All the hacking issues last week means there’s a lot to catch up on in the world of energy.
First, a column this morning from U of R professor Jim Warren: Guess what happens when eco-zealots are put in charge of making climate policy?
Here’s another verbatim press release from Steven Guilbeault about cutting oil and gas emissions by 75%.
If you didn’t catch it last week, Sask Polytechnic is getting a brand spanking new campus. Too bad it won’t be anywhere close to finished before my daughter finishes her journeyman heavy duty mechanic ticket. (She just started her 4 year apprenticeship, if that give you a hint.) Maybe my 16-year old son will get to attend the new site in his fourth year of apprenticeship?
Did you know Manitoba has an oilpatch? Often their own politicians don’t really clue in on it, including former Premier Brian Pallister. I can’t find it now, but when he flip-flopped on fighting the carbon tax, he made accusations against “oil producing provinces.” Manitoba produces around 38,000 barrels per day. Anyhow, the largest oilfield in Manitoba is now 19 years old.
Oil prices look like they’re heading for $100/ barrel US.
Dams aren’t so green, after all.
And the big one for last week: my column on how Saskatchewan goes big into nuclear. Funny thing is I’ll be speaking to the SaskPower CEO on Monday. We’ll see if I’m on the mark or not.
Trades are where it’s at more than ever in Canada.
Peeps looked into whether there was one factor that separated lefties from righties, there was, lefties were not spanked as children, righties were. Spanking teaches you something that is difficult to teach any other way, actions have consequences. This also teaches the basis of logic and reason, if A then B. Instead, lefties learn that you can have anything you want if you just scream loud enough.
The eco zealots are lefties, it comes as no surprise they do not think ahead, as they are simply unable to understand that concept. Magical thinking and protesting always worked when they were growing up, after all. Plus, it takes work to know what you must actually do to accomplish eco goals, work is something they never had to do, hence all the cushy government jobs and bureaucratic jobs they gravitate toward, such as “diversity officer”, the power to scream at people without actually doing any work. No, not even brain work, in school they got good grades because we wouldn’t want to hurt their precious little self esteem, now would we?
You see that now in everything. Become higher up in a company, go woke, go broke. Movies, we wouldn’t want to actually work and find out what has been discovered to sell in fiction, would we? Instead, make it yet another Mary Sue movie, says Mary Sue, who grew up that way, being told she was the greatest.
And now they are on positions were actions are carefully tailored to have no consequences, they cannot be fired from government jobs, no matter how much damage they do, and companies award them golden parachutes after they bring it down. The only people who suffer consequences are, well, YOU.
And you are at least partially to blame. These things happen, you do nothing. People get the kind of government they deserve. Liberty demands eternal vigilance, you let yours lapse.
” Liberty demands eternal vigilance, you let yours lapse.”
Tell me, what did I personally do to let it lapse? I’ve always voted the most conservative, until the PPC, now I vote PPC. I’ve been railing to anyone who would listen about chips in retail cash registers, seat-belt laws, gun control, boat licensing, even plating cars, and more. Now I live mostly outside the system, in the growing parallel economy, do my commuting on a 2-stroke bike I slapped together myself from a kit, and so on, while most people have RRSPs backed by Blackrock and the like.
Tell us, what have you done to preserve even your own liberty?
Jim Warrens column should be required reading for both Justin and Steven Guilbault. And probably a whole lot of other greenies. But not a chance that they would muddy the fiction with facts. Listen up kids, the real world is a complicated space not your personal playground.
Agreed. There are a few refinements I could add about nuclear, but otherwise he has defined the issues of why the Green energy revolution is failing very well. I would simply note that Justatwit doesn’t matter; he’s simply Katie Telford’s sock-puppet and does what she tells him.
Aging Dams should be a manageable issue. As long as the concrete and reinforcing steel (or earthen fill) is in good shape, dams should not suddenly and catastrophically collapse. They can and should be monitored, hopefully by competent people. Much as US Highway Bridges are being inspected regularly after collapses like the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis Minnesota; or Florida Highrise Buildings after the collapse of the Surfside Condominium.
They will eventually reach end of life, where they will need to be dewatered and then removed or replaced. Then the fights with environmentalists will really begin.
A similar example are US Domestic Nuclear Power Plants. They were designed and licensed for a forty year life span, and the licenses of many plants built in the early 1970’s have already been approved for an additional 20 years. Several units are now 50 years old and in the process of adding a second twenty years to their licenses for a total of 80 years.
Quite right, RD. When things really fall apart in either it’s invariably because it was run by operators who didn’t know what they were doing (TMI, Chernobyl) or maintained very badly (Fukushima). This latter also applies to Oroville in California in 2017.
Being built very very badly and failing by design is also a feature of RBMK reactors and the worst industrial accident of all time – Banqiao in 1975. Poor maintenance and incompetent operation is also likely a cause of the Machchhu collapse in India in 1979. Non-existent maintenance was the reason for this year’s flooding in Derna when a number of reservoirs were allowed to overfill and collapse. Bad design, construction and maintenance is also the reason why the Aswan High Dam in Egypt has been failing for years.
But for properly maintained dams and NPPs, there is no defined lifetime for these facilities. For example, there is no lifetime limit for the Sir Adam Beck II facility in Niagara Falls or for the Saunders power dam on the St. Lawrence River. Ontario is also extending the lifetime of all its nuclear plants for a minimum of another 20-30 years.
Dams have always been non-green in that they flood arable valleys and force inhabitants (human and animal) to higher, less hospitable habitats. Also, their vulnerability depends on where they were built.
Very much back in the day, took a Geology course where the prof delighted in exposing the follies of engineers who figured there was no problem a lot of cement couldn’t solve. One of his examples was of the Vajont dam in northern Italy which – during initial filling – was overwhelmed by a massive landslide which caused the water to overtop the dam and brought massive flooding and destruction to the valley below. It was later discovered that the company commissioning the dam and the Italian government had ignored reports that Mount Toc – on the south side – was geologically unstable. We were told that the locals had called that area the “mountains that move”, but the bureaucrats in Rome and elsewhere ignored local knowledge.
Largest number of deaths from a power generation disaster?
Banqiao, China.
Around 250,000 killed by a release of Di-Hydrogen Monoxide. No one mentions it of course, because:
a) it occurred in communist China and news of the event was therefore suppressed.
b) We don’t want the public to know that something ‘green’ could do anything harmful.
The average life-span of a wind turbine: 2-1/2 years.