junk science

Junk Science, Delusion, and California’s “Green” Energy Grid

For nearly seventy years—since the 1960’s—California has been the epicenter of a radical philosophy that holds capitalism, wealth, property rights, and conservatism as enemies of the people. This progressive ideology gave birth to the modern environmental movement, which the uncompromising green extremists have used as a sledgehammer to attack lifestyles that they conclude are harming the planet. Ultimately, the broadminded thinkers have concocted environmental laws and policies designed to ultimately control of the rest of us whom they declare to be “lesser-minded.”

To accomplish this, one of their key goals is to limit the flow of inexpensive energy available to the masses, thereby eventually forcing people to make lifestyle changes that are more congruent with their climate agenda, which demonizes fossil fuels and calls for the end of “Big Oil.” They want us to reduce our personal carbon footprint, downsize our homes, become dependent on mass transit, and herd us into cities where we can be better observed, better controlled,  and better regulated.

The lie they have activated to move forward their plans involves a compound necessary for life: carbon dioxide (CO2). They contend CO2 is a pollutant stemming from the use of gas and oil products required to create energy. While it’s true that carbon dioxide is a heat-absorbing greenhouse gas that is emitted whenever fossil fuels are used, it is not accurate to claim such usage is causing global warming or climate change. In my upcoming book, Climate Cult, I discuss this in very easy to understand terms. Suffice it to say, without greenhouse gases where you live would likely see temperature swings of 100-degrees between night and day.

Actually, where you live would be unlivable.

Additionally, CO2 is a requisite for all plant life. In fact, the more CO2, the more plants are able to thrive. But these are facts that get in the way of the climate agenda.

In their quest bring forth what Al Gore has described as “a wrenching transformation of society,” for the past several decades lawmakers in California have been putting in place aggressive moves towards renewable electricity production—solar and wind—thereby eventually killing Big Oil. While doing so, they frequently tout the state’s nation-leading electric efficiency and its supposed reduction in CO2 emissions. But what they don’t tell you is that Californian’s are paying the highest prices for electricity in the contiguous United States and that the energy grid in the Golden State is hanging by a thread.

While there are a myriad of laws and policies that have made California’s retail consumer electric prices totally out of line with the rest of the country, I’ll boil it down to just a few.

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First, despite being a state with some of the country’s most abundant natural gas reserves, California has made the decision to eventually curtail the use of those resources. There are only three natural gas plants left operating in the state and the legislature has plans to shutter than all.  However, there is a huge disconnect with reality that the environmental community doesn’t want you to know about.  California has led the way in government subsidized solar and wind arrays; it’s the only way the bureaucrats have been able to get renewable generation—which is very costly by the kilowatt—to market.  Problem is, solar only works on a sunny day well after sunrise and well before sunset. Wind turbines only create electricity when the wind is blowing just right, not too fast or too slow. When conditions are not perfect, the grid has to be powered by another source. The go-to is natural gas. Yes, there is nuclear and hydropower in California, but both combined make up less than 20-percent of total electricity output, and the environmentalists want to see those sources come to an end as well. In fact, perhaps in an effort to appear moderate and save face under his watch, Governor Newsome actually pushed to extend the usage of California’s last remaining nuclear plant for another five years.

California’s electricity production is very much dependent on natural gas, which now has to be imported from other states, and that’s very expensive, not to mention fiscally stupid. In fact, California is the nation’s biggest importer of electricity. In the past, this meant bringing in a lot of coal-fired power from Arizona and Utah. But a law passed in 2006 alongside the state’s more famous AB 32—the Global Warming Solutions Act—effectively banned reupping contracts from traditional out-of-state coal-powered generating companies.

As a result, something known as “electron laundering” has arisen to fill the gap. This occurs, for example, when California, in its hunt for green electrons to power their grid, pays British Columbian for hydropower. The Canadians are more than happy to sell hydropower as they backfill their own power needs with coal power from Washington State and Alberta. It’s a shell game. California gets higher-priced power that they can claim to be “green,” while the Canadians get American greenbacks to fund their socialized health care system. But it’s even more devious. To maintain the green mirage, California authorities created a category of imported power called “Unspecified Sources of Power” that provide about 10 percent of the state’s electrical needs. The “Unspecified Sources” are coal.

Meantime, all the legislators continue to make the phony claim that California is leading the way to a carbon-free, “net zero,” energy grid.

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Another big reason for the sky-high monthly utility bills has to do with the many rooftop solar arrays. Because the electricity generated by the panels is free to the user (with any excess fed back to the grid), the user doesn’t receive a bill each month that automatically includes additional fees for “fixed costs” which include maintenance, generation, transmission, and distribution as well as public programs like wildfire mitigation. When households adopt solar, they’re not paying their fair share, while they still rely on the state’s electric grid for much of their power consumption. This is another reason for the grid’s higher electricity prices in California.

Electric vehicles (EV) pose another problem.  Despite the propaganda, these vehicles generally suck in electricity from the grid that is derived primarily from natural gas.  Thanks to government subsidies and a massive PR campaign, as more drivers switch to an EV, and as the politicians in Sacramento continue their warpath against natural gas, the grid’s capacity will continue to be stretched, leading to higher prices, rolling black outs, and forced lifestyle adjustments. On hot summer days, California is already seeing electronic signs above the highways urging EV owners to charge their vehicles after the peak evening energy hours have concluded. And this is happening with only 3 percent of the vehicles on the road being electric–just wait until new gasoline powered vehicles are prevented from being sold in California in 2035—per the law.

But wait there’s more. While Bidenflation is taking a big bite out of the working family’s bank account, California is set to employ another electricity rate hike in 2024.

Virtue Signaling and the Climate Agenda

Virtue signaling is defined as the act of publicly expressing opinions in order to demonstrate that you are a good person.

Examples from the Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area illustrate this exceptionally well. There are the venture capitalists and rich executives who drive a flashy Tesla because “it’s the right thing to do,” but at the same time employ a private jet for personal vacations. Building contractor friends of mine joke about the wealthy executives who say they’re all about saving the trees and reducing carbon emissions, but insist on real hardwood floors in their 6,000 square foot home.

In too many cases, the rooftop solar array, the electric car, the vegan diet, or the corporation boasting their products are “sustainable,” are efforts to conspicuously display awareness of, and attentiveness to, the climate agenda.

Dr. Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychology professor (proving there is a doctor for everything). He was trained at both Columbia and Stanford and currently teaches at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Miller has written a thought-provoking book, Virtue Signaling: Essays on Darwinian Politics & Free Speech, where he identifies two types of virtue signaling. The first is “cheap talk,” which he comically illustrates with a tote bag emblazoned with, MY REUSABLE BAG MAKES ME BETTER THAN YOU.

Then there is the genuine type, wherein the signaling is based on sincere belief. This is the type of virtue that, as Miller says, “reinforces social norms” and “teaches youths.”

In terms of climate change all varieties of virtue signaling, cheap and otherwise, are working collectively to mold the mass mind, and our schools provide the starting point for it all.  The immense peer pressure during those formative years is the perfect incubator for development of this mass mind—and the Left is well aware.

Before Herbert George Wells—we know him as the author, H.G. Wells (1866-1946)—began his career writing The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, and so many others classics, he was a grammar school science teacher. He was also a vocal socialist who personally visited Soviet Russia, interviewing both Lenin and Stalin. Regarding Lenin, Wells said, “In him I realized that Communism could after all, in spite of Marx, be enormously creative.”  As for Stalin, “I have never met a man more candid, fair and honest, and to these qualities it is, and to nothing occult and sinister, that he owes his tremendous undisputed ascendency in Russia.”

As I revealed in my book Climategate, Lenin was the first radical environmentalist to run a nation (into the ground), and understood the political capital found in “useful idiots” who would go along with his programs.  My guess is Wells would be a fan of the climate agenda and the need to indoctrinate via the public education system. You see, in addition to his great fiction, Wells wrote quite a bit about using schools as the focal point for becoming virtuous socialist citizens.  In his own words:

“The new world demands schools, therefore, to give everyone a sound and thorough mental training and equip with clear ideas about history, about political and economic relationships…socialism in itself is little more than a generalization about the undesirability of irresponsible ownership and that the major problem before the world is to devise some form of administrative organization that will work better than the scramble of irresponsible owners. That form of administrative organization has not yet been devised.”       

Wells wrote that in 1928. I think it’s safe to say the birth pangs of “the new world” have passed and we have entered an age being built upon junk science and phony virtue.