Saturday, September 30, 2023
Thermodynamically Competent
The wind industry’s capital costs were very high before the Ukraine crisis, and now, like everybody else’s, are shooting up still further: the cost of steel, concrete, carbon fibre, copper and all the other ingredients of a wind turbine have risen sharply. Operating costs are rising. Inevitably, the energy generated by wind is expensive.
And…wind itself is thermodynamically inferior. Consequently, it takes a huge machine — the building of which requires a lot of energy — to extract a small amount of electricity from randomly fluctuating, low-density wind, which bloweth as and when it listeth. By contrast, in a nuclear plant, it takes a small machine to produce a flood of energy from a dense, “thermodynamically competent” energy source, and on demand.
Via John Hinderaker.
Trump = Electoral Disaster
Well, Donald, that is how it works. All kinds of people, most of them people I disagree with, use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE. I take it that Trump is threatening to drive NBC off the air (MSNBC doesn’t use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA) for being dishonest. Obviously, that isn’t going to happen. It would be unconstitutional. It would blow up in Trump’s face. The FCC by law is bipartisan, and Trump couldn’t find a single remotely qualified appointee who would undertake to revoke NBC’s broadcast license. The whole thing is idiotic.
But that is Donald Trump. He does some good things, and then he nullifies them with inexpressibly stupid behavior like this. Everyone who pays attention knows that threats to free speech and the First Amendment come from the left, not the right. But by pronouncements like this one, Trump enables the Democrats to paint Republicans as the enemies of free speech. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And sadly typical.
Mediocrity
That Hillary Clinton is ungracious is not new information. That she continues to be obsessed with her own political ups and downs has been apparent for quite a while. But she is also not very intelligent. For many years, Democrats have tried to promote Hillary Clinton as a uniquely brilliant person, the flower of Yale-educated womanhood, more than a match for any man. In fact, she was never more than a mediocre and unoriginal intellect, and a not very competent administrator. She has gone downhill steadily from there, as her State Department appearance exemplifies.
We should all be eternally grateful that this utter mediocrity never became president.
