jyoutz
Super Member
Why doesn’t the power grid go down in other states when it’s cold outside? Texas didn’t winterize their systems, simple as that.
Used Value vs Age
- Thread starter MHarryE
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blehmann
Bronze Member
It isn't that simple. You are correct that the system wasn't winterized. You are leaving out the part about a higher than normal number of conventional power plants being off-line for repair, (how dumb is that?), natural gas going offline as a direct result of electric failures, and wind and solar going offline for several days. The main reason that power doesn't go off in other states is because most of them are tied in with a huge grid that should always have excess power to shuffle around. ERCOT didn't have that option. Maybe it is time to do away with ERCOT and spread the risk like the rest of the country.
bvanek
Silver Member
The stated goals of subsidies (supposedly) were to stimulate demand for wind and solar technology in the hope that their high cost would decline. As we see today that is no longer viable as the technology has plateaued and therefore these larger companies can enter the market as is (but these large companies are diverse in other sources so they eliminate competition and thus control pricing to the consumer. So now they can settle in and reap their harvest at the expense of the ratepayers.... sound familiar?
I live in the Northwest. After WWII the federal government went headlong into producing and promoting cheap hydroelectric power throughout the nation. It was particularly rewarding in states (like mine) that had this abundant renewable natural resource.....but what happened? Corporate America took over, much like what might be happening in your area with wind and solar. Costs started soaring because of two major factors; They found out they could sell (initially surplus electricity) to California at a 50% higher rate and # 2 the environmentalists started going after the smaller hydro plants for the usual reasons and all of a sudden supply and demand became the front-runner for profitability.
So in your area maybe wind and solar can be competitive? But lets be clear wind and solar do not provide the same value to the grid as conventional electricity sources. In addition to not operating on demand (a subsidiary but tangible issue with power grids going down.), both wind and solar provide little of capacity value that is needed to maintain long-term reliability to the grid. Instead they rely on other electricity generators (that dreaded fossil fuel, natural gas in your case),to provide the services they cannot.....thus imposing those costs on other generators and the structure of the grid itself. The wind and solar facilities do not pay theses costs, ratepayers do. The Texas heat wave of 2019 provides a good example of how renewables can distort electricity grid operations.
So my simple reference is aimed at the very idea of replacing fossil fuels and subsequently blowing up our economy in the process. It's not "about time" for fossil fuels to be eliminated when you don't have replacements with the infrastructure to back it up. Political agendas always put the cart before the horse and ignorantly use this to disingenuously promote man as the culprit to changing climates. ........hydroelectric power invested in it's infrastructure without compromising the welfare of it's citizens...why? because we had fossil fuels in place to hold us over. Then we were able to use cheap hydroelectric power to vault into the era of opportunity and prosperity for any citizen who was willing to participate.
So you promote wind and solar....and who do you think will profit from that? Well the bottom line points to China both indirectly (from big tech) and directly. Solar panels made in China, wind turbans made mostly from parts and steel alloys made in China. Batteries made in China. Rare earth minerals (components of solar cells and batteries) ...all from China or sourced from Chinese investments in many third world countries...and if China takes Taiwan, computer chips..China will control our infrastructure and everything that runs them..and if they wish, because we have no protection against securing our electric grids and computers that run almost everything now, they could shut us down with a single EMP rocket. Incidentally this phony ***** "infrastructure bill' has no provision to take care of this.....and it is not that costly to permanently idiot proof this serious threat to our security.
America citizens will pay dearly if this nonsense isn't thwarted.
So one other comment to you: You have some one-sided pot shots at particular posts which are opposite views....didn't do any research so can't comment .....You seem adamant about promoting wind and solar and have pushed back rather religiously, to dominate the thread? It leads one to believe that you might be vested in something? Who do you work for? I kinda don't think you are a farmer
OzarkChris
Gold Member
Not grinding an axe, I'm glad that you still have a job, city, county after the spotted white owl fiasco - I know many who don't. But you didn't the questions. How do you justify the toxic garbage from the solar industries? How do you justify the mass killing of our national bird - the one if I "accidentally" kill one of have huge fines & jail. Etc etc
jyoutz
Super Member
Wind farms are distributed throughout the western US. I have no clue about how many birds are killed. I do know that wind farms are a significant percentage of the western power grid and that isn’t going to change. Solar manufacturers in the US have to deal with toxic manufacturing waste just like all other industries in the US. Nothing different. Same clean air and water acts that all manufacturers must comply with. The spotted owl situation (Mexican and Northern) has been dealt with. We still have most of the forested acres to manage and the protected owl habitats really are a minor portion of the landscape. For example, in my area, 15% of pine/oak forest must be managed for Mexican Spotted owl habitat, leaving 85% of the acres that can be managed for other priorities. I’m stating the current situation without my personal preferences; it is what it is. We are all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts.
bvanek
Silver Member
yes there will be abundant fraud and waste. There is plenty of historical evidence that fraud, waste, mismanagement, and political hacking are the norm. The evidence is presented in your assessment of our roads, airports, bridges, etc. as past political porking/hacking/corporate featherbedding has left us in dire straits on basic infrastructure. This will continue as long as accountability gets sidelined and political pandering to special interests persists.
Also I'm sure each State will have certain pet projects often allocated to to bail out prior mismanagement and incompetence. It's a safe bet that Blue states will veer towards woke/green new deal/white privilege stuff while their bridges and roads continue to be in disarray and the cost to fix them keeps rising year by neglected year. This will be federal money paid for by all American taxpayers and thus people in South Dakota will have to help pay for a fairyland high speed rail in California. A better use would be to invest in desalination plants to produce the water they are in short supply of.
Here's a good example of how we spend/waste money on infrastructure...check out acres of steel left to rust away because a democratic Congress has decided to toss taxpayers money aside for nothing more than ideological garbage of no border.
Yes there will be waste.....but I'd venture to guess that red states won't waste theirs....(but they won't get much because they don't holler and whine and luckily they are ran well enough that they don't need it)....you see what I'm saying here)
bottom line;Fix and repair the old before you pork in a bunch of "green new deal" new. I don't take issue with environmental projects, but since this will be /administered/prioritized by bureaucratic loonies I can't say that this money will be fully advocated to meaningful infrastructure.
jyoutz
Super Member
We in the Forest Service are getting billions to do forest restoration projects to reduce severe wildfires. Most will go to western and southern states because that is where the wildfires are most severe. It’s not a red/blue state issue; America has needs everywhere. Especially highways, bridges, ports and communications. If you want some actual real information about the border, PM me. I have lived my entire life in border states and my career is in land management. It’s sad how politicians have misrepresented the situation. And those hunks of steel have been rusting away for the past 20 years because politicians sold a ridiculous solution to an issue they are gutless to address with real solutions.
bvanek
Silver Member
so, you edited your comment and offered up some other comments....IMO one giant step towards "real solutions" would to have been to honor/enforce the existing immigration laws in the first place. But then you start putting both activist and bought judges into the process and legal immigration takes a back seat to illegal immigration. Two examples of those laws are remain in the first crossed country asylum seekers and deportation when you cross illegally. So a steady progression of circumventing a reasonable system that at least had some foundation to build upon and replacing it with nonsense is where we are at today.
The wall which I suppose most don't like (except the people charged with patrolling the border and local law enforcement)ask them... was a stop-gap tool because the Hispanic cartels, China, and US drug traffickers with large amounts of support money were winning the border battle.
Politicians misrepresent everything! That's their job..... and is usually how they get elected in the first place. Statistics tell us the wall and other ***** border policies worked......and I'll agree with you that Congress has been worthless and have compromised our sovereignty and betrayed the American people.
Now I'll move on to your second point. So your in the Forest service I presume BLM (not the other BLM) I'm from Oregon land of many forests. I have friends and family in all aspects of forestry including a logger, a state park ranger, a natural resource manager for BLM (not sure of exact title) A forest management official from a private company (Longview fiber). and even a tree planting crew leader from another private company (Weyerhaeuser)......The majority of our forests are federal, then state , then private.
I'm curious about what the forest management practices are in your state? You said reforestation so I'm presuming replanting after a forest or brush fire? So I look at pre- fire management as one of the tools to lesson the impact of fires...I used to be a staunch opponent of clear cut logging, but after a particular fire in 2020 in southern Oregon I realized that without the clear cuts in the area and the roads that a logging company built was instrumental in preventing this fire from spreading to a nearby town and several other more remote homes. Why 1. there was a buffer zone of clear-cut and 2 the roads allowed ground access to areas that otherwise were inaccessible. I also later found another similar incident in the prior year where logging roads, clear-cuts and even the logging companies helping (they had heavy equipment and fire gear nearby and was able to respond early before the fire spread) So the very thing Oregon people had disdain for ended up being a positive factor for squelching a fire before it reached the out of control stage.
Oregon has always had replanting built into their budget. Of course the private companies replant for a future harvest and there may be several things that helped them with fire management/prevention 1. they plant their tress close together and no underbrush grows2 they work with locals to patrol 3 they close off their access roads during fire season 4 they are in close proximity to emergency equipment, main road immediate access well maintained secondary roads and relatively flat land.
I hope we might agree that standing on a stage and yelling Climate Change! is by no means pro-active when it comes to immediate forest management practices.....there are some reasonable suggestions out there but if you ignore them like the California governor did when ***** allocated some funds for his state fires in 2019 then I guess you will burn down your state for a cleaver rather misleading slogan.
lots of honest debate needs to happen. many fires are caused by lightening, and many careless acts of man, we had at least two known cases in Oregon that were deliberately started. Sad when people's homes are destroyed and lives are lost, not to mention wildlife..
the red-blue debate will always be a talking point. Me I'm an American so I get to pick which one best serves both me, my family, and my country....... and there is plenty of evidence to pick a side at any given point in time.....We can learn a lot from our failures. Owning up to them might get things right?
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jyoutz
Super Member
The illegal immigration issue is simple. They come here because US employers hire them and actually recruit them. And these employers are never prosecuted for this. So when the Border Patrol deports the illegals, the employers hire new illegal employees within a few days. All politicians of both parties know what is happening and how to stop it: prosecute the employers who hire illegals and require e-verify for hiring, not spend billions on a silly problematic iron sculpture that causes more problems than it solves. But the truth is that the business community likes things the way at they are: the agriculture, construction, and service industries have always operated by hiring illegals. And so the politicians of both parties have always used the issue for votes and propose expensive bogus solutions. Just arrest the employers who break the laws and you will see a huge reduction in illegals in the US. I have spent over 60 years living in Arizona and New Mexico and am more familiar than most people who bloviate about this issue (who typically live far from the border). I have spent summers in high school years picking farm produce along side illegals. The situation is easy to understand. But beware of solving this situation: most Americans won’t do hand labor on the farms to pick produce.
jyoutz
Super Member
I responded to your comments about illegals; now I’ll say a few things about Forest management. I work for USFS, not BLM, so I’m not going to comment on their management. In my Southwest Region, we manage ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests. We typically use uneven-aged management group selection cutting along with prescribed burning to restore forests to more open historical conditions that will experience surface fires, not crown fires. Over a century of fire suppression and historical logging practices have created overgrown forests with 1000 trees per acre compared to the historic 100 trees per acre. It’s a monumental task and very expensive: logging of high value trees alone will not create resilient forests. There’s a lot of small unmerchantable trees and brush that need to be removed at a very high cost, and millions of acres that need treatment. Until the stimulus bill was passed last year, we were not adequately funded to do this work at the needed scale; now we are. Exciting times and lots of work to be done. My main concern now is that we don’t have sufficient wood processing facilities and contractors to do the 20 million acres in the west that Congress has directed us to do. Once again things are going to be exciting and lots of activities are imminent.