Each renewable energy, Jevons explained, was either too scarce or too unreliable for the new industrial era. The energy savior was coal, a concentrated, plentiful, storable, and transportable source of energy that was England’s bounty for the world.

There was no going back to renewables. Coal–and that included oil and gas manufactured from coal–was the new master of the master resource of energy in the 18th and 19th centuries. As Jevons stated in the introduction (p. viii) of The Coal Question (1865):…

According to USA Today, the energy elements of Obama’s “stimulus” package add up to about $58 billion. He’d use $32 billion to fund a smart electricity grid;$20 billion for Renewable energy tax cuts and a tax credit for research on energy efficiency and clean energy, plus a multiyear extension of the green energy production tax credit; and $6 billion to weatherize modest-income homes.

There’s not all bad here.…

Ed Note: The Great Texas Blackout five years ago, the worst energy debacle in US history, was misinterpreted as a ‘market failure’ by the mainstream press (and faux classical liberal Lynne Kiesling). This repost stands today as it was written three years ago.

Electricity specialists at the University of Texas at Austin recently revisited the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021. The op-ed, “Two years after its historic deep freeze, Texas is increasingly vulnerable to cold snaps – and there are more solutions than just building power plants” (The Conversation), spreads the blame and recommends more government planning, not less.

The authors want to let wind and solar continue to “saturate” the market and regulate (via “smart meters”) usage in your home and business to save the grid.…

“CO2/climate optimism is merited, not more recalibration by falsified merchants of doom.”

David Carlin must be a worried guy outside of his smiling photos.  This “policy, sustainability, and finance expert” has a firm (D. A. Carlin Company) ready to assess your climate/ecology risks for a nice fee. He has the knowledge and answers to the ‘problem’… Or maybe not.

Here is his New Year’s post:

With 2026 beginning, what date would we overshoot the planet’s resources if everyone lived your lifestyle?

Great visualization showing when 100+ countries would exceed a sustainable balance based on the resource use and consumption habits of different nations.

The U.S. and Canada hit their sustainability threshold in March, so maybe North America should just hibernate for three-fourths of the year.

Carlin ends:

It’s the mirror image of how many earths we would need.