 goes into some technical detail to make the same point.
Thorium is not nuclear fuel according to Glasstone.
One alternative to California’s regulation imposed high Time of Day electricity prices can be seen in:
Pakistan’s Energy Crisis: “They’ve pushed us back into the stone ages”
California’s regulations may soon achieve such utility “reliability”.
David L. Hagen says:
July 5, 2013 at 7:15 am
Say what? Roger Sowell walked in the door attacking me. First words out of his mouth were:
He closed that charming first post by accusing me of unethical behavior, claiming I had censored his comments in the past.
When I confronted him and asked him for any kind of evidence to back up his untrue and unpleasant accusation, he refused to provide even a scrap of evidence to support his claim. Nothing.
And despite that, he has neither retracted his accusation nor apologized. Perhaps you take that kind of crap laying down. Not me.
Instead of either providing evidence or retracting his false accusation, he went on to nitpick about whether Grandma was literally getting cooked, I expected him to ask me to provide evidence as to whether she was well done or rare, the man clearly doesn’t understand the concept of “metaphor”.
He followed that up by claiming that it was OK to screw the poor out of air conditioning, as long as you provide a cool building somewhere in town for them to shelter from the heat …
Finally, I directly asked him a most important question—what are we getting for our sacrifice in terms of higher energy cost and resource unavailability, and why do the poor have to bear the brunt of it?
No answer.
So you are asking your question of the wrong man. Go ask Roger why he is shooting himself in the foot by attacking me.
Then ask him whether he’s going to do the honorable thing and retract his accusation.
Then you can ask him how providing a cool building justifies screwing the poor.
And finally, you can ask him how he justifies jacking the cost of energy for rich and poor alike. What benefits do we get from that that are worth cooking Grandma for (METAPHORICALLY, ROGER, METAPHORICALLY)?
w.
PS—There is a crazy assumption in the Middle East and in climate science, that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This idea has been lethal to the climate alarmist side of the discussion. They are very unwilling to point out bad science coming from their side, simply because it’s coming from “the enemy of their enemy”, and their enemy is sceptical claims about the science. This has contributed greatly to the moribund state of climate science, because anything supporting CO2 alarmism passes largely without penetrating, critical examination by mainstream climate scientists, even extending to “pal review” instead of peer review in the journals.
This is a tragedy, because penetrating, critical examination, including the falsifying of even your friends’ claims, is how science progresses.
Unfortunately, the same idea is creeping into the skeptical side as well. I’ve been roasted several times for pointing out bad science done by skeptics, and people make the claim you are making, which is essentially that the skeptics whose claims I’m disputing are on my side, so why would I shoot myself in the foot by opposing them?
Well … because bad science and bad claims are the same whether they are put forward by skeptics or alarmists, and I am opposed to bad science and bad claims wherever they are found. Yes, Roger Sowell has done lots of good work, and I commend him for it … but when he goes off the rails scientifically I’ll point it out.
And when he comes in the door attacking me I’ll ask for evidence, and if he doesn’t provide any, I’ll point that out as well.
For Roger Sowell.
http://www.nrdc.org/health/climate/heat.asp
In the United States, an average of 400 deaths per year are directly related to heat, and an estimated 1,800 die from illnesses made worse by heat – including heat exhaustion, heat stroke, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease. Deadly heat waves swept across most of the nation in 2006, hitting California the hardest; the state saw an additional 16,000 emergency room visits during the two-week heat wave.
Roger Sowell says:
July 5, 2013 at 1:16 am
Roger, you made what I called “ungrounded and untrue accusations about my ethics” without facts to back it up. Instead of dealing with that, you want to object to my term “slimy”?
In my world, making ungrounded and untrue accusations about someones ethics without evidence is slimy. And you’re a lawyer. You do the math.
Now you may also be a very good lawyer, in fact that quality may make you a more effective lawyer. And I’m glad you’re generally fighting for what I see as the right side, and I congratulate you for your work in support of the good guys.
But accusing a man of ethical misconduct. without evidence is still slimy.
Now, I notice that downstream from that comment, you proudly announce that you finally found your evidence that I’m censoring you, so lets bring that up and discuss it, shall we? Here’s my heinous crime in black and white for everyone to see …
Roger Sowell says:
July 3, 2011 at 3:10 pm
That’s it? I snipped out pages and pages of legalese about “exclusions of general application to public bodies” that is of interest only to lawyers, LEAVING IN THE CITATION SO PEOPLE COULD READ IT IF THEY WISH, and you want to bitch me out about being “censored”? That’s your whole case? That’s it? That’s what you’re accusing me of and calling censorship? No wonder I didn’t remember it, it has nothing to do with censorship in the slightest.
You are truly a piece of work, Roger. I shorten a long quote written in impenetrable legalese, leaving in the link to the excluded data so anyone can read it even today. I explain my actions clearly and without rancor, and in response, two years later you accuse me of censorship?
I was wrong. You’re not slimy, I retract that accusation entirely, you don’t reach that level of maleficence. At the end of the day it turns out you’re just a pathetic little Esquire, so puffed up with your own importance that you think my actions were aimed at you personally. It’s not all about you, Roger. Sometimes it’s just about someone foolishly posting an overlong quote, instead of a précis and a link … and snipping the excess and leaving the link is not “censorship” on anyone’s planet but yours.
w.
Mikeyj says:
July 5, 2013 at 7:37 am
Alternate Plan. Southeastern Michigan(not exactly the rocket science capital of the U.S.) uses DTE Energy…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Welcome to the world of smart meters. So far only 10% of the coal plants are slated to be closed. However Obummer wants to close ALL of them. That is ~80% of our electric energy.
Looks like you took the bait they dangled in front of you, but that is just the beginning. They want to do that to EVERTHING that draws a lot of power. Your frig, washing machine, dryer… The plans are already in the works.
Add onto that the cost of energy in the USA sky rocketing (when and if you can get it.)
Ohio is the state with the most coal plants closing (19) in or near the state so rolling blackouts and major sticker-shock can be expected in the near future for the people in that state. Most of the closings are in the mid-Atlantic area and will effect major US cities from Chicago to Washington DC to Philadelphia to Raleigh NC.
So WHO is benefiting?
The Financiers of course, who are jumping for joy because a whole new industry has been manufactured out of thin air. ( Broken Window Fallacy anyone?)
And just in case you think this is not about moving $$$ from your pocket into the pocket of the Ultra wealthy. Straight from the IMF In many countries the distribution of income has become more unequal, and the top earners’ share of income in particular has risen dramatically. In the United States the share of the top 1 percent has close to tripled over the past three decades, now accounting for about 20 percent of total U.S. income (Alvaredo and others, 2012).
However do not worry, you have just the type of mindset they have been working for.
benfrommo says:
July 5, 2013 at 8:31 am
Mr. Sowell, You might be technically correct that “no one is cooking grandmother” but I would argue that “we are invalidating grandmother as a person.” ….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
EXCELLENT POINT!
This is a good article that expresses my feelings about government intrusion on all levels better than I ever could. It is referring to government surveillance but extends to the whole nanny state philosophy and why it is horrible.
“… But even both of these abominations combined will not have any measurable effect on temperatures, even in a hundred years.
How is this a good plan under any stretch of the imagination?
Anyone?
w”
No one will or can.
The purposefully mendacious purveyors of this madness will certainly never answer or explain this agenda.
They are too busy dreaming up theoretical beneficial outcomes from their constant efforts to modify human behavior.
Even when their advocacy brings about precisely what they claim to be trying to avoid or compensate for.
As they lecture on about alternative forms of energy using forecasts of Peak Oil and $10/gal gas they know their obstruction to drilling and refining oil will cause what they predict.
These are horrible people who would choose to throw mankind under the bus of oppressive and useless regulation while at the same time bringing about the harm they pretend to be championing against.
I have my own question.
What would energy policies and prices look like today if skeptics had not been exposing and obstructing implementation?
@ur momisugly Eschenbach,
“so puffed up with your own importance that you think my actions were aimed at you personally.”
You, Eschenbach, are a real piece of work. How else could it be taken, other than personally, when a comment is snipped with such derogatory comments, by the blog post author. Just because you cannot read or understand “legalese” as you describe it, is no reason to censor a comment. If you are afraid to debate an issue on its merits, or you prefer the Communist style of only allowing the ideas in print with which you agree, then say so.
After that episode of your censorship, I have not usually read the posts you place on WUWT, but in the few that I have, there are laughable errors and just flat wrong statements. I restrained myself from commenting or correcting you, in the certain knowledge my comments would be censored yet again, which is exactly what “snipping” is in internet slang.
Perhaps I shall make a more concerted effort to expose your idiotic writings. You do more harm than good to the AGW skeptic cause.
In the alternative, you now resort to ad hominem attacks, which is indeed the last resort of one who knows he has lost the debate. You accused me of knowing nothing about the poor, and having no concern for their welfare. You claim to have been raised on a cattle ranch. Big deal, well so was I. Why don’t you man up, saddle up, stop with the ad hominems, and show the world where I am wrong. Does California have a low-income subsidy program for utility customers? Yes or no. Is hydroelectric power under 30 MW considered renewable in California? Yes or no. Have my previous writings demonstrated a compassion for the poor? Yes or no.
Man up, Eschenbach. Or if you prefer, Cowboy up.
Roger Sowell says:
July 5, 2013 at 1:38 am
Roger, I’m glad to hear you say that. I’m still curious why you defend the California pricing structure, of gouging people when they need the power. If you were to answer direct questions when they are put to you, these confusions could be avoided. For example, I asked near the beginning of this discussion:
I still have not gotten your answer to that very fundamental and to me, simple question. As a result, it appears I’ve misunderstood your position.
So are you going to answer or not? I mean, I like it that you say you’re for the poor and for low energy prices, that’s good to know … but not answering questions costs you credibility every time you do it. And to date, I don’t recall getting an answer to any of my questions, despite answering many, perhaps most of yours. That leaves lots of room for folks, including apparently myself, to misunderstand your position.
You go on to say:
I answered this accusation above, saying:
Now you are back and accusing me once again, after I’ve stated that I knew about it, of not knowing about small-scale hydro. That’s a cheap lawyer trick to try to discredit a witness. I told you I knew about it, and that I’d written about it before. Here’s an example.
So lay off the sleazy lawyer tactics. I will not stand for accusations that I’m lying when I flat-out stated I knew it and I’d written about it before. You are dealing with an honest man, and I’m willing to cut you some slack because it may be a novel experience for you being a lawyer and all, but in future, you don’t accuse an honest man of lying without having damn good and solid evidence in hand to back it up. Yeah, I’m touchy on the subject … best get used to it, that’s not going to change.
Moving on to the question of why I left some bit of information or other out when writing about a given subject, there’s always a balance of how much detail to give. You want to give enough, but too much is very damaging. It’s not like writing a legal document, because no one has to read it. And if I lose a reader at some turn in the tale, they may blow it off. So how much detail to put in is a judgement call, and a subtle and important one. Of all of the nuggets of fact and information about a subject, I need to choose which ones add to getting the central ideas across and which ones detract from that communication. Not only that but I need to pick which and how many numbers to put in, because many people are allergic to numbers. And equations are worse, every equation costs readership.
And yet I want to put in all the nuggets, and as a mathematician of little brain I want to include all the gory details, to me that’s the meat of the matter, the math doesn’t lie.
It is the art and science of the author to balance all of those competing considerations, and to pick and choose just the right facts and just enough of the right numbers to craft and weave a tale that invites the reader along and that facilitates communication. It’s like the song says:
“And as we sat stuck, you could hear the trash truck,
Makin’ it’s way through the neighborhood,
Pickin’ up the thrown-out, different from house to house,
We get to decide what we think is no good”
So you can certainly criticize what I leave in and what I leave out, I’m willing to discuss the intricacies of writing an effective strong post … but please, leave out the accusations of bad intent and bad faith. It is an artistic decision.
In this case, I did not mention small-scale hydro because the exemption makes little difference in total generation capacity, and more to the point, it makes no difference when we go to buy power from Bonneville and we are forced to buy wind power.
Now, you state above that your objection to my piece is that I lied about knowing the small-scale hydro exemption in the law, or alternatively, that I didn’t mention it … a most lawyerly way of describing an objection. Now that I’ve clarified that I don’t do the first, and explained my reasoning regarding the second, do you have other objections, or is that it?
Thanks,
w.
Robin Hewitt says:
July 5, 2013 at 1:45 am
Thanks, Robin, but that’s already happened, CA buys lots of fossil power from its neighbors. Not as much as from before the renewables nonsense, of course. But you’re right, we’re off-shoring our power supply … madness.
w.
Les Johnson says:
July 5, 2013 at 1:48 am
You are right. The choice of excess heat was forced on me because Anthony’s 92 cents results from demands for air-conditioning, so the direction of the story was fixed.
But it is much worse regarding the cold, as you say. One difference between deaths from heat or cold is that deaths from a heat wave are usually followed by a short-lived drop in mortality. This means that many of the people who died were near death already.
But deaths during and then after a cold snap don’t show that pattern. The excess mortality during the cold snap is not followed by a drop in mortality. This means that the people killed by the cold were not at the edge of the abyss, they were not about to die.
I probably should write a post on this … so many interesting subjects, so little time …
Thanks,
w.
jonnie26 says:
July 5, 2013 at 6:54 am
Interesting that only two former commissioners of the Green Fiscal Commission are now also ex-convicts!
http://www.greenfiscalcommission.org.uk/index.php/site/about/commissioners/