Powerline

John Hinderaker has a post about the futility of a green energy economy in, appropriately, his Powerline blog ... see: Batteries: a Forlorn Hope ... be sure to watch the video. If the greenies reject out of hand nuclear power generation, their dream of a fossil-fuel-free economy will never come about. Hear that Angela? She must be as detached from reality as Joe ... and Elon ... although I think Elon knows he is ... he is just playing the greenies for suckers.

Armageddon

There are quite a number of threats to the survival of our culture ... even our people. Whether they actually mean that the Earth will turn into Mars is dubious, but some actually might pose this menace. I have listed below real and imagined Armageddons ... in a descending order I consider reasonable. Each deserves its own extensive blog entry ... which I may well do. You may differ with the sequencing, but I doubt that you will dispute these items themselves:

Nuclear Proliferation — Nukes in the hands of lunatics

Top-dog Hegemony — China vs. Russia vs. USA vs. radical Islam ... unless the U.S. wins, things will be over

Plague — Biological weapons or natural pandemics might easily wipe out huge numbers of people

Artificial Intelligence — The nutroots are constantly predicting that robots will rule us. I am dubious.

Climate Change — the Earth has been getting warmer since 1750. Will it burn up as many predict? Maybe in a few million tears ... but not tomorrow.

Green Energy — I think that capturing energy from the wind and tides may present some unintended consequences.

Recreational Drugs — opium once almost took down China. It is conceivable that the legalization and propagation of mind-altering drugs could profoundly affect our future outlook.

Designer Babies — DNA-altering medicine will be changing our offspring and lives in ways not fully understood. Are we in for a planet full of Frankensteins?

Population Bomb — thirty years ago this was close to the number one fear. However populations are leveling off and declining everywhere bu Africa. Thus threat is therefore small.

Famine — the reduction of population pressure combined with higher crop yields reduces the possibility of widespread famine.

Big Data — although not threatening the end to civilization, the collection of massive amounts of personal data through social media and otherwise does pose a serious danger to our freedoms.

UFOs — Sorry Tucker ... not a threat.

Headlines

Trump personally lobbying senators to flip om Sessions

Weekly jobless rate rises, [but] labor market still tightening

Palin excluded from McCain funeral

Coulter: Media 'angry,' they want South African genocide to happen

Months of animosity boil over in Cuomo, Nixon debate

India's rupee falls to an all-time low

Space station 'hit by meteorite'; depressurization ...

CA assembly passes bill mandating 100% 'green' energy by 2045

Haunted by FBI investigation, Gillum faces tough climb in Florida's governor's race

Consumer spending increasing strongly, inflation rising

Amazon wages war with Bernie [Sanders] ...

Reports: Chinese hacked Hilliary's email server

Obvious Truth #6

Perhaps there is such a thing as "global warming," but after two decades of fudged data, failed computer models, $billions of "green energy" boondoggles and "scientific" navel gazing; the general public has pretty much figuted out that electric cars get their energy mostly from fossil-fuel fed power plants. -- Anon.

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites. Guess which ones came from Politico?

NKorea [failed] missile launch hacked?

Failure to sanction China helped North Korea, former officials say

Pence's [Indiana] Medicaid experiment confounds expectations

Americans owe $1 trillion in credit card debt

Massacre of New York teens tied to Central American MS-13 gang

Report: Melania and Baron Trump will move to the White House this summer

29 people shot in less than 18 hours in Chicago ...

Fox personality wonders if Speaker Ryan is sabotaging Trump

Turks vote to expand Erdogan power ...

DOE prepares studies determining green energy's affect on the [power] grid

Ex-acting CIA chief: Trump made North Korea situation worse

Mystery surrounds Obama's mass clemencies

False Prophets

True prophets are rare birds. False prophets are much more common. They often extrapolate from small initial breakthroughs (and wishful thinking) into grandiose forecasts. (I know because I am often quite guilty of same.) There is a element of grandstanding to these avians as their wild-eyed pronouncements often make national headlines. But when they crash and burn, these false prophets are nowhere to be found. Here are a few of the current crop of what seem to be mostly false memes:

Autonomous Cars -- I just heard the CEO of Ford Motor say on TV that by 2021 we will have cars with no pedals or steering wheels driving around "designated areas." By this date I may no longer be allowed to drive ... and, even if I were, I would not entrust my life to some Silicon Valley software engineer's sense of the reality of the road.

Robot Takeover -- If Malthus taught us nothing, it was that simple extrapolations of technologies seldom approximate the truth. And certainly what I know about simulated knowledge suggests to me that artificial intelligence will never be fully sapient. This is all the stuff of science fiction writers ... fictional.

Global Warming -- False prophets predict things that don't come true ... just like the predictions of global warming (aka climate change) have not materialized. But then, altering the raw data to make it appear like these predictions are accurate is demagogic. Besides anyone who thinks we can accurately take the temperature of our entire planet is a tad nutso.

Anthropomorphic Animals -- Long before PETA, there was the feeling that all animals were human-like creatures in a different form ... and this belief is metastasizing into the desire for Constitutional guarantees for animals. Certainly the movie "Bambi" went a long way in creating this meme ... when Bambi's father was shot by the evil hunters. Bambi's mother then consoling Bambi made total sense to us kids ... and millions of young minds were forever prejudiced into this notion that animals were effectively "human.". But humans have incisors for a reason ... and it is not to tear into lentils.

Green Energy -- All green energy projects (except hydroelectric and atomic) are basically uneconomic when compared the carbon-based production ... and may be so forever. Thank God we had hundreds of millions of years of laying down of hydrocarbons on Earth. Solar and wind powered energy production survive only because of government subsidies. When we eventually run out of hydrocarbons ... hundreds of years hence ... we should have suitable replacements. Man is a very resourceful type.

World Government --This was Woodrow Wilson's wet dream which has been evolving now for a hundred years, but is about to come acropper with the growing realization that it is an expensive, self-absorbed, undemocratic, prejudiced, and ineffective bureaucratic nightmare. If world government ever does come about, I believe it will not grow out of our current United Nations.

Regenerated Organs -- Using your own stem cells to regenerate one or more of your organs is a technology that I do believe will eventually come about ... however when this might occur is maddeningly unpredictable. Perhaps in ten more years?

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites.

Israeli police question PM [Netanyahu] over corruption charges ...

Trump boots Koch bro from golf course

Curt Schilling: I'd be in the Hall Of Fame if I said, 'Lynch Trump' ...

3X more migrates than reported diagnosed with active TB since 2012

Black leaders scramble to block Trump's agenda

60+ killed in Brazilian prison riot ...

1000+ migrants attempt to break into Spanish territory ... injure 55 officers

Black college marching band to perform at inauguration ... causing controversy

Court reinstates Kennedy cousin Skakel's murder conviction ...

Experts: Ryan's [smart phone] livestreaming ban may be unconstitutional

Bitcoin hits over $1,000 ... highest in over three years

Obama credits green energy for cutting foreign oil imports -- he's wrong

The Death of Common Sense

What is it in the water these days? Doesn’t it appear that our leaders have been tripping on some mysterious substance that robs them of even a modicum of sensibility? Decision after decision by these fruit bats fly in the face of reason … no restrictions on travel from West Africa, no health screening for those tens of thousands of young Mexican border jumpers, supporting welfare benefits and voting rights for illegal aliens, fire-hose government spending that robs from our children and grandchildren, national defense dismantling during a period of growing Russian and radical Islamic threats, rejecting carbon-based energy sources for less viable "green” options. Need I go on?

It seems that every time I see or hear of a policy decision these days it is diametrically opposed to what my Jiminy Cricket is suggesting. Do politicians feel obligated to reject what their inner voices tell them in favor of some cockamamie pronouncement that they heard from atop a soapbox by some wild-eyed ideologue?

I do believe we reject our innate filter of common sense at great risk. Maybe, for at least the next few elections, we might choose those politicians who dare to exhibit some common sense. Perhaps this characteristic won’t grab the headlines, but it might just save us.

Afterward: Not only are we not restricting travel from the three-country center of Ebola outbreaks in West Africa, but we have, for two months, been expediting the processing of U.S. visa extensions to the people from there! I'm not joking ... see: Breitbart Story! By the bye Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and other African Countries have closed their borders to emigres from these three West African countries.

Frugal Green Energy

Electric car battery maker, A123 Systems, just joined the growing list of our Department of Energy-backed companies receiving taxpayer dollars ... who then have gone belly up (see: Market Watch).  This time the hit was $123 million ... not quite the $535 million that Solyndra cost us ... but then not peanuts either.  The list of green-energy corporate failures goes on and on:  Compact Power Inc., Ener 1, Beacon Power, Abound Solar, Amonix Solar, SpectraWatt, Evergreen Power, Range Fuels, Raser Technologies, and ECOtality to name but a very few ... and in the wings are Sun Power, First Solar and Solar Trust of America (see Brainard Dispatch).   This has cost our bumbling Energy Department buffoons billions of dollars and will certainly cost us taxpayers billions more. As Mitt Romney has aptly opined ... our government "doesn't just pick green-energy winners and losers, it just picks losers."

I have come up with a better idea for how the Obama administration can produce green-energy much more frugally ... scroll down please ...

Afterward: Add Satcon Technology Corp to the above list of failed DOE-funded greenies (see: The Foundry Story)

Nostradamus and Me

That famous seer, Nostradamus, has a set of dire predictions for 2012 ... see his Grim News.  Although I do not partake of hallucinogenics nor gaze into a bowl of shimmering mercury (or was it water?), I, along with my friends and family, also make annual predictions as part of our New Year's Eve festivities.  Mine are not quite so dour.  For what its worth, here they are::

• China’s economy will weaken significantly … resulting in much civil unrest
• At least one country will leave the EuroZone
• A third party candidate will run for President … almost assuring Obama’s re-election
• Massive student-loan meltdown. U.S. taxpayers foot the bill.
• China will annex more territory … possibly part of Mongolia
• Jimmy Carter will attend Hugo Chavez’s funeral
• Another Solyndra-like green-energy scandal in the Obama Energy Dept.
• The Iran “navy” will be destroyed trying to stop shipping through the Strait of Hormuz
• Hillary Clinton will replace Joe Biden on the Obama ticket
• Israel will attack Iran … destroying many nuclear facilities
• It’s Green Bay vs. Patriots in Super Bowl. Green Bay wins.
• Inflation finally bites … up 5%
• The Occupiers will re-emerge with the warm weather … resulting in meaningless bloodshed
• At least one state will go bankrupt. U.S. taxpayers foot the bill.

Breaking Wind

Billions for green energy, not one cent for nuclear ...  Here is a recent Op Ed from the New York Times revealing what the tree huggers are doing to the trees in Vermont ... all to reduce our nation's "carbon footprint" by a teeny weeny fraction of one percent. See: Green Mountaineering.  It's one thing to see huge wind farms on the barren highway passes between LA and Las Vegas, but on an entire ridgeline in Vermont?  Ouch!  And how do these hugely-expensive politically-correct projects get funded?  You guessed it ... mainly by that kindly old man with the billy-goat beard, striped pants, and a cut-away coat.

Have we learned nothing from the failure of the green energy initiatives in Spain? (See: No Gain in Spain.)  Please also read this link that describes an Obama $61 billion slush fund called the Federal Financing Bank ... see: Secret Government Bank.  This revealing reference was given to me by a contributor who also seems worried about how our current government is squandering billions upon billions of dollars on questionable green-energy projects ... none of which so far involves the splitting of an atom.

Afterthought: Here is a list of wind turbine manufactures: Wind Turbines.  Is all this green energy B.S. adding or subtracting from our balance of payments and employment levels?