As reported in my last post, even the U.S. government’s own Energy Information Administration in the Department of Energy doesn’t believe for a minute that any kind of rapid transition to “net zero” carbon emissions is about to occur in this country. Although President Biden has supposedly committed the entire federal bureaucracy to the “net zero” by 2050 transition, the EIA projects steady and even increasing fossil fuel usage in the U.S. through the entire 28 intervening years.
But surely there must be somebody taking this green energy transition thing seriously. The obvious place to look for such serious commitment would be in New York State, and most particularly New York City. Here, deadly earnest climate campaigners dominate local politics. New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, enacted in 2019 and effective in 2020, commits the State to the energy transition. And to prove its own bona fides, the City Council just enacted legislation at the end of 2021 banning new buildings from burning natural gas starting for smaller buildings (up to six stories) in 2024, just two years from now, and then applying to all new buildings by 2027, just five years away. Yup, natural gas is definitely on the fast train to oblivion around here.
All of which led me to be greatly curious when I heard the jackhammers going out on the street starting around 8 AM for the last several days. On closer observation, they seem to be putting in new pipelines of some sort:
So I picked out a guy who looked like the job foreman, and asked him what is going on. Sure enough, they are installing new gas mains in the neighborhood. According to the foreman, it’s a new higher-pressure natural gas system, to replace the old low pressure system. He said that the old mains were close to 100 years old.
So it’s great to know that we will shortly have a new natural gas distribution system in Greenwich Village, ready for the next hundred years or so.
The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
Not all that unusual for governments.
The LEFT hand doesn’t want to know what the RIGHT hand is doing. So long as the LEFT hand gets to be dominant and make all the orders and agreements and tell the RIGHT hand what it gets to think
“The right hand…left hand…doesn’t know…”, I think that’s the excuse Jeffrey Toobin used.
The left hand wants to push policy to the brink but not get blamed when it blows up periodically with reality blown in all directions. Therefore, the left hand must have superior media management to blame the right hand for anything that goes wrong. The right hand must be shunned and ignored until such time that the blame game begins. Besides things don’t blow up that often which leaves a lot of time to gain power and influence before the dirty cleanup work begins… for the right hand.
Sinister: “of ill omen by reason of being on the left”
It’s worse than we thought! The left hand doesn’t even know the right hand exists!!! 😮 😉
And the left hand doesn’t know what the Left hand is doing.
In this case, the left hand does not know what the other left hand is doing.
Steve C: “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”
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Ummm, I think the problem is that on the main, there are only two left hands.
The left and the right are two wings on the same bird and exist only to give the rubes the illusion of choice. We have a uniparty paid for by the WEF and other GEBs funneled through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
I’m U.S., but I see the same from the UK and OZ posters. “Who can we vote for? They are all in the tank for the Green (Marxist) agenda.”
The left hand doesn’t know what the right clenched fist is doing.
The left hand is the govt telling everyone that Nat Gas will be shut down.
The right hand is the gas company, knowing that they need to keep their infrastructure in good order, and replacing it in a manner that will allow for more volume (regardless of what the left hand says).
The left hand will benefit but that’s beside their point.
Wish you hadn’t said that. Now I can’t get the image out of my mind of some CDC wing nut lecturing about hand hygiene with one had down his backside scratching an itch.
These days in the US, the left hand doesn’t know what the far-left hand is doing.
Ok, in answering the question.
Griff?
Gas lines can be duel use. They can transport 🦄 unicorn fahts.
Why does anyone look to griff for anything? He’s not even good for comic relief.
Stupidity is always funny
Don’t sell him short
He’s the verbal equivalent of watching him fall down the stairs
Loydo was funnier. Where did she go ??
She was so nutty, she thought she was on the right side of the Dunning-Kruger equation, but I guess that’s why the Dunning-Kruger effect exists.
I think they have all gone quiet as they are awaiting instructions but Putin seems distracted by something.
The generals stole a bunch of Putin’s money. Putin ‘fired’ a bunch of them today. (Don’t bother looking for those generals in the unemployment line. Try the Black Sea.)
Hmmm… was a small part of their budget dedicated to paying wind/solar cheerleaders to keep Western governments from drilling or fracking?
Maybe we should take up a collection and give the guys a little farewell party as a thanks for all the entertainment they have provided.
We’ll just have to wait and see if griff, or Loydo pop up over the parapets.
HaHa true the Griff really believes it 🙂
Simple Simon would be a true believer but he is still trying to put a coherent thought together.
You could bang their collective brains together and they still wouldn’t have the reasoning power of a single amoeba.
The smart money is going to continue investing in oil gas and coal.
The awful truth of the impossibility of net zero is going to sink in sooner or later then they’ll be well set to exploit the market.
Just have to ignore the calumny and eco-loons in the interim.
Smart money makes a killing in the first ten years from investment. The promoters then move on to the next fad that gets the easy money.
The smart money appears to be going to lithium right now. Another 10 year fad that is garnering all sorts of government support. It has taken 10 years to build the current momentum.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
Small scale nuclear and uranium mining may also attract smart money.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/uranium
There is smart money in copper as well but it is more durable as it is an essential to any electrical and transport infrastructure. Copper miners cannot lose providing fads continue.
Hydrogen
Move fast
Right, Ken. For one, Soros is buying up depressed coal stocks.
https://www.businessinsider.com/george-soros-is-loading-up-on-coal-2015-9#:~:text=Soros%2C%20whose%20%2424%20billion%20fortune,by%20Britain's%20The%20Guardian%20newspaper.
He’s being doing that for years – stocks and entire companies. Curiously enough, he was one of the ones clamouring for people to divest from coal and advising Obama to shut down the coal industry – quite the well-oiled operation he has going.
The Green Energy rent seekers are taking it very seriously, straight from our pocketbooks.
Well, those of us who comprehend what a “deficit” means certainly can’t take the conjecture about wind & solar providing utility scale 24/7 dispatchable electricity seriously.
deficit
(1)
deficiency in amount or quality
(2)
a lack or impairment in an ability or functional capacity
Both (1) and (2) apply to Brandon’s state.
Probably too much to hope for, but maybe we could relabel natural gas as “underground wind” and convince the congresstrolls and high school science teachers that it’s verifiably verdant and renewable.
Good idea. Then it follows, we already have underground wind turbines. They work great, 24/7/365 for generating electricity.
Yes, this voodoo usually works: first, you make an “evil” wax doll and stick lots of pins on it; then you declare that the evil is done with it; and finally you make another “good” wax doll and declare that it is protecting you from the evil one.
Seriously that’s a good idea! Tell the regulators the pipeline is for green hydrogen and all the pesky permitting and even environmental assessment problems go away!
It is infuriating what these scoundrels are getting away with, lying, cheating and wasting our money and resources at an astounding rate. It makes me sick.
Well, these new edicts just mean there will not be a lot of new construction in NYC. But with the number of people leaving because of crime and taxes, it won’t be much needed, either.
Not intended for Rud…
Please stop leaving!
Seriously, we certainly like your tourist dollars, but really do not want your NYC lifestyle.
Cleanup your mess, flush your toilet OK?
Speaking of leaving. My daughter and family left Chicagoland for the mountains of Evergreen, Colorado 4 years ago, and now own their dream home on 8 acres that they helped build themselves.
My ex wife (and ex Pres of Chicago Symphony Women’s Association) left Chicago 3 years ago for her former summer only home on Lake Michigan in Michigan.
My son and family just left Chicago for Charlotte NC in February.
In all three cases, reasons were horrible traffic commutes, taxes, and crime.
When we first moved to Chicagoland (Cook county) in 1983 from Munich, it was wonderful. We were in Winnetka, one of ten best public school systems in the country. Easy to get to Opera and Symphony, where we held season tickets to both. Field Museum members…Chicagoland Started going downhill mid 1990’s. An accelerating slide ever since.
For business and tax reasons, I left for Fort Lauderdale in 2000 and never looked back—although still own a Chicagoland 3br 2.5 bath townhome on a golf course in Northfield, last there Thanksgiving two years ago. Holding only for continued price appreciation at about 12% pa since no mortgage.
Lots of good Chicago memories for me. In March 2020 I attended a private party at Buddy Guy’s blues club on Wabash. Great fun.
That’s where I think I likely got covid. A great place for that.
Been there, but not done (COVID) that. Three blocks further east on Wabash is the Weber Kettle Grill restaurant. Heavenly BBQ.
I still own 2 big Webber Kettles, Chitown and north Georgia mountains. Used to have 4 before recently sold my SE Wisc dairy farm. Were used to feast my deer hunting gang (8 to 12 per year) on wild Turkey, fresh slaughtered beef, and even last years grilled deer brats.
I use my big green egg primarily for making bacon and pork shoulder
But also makes killer rib eye
I wish I had known it was good. I stayed at the Embassy Suites kitty corner from the Weber Grill a few nights, and the Hilton Garden Inn another time which is basically next door.
I like the Pizzeria Uno in that vicinity.
The Crime Minister of Canada, known to don blackface on occasion, takes the Gang Green transition seriously. But serious people don’t take him seriously. But when a dolt is in power, they should be taken seriously, because such a person can be very dangerous.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/01/steven-guilbeault-canada-environment-minister-518446
Yes he really does seem to believe it
One more piece of evidence he isn’t very smart
Beware, Turdeau and his ecolytes set the programs up to fail, so that their ultimate goal of totalitarian control by the state to contain the “existential threat” will be accepted by the gullible populace….
I say they are more devious than you think. Boston switched to high pressure line a few years causing several houses to explode. Perhaps they intend to show how unsafe natural gas is.
I believe that was human error, reversed the flow , or shut off the wrong valve or something. Though Im sure the higher pressure made it worse.
At my place in Chicagoland, the entire natural gas system for the golf course development complex was replaced two years ago by Nicor. Was originally built in 1972, and the original metal piping was corroding. Replaced by higher pressure plastic piping and new high pressure meters. No problems at all.
In Philly, something like half of the gas pipes are over 100 years old and made of cast iron, direct buried.
Basically, they are pipes made of rust.
Some water mains are well over 150 years old.
I think they may be tile in some cases.
The oldest water pipes in Philly were wooden, made of logs.
I think they may have gotten around to replacing most of them by now.
/No sarc
(Ok, maybe that last sentence)
The right question is ” Does anyone really think this transition is needed or will do any good?” Most of the push for the transition is purely political and couched in power acquisition or the true believers that have swallowed the rhetoric from the power seekers. I keep asking folks and have yet to run into someone that thinks there is a climate problem let alone an emergency. That attitude goes a long way to explain why the transition is having rough going.
If they were at all serious, they would be pushing nuclear leading to fusion as the ultimate fossil fuel replacement for when we inevitably run out. Nothing else is sufficient by any useful metric. Fission technology has come a long way, especially with regard to safety and presuming that being environmentally responsible matters to the Nut Zero crowd, nothing else is greener or sustainable.
No sentient individual is taking this green hysteria seriously. But where you have progressive politicians, you’ll soon have all kinds of hysterical nonsense as truth and policies to enforce that minority voice over all common sense.
It’s quite simple. They need to keep gas, as electricity is charged at a rate set by the most expensive method of generation. “Carbon” taxes on gas keep the costs nice and high, so if they were to get rid of it they would have to charge at the rate of wind generation, which as we all know is so cheap that they’ll be giving it away. Can’t have that..
Bingo. It’s not about the climate. It is about extracting money.
I see that White House “climate advisor” Gina McCarthy is stepping down. Is this another nail in the green agenda coffin?
Possibly not – she’s taken to Twitter to say that she hasn’t resigned from her position, less than an hour after the original story broke. No idea what’s actually going on though.
Menton ==> Isn’t it curious how the real people just ignore all that nuttiness and get on with life?
Of course we need new mains, the old ones leak. And we will need more gas in the future.
We need more oil so we need more drilling and more Federal oil leases.
Whether we use the oil to make gasoline, burn in power plants or use as feed stock for a million different products, we need more oil.
Maybe it is for hydrogen
Some years ago, I lived in a town where the street department diligently painted stripes for crosswalks, turn lanes, etc. Several weeks later, they then put a 2 inch bituminous overlay on the streets.
All the government you cannot afford to pay for. Classic.
That was to protect the paint
They must have forgot to use the clear bitumen to cover it
A few years ago here a major road had all the lines repainted and for the first time centerline and shoulder reflectors installed.
Significant snowfall about 60 days later. I would guess that 80% of the reflectors were in the plowed snow on the side of the road the next day.
They usually schedule the new blacktop to be installed about a month or less before they dig up the street to put in new water or sewer lines.
I know I am not taking an energy transition seriously ….
I mean, really, an energy transition as proposed by Brandon simply isn’t going to happen ….
How could you take that seriously ???
They will have to pry my gas range c/w dual ovens from my cold dead hands.
Thankfully I live in AB, still one of the least insane jurisdictions in North America
My propane heater self-identifies as an electric heat pump. That’s how energy transition works.
Schumer takes it seriously … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD-e2sWQ05Q
Recently, I just happened to be on a conference call with some high level banker types where the topic was “inflation”. Net-Zero was discussed, Covid policy, US fiscal policy, FED policy, asset prices, durability of corporate profits, etc. and the takeaway was the “noble cause” shall not be questioned. Traditional tools of monetary policy can’t be used “this time” because it would collapse the house of cards supporting the noble cause. My take away was that everybody agreed, but nobody would say it: the FED needs to raise interest rates, sharply. But we are not allowed to talk about that, in favor of the inflation-fighting secret weapon: hope. “We hope that core inflation will fall below 5% in 2 years.”
Climate Campaigners are deadly earnest about their virtue signaling, no matter how dumb the policies they enact, or how harmful they will be. It’s “For the Planet”.
I take the $66 it took to fill up my gas tank yesterday seriously.
Actually, we should all take seriously everything said and done by the maniacs who are trying to destroy our civilization.
They are serious, that is for sure.
I am sure they only take their climate propaganda seriously because it’s production is a cash cow. I am sure that left leadership reads their climate propaganda crap and laugh and giggle a little ……. all those “little Pretties” out there, “they’re mine”! But it’s not just the left that is quietly giggling to themselves….. it’s all those who are leverage the movement….. like the Grid and Energy companies… .they want to take Carbon Tax dollars from the consumers and give it to politicians as tax revenue because this puts them in their pockets and as we know energy markets are propped up by regulation.
If you really want to know what people are thinking, observe what they do, not so much what they say. The greater the difference between those two, the bigger the hypocrite they are.
How old are other parts of the line?
This makes perfect sense. It is part of a plan to renovate the entire energy system using antimatter. They will pump oodles of anti-methane down those pipes and when it burns create anti-CO2 which will safely bring us back into the full glaciation we miss so much. “But we don’t know how to harness and use anti-matter” you say. Nothing a bit of overly ambitious, progressive legislation can’t fix.
Renewable energy is mostly virtue signaling with a few turbines and PV panels thrown in to mollify the Greens. You can fool the people but you can’t fool the energy engineers when it comes to 24X7 power and cost.
Net Zero is what we will all have in our checking accounts and 401K’s when they get done spending and taxing US into oblivion.