My early Saturday morning shopping run to Walmart wasn’t as smooth as usual. I’m usually pulling into the Walmart parking lot at 7:30am and there are maybe a dozen cars in the lot. My shopping takes all of 15 minutes including going through the single checkout lane that’s open. But this time the lot was almost full, with most of the cars and trucks sporting out-of-state plates. There were a lot of shoppers already making their way up and down the aisles when I got inside, and there were seven checkout lanes open. It took me an extra 10 minutes to complete my shopping. The trip home also took some extra time as traffic on the main route through town was also quite heavy. I noticed on my way home that the parking lot at one of my favorite diners was full and there was a line waiting to get a table or a seat at the counter, far earlier than is usual.
This is one reason I am otherwise staying away from my usual weekend haunts. The summerfolk have arrived in force, it being the unofficial beginning of the summer season. All of the summer seasonal restaurants, shops, and attractions are open. The high gas prices haven’t seemed to have an effect on the number of people visiting the lake this holiday weekend. I have no idea if the even higher gas prices at the gas docks around the lake will have a negative effect on the number of boats out on the lake at any one time.
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From the comments to this piece at GraniteGrok comes this observation:
If it is above normal temperature, it's climate change.Ayuh.
If it is below normal temperature, it's climate change.
If it is normal temperature, it's climate change.
If it's too dry, it's climate change.
If it's too wet, it's climate change.
If it's just right, it's climate change.
If it's sunny, or rainy, or cloudy, or snowy, or windy, or calm, it's climate change.
I remember when they used to call it weather.
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As the not-so-old joke goes, “What did socialists use for light before candles? Electricity.”
So many of those pushing for an all-electric future either haven’t thought through the implications, have thought it through but are working from a series of false assumptions, or have thought it through and want everything to come apart for everyone...except them.
The push for changing all vehicles over to EVs and eliminating non-electric stoves/rangetops, clothesdryers, water heaters, and furnaces has chosen to ignore two big problems: 1) the electrical grid as it stands now isn’t capable of carrying the power needed to meet the goals and 2) the generation capacity to meet the needs doesn’t exist...and will never exist if we have to make use of ‘sources’ these same people insist must be used, i.e. renewables.
It’s purely a numbers game and the numbers do not add up no matter how much the All-Electric proponents try to twist them to fit their vision. (Or is it delusion since their vision does not come anywhere near meeting the harsh reality of the numbers?)
As I have stated here and elsewhere, both the electrical grid and generation capacity need to be increased three-fold to meet the demand. (As a reminder, both need to be able to handle peak demand, not average demand, otherwise the grid will fail.)
Updating and expanding the capacity of the grid is a non-starter since many of the same people pushing for an all-electric future also fight tooth-and-nail against the needed power line projects, one of the first examples of the cognitive dissonance that plagues so many of those same all-electric proponents. (Northern Pass or CMP projects, anyone?) The same is true of many of the renewable energy projects (solar nd wind), but the opposition to these isn’t just from the usual suspects - NIMBYs and BANANAs - but from people who fully understand the downsides to such projects, who understand the numbers and know they don’t add up.
Keeping all of this in mind one will need to ask the question “Where were you on The Day The Electricity Died?” when that day comes.
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Here’s yet another example of the cognitive dissonance infecting so many of the Green Energy Faithful, where a 1000-year old ‘fairy tale’ forest in Germany is being clear cut for a large scale industrial wind farm.
In the Reinhardswald, which covers an area of around 200 square kilometers, there are centuries-old oak trees, a highly developed natural biodiversity that is home for example to rare wild cats and populations of white red deer – a balance which has taken 1000 years to establish. But now it’s all being industrially raped, gangbang-style, by crony, greedy bastards under the guise of environmental virtue. It’s a grand swindle that in normal times would have everyone enraged.This is just another version of the old Vietnam War trope, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” but this time applied to the environment.
But these are not normal sane times. The NZZ reports: “Yesterday, trees were planted as climate savers; today, only plastic rotor blades count.”
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Weasel Zippers asks the important question regarding the Robb Elementary School shooter in Uvalde, Texas:
This kid’s kit was like $5,000. [H]ow the hell did a broke kid from a border town with a job at Wendy’s get such stuff?
Indeed.
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Yet another Marxist professor from Boston University mouths off about yet another thing that is ‘racist’. In this case, property.
A Boston University professor recently said the concept of property is “racist” … because blacks “historically have been property.”Really? That last statement certainly got a response from a comment at linking post at Instapundit, the commenter making an excellent point:
--snip--
“If we’re going to talk about George Floyd and really understand it, then we need to understand community reactions to it,” Grundy said. “And we often hear politicians, we hear civic leaders from inside Black communities and from outside of them as well… we hear President Biden say, ‘Y’know I understand your frustration, but don’t destroy property.’
“Well, when you say that to Black people, who historically have been property, one of our greatest weapons was the looting of ourselves as property from the system of slavery. And what we see in communities is they are reacting to the very racism of what we call property.”
“I think it's very important for people who see reactions in communities not to judge or make assumptions about what is good and not good reactions. And not actually re-victimize communities by saying there's an acceptable and not acceptable way to react.”
“So you’re admitting blacks are subhumans who aren’t capable of living up to the basic expectations made of the poorest and least-educated white people.”As we see yet again, it turns out the racist in the room is often the one spouting off about racism. What’s worse is they don’t even realize (or care) that they are racist, even against the very people they say they are speaking on the behalf of.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summerfolk are crowding the roads and restaurants, the tills of the local businesses are filling, and where we don’t have to worry about Monday...this week.