quote:

I think its doing that right now. How long will a modern city last without electricity? Worse, will we all be asked/demanded to pay for their folly?

Yes we will. All those bleeding heart liberal democraps in DC will force it, and enough uneducated knotheads will support it, with no thought of why it happened in the first place.

Typical answer from those like the ones in power in Kali: When all else fails, throw more money at it, and blame somebody else.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who now lives in Texas, has done a great job of highlighting this issue and explaining how the blackout crisis was largely caused by politicians.

I've been following Chuck DeVore's comments since I first caught an interview with him on the Larry Elder radio show, almost a year ago.

In that interview he pointed out that not only wildfires, but larger scale and more destructive wildfires were predicted in the late '90s and early 2000s, along with increased CO2 emissions due to poor forest management. The Western Governor's Association predicted larger California wildfires in their Biomass Task Force Report 13 years ago. He also relayed the fact that the CA city of Laguna Beach requested money to bury their power lines in an attempt to mitigate the fire ignition risk, however the utilities company opposed the plan and Governor Jerry Brown sided with the utilities company. Also mentioned in the interview was the fact that forest product industry officials have demonstrated how their well-managed forest lands around Mt. Shasta have managed to avoid these large scale destructive wildfires.

Chuck DeVore also serves on the Texas Public Policy Foundation and this is a recent article from them. Supporting hyperlinks can be found in the linked article.

With Or Without Climate Change, California Will Burn, The Only Question Is: How Much?

By The Honorable Chuck DeVore|October 29, 2019
Originally published in Forbes on October 29, 2019

California is blessed—and cursed—with a Mediterranean climate. The Golden State features long stretches of dry, low-humidity weather, with infrequent thunderstorms (except in its desert regions). Most of the state’s precipitation falls during the winter months. Before the first big late-year Pacific storm, California’s forests and coastal chaparral are often tinder-dry.

Richard Henry Dana Jr., in his book “Two Years Before the Mast” published in 1840, described the area around Los Angeles thus:

“The only thing which diminishes its beauty is, that the hills have no large trees upon them, they having been all burnt by a great fire which swept them off about a dozen years before, and they had not yet grown up again. The fire was described to me by an inhabitant, as having been a very terrible and magnificent sight. The air of the whole valley was so heated that the people were obliged to leave the town and take up their quarters for several days upon the beach.”

Today, of course, politicians blame climate change for the wildfires and the electrical blackouts aimed at preventing more fires, with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday declaring that “It’s more than just climate change. It’s about the failure of capitalism to address climate change.”

There are two things to unpack here: the climate change claim and the failure of capitalism claim.

California is seeing larger wildfires. But this was predicted 13 years ago by the Western Governors’ Association in their Biomass Task Force Report:

“…over time the fire-prone forests that were not thinned, burn in uncharacteristically destructive wildfires… …In the long term, leaving forests overgrown and prone to unnaturally destructive wildfires means there will be significantly less biomass on the ground, and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

For a variety of reasons, government-mandated and subsidized wind and solar power won out in California over government-mandated biomass generators powered by wood waste from the timber industry. The timber industry largely left. And as a result, the fuel load in California’s northern forests has soared, and with it, the wildfire danger.

What isn’t harvested and cleaned up in a controlled, predictable manner is burned up in a chaotic manner—the only thing predictable about it is that it will certainly burn, sooner or later.

As for the failure of capitalism, California’s publicly regulated utilities are hardly examples of unfettered free markets. Rather, they do exactly what the regulators appointed by the elected officials tell them to do.

Those politicians and regulators have told the utilities to dramatically boost wind and solar power—and they have. In 2012, PG&E asked regulators for a $4.84 billion electric rate hike to pay for powerline maintenance and upgrades. Regulators, worried over electrical prices that were already close to the nation’s highest, rejected the request, and eventually approved less than half that amount.

One can’t help but to wonder—if this rate hike were approved in 2012, might it have prevented 2018’s deadly Camp Fire, which started almost a year ago and killed 85 people while destroying nearly 19,000 homes, businesses and other buildings? The fire was blamed on a nearly-100-year-old power line that should have been replaced 25 years ago.

Now, PG&E—in bankruptcy to shield itself from $30 billion in fire liabilities and under heavy criticism—is preventatively cutting the power on high-risk powerlines during periods of heavy winds.

These blackouts—the largest two hitting about 2 million people each time for a couple of days—have cost California businesses and consumers an estimated $5 billion in lost economic activity. As much as the requested rate hike might have cost had it been approved seven years ago.

As PG&E tries to catch up for years of neglect in trimming trees away from some 2,500 miles of high-priority powerlines, they’re running into another problem: They can’t find the experienced work crews. This is because employment in the timber industry is half of what it was 20 years ago due to decades of federal and state environmental policies that have cut the Western region timber harvest in half.

Whether or not climate change is making California’s deadly outbreak of fire worse, the solution is the same—California must significantly ramp up forest management, which, if done in concert with increased logging, will be less costly to the taxpayer. At the same time, it must aggressively increase the use of proscribed burns, both in the north and in Southern California’s coastal chaparral. President Trump said as much last year, to great hoots of derision from California’s politicians and environmentalists.

California has slowly taken steps in this direction, in the last year of Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s four terms in office and now Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first year. But it is likely too little, too late. That has led PG&E CEO Bill Johnson to warn state regulators that blackouts could last another 10 years.

Not all Californians moving out are liberal. I left in '93, moved to KY, and became involved in the pro-concealed carry movement.

The solution to homelessness in CA are shovels. Have them bury the power lines and trim brush. (hahaha, yeah, that'll happen.)

quote:

Originally posted by Fredward:
The solution to homelessness in CA are shovels.

There are no poor people here in the US. Only lazy people. (I'm retired and one of the lazy).

Re: the Babylon Bee pic. Texas not only has electricity, it has its own separate power grid, not part of the national grid.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by rburg:

quote:

Originally posted by Fredward:
The solution to homelessness in CA are shovels.

There are no poor people here in the US. Only lazy people. (I'm retired and one of the lazy).

I was talking with a customer from Ghana recently and he was telling me that he was writing a paper for masters or doctoral thesis about obesity in the US and which states are the most obese. I joked with him that the US is the only country that poor people have an obesity problem and iPhones. He laughed his ass off and told me in Ghana poor people were just bones with a layer of skin over them, they don't have anywhere to live, and smell really badly. I joked back that some countries middle class would die to be in America's poor class, he replied - that's the truth.

Perhaps the 'green' electronic voting machines will be unavailable in the 2020 election Could be an interesting situation.

Gonna be a whole lot of anti-gunners sitting in the dark listening to every creak and thump and wishing the hell they had a damn gun!

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:
Gonna be a whole lot of anti-gunners sitting in the dark listening to every creak and thump and wishing the hell they had a damn gun!

My extremely lefty mother sold me her SIG P230. I try to ignore anything she posts on Facebook, but saw recently she posted about wanting to get a gun due some kind of nature related power outage. I would not trust her with a gun at all, she'd shot someone or something she did not intend to destroy.

Rules for thee, but not for me.

Heard on the radio today Tesla owners are having problems find a time to charge their cars , with the rolling blackouts, and they are seeing an increase in gasoline powered cars being sold.

An even bigger worry, if all the electricity goes off at once, will everyone forget the Beatles?

Jerry Brown Blames Trump, Republicans for California Fires: ‘The Blood Is on Your Soul’

https://www.breitbart.com/envi...30&utm_content=Final

Former California Governor Jerry Brown told Congress on Tuesday that President Donald Trump and the Republican Party were responsible for the ongoing California fires because of their opposition to drastic climate change policies.

“California’s burning while the deniers make a joke out of the standards that protect us all,” Brown told the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, as quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle. “The blood is on your soul here and I hope you wake up. Because this is not politics, this is life, this is morality. … This is real.”

Brown was testifying against efforts by the Trump administration to rescind California’s waiver that previously allowed it to set its own emissions standards for vehicles — effectively giving the state control of the entire auto industry. The administration argues that California’s policy is actually worse for the environment because higher standards make new cars — which are more energy-efficient than old cars — more difficult for consumers to buy.

The ongoing California wildfires have a variety of causes. The immediate cause of the Getty Fire in Los Angeles, for example, appears to be a tree branch that was blown by high winds into power lines, according to the Los Angeles Times. Critics fault California and its utility companies for spending money on complying with “green” initiatives rather than on burying power lines. Others also cite homeless camps, where past fires have started, and poor forestry management policies that have barred the clearing of brush that can provide fuel for wildfires.

But Brown and other Democrats have identified climate change as the cuplrit, even though there is no scientific evidence to support that claim. In 2015 and in 2017, Brown also blamed climate change for wildfires in California, though scientists disagreed, calling Brown’s arguments an example of “noble-cause corruption.”

California Democrats are facing new criticism at home, as utility companies have begun cutting power to electricity customers in peak fire conditions — a new practice for which the state government seems to have been unprepared.

Good grief

I was in California last week.

I’ll say only 2 things:

FUBAR & SNAFU.

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:
I was in California last week.

I’ll say only 2 things:

FUBAR & SNAFU.

I’d say, “SNFUBAR”. It doesn’t pronounce as well, but “Situation Normal, FU Beyond All Repair.” seems to best describe Cali lately...

As explained quite well above, the disaster in ca has nothing to do with climate change. those responsible for the decades of mismanagement and ineptitude would like everyone to believe it but any rational person can understand what the problem has been and is.

Calipornia
Sometimes a name says it all

LA,Portland,Seattle
They don’t have a homeless problem; they have a drug problem.

JHC!....when in doubt, blame it on the GOP or, Trump.

Nevermind that the Dems have a SUPER MAJORITY in CA gov, ALL the appointed positions to the various oversight and regulatory committees, are DEM controlled. Yet, they're still railing about the other team. You'd think they were giving a speech in Cuba, Nicaragua, or, pick a failed socialist state...always talking about the other side, the revolution! never mind that their party controls the gov.