The Saltbush Club

Green California Has the Nation’s Worst Power Grid

By Steve Goreham

Originally published in Washington Examiner.

More than a million Californians suffered power blackouts last Friday evening. When high temperatures caused customer demand to exceed the power available, California electrical utilities used rotating outages to force a reduction in demand. The California grid is the worst in the nation, with green energy policies pursued by the state likely furthering reduced grid reliability.

At 6:30 pm on Friday, Pacific Gas and Electric, California’s biggest utility, began shutting off power in rolling outages to force a reduction in demand. Southern California Edison also denied power to homes, beginning just before 7 pm. Shutoffs impacted a rotating group of up to two million customers until 11 pm. Continue reading “Green California Has the Nation’s Worst Power Grid”

The Green Road to Blackouts

by Viv Forbes

California leads the way to electricity blackouts, closely followed by South Australia.

They both created this problem by taxing, banning, delaying or demolishing reliable coal, nuclear, gas or hydro generators while subsidising and promoting unreliable electricity from the sickly green twins – solar and wind. All supposed to solve a global warming crisis that exists only in academic computer models.

Energy policy should be driven by proven reliability, efficiency and cost, not by green politics.

Wind and solar will always be prone to blackouts for three reasons. Continue reading “The Green Road to Blackouts”

No Fuel = No Fire

By Viv Forbes

A NSW Bushfire Enquiry concluded: “Hazard-reduction burns should be greatly increased”.

What a breath of good sense. If there is no fuel, there can be no fire.

They also urge a return to indigenous fire management. Aboriginals burnt anything and everything, at any time, for any reason. They had no water-bombers and seldom tried to put fires out, but they did understand back-burning. Their vegetation management created the vast and productive open forests and grasslands that supported large populations of marsupials and birds.

But tree huggers would never support this. They prefer scrub, weeds, pests and occasional fierce wildfires.

Pure and Sterile

By Viv Forbes

Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef is once again the excuse for extending Green control of all land and waters. Their current scare concerns the quality of water draining into the Coral Sea.

Their hidden agenda is to eliminate coastal agriculture, mining and commercial fishing. They would surrender the land to kangaroos, cassowaries, lantana, cane toads, wild cats and feral pigs and the seas to marauding sharks, cruising whales and aboriginal fishermen. Continue reading “Pure and Sterile”

Bernie Scolds Elon Musk for Taking Government Subsidies that Sanders Made Possible

By Steve Goreham

Originally published in WND.

In a twitter battle last week, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders criticized Elon Musk for accepting billions of dollars in government support. The exchange erupted over Sanders’ new bill to impose a wealth tax on Musk and other billionaires. But most of the payments received by Musk’s companies came from electric vehicle and solar energy programs that Sanders, green advocates, and state governments established to promote green energy.

The coronavirus pandemic caused the stock market to plunge in February and March of this year. The subsequent market recovery between March and August increased the wealth of U.S. billionaires by more than $700 billion. Last week, Senators Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a bill to tax wealth gained by billionaires during the stock market recovery. Continue reading “Bernie Scolds Elon Musk for Taking Government Subsidies that Sanders Made Possible”

Coronavirus Accelerates the Trend of Declining US Transit Ridership

By Steve Goreham

Originally published in Washington Examiner.

Public transit systems play an important role in transporting people within our major cities. Buses, trains, streetcars, and ferry boats transport more than 27 million people each day in the United States. But U.S. public transit ridership has been declining for the last five years and the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the decline.

Public transit ridership is measured by “unlinked passenger trips,” with a trip defined as whenever a person boards a transit vehicle, including transfers. Since 1970, the number of unlinked passenger trips grew about 37 percent to almost 10 billion trips in 2019. Transit miles grew more than 15 percent from 2000 to 2018, keeping pace with total U.S. vehicle miles traveled. Continue reading “Coronavirus Accelerates the Trend of Declining US Transit Ridership”

HOW CLIMATE ALARMISTS USE RCP8.5 TO EXAGGERATE AND DECEIVE

By Dr. John Happs

It is now widely known that there is a complete lack of empirical evidence to show that atmospheric carbon dioxide drives global temperature. Dr. Horst-Joachim Ludecke has demonstrated this fact from readily available data:

https://notrickszone.com/2020/07/29/data-from-2-independent-studies-show-no-correlation-between-co2-and-temperature/

Perhaps not as widely known is that, on those rare occasions when atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature have tracked closely, it is temperature that drives carbon dioxide levels.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/06/news-from-vostok-ice-cores/

Continue reading “HOW CLIMATE ALARMISTS USE RCP8.5 TO EXAGGERATE AND DECEIVE”

The Hydrogen Strategy to NOWHERE

The European Commission presented its hydrogen strategy in July 2020. It is convinced that it will be possible to make ‘clean’ hydrogen a viable solution for a climate-neutral economy and to build a dynamic value chain for this resource in the EU. It is even convinced to do that over the next five years. The European Commission is convinced that “from 2025 to 2030, hydrogen needs to become an intrinsic part of our integrated energy system, with at least 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolysers and the production of up to 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen in the EU”. For 2030 hydrogen produced with renewable energy should be deployed across all the EU. In doing so, it follows the example of Germany, which launched its hydrogen strategy a month earlier. The Commission know that this will be a conflict with the market law and propose therefore to create a value chain by boosting the demand for hydrogen that does not exist presently; this will require a “supportive framework” i.e. an imposition to the market by policy. Continue reading “The Hydrogen Strategy to NOWHERE”

Covid will now Empty the Dams

By Viv Forbes

“Wash your hands as often as possible” says Canberra’s Covid Chief.

This could flush away 25 litres of water per person per day.

Suppose ten million obedient Australians wash hands thoroughly “as often as possible”. The water used would total 250 Mega litres per day – enough to empty Australia’s biggest dam, Lake Eucumbene, in just 20 days.

We acknowledge an un-named cartoonist who gave us the idea for this cartoon.

Now add water used to supply the Covid demand for alcohol-based sanitisers to wipe every knob, rail, handle and bench. Distilleries are already diverting production from grog for drinking to alcohol for sanitisers. How long before kids and alcoholics are tasting hand sanitisers? Will the Covid Chief then insist it be methylated or subject to excise?

Covid emptied our pubs and is now draining our dams.

With Environmental releases and Covid cleaning, someone must slash red and green tape and start building more dams quickly.

Smile Time:
What’s the best way to avoid touching your face?
A glass of wine in each hand.

More Reading:
UK water demand soars during lockdown:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52893790

Cold Comfort

By Viv Forbes, 30 July 2020

Before sunrise yesterday, the grass temperature in Washpool, “Sunny Queensland” was minus 1.7 deg.

There was no wind or sunshine. Wind turbines were becalmed and not even moonbeams energised our solar panels.

In that still, frosty darkness, green energy failed again. Not a watt came from becalmed wind “farms” or from subsidized solar panels cluttering many roofs (including ours). But we didn’t need our diesel in the shed – we were saved by trusty Old King Coal, with maybe a dash of gas or hydro.

Reliable 24/7 generators provided pre-dawn power-by-wire for lights, heaters and coffee before we checked the frosty flats for new-born lambs.

Continue reading “Cold Comfort”