I made this mockup for Anthony, who is currently dealing with more fires in northern California.
He said make it into a Friday Funny.
This next image, sums up the feeling of many Northern Californians today.
Friday Funny: California Feelings
- Saturday, December 9, 2023
I would suggest it is more the California politicians who are rabid greens than PG&E management, and the priorities are set by the regulators, not management.
As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, “PG&E hasn’t kept detailed records on the age or condition of its transmission towers and wires, but it knows that 1.2% of its workforce is American Indian and 0.6% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.”
Priorities, after all.
This just doesn’t ring quite true. How do they do depreciation without detailed records on the age and investment? I would think the tax man would be having a hissy fit! Do they never audit the depreciation allowances?
I can believe they don’t make the detailed records available. But they don’t keep the detailed records? When I worked for one of the old Bell System companies the public utility commissions would have ground us into dust!
Once items are fully depreciated after 10 years, the tax man no longer cares about any records about them.
Regulators may share in the blame, but PG&E management failed in their responsibilities including their duty to maintain infrastructure from natural gas pipes and wells to electrical transmission lines and equipment leading to two bankruptcies in under two decades.
I don’t know what led to this but before that PG&E was well respected.
PG&E’s bosses are the PUC, not the customers who have no choice, and lawsuits will be paid for by rate hikes; they have no competitors to keep them straight.
Is this the same PG&E that poisoned water courses with hexavalent chromium…? How much did that cost them and more importantly the families who suffered terrible health problems? Well respected is not the term that comes to my mind….
Absolutely. The PUC is where termed-out politicians find their sinecure, and they reward their still-legislating pals with as much woke nonsense as possible.
I was a painting contractor in the Peoples Republic of California, and whether CARB or the PUC was more a pack of green lawyers was a matter of dispute.
CPUC – California Public Utility Commission. Political appointees. None have any experience-academic/otherwise in Electrical Generation-Transmission engineering. That’s ok. Hired experts will advise. Opinion – CPUC wants a public traded Utility to become government mired – like SMUD-Sacramento Municipal Utility District – which buys federal electricity 20% more than they need at less cost than what it takes to make. SMUD then, by law, sells excess to PG&E at a profit for SMUD. Government ‘foreman’s’, herd ramrods run day to day government. Some SMUD customers (a relative) claim – ‘see PG&E charging too much’.
Do you mean that climate change doesn’t cause forrests to spontaneously combust? Who woulda thunk that powerlines could cause fires?
Regards,
Bob
In a recent budget proposal, Governor Gavin Newsom allocated $1bn for wildfire prevention, $4bn for a high speed train from Merced to Bakersfield (both places exist, get a good map).
What water infrastructure could 4 billion dollars provide?
Deadwood removal.
Curious,
Are you referring to forests or politicians?
Forests. $4T would not be enough for politicians.
The real problem is the legal system.
Both. Large piles of deadwood, with politicians strapped to it.
Wickerman, isn’t that a druid thing.
On NF – National Forest, 55% harvest yield did selective dead removal in 1990. Politician redirected the Harvest/Yield on NF. Primary tool the bogus Spotted Owl (eventually called Western to bolster the academic failure of owl). About 1995 one retired NF – biologist said ‘this will lead to a dead forest (hot fire)’.
Even if expensive desalination was used 4 billion dollars would produce adequate water for close to a million single family homes for a year. While not a money maker, way better then a train to nowhere and a heck of a lot more monthly income. Sooner or later a mega drought will hit California, no CAGW required.
( WAG .5 to 1 acre foot per single family home with 4 individuals. Six one hundred million gallon a day desalination plants.)
What do you mean, train to nowhere! Are you insinuating that Merced and Bakersfield are no…
Oh, wait. Silly me….:)
The best thing about sometimes riding through the central valley, rather than up the 101, is the peace and quiet – I see no one for miles and miles!
Is that to purchase the plants or cost of operating/maintaining?(or both)
Purchase. I suspect one million paying monthly customers could more then cover the the maintenance – operational costs.
According to this site the average bill is $138 per month. https://ysplit.com/blog/the-average-water-bill-in-california-provided-by-ysplit/ The WAG for the plants was adequate for one million single family homes, four million residents.
So 1.68 billion a year is substantial.
I don’t have the price sheet, but I suspect $4B could buy at least two massive ocean water desalinization plants and the necessary site properties if not already state-owned, which together might supply half of the total drinking water needs for the State of California.
$4B would be consumed in the litigation costs alone as various NGOs, activists and other social parasites will paper the courts with every permutation of NIMBY, BANANA and environment impact arguments.
Power the desal plants with Nuclear Power Plants that could desal more water cooling the steam generation and you get eliable power as well as more water
We should keep Diablo Canyon for that reason alone!
Ideally, we in CA would build 10 more Diablo Canyons and have ~110% of our total electrical needs met with our own nukes. Then all the installed solar/wind could be used for desalination, where we can buffer the output (fill reservoirs) based on the intermittent supply of power.
David A asked, “What water infrastructure could 4 billion dollars provide?”
Len Bilen has some ideas about how to spend that money (and a lot more):
0 (intro). https://lenbilen.com/2021/06/29/the-solution-to-the-water-shortage-in-the-south-west-and-texas-hydro-electric-storage-problem-eliminating-carbon-fuel-dependence-at-the-same-time/
1. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/02/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-1-mississippi-river-to-aquilla-lake/
2. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/03/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-2-aquilla-lake-to-brad-lake-to-be-constructed/
3. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/04/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-3-brad-lake-to-be-dammed-to-deadman-draw-lake-to-be-dammed/
4. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/05/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-4-north-of-baird-dams-to-be-constructed-to-east-of-sweetwater-dam-to-be-constructed/
5. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/06/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-5-east-of-sweetwater-dam-to-be-constructed-to-grassland-canyon-lake-to-be-made/
6. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/07/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-6-grassland-canyon-lake-to-be-made-to-white-oaks-canyon-lake-to-be-made/
7. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/09/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-7-white-oaks-canyon-lake-to-be-made-to-the-arch-lewis-canyon-lake-via-a-20-mile-tunnel-under-the-guadaloupe-mountains-in-new-mexico/
8. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/10/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-8-arch-lewis-canyon-lake-to-martin-tank-lake-a-distance-of-50-miles/
9. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/12/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-9-martin-tank-lake-to-round-mountain-rockhound-reservoir-a-distance-of-210-miles/
10. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/13/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-10-round-mountain-rockhound-reservoir-to-cove-tank-reservoir-a-distance-of-13-miles/
11. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/13/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-11-cove-tank-reservoir-to-los-carlos-lake-a-distance-of-70-miles/
12. https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/17/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-leg-12-san-carlos-lake-to-the-colorado-river-following-the-gila-river-a-distance-of-280-miles/
13 (costs). https://lenbilen.com/2021/07/18/the-transcontinental-aqueduct-cost-estimates/
Funnier. Obama gave CA about $2 billion in subsidies for this first rail segment. CA didn’t timely complete, so Trump asked for the subsidy back. Tied up in the courts, of course.
Curious,
Bakersfield is a thriving megalopolis of almost 350,000! Why it is the 53rd largest city in the US! And Merced is striving nobly to reach 100,000!
With the high speed rail they will be able to help with the Bai Den Regime’s policy of moving illegal immigrants, especially Covid positive ones, quickly into the interior before CBP officials can be infected! It will also help all those highly paid agricultural workers move to jobs around the San Joaquin Valley!
Oh, wait! It looks like water for the SJV must be used for reintroducing salmon, so there won’t be many ag jobs. Thank God illegals qualify for welfare and healthcare in Commifornia! We are saved!
In Australia, Bob, none of the public servants will give permission for anyone wanting to reduce fuel loads, to strike a match, in case it all gets out of hand and they are held responsible.
You have to employ arsonists if the power lines don’t oblige.
The state could rake up the tinder and feed boilers and steam turbines to generate revenue and provide electricity for citizens From what I’ve seen in the news and other videos about big California fires, you would essentially be using future “wildfires” for energy, improving the forests, saving hundreds of lives billions in property damage …instead of wasting the energy with no positive benefits.
A lot of good timber is destroyed too. You could give thousands ‘green’ jobs leasing the amount of timber that so far you havent cared about preserving with the let-it -all-hang-out policy.
We need another Trump- type to clean out the activists in more courts, to face down litigation, and pass enabling emergency legislation in a majority house and senate to handle the low tech “wildfire” issue, terminate wasteful green energy subsidies, pass an anti-eye-sore law or something for the PC panels and windmills. Reinstate protection of bats and raptor’s with huge fines, etc.
There are ways to confront the radical anti-American greens but you need Trumpuan cojones to carry it all out. He should also strike a commission to evaluate whether or not the heritage big money “charities” programs meet all strict criteria. They would be able to fund stuff separately from the charity but it would not be tax deductible. Soros, Steyer, Bloomberg, Black Rock, Gates….
Indian goverment declared Green Peace a terrorist organization for their sabotage efforts to overturn government policy. They permit a Greenpeace chapter run by Indian citizens and funded only by donations from Indian citizens inside the country (for opposing real environmental issues). Thank you, we can get along fine without the NWO, etc.
Note after one Greenpeace misadventure in the Russian Arctic where a few did time for posing threats to the O &G industry ops and equipment, no second one is being advertised.
What a great idea. And you could employ all those unemployed, & the unemployable, with a little coercion, to do the raking up.
Twp problems fixed at a single stroke.
You appear to have lost sight of the reason the Borg made a deal with the devil to get rid of Trump.
Here in Oz we keep trying Climate Change in human form for arsons various.
This Dixie fire, near Anthony and me, was caused by a green 70 foot tree growing 40 feet from the lines that fell into the lines. How unforeseen is that? PG&E can’t win for losing.
Was the tree on public or private land??
If public, the Governor is responsible and needs to pay, him and his whole family including Nancy.
If on private land, and not owned by PG&E, the private land owner should pay.
If on land owned by PG&E, the company board, as a whole, should pay.
And if after the next board vote the clowns are still in power, then the shareholders should pay. Not with company funds, but with their personal funds. Of course, any management of a mutual fund who has the power to vote the shares would be required to pay for their investors themselves, from their personal funds.
Long past time for personal responsibility.
Maybe they need to change the tree trimming rules in California. Here, the tree need not be on public or utility property to be properly mangled beyond recognition.
A weed is a plant growing in the wrong place. Some trees are deadly weeds.
They are talking of spending over a billion to relocate power underground. I would guess the interest on that billion would pay, forever, for crews to clear the lines 2 or 3 times a year.
I remember as a child the power crews coming through every summer into fall cutting back the trees from overhead power lines. It seemed they cut at the end of the growing season.
I am in a rural location in Utah, Ponderosa Pine, Doug Fir forest, with overhead power. The co-op comes through every couple of years. Main 3 phase lines between lots are in ROW with a 20 foot width through the community. Most homeowners cut their own trees from under the branch power lines when they start getting up a little ways.
Similar to having a colony on the back side of the moon – tree removal/trim.
The Dixie Fire on the Lassen and Plumas National Forests is reported to be 167,430 acres as of 10pm 7/23.
The Bootleg Fire on the Fremont-Winema NF in Oregon is 400,389 acres as of 9pm, 7/23. It was ignited by lightning.
The ignition source is officially cited as the “cause” of wildfires, but in most fires (including these) it is the quantity and continuity of the fuels that are the real cause. It’s the biological fuel that is burning. Both fires are on USFS lands. The fuels (quantity and continuity) have been the responsibility of the Federal Government for over 100 years. The Feds have failed to tend our National Forests. They have allowed a-historical fuel loadings with inadequate fuels breaks.
Federal mismanagement (or un-management) of Federal lands by the Fed agency responsible is the real culprit, guilty party, and negligent entity, and is wholly to blame for both fires.
Mike,
You can’t expect the USFS to allow timber harvesting! Why, that could lead to good paying rural jobs and lower prices for building materials!
No, no! You can’t have that! All citizens must be crammed into large cities, where they are easier to coerce and control; especially with the new vexxines and variants be produced! Bucolic life in the hinterlands is anathema to the Progressive Utopia; you can’t allow citizens to live without govt guidance!
Dear A B,
It’s quite evident that the coerce and control includes brainwashing the populace into believing the power company is responsible for forest fires.
They should try this simple experiment: shut off the power for a year or two and see if there are no more fires. Huddle in the cold and dark for two years. See if that works.
Some people blame Gerbil Worming. Okay, halt all use of fossil fuels. Close down transportation, agriculture, logging, manufacturing, water, everything for two years. Do the huddling in mud huts with donkeys (the new mode of transport). See if the forest fires go away.
If they don’t, well, that disproves the hypothesis. No need for common sense — do the test. And if total collapse of the economy etc. leading to cannibalism and mass death has no effect on forest fires, then the proponents of the crap hypothesis should be exterminated like cockroaches.
Or we could just do that now without the experiment.
I visited California twice in the early seventies (the last century, not my age), governor was someone called Ronald Reagan (later president of the USA). It was a happy place, and I didn’t smoke anything then, before or after. Couple of my university colleagues decided to stay there for life, even they said place is not what it use to be.
Modern times are for smokers.
“Green energy” should be labeled “fire”, as in hot, don’t look… stare, don’t touch. But, so is “maintenance and prevention”, baby, darling, sweety. Choose one or the other, but you can’t reasonably have both. Or can you? Here’s to social…. uh, scientific progress.
PG&E just announced plans to bury 10,000 miles of electrical lines considered to be at “high risk” from wild fires. Cost: $15 to $30 billion.
Warning! the following link contains the usual anti-corporate crap, but it has the most information overall.
PG&E Will Bury 10,000 Miles of Power Lines So They Don’t Spark Wildfires : NPR
I don’t think that the lines are at risk from wild fires – the forest is at risk from the power lines. “Course the regulators won’t let them spend the money to clear the trees back further.
In many high-risk places, such as the Feather River Canyon, near Pulga, where the 2018 Paradise fire started, there isn’t enough soil to bury any lines. They will have to blast trenches in solid rock!
That sounds like fun.
But I don’t live there.
Just two months before the Camp that burned Paradise I spoke to a PG&E supervisor while she was inspecting lines near Paradise. She said they were about to double the corridor beside the lines…..they wee about to do it and then came the fire….not even started by trees.
Great meme, Charles. Except not very funny.
Did some checking. In 2018 (year before the Paradise fire and PGE bankruptcy, they spent $2.4 billion on renewable electricity and $1.5 billion on electrical transmission and distribution maintenance.
According to FERC, PGE wtd avg rate/KWh (across all rate plans) was 80% higher than the national average. In CA, you don’t get what you paid for.
Was there a breakdown between transmission and distribution ?
re. the excellent Friday Funny
I am reminded of the Northern Pikes song with the lyrics, “She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way.” link
Sometimes you find wisdom in the strangest places.
Yeah, funny unless you live here. A bit too much truth in this one. Sorry, but my sense of humor isn’t up to this task…
In Australia the government has finally realised that the Aborigines knew how to manage the land better through controlled burn offs
Don’t forget burn offs, controlled or uncontrolled are easy when there are no houses, fences or anything else the burn off will take with it. A bit hard to know now, how many aboriginal burn offs got away & burned through thousands of square kilometers now full of homes & towns.
Yes it should have been done, & must be done now, but applying aboriginal techniques is definitely not the full answer. It will take a great deal of expensive preparation today, like extensive wide fire brakes, to make burn offs safe as well as effective
So no comment on the fourth, no fifth, heatwave about to hit the US?
“The most extensive heatwave of a scorching summer is set to descend upon much of America in the coming week, further roasting areas already gripped by severe drought, plunging reservoirs and wildfires.
A massive ‘heat dome’ of excessive heat will settle across the heart of the contiguous US from Monday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast, bringing elevated temperatures to the Great Plains, the Great Lakes, the northern reaches of the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific northwest and California.
Places used to more mild summers are set for punishing heat, with temperatures expected to breach 100F (37C) in the Dakotas and Montana, a state in which the city of Billings has already experienced 12 days above 95F (35C) this month. Areas of states including Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma may get “sweltering” temperatures reaching 110F (43C), Noaa said, while cities such as Des Moines, Minneapolis and Chicago will get significantly above-average heat.”
and still all the heatwaves and excess rain events, well off the previous scale, some of them, are just weather and just a coincidence? Despite being exactly what climate science predicts?
Did climate science predict all that ice currently in the Antarctic Griff?
Griff, I’ll admit each record high is evidence of global warming if you’ll agree each record low, in the face of increasing CO2, disproves climate change. Deal?
I suspect it’s a wash and neither of us can prove anything
I don’t know how much time you’ve spent on the Great Plains of the U.S., but I’ve lived here in Kansas and Missouri all my life. These kinds of “heat waves” are not unusual. They make good copy for news folks and CAGW propaganda. When you wonder why many folks don’t believe what you say, that is the reason. Those who have lived long enough know how to compare what they have experienced over their lifetime to what the propaganda is spouting.
Griffy, stop being an idiot, will you. This is still just weather being unpredictable as usual. If you have 30+ year data of excessive heatwaves and heat domes across the same areas of the USA, then we’ll start talking meaningful climate change – until then, it’s just random weather.
And no, climate science ‘predicts’ no such thing – a general statement that there will be extreme weather event’s is not a prediction, merely a statement of fact that any meteorologist would accept as normal, unpredictable, weather.
Richard,
“Griffy, stop being an idiot,…”
‘To dream…the impossible dream…
To fight…the unbeatable foe…’
My apologies to Joe Darion!
Until the US heatwaves surpass the dust bowl years where drought covered a far larger portion of the US then any drought since, the alarmist don’t have a leg to stand on.
It is supposed to get pretty hot here in Kansas, with the anti-cyclone moving in from the southwest. But still 10-15 degrees below our record highs. So yeah, just another summer heat wave. We have them every year.
Dallas usually has it’s first 100 plus degree day around July 1. Has yet to happen this year. Just as Griff predicted, right?
There is “extreme” drought in the West, far greater than usual rain in the Southeast, and floods in Germany. All caused by Climate Change (sic). Is there nothing it can’t do?
Here is my prediction for the whole world: there will be unusual weather events, here and there, interspersed with normal weather, for the next 50 years.
Now you know why my nickname is ‘The 21st Century Nostradamus’… 🙂
We haven’t hit 100 degrees in about 4 years. Probably won’t this time either. that is why they keep telling us about the heat index, usually 10 degrees higher than the actual temperature. Our record highs this time of year are 115 degrees or so.
On the other hand we did have extreme cold in February–set a bunch of low temperature records. I agree, we can look forward to a series of unusual weather events, separated by periods of sort of normal weather.
starzmom
Thanks!
I guess those summer heat waves are [fairly] rare in – say – autumn [Fall in your locale], winter, and perhaps spring?
Which, if my guess is reasonably accurate, might that not be a huge surprise?
Auto
Griff: “Places used to more mild summers are set for punishing heat, with temperatures expected to breach 100F (37C) in the Dakotas and Montana, a state in which the city of Billings has already experienced 12 days above 95F (35C) this month.”
I worked in north central Montana for several years in the 1970’s. And in Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Temperatures above 95 are the norm in these places during a good part of the summer. And it’s pretty doggone cold in the winter. Such is life living and working on the northern great plains of the US.
It is cool and wet in the desert southwest. Is that okay?
I wonder how those spotted owls are doing… are K-Mart signs flammable?
Driving recently through burn areas, I can say highway sign lettering melts off and guard rails held up by wood posts fall down.
One day they might realise that their real problem is their Socialist politicians.
Gordon A. Dressler: “I don’t have the price sheet, but I suspect $4B could buy at least two massive ocean water desalinization plants and the necessary site properties if not already state-owned, which together might supply half of the total drinking water needs for the State of California.”
Rather than shutting it down, Diablo Canyon could have been either partially or fully repurposed to desalinate sea water. This option was under consideration before PG&E caved to pressure from the state of California in 2017 and decided to shut it down instead.
California’s Mega-Drought: Nuclear Power To The Rescue, Dr. James Conca, Forbes June 2015
IIRC, it’s been previously estimated that fifteen or so 1100 Mw size nuclear reactors, plus the associated seawater desalination technology and an expanded water distribution system, could supply enough fresh water for all of California’s municipal and agricultural needs.
As a very rough guess, I would figure a total of $150 billion (or so) for the fifteen large AP1000 size nuclear reactors, plus another $50 billion (or so) for the desalination facilities and for the expanded in-state water distribution system.
From 15 minutes of web research that 50 billion would cover every residential and business need for water, but not the agricultural needs. However there is zero need to eliminate all the hydro in California, and it would be extremely foolish.
IIRC, four or so 1100 Mw reactors could cover the state’s municipal water requirements, the other eleven would be covering the agricultural requirements.
Once again, we see the absurdity of shutting down Diablo Canyon and its 2,200 Mw of generation capacity.
The oncoming small modular reactors might be better suited for municipal desalination applications. But the first of these SMR’s won’t be in operation in the US until 2029.
In the meantime, one-third of America’s nuclear power fleet, roughly 37 GW of capacity, is being targeted for premature shut down before this decade is out.
It’s all Darth Vader’s fault: (20+) Facebook
For those smart enough to avoid FubarBook, the line is:
What does Darth Vader exhale?
Carbon Darkside.
<g,d,r>
I think that meme needs to be replaced. The uglier chick should be the one they are looking at. Probably an ancient wrinkled fat woman…
I think that was the point of the meme, wasn’t it? Ignoring someone fine to ogle umm let’s be nice and just say a not-as-fine one.
Which of the two do you seriously think is more attractive?