This is hilarious, from Columnist Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee.
Gov. Jerry Brown hopped around Europe for two weeks last month, telling the world that to avoid a climate change Armageddon, it should emulate what California is doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
As Brown was crusading in Europe, his Air Resources Board issued a report hailing California’s nearly 5 percent reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases in 2016 by companies governed by the state’s “cap-and-trade” system.
It appeared to underscore the efficacy of the system, whose extension was one of Brown’s proudest achievements this year and one he forcefully touted in Europe.
Appearances, however, can be deceiving.
Julie Cart, the environmental writer for CALmatters who covered Brown’s European sojourn, delved into the report’s data and discovered that the major reason for last year’s drop in emissions wasn’t cap-and-trade, or any other state action.
Rather, it occurred because unusually heavy winter rain and snow storms allowed utilities to depend less on generating electricity by burning fossil fuels and more on hydroelectric power from dams in California and other states.
“Emissions from in-state electricity generation decreased more than 19 percent last year, and emissions from imported electricity dropped nearly 23 percent,” Cart wrote.
That nugget of data is steeped in political irony.
California utilities are under a legal mandate to shift their power supplies from coal, natural gas and other carbon-emitting sources to carbon-free “renewable portfolios” — 33 percent by 2020 and 50 percent by 2030.
The latter requirement is imposed by 2015 legislation carried by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, who was part of Brown’s climatic posse in Europe.
However, the state’s definition of renewable sources specifically excludes the hydroelectric power from major dams such as Shasta, Oroville and Folsom that was the major reason greenhouse gas emissions dropped so dramatically in 2016.
Read the full story here
Sincere thanks to the 2015/2016 El Niño for usurping our Governor’s feckless climate action.
There is no known cure for stupidity. Moonbeam is a fine example.
Agreed. The man (and I use that term advisedly) is a Class “z” Idjit, American version. But I do take some comfort in knowing that, like all other organisms, he has a life span, and he is not going to outlive anyone.
I believe the correct classification for Brown and his ilk is “sub-Beta minus”
You may think he has a limited life span, but he eats tana leaves.
I think that’s especially true for the dogma induced and politically reinforced variety of stupidity that has become a virulent pandemic.
Faith in the constructive powers of government is the saddest of all religions.
Moonbeam is many things but stupid is not one of them. If you don’t believe it, try to make yourself Governor-For-Life of California.
Political animals, like predatory animals, can be very clever yet unintelligent. Though in Brown’s case, scavengers may be a more apt comparison.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.
[Or knight.
Or thief.
Or chef.
Or barber…. .mod]
It’s easy to get people to vote for you.
Just promise to give them lots of free stuff.
With two legal terms as CA governor, and now well into his fourth and unconstitutional (CA) term as governor; which he said was ok while he was the State attorney General and or whizzbang mayor of Oakland, he certainly has a prescription for life-time employment.
Persons with that status, usually go by the title of “Emperor” rather than Governor.
G
“Dear leader”?
The term is “invincible ignorance”. It’s the refusal to alter one’s position in the face of overwhelming evidence that said position is incorrect.
You can’t cure it and you can’t teach it. If only we could burn stupid to supply energy needs. California could forego fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.
Air Force One would need no fossil fuels at all with Donald on board.
Well in this case we are dealing with a living fossil.
g
Maybe no cure for stupidity, but there is a cure for Moonbeam and his cohort: vote them out of office.
The state of California, in it’s ineffable green wisdom, has declared that large scale hydro does not count as “renewable”. It is so concerned about greenhouse gases it is shutting down the remaining nuclear. But it is California, and needs no more excuse.
And it is the only disease that others suffer from more than the one having it.
Oh, contraire, everyone suffers the idiocy, its just that the carriers have lived so long with the symptoms that they are unaware of its existence.
Like Winnie-the-Pooh they keep bumping their heads as they slide down the stairs on their backsides wondering if there wasn’t some better way to get downstairs if only they could stop long enough to think of one.
If the weather wasn’t so nice I’d leave in a heartbeat. My head is getting sore form getting dragged along by the tide of morons.
On the left coast, not only is large hydro not considered non-renewable, they are going their damdest to remove dams and go back to free run rivers for the fish. Power generation, recreation and flood control be dammed.
Oeman you left out water supply.
Why would hydroelectric power NOT be renewable? Do the Californians actually think that if they let water flow over a dam that it will never rain again?
California’s removal of dams to allow “free run rivers for fish” is ridiculously stupid. California’s Central Valley is very fertile, and has mild winters, but irrigation is needed to grow anything there in the long, dry summer. What do all those delta smelt huggers eat all year, and where do they think their food comes from? Besides, fish can also live in fresh water lakes behind a dam.
Capturing and storing rainy-season runoff and spring snowmelt for use during the dry season is nothing new. The north coast of the Mediterranean is hot and arid in summer, and probably wouldn’t support much agriculture, but the ancient Romans built many aqueducts, some of them hundreds of miles long, to transport snowmelt from the Alps to farms and cities in dry areas, to help develop an advanced civilization for its time. Why can’t California use the same water-management skills the Romans used 2,000 years ago?
@ Steve Zell – – – “Why would hydroelectric power NOT be renewable?”
West coast states have access to hydro, thus regulations to encourage the unreliable projects (wind, solar) would not be necessary to meet a reasonably set target. Such is already met by hydro, so they have to claim hydro does not qualify in order to force development of the unreliable ones.
This is only one of the strange characterization of things to make the green agenda sound great. A city (Portland, Seattle ?) put a more efficient power train {partial electric, I think} in a city bus, then claimed the drivers of these were new “green jobs.”
Mr. Zell – preaching to the choir. Californians elect idiots – over and over again. Moonbeam is the epitome. Him and his stupid bullet train (more like snail train) between two places that most Californians haven’t heard of. If you’ve heard of these towns, you either live in one of the towns, or you’re from out of state.
Have to cut back on maintenance of forests, dams, highways in order to pay for silly choo choo.
Reason I had to leave.
To answer your question Steve, at one time California did use the water management skills you mention. San Francisco’s water supply comes from the Hetch Hetchy dam in the Sierras, about 200 miles from the city. LA and it’s surrounding area wouldn’t survive long on the Colorado river alone.
It’s funny watching the Southern Marxists fight the Northern Marxists over water rights; both want to destroy the big watershed dams, but they want to destroy the other guy’s dams, not theirs 🙂 S. Cal would be making much more noise, but someone must have told them they depend on the N. Cal watershed themselves now, so they sort of shut up about it.
Perhaps the deliberate exclusion of hydro shows that this is all Political to further the aims of the “back-to-the-stone-age” approach of the green blob, and has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘climate change’.
The IPCC and UN have freely admitted and stated in recent years that ‘climate change’ has nothing to do with the envrionment it is all about politics and the redistribution of wealth from rich countries. The actual mechanism for that seems to be taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries whilst global business creams off the middle.
huh? what do you mean if you burn less FF for electricity that emissions from FF for electricity are less…I, for one, am going to model this and submit for pal review. I wonder what would happen if we used mostly nuclear and hydro for electricity generation…has anyone modeled that?
Water levels on the rivers are impacted by seasonal and yearly variation. El nino and el nina cycles change rainfall patterns to include drought – a definite inconvenience when relying on hydro. The water will come back – at its leisure, not yours.It isn’t as stupid as relying on sunlight to provide power at night, but…..
As long as nearby states continue to sell California power at reasonable prices, the strategy will appear to work. How much capacity do these ‘seller states’ have to continue to prop up California’s stupid ideas. At some point it will all fall apart.
The need for a reliable Pacific Northwest power supply results in large excess electric generation in high-water years. CA receives more energy than normal over the PNW/PSW transmission interties.
Don’t forget the water they get from out state…while they refuse to build their own dams.
The Liberal government of Ontario Canada makes California look sensible and budget-conscious. Ontario pays from 20 cents up to 80 cents a KWH for unneeded windmill power generated by equipment bought from the Orient on no-bid contracts then ships excess power to the States at cost of transmission, i.e. pretty well free.
For those that believe in the radiative greenhouse effect. Governor Brown has done nothing to reduce the primary greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere, H2O. His efforts are therefore of no value.
The issue with ‘greenhouse effect’ is problematic, as it require inversion. Something that exist in very few places around the world and not permanently. The atmosphere doesn’t work that way. Standing in a green house during a warm summer day, one would realize why. (Something that was tought in school back in the 1970’s)
The way the greenhouse effect is normally described is a load of rubbish and it is totally understandable that many reasonable people don’t subscribe to it. The main issue is that it describes radiation movement as a process of “absorption”, whereas any reasonable person knows that all things that absorb radiation also emit it.
Also, the causality in the “mickey mouse” model that gets told to the public actually turns the whole process on its head, because the key to the greenhouse effect is not what happens to the radiation at the ground level … but what type of radiation is being EMITTED by greenhouse gases like CO2 and H2O AT THE TOP of the atmosphere. Because the only energy balance that matters for planetary warming is how much energy is coming and and leaving the earth+atmosphere.
And in reality, you can almost ignore what is happening at the ground level (the focus of the mickey mouse models) because convective currents are what stabilise the temperature below the tropopause, not any kind of radiation balance.
However, if instead of the mickey mouse description fed to the public, you create a detailed layer-by-layer model, you do get a reasonable approximation of what is happening and it DOESN’T BREAK ANY LAWS OF PHYSICS.
That is why I created a different model. Like the “Mickey mouse” description it is a gross simplification. But unlike the “mickey mouse” model, it actually predicts the greenhouse gas temperature, it focusses on the key area of the energy exchange into and out of the earth+atmosphere system, and it doesn’t rely on an unrealistic and scientifically inaccurate description of greenhouse gases only absorbing IR.
For details see: http://scottishsceptic.co.uk/greenhouse-effect/
Greenhouse gasses absorb radiation, then they give that energy to other molecules via collision before they have a chance to re-emit that photon.
In the upper atmosphere, molecules are further apart which gives the CO2 molecule more time to re-emit.
H20 is still far more better at that …
Mark, you may want to re-write/investigate this description, it doesn’t make sense.
Energy can be exchanged by radiation (photon emission) or conduction (collision) but not both at the same time. A molecule ether loses the photon through collision (conduction) or radiation. It can’t just keep transferring energy kinetically until it decides to stop.
It would be a neat trick if you cold build a power amplifier by capturing the kinetic energy of a molecule until it burped up a photon 🙂
Is it not more than a little bit off-the-wall and over-the-top to hypothesize that adding about 125 parts per million greenhouse gas in the form of additional CO2 molecules to an atmosphere that naturally contains 20,000 to 30,000 PPM (2 to 3 percent) greenhouse gas molecules is cause for panic? Go figure. Some people just need to be in a panic to be who they think they are and other people are compelled to incite panic to fulfill what they see as their role in life, I reckon.
It is all water under the turbine to them.
Why is Hydro not considered renewable? It certainly used to be.
It is not “renewable” any more because if it were, that would mean it would be good to build dams with hydroelectric generating stations. But lefties and greenies hate dams, including those with hydroelectric stations. And they even want to tear down some of the dams already built in California. In particular, they hate the Hetch-Hetchy dam in the Yosemite area, which feeds San Francisco’s water supply.
Ed Abbey wrote “The Monkey Wrench Gang” which is a sort of Bible to eco-vandals and eco-terrorists. One of it’s central ideas is the blowing up the Glen Canyon dam on the Colorado River at Page, Arizona, which creates Lake Powell.
Perhaps they’ll de-classify food production as non-renewable because it causes population growth and, by gosh by golly, that CAN’T be good!
Mickey Reno I have seen criticism of high level dam construction based on the constant flooding/ inundation of what would otherwise be usable land as compared to less of that – and the catastrophic danger from failure of containment in old installations – by using instead either a series of less expensive low level dams or even river bottom turbines. This with little to no effect on generating capacity.
( It wasn’t that long ago blowing up the Hoover Dam would have comparatively [ to stretch a point ] risk-free after years of drought and low water levels in the Colorado River.)
And yes, fish ladders are more of a problem for the fish the higher they must climb at one go.
My understanding is that extreme environmentalists — the Sierra Club, et al — dislike large scale hydro because the dams are disruptive to fish migrations and the varying water levels pretty much prevent plant growth below the high level mark of the pool. They also believe (incorrectly) that wind and solar are a plug in replacement for other power sources. How they would manage water for agriculture and prevent disasterous Spring floods in wet years without the dams doesn’t appear to be part of their world view.
Evidently they never heard of fish ladders.
Having worked with most of the environmental organizations I know of none that like hydroelectric dams. Even before CAGW they were pushing, in some cases successfully, to remove all hydroelectric dams. That had success in the NE with smaller dams. I want to see them go after the hydroelectric dams in the Colombia River that supply Seattle, including Microsoft and supporting techie companies, Boeing, etc with electricity. Solar ain’t going to work well in the NW.
They assert that fish ladders don’t work very well, and on that one point, my impression is that they are probably correct. e.g. http://e360.yale.edu/features/blocked_migration_fish_ladders_on_us_dams_are_not_effective Since this is a economic issue — Salmon fishermen vs farmers/utilities with the dam managers in the middle, I’d guess there is abundant literature and are numerous court cases if you care to check it out.
Might that be because they are just not constructed very well in some cases? The fish-ladders at Ballard locks in Seattle are a tourist attraction where you can go and actually watch the fish using them through glass panes.
Maybe we need a better “Fish Upstream Transport Tool”. I’m thinking in terms of a large pool for the fish to collect in and a trebuchet to fire them over the dam. Maybe in the off season we could use the FUTT to fire small children, yappy dogs, and other nuisances off into the distance at $10 a pop?
Crowdfundable?
Well the hydro architects should be blamed for building the dams across the rivers.
If the water containment dam was in some suitable valley location not on a river, and was filled by feeding some of the water flowing down a near by river into the dam impoundment, then there would be no need to disrupt the life cycle of anadromous fish species, which could then continue to move freely in free flowing rivers.
And the duct by which water was transported from the river to the impoundment lake, would also serve as a silt trap, so that the impoundment lake did not slowly fill up with silt. So now you would have a water storage lake that could last almost forever, instead of silting up till it has to be abandoned.
For some suitable geographic locations the lake could do double duty as a pumped storage reserve power generation facility, as well as being a part of a rational flood control system.
It seems ludicrous that the Missouri/Mississippi/whatever river system floods a vast area every year, with no intelligent control system to convey excess waters to locations that need more water.
If MB Brown had any more sense; or any sense at all, he would abandon his absurd slow train from nowhere to nowhere else, and work towards a sane water control system for California, including some desalinization component.
But that is a pretty big if.
G
Odd that in the NE they haven’t moved to shut down the hydro-generators around Niagara Falls.
The view of the ‘Establishment’ is interesting as well. Mulholland’s Dream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpaC4R6cU1o
I’m presuming that Hydro Power can’t be classed as renewable because it is cost effective and it actually works. Any power source that is not hugely expensive and intermittent is worthless as a sacrifice to the climate change gods. Only in the real world can it be classed as renewable, mainly due t to the fact that it obviously is.
In fairness, I think they count the grid scale geothermal at the Geysers and the Imperial Valley as “renewable”, although I suspect the highly mineralized water at the later sites would be an issue were it not for the fact that significantly damaging the environment in the Salton Sink is difficult and may not be possible. Nature has gotten there first. Makes Mordor look like attractive real estate.
See my comment above: @ Steve Zell
Tez. The leftists/greens do not like dams, lakes, irrigation, recreation, or hydro-electric dams. This would rob them of their plan to have all rivers run free and not serve the people but only the loony left. A similar situation is in Venezuela. Their economy, food supply, oil industry and society has collapsed under another failed totalitarian socialist government. The main stream media (MSM) try to eliminate all news reflecting on another socialism failure.
They want socialism so they will not report the news of it failure. I think this another anti-humanitarian effort of the MSM.
There are two kinds of people: 1. those who want/insist on controlling the lives and property of others. 2. Those who do not. Lots of people fool themselves by saying they don’t want to control others, but their actions belie their words. Ever “vote” for something you want, that compels those who don’t want it to go along… and worse, pay for it? Gotcha.
Socialism, and every other form of mass insanity, is about control, and nothing much else. They don’t “love” or “hate” anything except in relation to their compulsion for control of everyone and everything.
Don’t worry about the vague and small differences between “isms.” Just look to see who wants to be in control and who doesn’t. Control vs individual liberty.
In North Venezuela, formerly California, “renewable” is equivalent to “politically correct power”, and the local greens hate dams.
Liberal Logic 101: In California where there has been a drought and water shortages forcing the population to conserve water…they increased their use of hydroelectric that depletes the water reserves in the lakes to give the population the electricity they require and take more from the surrounding states…that all the in-state green and renewables sources could not provide them.
Could be even more stupid. Where I live contracts with wind and solar operators require the utility to take their power regardless of need at inflated feed in tariff rates. On a windy, sunny day it works like this: Phase 1, shut down all fossil fuel (Nat Gas only,coal is gone) plants. Phase 2 – shut down hydro electric, including Niagara Falls the greatest hydro electric resource in the world. Phase 3 – sell electricity on the open market across the border at a loss amounting to 100’s of millions per year.
For completeness there is also Phase 4 and Phase 5. Phase 4 – realize people are going hungry because they lost their job and can’t afford power all due to the high cost of energy. Subsidize the cost with a rebate by borrowing money. Phase 5 -pretend the government has balanced their books by parking all the extra borrowed money in a phony debt account created at the utility.
“including Niagara Falls the greatest hydro electric resource in the world”
Maybe… if all the water was used to generate electricity. However, only a fraction of the water going through the Niagara River is used to power generators. The capacity of the US electrical production at Niagara Falls is 2,525 MW, which puts it at 43rd on the list of largest hydro facilities. The largest facility is at the Three Gorges Dam in China… 22,500 MW, nearly ten times as much.
Jerry Brown trying to walk in Al-Gore’s fotsteps?
And stumbling like a drunken sailor…
But… but… but … Kalifornia is in a permadrought according to Moonbeam.
How could they be making so much electricity from hydro-water?
Oh yeah. Never forget Liberals/Progressives/Democrats Lie to suit their narrative.
Yes. They lie. (But so do many Republicans).
Words are cheap. Politicians, like grocery milk, have a Sell-by-date.
And Jerry Brown’s was about 1981.
Brown’s was the more important “expiration date” that actually has a much more import real-world meaning than does sell-by. .
Nothing like touring around burning fossil fuels to promote not burning fossil fuels.
I hope the Governor appreciates the irony.
At his age he should know that he must choose. Bozze or meds, but not both at the same time.
High pressure develops in the west of North America.
http://www.lightningwizard.com/maps/North_America/gfs_cape_usa72.png
Yes, but if that were Brown’s fault, it would be warm, damp and smell like organic fermented cabbage.
Give him credit all that travel meant a great deal of swimming and it could not have be easy sleeping on the streets. For I am sure it was not a case of them jetting first class around the place and staying in five star hotels, all on the taxpayers dime .
Therefore, I am sure they would not mind given a full account of the cost of this little adventure. Anyone known where it can be found ?
The “In-Paris” States and cities are funded and staffed by the big, tax exempt green NGOs.
Given that Californian has the highest poverty rate of any state ( when adjusted for cost of living ) I don’t think it is a good idea to increase electricity prices.
Jerry Brown is flying a “trial balloon” for 2020.
I think the last election showed that hot air won’t cut it.
When the Father of Lies owns your mind nothing good will come out of it.
Amen to that!
It’s good to have a clown around to keep the entertainment going. Anybody seen the first “Hottest Year EVAAAAAHHHHH” report yet?
California’s fires will certainly qualify them for that. Too bad they neglected (or protected?) their biomass problem to the point it consumed them.
Excluding large and cost effective Hydro is a classic sign of the nose-in-the-trough wind lobby with their hand on the legislative tiller. In Scotland we had the same, a massive rush for “renewables”, but for some strange strange reason the only “renewable” that would get the subsidies was wind.
I also came across an interesting fact. The same civil servant who headed up the people who pushed through that original legislation was still in post more than a decade later. That is highly unusual – because civil servants usually either get promoted or for some other reason move about. It was almost as if the job was worth a lot more to him than the public salary. I also know the wind lobbyists used “agent provocateurs” to wreck anti wind groups when they formed. So they aren’t afraid to use underhand methods and so, I’ve always suspected there’s a lot more to this scandal than a few politicians going after a few green votes.
That’s not always true. It’s hard to outright fire civil servants unless they do something illegal.
There was a guy who was a real pain but he was competent. Everyone in management hated him. They kept offering him a promotion. He kept refusing. If he took the promotion he would be on probation for six months and could be let go without reason. The motivations seemed pretty transparent on both sides.
There is the Peter Principle where people rise to the level where they are incompetent and then they don’t get further promotions.
There is also the Dilbert Principle where people are promoted to get them away from a position where they could do damage.
There are also lots of folks who cling to a job because they know they will have to take a big pay cut if they move.
There are lots of (bad) reasons why someone will stay in the same position too long. 🙂
Almost 40 years ago I used to include a “factlet” in my lectures about waste:
Even though I had some long lost reference for that tale (I suspect it may have been early books on Lean Thinking; Dr Womack et al), today I’m inclined to believe it is apocryphal. (Snopes recognises the story, but does not deny it.)
So like Consensus Scientists, since it sounds good; I’m sticking with it!
As some wag once noted, bureaucrats are like old cannons: they don’t work and you can’t fire them.
Does anyone besides me have the odd feeling that this Greenbean/Warmian/Save the Planet crowd is kind of like the worst zit or blister ever, and some day – not too long from now – something will happen to cause them all to implode?
Everything, including this mindless scramble to interfere with everything the planet does, has a lifespan. In the 1960s, it was the Beatles and war protests. In the 1970s, it was a Mother Earth/Gaia sort of movement. In the 1980s, it was a transition into electronic technology that zoomed ahead into the 2000s, and here we are, with nutballs insisting that the planet is endangered by humans. I keep asking, can we put them on their own planet? I think Proxima Centauri B is being studied now.
Save the whales. Save the snails. Save the bees. Save the trees. – George Carlin.
I’ve recently been looking at the subject of hydrology – which I thought would be time away from the idiot environmentalists. But it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that there is a movement in hydrology to “make rivers more natural”. Often that involves taking a quite normal water-course and then adjusting the channel to make it fit a preconceived idea of what “natural” ought to be … as in all very clone like and all the same. The result is some of the least natural looking rivers … but who cares, because some eco-activist has got themselves a job “naturalising” all the natural rivers.
And their logic is bizarre, if you cut down a tree it is seen as a massive environmental crime. But we had a group of eco-activists come in and cut down a piece of woodland that was on the earliest maps from 150years ago, and there is no evidence it was never not there … because it wasn’t “natural”. So they’re allowed to wreck the environment because they’re making it “natural”. And likewise the same logic is used for cutting down forests for bird-mincers/choppers. So, if someone wants to build a short piece of roads through a woodland, out comes all the idiot environ-mentalists. But if someone wants to cut down acres upon acres of woodland and built mile upon mile of access roads for bird-choppers/mincers – the environ-Mentalists think it should be applauded.
and by natural, it also means cutting down trees that want to spread into a prairie, because NOTHING MUST CHANGE! That is the modern environmentalist
https://prairieecologist.com/2012/01/04/new-information-on-tree-invasion-in-prairies/
.
I’d be more inclined to accept your point if you gave some examples of these rivers you say are ‘unnatural’.
Many UK rivers have been straightened and canalised over the years…
whereas a ‘natural’ river would meander and not run between concrete banks.
Arguably a naturalised river holds/retains more water and doesn’t dump it quickly downstream to increase flooding.
Griff,
Not all rivers naturally meander. It depends upon what kind of terrain the river is traversing.
Unfortunately, Sara, it is all the same nonsense repackaged to seem new. George Orwell said it best in his classic “Animal Farm”.
http://slideplayer.com/slide/4294131/14/images/4/The+Seven+Commandments+Four+Legs+Good+–+Two+Legs+Bad.jpg
But of course some animals, those with the political clout to boss others around, are more equal than others.
It makes no sense to try to make sense out of it, They just hate the human race. “We have met the enemy and he is us”. The only good thing about it is they don’t tend to reproduce, so if there is any hereditary aspect to this it will be dealt with by evolution.
Sadly they reproduce ideologically by taking over the educational system, but this cannot last forever. Some day the old hippies will be no more.
Here the animated version of the book. They changed the ending. In the book, the animals didn’t re-revolt.
Worth a watch if you’ve never read read the book or seen this before. It’s a little over an hour.
https://youtu.be/1Ibe-BgqwNg
In California, one hydro-electricity comes from renewable rain, the other from non-renewable rain. How does PG&E know which is which? Policy makers tell it. It turns out that, so far in California only, hydro-plants under 0.030 GW installed capacity have their reservoirs filled with renewable rain. The bigger ones do not. By law. How much difference does it make? For a comparison, Hoover dam is rated at 2.1 GW which is seventy times more than one 0.03 GW dam. Should other states establish such a regulation, and enact it retroactively to 2007, hydro-electricity baseline would drop to a fraction of the above 82 GW thereby lowering the baseline for all-renewables.
Learning about the PG&E trick I challenged myself to see how many similar tricks could be introduced elsewhere. With the bio sources, for example, virgin forests could be proclaimed non-renewable and only the newly planted forest be counted as renewable.
Calling Brown stupid when he has managed to become the governor of the nation’s most populace state is bad ad hom. The commenters here are correct that his stated climate change policies are ridiculous, but his trade is politics, and he’s doing just fine. Got himself a free European vacation, too.
a wise mans said you can fool all of the people some of the time. election time is some of the time.
we chose juries for life and death decisions from people at random. imagine what justice would result if we only chose people that wanted to be jurists.
the last person we should elect to public office is the person that wants the job. you can be sure the last thing in their mind is to be a “public servant”.
someone wants public office they are not looking to be a servant to the public. they want the public to be their servant.
He also deserves partial credit for the big tax reform package in Washington since the Calif. delegation and Obama helped lose control of Congress over the course of three U.S. election cycles. Bravo!
He’s managed to hornswoggle the voters of California TWICE, which probably says more about the voters of California (of which I am a voiceless one) than it does about Jerry Brown.
Four times. Brown served two terms, starting in the 1970’s, then much later, two more.
“which probably says more about the voters of California”
That’s my point. Brown is giving them what they want. That doesn’t make him ‘stupid.’
At least he’s termed out. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Hopeless in Sacramento
Smoke, mirrors and self-righteousness. Not exactly innovation or progress.
BTW . . . his sign “America’s Pledge #wearestillin” is criminal. He can speak for California. Not America.
why not cap and trade on political stupidity? aim for a 50℅ reduction in stupidity by 2020.
under the plan politicians can buy stupidity credits every time they want to open their mouths from other politicians that agree to keep their mouths closed in return.
economists predict that this plan will maximize the efficiency of stupidity. politicians will increasingly be able to say the stupidest things in the least amount of words.
computer models project that politicians will soon be able to say the stupidest things without saying anything at all.
That is a great idea. Now if we can just figure out a way for politicians to make money from this scheme we could get it passed into law very quickly.
Some of us thought we’d capped Jerry’s political career decades ago after his first effort as Governor.
The whole left coast has been willingly corrupted by the Sierra Club into disqualifying all of it’s big hydro generation as renewable in order to create a false target of 50% renewables by 2040. Or so?.
Of course in reality all three states had long ago reached that goal if hydro is included as renewable like the rest of the world considers it.
I recall years ago that when the UMW union in Pittsburgh forced the shutdown of the large silver mines in northern Idaho the resulting electricity share from Bonneville Power was quickly grabbed up by California. Idaho lost jobs and California got even more hydropower output share.
Anybody calculate the CO2 emitted by the wildfires?
Not to mention that the fires are directly heating the atmosphere…a double-whammy of Global Warming.
They better fire up the pixie dust farms if they want to meet that mandate by 2030.
I have to laugh and laugh at this feckless Moonbeam Brown. The problem is, he is such a liar; lying is the only thing Democrats seem to be proficient at these days. The irony of it all is most striking.
The biggest problem with that assessment:
‘apres Brown, le deluge’.
He’s the MODERATE in the California Democrat universe.
I’d really like to see more links or references for followup! I want to be in the position to pass on quality information to warmists and alarmists. On this story for instance:
1) “Air Resources Board issued a report hailing California’s nearly …” — If not a URL can’t you give us the name of the report at least?
2) Julie Cart, the environmental writer … delved into the report’s data … — OK, which table, in the unnamed report. The advantage of reading the reporting of an environmental writer is they know or have figured out how to “delve”.
3) Are any other news sources that confirm this reporting?
This is an unverified report from a source I’m not familiar with. If I shared this info with someone I would have to qualify it with those words. Too bad, it seems to be a powerful story about how just about everybody is a “denier” in some sense of the word.
The exclusion of hydroelectric energy from the list of renewables shows how bias the liberal’s environmental policies have become. Liberals don’t like hydroelectric because it can affect the river environment. Their favorite renewable energy (wind and solar) kills thousand of birds with no punitive backlash but you don’t dare put a dam on a river because that affects the type of aquatic habitat (river vs lake). I had over 25 years of experience in PG&E’s hydroelectric facilities and it frosts me how hydroelectric enegry is poohooed by liberals.
John, do you remember the mid-1970’s Northern California drought years? The Federal Central Valley Project (CVP) was not able to meet its contractual commitments to provide PG&E a certain minimum level of electric generation output from Federal hydroelectric facilities.
No matter how much power the CVP provided PG&E after that, PG&E only paid for the reduced peak amount they delivered during the 1977-78 water year. The Fed’s inept negotiations (and hapless negotiators) dragged on for years with multi-million annual losses to the taxpayers.
“it describes radiation movement as a process of “absorption”, whereas any reasonable person knows that all things that absorb radiation also emit it.”
‘Absorbtion’ is a euphemism, a term of convenience used in spectroscopy. What actually happens is that light traveling towards the observer is taken in, and then re-radiated in all directions. Since the amount re-radiated towards the observer is less than the total incident light would have been, a dark line is seen in the spectrum. Scattering would be a better word for it.
The danger with euphemisms like this is that people who are not familiar with the discipline will tend to take them as factual.