Curtailed Hydro from Wanapum Dam Crack: An ‘Unpredicted Change in the Wind’?

By Wayne Lusvardi -- March 17, 2014

“Projections show that wind generation will increase rapidly to approximately 6,250 MW by 2013. This vast amount of wind power interconnected to the Bonneville Power Administration’s transmission grid will likely overwhelm the existing federal hydropower system’s ability to provide sufficient integration services in the future….

As the percentage of wind generation grows, the risk of having a major system event from an unpredicted change of the wind energy level increases.”

– Technical Analysis of Pumped Storage Integration with Wind Power in the Pacific Northwest – Final Report, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (August 2009).

The magnitude and location of the current unfolding story of a large crack in the hydro-rich Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River in Central Washington became known only a week after the Grant County Public Utility District declared a potential emergency. …

‘The Road to Serfdom’ at 70: Hayek’s Relevance in the Age of Obama

By Richard Ebeling -- March 14, 2014

“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation …. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.” (President Obama, January 14, 2014)

“The Road to Serfdom showed that government planning was not only an economic disaster, but also more tellingly a step-by-step, process-oriented political system of control and management that threatened to bring about the end of human freedom.”

Seventy years ago this month (March 1944), The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek was published in Great Britain. Today, this slim book continues to challenge and influence the political-economic landscape of the world.

Hayek delivered an ominous warning that political trends in the Western democracies, including America, were all in the direction of a new form of servitude that threatened the personal and economic liberty of the citizens of these countries.…

Game, Set, Match Fossil Fuels? James Hansen Sleepless in Ningbo

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 13, 2014

“Recent events have been spiraling down so rapidly that I find it hard to sleep. Ex-President Clinton campaigns for a huge pipeline to carry Canadian tar sands…. Dogged insistence by environmental groups that intermittent renewable energies are the only alternative to fossil fuels.…”

Writing from China earlier this week, and no doubt preparing his testimony for Thursday’s “Keystone XL and the National Interest Determination” hearing in Washington before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, climate scientist/policy activist James Hansen has once again laid bare the internal contradictions of Big Green’s codependency on dilute ‘green’.

In his missive Sleepless in Ningbo, Dr. Hansen described how the Chinese authorities during a tour of the country’s renewable projects gave him some sobering news. China’s energy pie is divided into 78% coal, 12% gas, 7% oil, and 3% renewables.…