I’ve realized that Trump is a wannabe Mob boss since he first ventured into politics. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In international politics, a Mob boss is far more effective at preserving his people’s interests than an idealist.
That is a deeply stupid thing to say, because it presupposes that the extortionist is acting in the best interest of the storefronts he’s terrorizing into tithing to him.
In this metaphor, America is NOT the mob boss’ minion getting a bigger cut of the take through efficient racketeering, America is one storefront of many being threatened with arson and murder for failing to deliver a cut.
I think most people would agree that a good President has to be able to make hard and cold decisions that are in the nation's interest. The difference is that a Mob boss protects the interests of himself, his family, and to a lesser degree his soldiers and those who pay up to him, not the interests of the people in his territory. Trump is much more the latter than the former.
A Mob Boss is a defacto governor of a territory. He protects and makes the territory better, in so far as a military-eque leader can (which is mostly keeping control of the so-called criminal element, minimizing "unlicensed" depradations, and keeping the general "taxes" as low as is reasonable).
In this, he does better than the British Government, last seen evicting a 14 year old girl from protecting her 12 year old sister from Adult Men, for the "crime" of wielding a machete and hatchet. The Adult Men, mind you, had video of the girl saying "stay the fook away from my sister" and "don't touch us." This wasn't a "crazy guy wielding a hatchet in a walgreens" -- this was someone wielding weapons for the sole purpose of self-defense.
Trump has considerably more tools than a Mob Boss, who at the end of the day is an illicit leader of a military corporation. Primary among them is the US Economy, and our MarketShare in the World Economy. And, boy howdy, Trump's using all the tools he's got.
Trump's only been uniequivocally good for the Black Man in America (primarily by removing slave-latino competition).
Trump's "people" are clearly his own literal family. The rest of America, including his expendable cronies? They're more like the neighborhood he's extorting, selling drugs to, whatever.
And the "wannabe" matters. His threats are mercurial and frequently backtracked. He withers in the presence of men like Putin, who's better at the mob boss thing than Trump could ever be.
Trump is very good at getting fools like you to think he's retarded. You think he doesn't have an intelligence estimation of "when we lost the Ukrainian War"? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris may have been willing to keep throwing good money after bad (because they were grifting off it)... but Trump is aware of where he stands in terms of "negotiating" with Vlad Putin.
Now, here's the trick: can you explain why Trump would want to look weak? Why that was the play that his advisors cooked up? Why he wanted Putin to be smirking and laughing at Trump's "ultimatum"?
If you ain't got nuttin', acknowledge that Trump may be dumb as maggots, but he's got Nobel Prizewinners on his team, and you ain't won a Nobel Prize.
Thanks for taking this one on. I watched about 3 minutes of it and had to shut it all down, the horror of it was too much. I am sure it was played on a loop in the Kremlin sort of like some companies throw CNN or Fox on the background of their waiting rooms to entertain their customers.
It’s frightening how truly dumb all of these people seem to be: that they don’t know how government works and they don’t care, either. The braying mob that cheers on their ignorance shares it proudly. I don’t really know where we go from here, but it’s nowhere good, as the inertia of residual competence inside our systems won’t last forever.
You say this like you've ever found someone competent in the realms of "Secretary of..." (aside from Hillary Clinton, who was ferociously competent, and Paul O'Neil, who couldn't quit fast enough). Those are all political hires, and they all suck, and don't know what they're doing.
This just strikes me as deeply unhelpful, but also pretty illuminating into how we got ourselves to the current moment.
The nihilism that says every government cabinet official has been incompetent for years quite naturally leads to the conclusion Trump isn't a bad choice. If it has always been trash, what does it even matter.
Nah, this ain't Nihilism. This is reality. Folks "up top" exist to give press conferences, and occasionally to "turn the wheel of state" (see the equivalent of "reduce the number of workers" or "we're moving the IRS to Wyoming" or "we will make sure the military can stand a fiscal audit of resources, with perfect scores") There's a whole flotilla of people just below them, folks with titles that say "Undersecretary" who do the actual administrative work, and make sure the priorities actually hit the right people who can do something about them.
Our secretaries aren't even all that crazy-wild. There's a secretary in Israel whose response to "what should we do about global warming" is "god will provide." Pretty sure if there's real trouble, the government above and below him stops listening to the religious dude and gets shit done.
Sure, Jimmy Carter put on the lead and stepped into Three Mile Island. He was a nuclear engineer, and thought folks might be lying to him. We ain't got a nuclear engineer as President, we got a delegator and a "risk-taker" and a "bit of a wiseass" (okay more than a bit). I don't want Donald Trump stepping into TMI, he wouldn't do a lick of good there. Let someone else (whom he trusts) give him the intel on "what's really going down."
I'd call it "facile cynicism" rather than "nihilism", but whatever.
Two observations emerge from this travesty:
(1) Every single Trump appointment is an incompetent lickspittle.
(2) This is historically unusual.
We are all agreed on (1), but there seems to be resistance on (2). Why?
Those of us who can remember more than one or two Cabinet secretaries can also remember quite a few who were undoubtedly competent, to the point that competence really was the norm. Now that we have a bonafide dictator who fears not even a peep of criticism from a slavish base, we see the Cabinet filled with poo-flinging lower primates. It is unprecedented, and there should be no hesitation in saying so.
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
Okay, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, "That's wrong."
I'm pulling a Democratic Candidate for the Presidency, name of Tulsi Gabbard, as "she ain't an incompetent lickspittle." It takes personal courage and integrity to call out your party when it hires Dick Cheney and starts making moves towards World War III.
"Quite a few"? Name one. You don't get to name Secretaries of State if they don't have significant "Three Letter Agency" experience, as our embassies are nice little nests for the CIA to operate out of. Buttkieg(sp?) doesn't get to take credit for initiatives started under Trump ReignTheFirst.
Trump's getting plenty of criticism about the Epstein list, and if not that, for letting the Israeli child molestor/diplomat run straight back to Israel after fleeing Las Vegas.
Trump's cabinet can fling "poo" all they want. They'll still be heads and shoulders above the last president's cabinet-level officials. You remember, the guy who got dismissed for constantly issuing credible death threats to his underlings? (Erm. I believe the "official reason" was sexual harrassment of his underlings). Or the fine folks who tried to run a coup on the President? Yeah, there's "possibly treasonous actions" and they're a little more problematic than "poo flinging."
The highly researched and civil debate about energy source options in the comments was way more interesting than Jeff’s take on the cabinet meeting, which was typical Trump theatre to own the news cycle among MAGAs, haters, and everyone in between.
You're aware that electricity from wind only happens when the wind is blowing?
You may not be aware that we can't store ANY electricity on the grid. (For practical purposes, we have very very tiny battery storage).
So, what does this mean?
Assume constant demand, or at least demand that can't respond to the 4th power of the windspeed.
You need SOMETHING ELSE to keep up with the rapidly varying wind "power" you're adding to the damn grid. That's called NATURAL GAS. Specifically, natural gas power plants that are quite a bit LESS EFFICIENT than the ones you'd build without the damn windmills. (Same goes for solar, realize it's dark half the time, birdbrain). This should come as no surprise, because building a power plant that constantly burns "10 Donuts" is easy, compared to building a power plant that dynamically adjusts to burn "1-10 Donuts", based on How The Wind Is Blowing.
So, yes, windmills and solar (past 10% of the grid's total energy input) burn MORE greenhouse gases (on net, from the entire grid), and make the whole thing incredibly unstable.
The efficient gas power plants use a jet engine as a high temp (Brayton) cycle, but they use the waste heat from that to power a steam low temp (Rankine) cycle. This is called “combined cycle natural gas” and it can be around 60% thermally efficient. The Brayton part is only around 30% efficient on its own, and that is the fast ramping part that matches load easily. The Rankine part is very slow to react and needs to run basically constant.
So yes, running natural gas power plants as backups for shitty wind power actually does end up using a lot of gas to make the same amount of power and is very hard on the machinery making maintenance significantly more expensive.
Of course snide know it alls scoff at the engineering behind all this, but yes, there are actually smart people in the DOE (even in Trump’s government) that understand these things better than you do.
Fancy, but the gas plant doesn't have to produce the same amount of power over time because, y'know, the windmills are there. The plant is less efficient, but if it also has even less to do, it will still consume less.
If you really need data, please refer to the rest of this comments thread. You will find that CO2 emissions per kWh in California went down, not up, since the year solar and hydro were expanded. Which, frankly, was supremely predictable. Sorry, but I do think having to demonstrate how burning less gas may result in less gas being burnt justifies some snark.
So, look at the numbers above. 60% efficient versus 30% efficient. That's 70% waste versus 40% waste. So, if you need to run HALF as much (see "wind and solar"), you need 2 quataloons OUT (instead of four). For each 1 in, you're getting .3 out. So that's approximately 7 quataloons burnt, for approximately 2 quataloons out.
Now take the "efficient" gas side: You need four quataloons out, but you get each one of those at 1 quataloon per .6 out. That's approximately 6 quataloons burnt for approximately 4 quataloons out.
This is just simple math. You're getting more carbon dioxide out, from the half-wind generation. Do the math yourself if you don't believe me.
You're looking at "solar plus hydro" and you'll note me and everyone else sane isn't saying Hydro is bad. Hydro is very good and I very much support it and nuclear and everything that Works and Isn't a Lie.
(Also note: solar in southern california is "nearly optimal conditions solar." Solar in "practically as dark as Europe" Pittsburgh is ... very much less of a good idea, due to more clouds and less sun in general.).
You were against "renewables", and you sent me a link arguing California's focus on renewable was Bad. California is pushing both solar and hydro (mostly solar, but it has more hydro than wind). If you think hydro is good, then perhaps California's investments in renewables were not quite as bad as you thought.
I'm familiar with power consumption calculations. Since you asked... For one, you're not throwing away the 60% efficient machine when building a solar plant. When it's night (or when you have two weeks of bad weather), your gas plan will run as if solar wasn't there. So, your efficiency will remain at 60% (or whatever the real value) for long periods of time. Further, this is likely the moment when your plant will produce the most energy, because solar is out. Let's say the plant runs at good efficiency 50% of the time (arbitrary number, I doubt it's as simple as day vs night) and produces 75% of its energy in that period. Only 25% of the energy would be produced at 30% efficiency.
By that number, your efficiency doesn't go down from 60% to 30%, but to 0.6*0.75 + 0.3*0.25 = 52.5%. So you have to burn ~15% more gas per gas-produced kWh. This may sound like a lot, but it means you only need <20% solar in your mix to make up for it. In terms of carbon, at least, economics are a different story and you would have a much better argument there. Numbers may be off in any direction, but it shows why this "60 vs 30" is too simplistic.
Even that calculation was fairly pessimistic. It is probably not realistic to assume all machines will be ramping up and down constantly as clouds come and go. Hydro would manage the worst of the spikes, cloud cover is somewhat predictable, at least on the scale of a state. There is room for optimisation by, say, powering up some plants just ahead of time and shutting them down last, so they at least remain at good efficiency.
All that being said, I will add that you ask good questions, my earlier comment about snark notwithstanding.
Yes but if they speak up.... they gone!!! This is the problem. It's not possible for a dumbass like Trump to fire all the smart competent people (look at Elon's epic fail at this) but as soon as they point out the gross ignorance on any number of issues, they get fired. Trump is just doing the bidding of donors that created Project 2025.
It takes energy to spin the turbines up and down, alright? And if you have to be constantly balancing them... and wind power is dependent on the 4th power, which means you don't have nice straight lines, or even quadratics. This is all expensive, in terms of "how much greenhouse gases" are you using to power a lightbulb.
Talk to someone out of the DOE if you don't believe me... Who do you think I talk to? a comedian? I talk to a physicist who runs the numbers, professionally.
I don't know who you talk to, but Trump's team talks to a guy who said windmills cause cancer, and also kill whales. So, y'know, I will believe it when I see your numbers.
It's good reading, look at the pretty graphs if you're short on time.
No comment on "windmills kill whales" though a brief googling says "some circumstantial evidence". Given the massive industry around windpower, and the noted ability of powercompanies to manipulate entire scientific consensuses (exxonsecrets), I'm skeptical about "windmills don't kill whales". Particularly since "loving whales" was such a 1990's thing (Free Willie), and women-hating-windpower is about the only thing that can stop the Democratic party from funding the entire aquatic industry.
Do you also think the noise from windmill might cause cancer? Will you ask me for sources stating that it doesn't?
I suppose that in this age, quoting bad cattitude from Substack beats quoting catturd from Twitter. But I have several comments: first, the article lumps all renewable energy in a single category, which may not give us much information about wind power specifically. So I looked it up, California is 43% thermal, 12% hydro, 19% solar, and 6% wind as of 2023. So whatever conclusions we draw from the data, it will say far more about solar power than wind power. As the author says: oopsie.
Let's play along anyway. The most informative part of that post was the graph that plotted CO2/kWh in California since 2011 (which was not made by bad cattitude, perhaps unsurprisingly). A problem is that the article doesn't say how much the proportion of renewable has changed over time. Further down it says that nuclear reactors, which are very clean in terms of CO2, are being shut down (which is indeed idiotic as climate policy goes). Could, say, the increase in solar power and the decrease in nuclear power cancel out?
Sticking to what the article does say. It calls the graph "disappointing" because the regression line doesn't move much. But there is, in fact, a very noticeable drop in a specific part of the year. Since solar power provides three times more electricity than wind power, I would expect that part to be around June, but it is not quite clear from the graph. Still, the minimum value for every year since 2017 is less than half the minimum of 2011. That's interesting, did the proportion of renewable start increasing in 2016? Perhaps California now relies on clean energy during favorable seasons, and on fossile fuel when it isn't, which would explain the see-sawing of the graph. Could the shutting down of nuclear plants explain the slightly higher maximum, when renewables are out?
Nuclear production in California is cut in half between 2011 and 2012, just when CO2/kWh increases on that graph. Then both solar and hydro take off, starting in 2016, and the energy becomes cleaner again.
*Of course* burning less gas does not result in burning more gas. Renewables *do* provide cleaner energy, it simply compensated for the idiotic decision to shut down nuclear plants.
I will admit the slim possibility that noise from windmills might cause cancer. I would put that, without looking at the sources, at probably 10 million to one odds against, though (in short: it's another crackpot theory.)
The article does what it does, which is America focused. That's why I suggested looking at the graphs. Take Germany, if you will, and that's far more wind-powered than California. It also has MORE CO2 per kilowatt hour (more than double that of Belgium, at 54% nuclear power). So, I'm going to dismiss the rest of your argument, and ask you to bring sources that are actually relevant to windpower, and windpower alone if you want to discuss purely wind (kudos for doing the research, and kudos for having the balls to come back and talk).
Burning less gas in very inefficient power plants DOES lead to more greenhouse gases per "lightbulb". Renewables do provide "cleaner energy" if you're willing to deal with "no energy" when there's ... clouds. Or Nighttime (and thus it's potentially the "okay solution" in Darkest Africa -- if you're willing to spot "clean energy" the slaves that die in the mines for the materials it takes to make the solar panels). I'll note that the solar panel-powered chainsaws delivered to North Carolina had an estimated timeframe of "two to three weeks" to get charged, versus "two to three days" in Southern California. That's, of course, two to three weeks of "no medicine" for the diabetic.
Nuclear power and "non-hydro renewables" are completely antithetical to each other (because you can't build an agile nuclear power plant), and that's why I'm riding the hobbyhorse of "we have enough renewables" already. Nuclear power is stable, and cheap, and very good for the whole "greenhouse gas" issue. Let's make most of our power come from that, and we can work on the battery issue for another forty years.
Even pretending that's true, that's not their call to make. I get my power from a nuclear power plant owned by ComEd. If they wanted to supplement this with solar power or wind power, that's their business. Why should the government prevent them from doing so?
Maybe you're making a solid case here, but it's one that you'd need to present to ComEd strategy department. While it's potentially reasonable for the government to regulate unsafe business practices, you're arguing that the government should ban a private business from being unreliable. That's a huge overreach.
(For the purposes of this argument about the separation of private and public institutions, please ignore that ComEd's CEO, VP, several consultants, a former state rep and the speaker of the state house have all been indicted for racketeering and bribery due to corruption)
Utilities aren't a very good case for "this is a private business." TVA is a government-created utility, for example. And the largest power production in the entire country. When they destroy an entire town's water supply, who do you think foots the bill? That's right, nobody. The town dies. So Sad.
But yeah, I'm getting offtrack.
Utilities, in a "fair and reasonable" world, would be on the hook for unreliable power. AKA if Ms. Shortcake died because her oxygen ran out, it's the utility's fault for their power outage (assuming this was caused by solar/wind, which it was in Spain -- this is a "deliberately" unreliable power source. We could easily go hydro, which is a reliable renewable energy source). Give them enough "people die at a $1 million per person" costs, and they don't go with unreliable energy. Otherwise, you incentivize "it looks good but is actually malfunctioning grid operation."
The Government is perfectly willing to declare Power Infrastructure as a National Security issue, particularly when some "moron" used peanut oil in the wire cladding, and all the squirrels went crazy and started chewing the insulation off. (Yes, That was a Good Prank. The pentagon noticed the prank, which was ... probably not so good).
So, do you think that the government should be allowed to intervene so that, say, they can keep NORAD functional?
Now, let's go one step further. The federal US government actively incentivizes solar power for residences. Which is dunderheaded. It leads to people putting solar on their houses in places that don't get much solar irradiance, which is downright wasteful.
Ok, what happens in 2028 (or 2032 or 2036 etc.) when the other party is in power? Having government intervene so much in what a power company does seems like it'd lead to a certain amount of instability. You're already complaining that the government subsidizes certain types of power generation, yet you're advocating that they intervene even more? As soon as democrats are back in control of such a interventionist government, ComEd would be mandated to open solar and wind plants, only to be forced to close them a few years later.
(As for NORAD, electricity is supplied by a government owned and operated plant)
Assuming that you are actually making a strong case here, you should be bringing it to ComEd. They have a recent CEO opening and they could appreciate someone who knows so much about what power companies are doing wrong.
Well, did you think that the Navy was intervening in "civil research" when they decided to pilot the plans for a fusion reactor (or mini-fusion reactors)? Probably not -- this was years ago.
The US Government does a lot of insanely stupid shit some weeks.
I'm not sure I'm on the side of "intervene" or "not intervene" -- in an ideal world, it probably goes to "not intervene" (but we know that the Clean Air Act has been used as a weapon to shut down power plants).
"ComEd would be mandated..." -- No, you're not getting it. Down the hill from me, there's a government-created solar installation going in (https://triblive.com/local/epa-earmarks-2m-to-convert-pittsburgh-slag-heaps-to-solar-farm/). I'm in Team Blue Land, and there's pretty much no stopping the "FeelGood Can'tDoMath" Ladies from putting it in -- unless you get Bigger Government to say "hey, we need a limit on this, or everyone's power breaks." The "Can'tDoMath" contingent will continue asking for unsustainable things until the sky Actually Falls, and then they'll run around screaming with no idea that they've actually Caused The Problem. I can't even wave Spain in their face and get them to listen.
Likewise, nuclear power plants are more or less Government Property. Hydroplants are caused by the Army Corps of Engineers needing more work to do (okay, that sounds silly, but... my point is, saying that these are private industry things is looney -- government is involved the whole way down).
My local electrical company MUST deal with personal electric power generation -- aka each and every damn person who puts in a solar panel on their roof, and sometimes pushes more power than they use, and in general causes instability on the grid.
As to ComEd, DOE (and the TEOWAKI part of the military) will be talking with them, as Trump talked with Merkel about the insanity of removing all the nuclear power plants. It's their job to prevent national security issues.
In a perfect Edison world, we set everything up running DC and don't have to deal with the transmission losses, or a power grid that gets more rickety every time we add solar or wind.
Ok, once again sounds like you'd be better off making your case with ComEd. They are probably less ideological and controlled by activists than the government.
"I focus on the two most important ones, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 and the stunning change, which commenced largely in the same era, in which America began to conceive of education as a private, personal good, to be measured solely in terms of increase in lifetime earnings.
The Bayh-Dole act provided for the private licensing of discoveries made during federally funded research. It was motivated by a concern that discoveries made in the preceding decades had not been fully exploited because the lack of opportunity for private gain deprived the system of incentive for development. In short, it granted intellectual property in discoveries made during federally funded research to the universities that hosted the projects and the people who did the research—not, as before, to the people of the United States, who funded that research.
In all fairness, it should probably be said that the Bayh-Dole Act achieved in some narrow sense what it intended. In 1979, on the eve of Bayh-Dole, American universities received only 264 patents. Within a quarter of a century, applications for patents by universities had increased to more than 7,500, thousands of which were licensed to private corporations for commercial application."
This was very entertaining, and scary. But I have to tell you, as a Brit, Trump is unfortunately right (I hate to say that) about UK energy prices being inflated by our wind power. The problem is the private wind power companies get paid to switch off the turbines, lots and lots of money, so as not to put energy into our national grid when we can't use it. That new bill is then added to the overall cost of electricity. This is pushing the consumer price of electricity up, particularly for the Scots, who now have the highest energy bills in Europe. I don't know the solution to this (other than state run energy as in Iceland). Buts it's red meat for the anti-renewable energy politicians.
The solution seems relatively straightforward: Mine Bitcoins. Pull enough off the power grid until you no longer need to mint money, then go back to normal electrical usage.
Yes, I understand this requires the British to actually buy computers. (snark).
If substack had tip jars, and I'm going to suggest to them that they should, I would no doubt be fully supporting whatever disreputable vice you're addicted to.
The only logical explanation for Trump is that the "Men in Black" was a quasi-documentary; the cabinet are all aliens and thus their actions make no sense to Earthlings and they are prepping us for the full-scale invasion.
Think bigger picture than that. We are in a planet-wide sociology experiment, specifically in authority and response to authority when it's wrong. The aliens aren't "out there" in space, they're above us in reality. Do the math: we're a simulation.
If you haven't yet, you should read Jonah Goldberg's piece from yesterday https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/gfile/trump-state-capitalism-mafia/?utm_campaign=3940556&utm_source=S1t2U-3v4W5-x6Y7z-8A9B0 in which he expands on his long held position that much is explained if you assume that Trump views the world as a mob boss/mobbed up pol. It makes a disturbing amount of sense.
Good piece -- thanks for the recommendation!
I’ve realized that Trump is a wannabe Mob boss since he first ventured into politics. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In international politics, a Mob boss is far more effective at preserving his people’s interests than an idealist.
That is a deeply stupid thing to say, because it presupposes that the extortionist is acting in the best interest of the storefronts he’s terrorizing into tithing to him.
In this metaphor, America is NOT the mob boss’ minion getting a bigger cut of the take through efficient racketeering, America is one storefront of many being threatened with arson and murder for failing to deliver a cut.
I think most people would agree that a good President has to be able to make hard and cold decisions that are in the nation's interest. The difference is that a Mob boss protects the interests of himself, his family, and to a lesser degree his soldiers and those who pay up to him, not the interests of the people in his territory. Trump is much more the latter than the former.
A Mob Boss is a defacto governor of a territory. He protects and makes the territory better, in so far as a military-eque leader can (which is mostly keeping control of the so-called criminal element, minimizing "unlicensed" depradations, and keeping the general "taxes" as low as is reasonable).
In this, he does better than the British Government, last seen evicting a 14 year old girl from protecting her 12 year old sister from Adult Men, for the "crime" of wielding a machete and hatchet. The Adult Men, mind you, had video of the girl saying "stay the fook away from my sister" and "don't touch us." This wasn't a "crazy guy wielding a hatchet in a walgreens" -- this was someone wielding weapons for the sole purpose of self-defense.
Trump has considerably more tools than a Mob Boss, who at the end of the day is an illicit leader of a military corporation. Primary among them is the US Economy, and our MarketShare in the World Economy. And, boy howdy, Trump's using all the tools he's got.
Trump's only been uniequivocally good for the Black Man in America (primarily by removing slave-latino competition).
Even if we accept this for the sake of argument:
Trump's "people" are clearly his own literal family. The rest of America, including his expendable cronies? They're more like the neighborhood he's extorting, selling drugs to, whatever.
And the "wannabe" matters. His threats are mercurial and frequently backtracked. He withers in the presence of men like Putin, who's better at the mob boss thing than Trump could ever be.
Trump is very good at getting fools like you to think he's retarded. You think he doesn't have an intelligence estimation of "when we lost the Ukrainian War"? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris may have been willing to keep throwing good money after bad (because they were grifting off it)... but Trump is aware of where he stands in terms of "negotiating" with Vlad Putin.
Now, here's the trick: can you explain why Trump would want to look weak? Why that was the play that his advisors cooked up? Why he wanted Putin to be smirking and laughing at Trump's "ultimatum"?
If you ain't got nuttin', acknowledge that Trump may be dumb as maggots, but he's got Nobel Prizewinners on his team, and you ain't won a Nobel Prize.
These are all remarkably interesting questions that perhaps you ought to be answering, to show us fools how much of a smarty guy Trump is.
Along with, if you have the time, just what Nobel Prize winners are on Trump's team, which is I assume different from being in his Administration.
Good for his mafioso but bad for all but 2000 of us regular Americans!😆
Thanks for taking this one on. I watched about 3 minutes of it and had to shut it all down, the horror of it was too much. I am sure it was played on a loop in the Kremlin sort of like some companies throw CNN or Fox on the background of their waiting rooms to entertain their customers.
It’s frightening how truly dumb all of these people seem to be: that they don’t know how government works and they don’t care, either. The braying mob that cheers on their ignorance shares it proudly. I don’t really know where we go from here, but it’s nowhere good, as the inertia of residual competence inside our systems won’t last forever.
You say this like you've ever found someone competent in the realms of "Secretary of..." (aside from Hillary Clinton, who was ferociously competent, and Paul O'Neil, who couldn't quit fast enough). Those are all political hires, and they all suck, and don't know what they're doing.
This just strikes me as deeply unhelpful, but also pretty illuminating into how we got ourselves to the current moment.
The nihilism that says every government cabinet official has been incompetent for years quite naturally leads to the conclusion Trump isn't a bad choice. If it has always been trash, what does it even matter.
Nah, this ain't Nihilism. This is reality. Folks "up top" exist to give press conferences, and occasionally to "turn the wheel of state" (see the equivalent of "reduce the number of workers" or "we're moving the IRS to Wyoming" or "we will make sure the military can stand a fiscal audit of resources, with perfect scores") There's a whole flotilla of people just below them, folks with titles that say "Undersecretary" who do the actual administrative work, and make sure the priorities actually hit the right people who can do something about them.
Our secretaries aren't even all that crazy-wild. There's a secretary in Israel whose response to "what should we do about global warming" is "god will provide." Pretty sure if there's real trouble, the government above and below him stops listening to the religious dude and gets shit done.
Sure, Jimmy Carter put on the lead and stepped into Three Mile Island. He was a nuclear engineer, and thought folks might be lying to him. We ain't got a nuclear engineer as President, we got a delegator and a "risk-taker" and a "bit of a wiseass" (okay more than a bit). I don't want Donald Trump stepping into TMI, he wouldn't do a lick of good there. Let someone else (whom he trusts) give him the intel on "what's really going down."
I'd call it "facile cynicism" rather than "nihilism", but whatever.
Two observations emerge from this travesty:
(1) Every single Trump appointment is an incompetent lickspittle.
(2) This is historically unusual.
We are all agreed on (1), but there seems to be resistance on (2). Why?
Those of us who can remember more than one or two Cabinet secretaries can also remember quite a few who were undoubtedly competent, to the point that competence really was the norm. Now that we have a bonafide dictator who fears not even a peep of criticism from a slavish base, we see the Cabinet filled with poo-flinging lower primates. It is unprecedented, and there should be no hesitation in saying so.
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Every. Single. Trump. Appointment?
Okay, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, "That's wrong."
I'm pulling a Democratic Candidate for the Presidency, name of Tulsi Gabbard, as "she ain't an incompetent lickspittle." It takes personal courage and integrity to call out your party when it hires Dick Cheney and starts making moves towards World War III.
"Quite a few"? Name one. You don't get to name Secretaries of State if they don't have significant "Three Letter Agency" experience, as our embassies are nice little nests for the CIA to operate out of. Buttkieg(sp?) doesn't get to take credit for initiatives started under Trump ReignTheFirst.
Trump's getting plenty of criticism about the Epstein list, and if not that, for letting the Israeli child molestor/diplomat run straight back to Israel after fleeing Las Vegas.
Trump's cabinet can fling "poo" all they want. They'll still be heads and shoulders above the last president's cabinet-level officials. You remember, the guy who got dismissed for constantly issuing credible death threats to his underlings? (Erm. I believe the "official reason" was sexual harrassment of his underlings). Or the fine folks who tried to run a coup on the President? Yeah, there's "possibly treasonous actions" and they're a little more problematic than "poo flinging."
I paid for Komey Klass, not Komedy Klass.
It feels like you're one Lutnik/Bessent news conference away from throwing up your window a la 'Network' and screaming, "Taxation is Theft!"
We're mad as hell and we ain't takin it no more!!!
The highly researched and civil debate about energy source options in the comments was way more interesting than Jeff’s take on the cabinet meeting, which was typical Trump theatre to own the news cycle among MAGAs, haters, and everyone in between.
You're aware that electricity from wind only happens when the wind is blowing?
You may not be aware that we can't store ANY electricity on the grid. (For practical purposes, we have very very tiny battery storage).
So, what does this mean?
Assume constant demand, or at least demand that can't respond to the 4th power of the windspeed.
You need SOMETHING ELSE to keep up with the rapidly varying wind "power" you're adding to the damn grid. That's called NATURAL GAS. Specifically, natural gas power plants that are quite a bit LESS EFFICIENT than the ones you'd build without the damn windmills. (Same goes for solar, realize it's dark half the time, birdbrain). This should come as no surprise, because building a power plant that constantly burns "10 Donuts" is easy, compared to building a power plant that dynamically adjusts to burn "1-10 Donuts", based on How The Wind Is Blowing.
So, yes, windmills and solar (past 10% of the grid's total energy input) burn MORE greenhouse gases (on net, from the entire grid), and make the whole thing incredibly unstable.
Trump's team knows this, and you don't.
"Building a power plant than burns more gas is easier, so if we burn sometimes less gas, we burn more gases."
That's some Team Trump logic all right.
The efficient gas power plants use a jet engine as a high temp (Brayton) cycle, but they use the waste heat from that to power a steam low temp (Rankine) cycle. This is called “combined cycle natural gas” and it can be around 60% thermally efficient. The Brayton part is only around 30% efficient on its own, and that is the fast ramping part that matches load easily. The Rankine part is very slow to react and needs to run basically constant.
So yes, running natural gas power plants as backups for shitty wind power actually does end up using a lot of gas to make the same amount of power and is very hard on the machinery making maintenance significantly more expensive.
Of course snide know it alls scoff at the engineering behind all this, but yes, there are actually smart people in the DOE (even in Trump’s government) that understand these things better than you do.
Fancy, but the gas plant doesn't have to produce the same amount of power over time because, y'know, the windmills are there. The plant is less efficient, but if it also has even less to do, it will still consume less.
If you really need data, please refer to the rest of this comments thread. You will find that CO2 emissions per kWh in California went down, not up, since the year solar and hydro were expanded. Which, frankly, was supremely predictable. Sorry, but I do think having to demonstrate how burning less gas may result in less gas being burnt justifies some snark.
So, look at the numbers above. 60% efficient versus 30% efficient. That's 70% waste versus 40% waste. So, if you need to run HALF as much (see "wind and solar"), you need 2 quataloons OUT (instead of four). For each 1 in, you're getting .3 out. So that's approximately 7 quataloons burnt, for approximately 2 quataloons out.
Now take the "efficient" gas side: You need four quataloons out, but you get each one of those at 1 quataloon per .6 out. That's approximately 6 quataloons burnt for approximately 4 quataloons out.
This is just simple math. You're getting more carbon dioxide out, from the half-wind generation. Do the math yourself if you don't believe me.
You're looking at "solar plus hydro" and you'll note me and everyone else sane isn't saying Hydro is bad. Hydro is very good and I very much support it and nuclear and everything that Works and Isn't a Lie.
(Also note: solar in southern california is "nearly optimal conditions solar." Solar in "practically as dark as Europe" Pittsburgh is ... very much less of a good idea, due to more clouds and less sun in general.).
Another link:
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/eu-physics-denial-has-come-home-to?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web
As the example numbers I threw together above shows, you're using more fuel to get less quataloons out.
You were against "renewables", and you sent me a link arguing California's focus on renewable was Bad. California is pushing both solar and hydro (mostly solar, but it has more hydro than wind). If you think hydro is good, then perhaps California's investments in renewables were not quite as bad as you thought.
I'm familiar with power consumption calculations. Since you asked... For one, you're not throwing away the 60% efficient machine when building a solar plant. When it's night (or when you have two weeks of bad weather), your gas plan will run as if solar wasn't there. So, your efficiency will remain at 60% (or whatever the real value) for long periods of time. Further, this is likely the moment when your plant will produce the most energy, because solar is out. Let's say the plant runs at good efficiency 50% of the time (arbitrary number, I doubt it's as simple as day vs night) and produces 75% of its energy in that period. Only 25% of the energy would be produced at 30% efficiency.
By that number, your efficiency doesn't go down from 60% to 30%, but to 0.6*0.75 + 0.3*0.25 = 52.5%. So you have to burn ~15% more gas per gas-produced kWh. This may sound like a lot, but it means you only need <20% solar in your mix to make up for it. In terms of carbon, at least, economics are a different story and you would have a much better argument there. Numbers may be off in any direction, but it shows why this "60 vs 30" is too simplistic.
Even that calculation was fairly pessimistic. It is probably not realistic to assume all machines will be ramping up and down constantly as clouds come and go. Hydro would manage the worst of the spikes, cloud cover is somewhat predictable, at least on the scale of a state. There is room for optimisation by, say, powering up some plants just ahead of time and shutting them down last, so they at least remain at good efficiency.
All that being said, I will add that you ask good questions, my earlier comment about snark notwithstanding.
Yes but if they speak up.... they gone!!! This is the problem. It's not possible for a dumbass like Trump to fire all the smart competent people (look at Elon's epic fail at this) but as soon as they point out the gross ignorance on any number of issues, they get fired. Trump is just doing the bidding of donors that created Project 2025.
It takes energy to spin the turbines up and down, alright? And if you have to be constantly balancing them... and wind power is dependent on the 4th power, which means you don't have nice straight lines, or even quadratics. This is all expensive, in terms of "how much greenhouse gases" are you using to power a lightbulb.
Talk to someone out of the DOE if you don't believe me... Who do you think I talk to? a comedian? I talk to a physicist who runs the numbers, professionally.
I don't know who you talk to, but Trump's team talks to a guy who said windmills cause cancer, and also kill whales. So, y'know, I will believe it when I see your numbers.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/global-warning-the-wind-and-solar
It's good reading, look at the pretty graphs if you're short on time.
No comment on "windmills kill whales" though a brief googling says "some circumstantial evidence". Given the massive industry around windpower, and the noted ability of powercompanies to manipulate entire scientific consensuses (exxonsecrets), I'm skeptical about "windmills don't kill whales". Particularly since "loving whales" was such a 1990's thing (Free Willie), and women-hating-windpower is about the only thing that can stop the Democratic party from funding the entire aquatic industry.
Cite your sources if you don't mind.
Do you also think the noise from windmill might cause cancer? Will you ask me for sources stating that it doesn't?
I suppose that in this age, quoting bad cattitude from Substack beats quoting catturd from Twitter. But I have several comments: first, the article lumps all renewable energy in a single category, which may not give us much information about wind power specifically. So I looked it up, California is 43% thermal, 12% hydro, 19% solar, and 6% wind as of 2023. So whatever conclusions we draw from the data, it will say far more about solar power than wind power. As the author says: oopsie.
Let's play along anyway. The most informative part of that post was the graph that plotted CO2/kWh in California since 2011 (which was not made by bad cattitude, perhaps unsurprisingly). A problem is that the article doesn't say how much the proportion of renewable has changed over time. Further down it says that nuclear reactors, which are very clean in terms of CO2, are being shut down (which is indeed idiotic as climate policy goes). Could, say, the increase in solar power and the decrease in nuclear power cancel out?
Sticking to what the article does say. It calls the graph "disappointing" because the regression line doesn't move much. But there is, in fact, a very noticeable drop in a specific part of the year. Since solar power provides three times more electricity than wind power, I would expect that part to be around June, but it is not quite clear from the graph. Still, the minimum value for every year since 2017 is less than half the minimum of 2011. That's interesting, did the proportion of renewable start increasing in 2016? Perhaps California now relies on clean energy during favorable seasons, and on fossile fuel when it isn't, which would explain the see-sawing of the graph. Could the shutting down of nuclear plants explain the slightly higher maximum, when renewables are out?
So I looked it up again (don't worry, I am not short on time) and wouldn't you know it, that seems right: https://www.energy.ca.gov/media/7311
Nuclear production in California is cut in half between 2011 and 2012, just when CO2/kWh increases on that graph. Then both solar and hydro take off, starting in 2016, and the energy becomes cleaner again.
*Of course* burning less gas does not result in burning more gas. Renewables *do* provide cleaner energy, it simply compensated for the idiotic decision to shut down nuclear plants.
I will admit the slim possibility that noise from windmills might cause cancer. I would put that, without looking at the sources, at probably 10 million to one odds against, though (in short: it's another crackpot theory.)
The article does what it does, which is America focused. That's why I suggested looking at the graphs. Take Germany, if you will, and that's far more wind-powered than California. It also has MORE CO2 per kilowatt hour (more than double that of Belgium, at 54% nuclear power). So, I'm going to dismiss the rest of your argument, and ask you to bring sources that are actually relevant to windpower, and windpower alone if you want to discuss purely wind (kudos for doing the research, and kudos for having the balls to come back and talk).
Burning less gas in very inefficient power plants DOES lead to more greenhouse gases per "lightbulb". Renewables do provide "cleaner energy" if you're willing to deal with "no energy" when there's ... clouds. Or Nighttime (and thus it's potentially the "okay solution" in Darkest Africa -- if you're willing to spot "clean energy" the slaves that die in the mines for the materials it takes to make the solar panels). I'll note that the solar panel-powered chainsaws delivered to North Carolina had an estimated timeframe of "two to three weeks" to get charged, versus "two to three days" in Southern California. That's, of course, two to three weeks of "no medicine" for the diabetic.
Nuclear power and "non-hydro renewables" are completely antithetical to each other (because you can't build an agile nuclear power plant), and that's why I'm riding the hobbyhorse of "we have enough renewables" already. Nuclear power is stable, and cheap, and very good for the whole "greenhouse gas" issue. Let's make most of our power come from that, and we can work on the battery issue for another forty years.
Even pretending that's true, that's not their call to make. I get my power from a nuclear power plant owned by ComEd. If they wanted to supplement this with solar power or wind power, that's their business. Why should the government prevent them from doing so?
Maybe you're making a solid case here, but it's one that you'd need to present to ComEd strategy department. While it's potentially reasonable for the government to regulate unsafe business practices, you're arguing that the government should ban a private business from being unreliable. That's a huge overreach.
(For the purposes of this argument about the separation of private and public institutions, please ignore that ComEd's CEO, VP, several consultants, a former state rep and the speaker of the state house have all been indicted for racketeering and bribery due to corruption)
Utilities aren't a very good case for "this is a private business." TVA is a government-created utility, for example. And the largest power production in the entire country. When they destroy an entire town's water supply, who do you think foots the bill? That's right, nobody. The town dies. So Sad.
But yeah, I'm getting offtrack.
Utilities, in a "fair and reasonable" world, would be on the hook for unreliable power. AKA if Ms. Shortcake died because her oxygen ran out, it's the utility's fault for their power outage (assuming this was caused by solar/wind, which it was in Spain -- this is a "deliberately" unreliable power source. We could easily go hydro, which is a reliable renewable energy source). Give them enough "people die at a $1 million per person" costs, and they don't go with unreliable energy. Otherwise, you incentivize "it looks good but is actually malfunctioning grid operation."
The Government is perfectly willing to declare Power Infrastructure as a National Security issue, particularly when some "moron" used peanut oil in the wire cladding, and all the squirrels went crazy and started chewing the insulation off. (Yes, That was a Good Prank. The pentagon noticed the prank, which was ... probably not so good).
So, do you think that the government should be allowed to intervene so that, say, they can keep NORAD functional?
Now, let's go one step further. The federal US government actively incentivizes solar power for residences. Which is dunderheaded. It leads to people putting solar on their houses in places that don't get much solar irradiance, which is downright wasteful.
https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps
Look at the yearly solar irradiance: there's quite a bit of swing (some parts are even as dark as Northern Europe).
Ok, what happens in 2028 (or 2032 or 2036 etc.) when the other party is in power? Having government intervene so much in what a power company does seems like it'd lead to a certain amount of instability. You're already complaining that the government subsidizes certain types of power generation, yet you're advocating that they intervene even more? As soon as democrats are back in control of such a interventionist government, ComEd would be mandated to open solar and wind plants, only to be forced to close them a few years later.
(As for NORAD, electricity is supplied by a government owned and operated plant)
Assuming that you are actually making a strong case here, you should be bringing it to ComEd. They have a recent CEO opening and they could appreciate someone who knows so much about what power companies are doing wrong.
Well, did you think that the Navy was intervening in "civil research" when they decided to pilot the plans for a fusion reactor (or mini-fusion reactors)? Probably not -- this was years ago.
The US Government does a lot of insanely stupid shit some weeks.
I'm not sure I'm on the side of "intervene" or "not intervene" -- in an ideal world, it probably goes to "not intervene" (but we know that the Clean Air Act has been used as a weapon to shut down power plants).
"ComEd would be mandated..." -- No, you're not getting it. Down the hill from me, there's a government-created solar installation going in (https://triblive.com/local/epa-earmarks-2m-to-convert-pittsburgh-slag-heaps-to-solar-farm/). I'm in Team Blue Land, and there's pretty much no stopping the "FeelGood Can'tDoMath" Ladies from putting it in -- unless you get Bigger Government to say "hey, we need a limit on this, or everyone's power breaks." The "Can'tDoMath" contingent will continue asking for unsustainable things until the sky Actually Falls, and then they'll run around screaming with no idea that they've actually Caused The Problem. I can't even wave Spain in their face and get them to listen.
Likewise, nuclear power plants are more or less Government Property. Hydroplants are caused by the Army Corps of Engineers needing more work to do (okay, that sounds silly, but... my point is, saying that these are private industry things is looney -- government is involved the whole way down).
My local electrical company MUST deal with personal electric power generation -- aka each and every damn person who puts in a solar panel on their roof, and sometimes pushes more power than they use, and in general causes instability on the grid.
As to ComEd, DOE (and the TEOWAKI part of the military) will be talking with them, as Trump talked with Merkel about the insanity of removing all the nuclear power plants. It's their job to prevent national security issues.
(Alright, yes, NORAD was an exaggeration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_disruptions_caused_by_squirrels)
In a perfect Edison world, we set everything up running DC and don't have to deal with the transmission losses, or a power grid that gets more rickety every time we add solar or wind.
Ok, once again sounds like you'd be better off making your case with ComEd. They are probably less ideological and controlled by activists than the government.
https://archive.ph/2025.08.27-154227/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15036639/ANDREW-NEIL-stifling-growth-killing-industry-making-households-poorer-Net-Zero.html
I’m with you. Interesting article regarding the costs of energy. 🤔
I see what you are trying to do here, and I agree with your criticism of mendacity, greed and basic ignorance, but you still need to do some reading:
The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths by Mariana Mazzucato
I know this is really sad, but you made me laugh out loud. In particular the image of the todler with wood leg and the knife...
On Howard Lutnick's proposal, take a look at this: https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-crisis-of-the-university-started-long-before-trump/
"I focus on the two most important ones, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 and the stunning change, which commenced largely in the same era, in which America began to conceive of education as a private, personal good, to be measured solely in terms of increase in lifetime earnings.
The Bayh-Dole act provided for the private licensing of discoveries made during federally funded research. It was motivated by a concern that discoveries made in the preceding decades had not been fully exploited because the lack of opportunity for private gain deprived the system of incentive for development. In short, it granted intellectual property in discoveries made during federally funded research to the universities that hosted the projects and the people who did the research—not, as before, to the people of the United States, who funded that research.
In all fairness, it should probably be said that the Bayh-Dole Act achieved in some narrow sense what it intended. In 1979, on the eve of Bayh-Dole, American universities received only 264 patents. Within a quarter of a century, applications for patents by universities had increased to more than 7,500, thousands of which were licensed to private corporations for commercial application."
This was very entertaining, and scary. But I have to tell you, as a Brit, Trump is unfortunately right (I hate to say that) about UK energy prices being inflated by our wind power. The problem is the private wind power companies get paid to switch off the turbines, lots and lots of money, so as not to put energy into our national grid when we can't use it. That new bill is then added to the overall cost of electricity. This is pushing the consumer price of electricity up, particularly for the Scots, who now have the highest energy bills in Europe. I don't know the solution to this (other than state run energy as in Iceland). Buts it's red meat for the anti-renewable energy politicians.
The solution seems relatively straightforward: Mine Bitcoins. Pull enough off the power grid until you no longer need to mint money, then go back to normal electrical usage.
Yes, I understand this requires the British to actually buy computers. (snark).
Lutnik sounds like he's trying to do a Trump impression, with Trump standing right there.
If substack had tip jars, and I'm going to suggest to them that they should, I would no doubt be fully supporting whatever disreputable vice you're addicted to.
Jeff should make a paid tier.
The only logical explanation for Trump is that the "Men in Black" was a quasi-documentary; the cabinet are all aliens and thus their actions make no sense to Earthlings and they are prepping us for the full-scale invasion.
Think bigger picture than that. We are in a planet-wide sociology experiment, specifically in authority and response to authority when it's wrong. The aliens aren't "out there" in space, they're above us in reality. Do the math: we're a simulation.