Monday - April 18, 2011

stupid california tricks

I actually tripped across this (there’s lots more but I think I lost the link) and found it interesting and the usual scary/stupid California thing.

Hell, I don’t even expect to still be here in 2020. If I am, heaven knows what shape I’ll be in.
Being in love with computers and California is like being in love with an unfaithful mistress.  Yeah I know. I’ve said that before but it’s no less true now.
Gee, both begin the letter ‘C’ and I wonder if there’s a connection. Well, I’ll be.

Let me explain what happened here.  I clicked something without thinking and soon discovered I had subscribed to a feed of some kind. RSS?  I think I did that, thinking I was clicking on to a link for further info. 
So I started reading all kinds of interesting stuff not knowing how the heck I was getting it but there it all was.  And btw, this ALL started because I was looking for Sun City Real Estate.  I was getting cross eyed with those darn thumbnails and then when I did find a site I was hunting for, instead of letting me click thru the photos, they were running a slideshow and no option to slow the damn thing down, as it was running too fast. Are web designers thoughtless er what? Not all of course but I often find the sites for real estate are pretty dumb.

Well anyway, I found myself staring at this page, and before I knew it, I was engrossed. So I decided to post part of it and provide a link. That’s when disaster struck.  I couldn’t find my way back to the page. Back arrow did no good and I have a list a mile long and growing. ????
Then worse happened and I have never experienced this before.

I landed on another story and to be sure I didn’t lose it, I tried to do what I always do when I find things. Or most always.
I open up a Word doc. and paste everything in there including a link to the source, and do any editing needed there.
BUT .......
Not this time.  I got a window that opened and said I was short on memory or disk space. HUH?  NO WAY! So I opened Notepad and pasted the next story there.  So of course, I haven’t any idea what’s going on.  I only know that ever since Microsoft tech helped me last week, I’ve lost a few settings and my printer does not work even tho looking in msconfig it says that spooling is running.  MSFT tech support is calling me back tomorrow afternoon as the issue I originally called them for was left open.  I don’t know why.

Over in the world of transportation, California has mandated that diesel emissions be reduced 85% by that halcyon year, 2020.  This constitutes a multi-whammy for independent truckers, who will have to spend $8K to $20K per truck to retrofit them so that they can be operated through 2016, and will have to purchase new ones (at $80K to $250K a pop) by 2020 – although they won’t be able to get rid of their old ones for better than pennies on the dollar.

(Ed Morrissey wrote earlier this month about the highly questionable study – linking diesel emissions to premature deaths – which led to California’s adoption of the emission-lowering requirement.)

(Hey ... is Calf. following the EU?  Or is the EU taking the lead from the left in CA? Cos they want to eventually do away with diesel here.)

California isn’t worried about the impact of the diesel regulations on the trucking industry.  But it is a big fan of high-speed rail (HSR), on which it’s moving full-speed ahead.  Citizens are calling the first leg of the HSR project the “train to nowhere,” because it will link two moderate-size towns in the Central Valley, which have no commuter needs relevant to the HSR connection – and no cargo needs either, for that matter.

HSR advocates are pointing out that the train will bring jobs to the areas hit hardest by agriculture losses and farm failures, the result of 30 or more years of improvident federal and state water policies.  Myself, I’d rather have the farms.  So would the farmers.

And this is an excellent time to observe that nothing going on here is dictated by blind fate: politicians and regulators are making decisions – according to their opinions; i.e., on the same basis you and I do – about what they want to encourage and discourage.  They are consciously disfavoring agriculture and favoring high-speed rail and environmental “restoration” projects.  (Meaning, “make it like it was in 1960 again, with the salmon runs and the water in my favorite spot in the Delta”; but why not 1910, or 1840, or 1776?) Of course, HSR potentially poses threats to wildlife too, and some environmental groups are pointing that out.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about HSR is that it uses a lot of electricity.  China feeds the HSR system with coal-generated power.  Japan and France feed theirs with nuclear-generated power.  California wants to have HSR but ensure that 33% of the state’s electricity comes from renewables.  Since passive renewables are unreliable on a 24-hour average basis – winds die, clouds come – the rail system will presumably have to monopolize some of the more-reliable electricity being produced for California.

Down the road, there will be an impact, in various forms, from energy unreliability.  My guess is that it will be a combination of even higher electricity prices – a premium (or, basically, extortion) for reliability – along with periodic compromises from regulators on how well the power companies are meeting their mandated renewables goal, and (the practical measure) a proliferation of generators operated by businesses and homeowners, who will want to keep the power saw, the refrigerator, or the a/c on when the grid is overloaded.

In other words, state policy will guarantee that what you spend on electricity goes up, period.

For many power customers, there’s also the option of moving away.

WOO-HOO! I found the link. She’s pretty good. Take a look.

It’s headed, Stupid California Tricks

http://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/

Posted by peiper     on 04/18/2011 at 06:27 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment • USA •  
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