Best Energy Picks - August 3, 2024

Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.

This week’s best energy picks:

Coal: It's A Very Real Thing — Desert Mayhem from Yet Another Big Lithium Battery Fire! — We Must Think About Fossil Fuels in A Balanced Way — Back to Diesel for Virtue-Signaling School District — and much more.

Coal: It's A Real Thing

One of readers has authored this wonderful piece:

[This is a] picture is 110 aluminum train cars carrying 114 tons of coal each. Where is it going and why is it going there? Well, one has to understand the markings on the car, and the track that it is on. This particular load is going to Pennsylvania. power generation companies often if large either own or lease their own cars. BNSF simply delivers them.

You can tell where the coal is going by what track it is on and the car markings. For example (this is old and I use it on purpose because they do not exist anymore) TXU 5901. That marking on a car means it was either owned by or leased to Texas Utilities car number 5901. Think on that, in its hey day TXU had under lease, 14,000 cars, and another 22,000 under lease. Contemplate that 36,000 cars that hold 114 tons of coal each. That is a lot of black bottom.

A fellow by the name of T. Boone Pickens, some may remember him, along with a gal you all know (Nancy Pelosi) decided that Texas should have wind power. He jumped on the band wagon of wind when almost no one else was even thinking about it. It worked, he made millions.

Most of his early wind farms are either dead or in dire straights. Wind is expensive to fix when it reaches age. T. Boone’s epiphany (grifting) made him and Nancey very rich. He did the same thing with Nat Gas too, and killed every coal plant in Texas. FACT. TXU does not exist anymore, Big Brown Steam Electric, an Iconic Texas plant does not exist anymore, where its workers went who knows.

This is not a dig at Texas Gas, you all do a wonderful job making up for the short falls of that really short sighted policy that Texas took. If Big Brown and a couple of her sisters were still on line, chugging Powder River Basin Coal, your ERCOT would not be having the issues it is.

Be careful when two clowns in the political world try to sell you a bag of pixie dust and unicorn farts.

The black stuff, coal, oil and gas is and are what makes your life work. CO2 is not the enemy, in fact it is a source of life…

The only difference between oil and coal are how we package it, and how we use it. Oil has the great ability to be chemically stripped and used for more things then coal. That is changing however.

All fossil hate is the hate of energy that gives us the lives we have. Period.

Love the last line. Fossil fuel haters are nihilists.

Hat Tip: R.N.

Desert Mayhem from Yet Another Big Lithium Battery Fire

Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere in our life today, powering our cell phones, chainsaws and watches, but pack them close together or build bigger batteries and there’s bigger risk:

Some X users have described the traffic chaos near Baker, California, on the northbound lanes of I-15 as 'carmageddon.' This followed road closures on Friday that extended well into the weekend due to an overturned truck carrying lithium-ion batteries that ignited on fire. 

As of early Sunday, the California Highway Patrol wrote on X, "I-15 N/B at Harvard Rd remains closed," adding, "Crews are currently grading the dirt around the trailer housing the hazardous material. Heavy-duty equipment is on scene, and efforts to move the trailer will continue once deemed safe for the crews." 

"A crisis situation is unfolding in the California desert. Thousands of people headed to Las Vegas have been stuck on the I-40 for many hours, running out of gas and water. This is all due to the lithium battery truck fire that closed down I-15 yesterday," X user Las Vegas Locally wrote on X late Saturday afternoon. 

Drivers caught in the massive traffic backup were furious. 

"A different sort of energy crisis, also caused by alternative energy (a lithium battery fire)," X user Josh Young wrote. 

The dangers of the 'green' energy transition are not being disclosed to the American people by radical leftists in the White House. There is limited transparency and unaccountability…

Though caused by a traffic accident rather than occurring spontaneously, the latest battery fire in the California desert highlights a major issue: firefighting crews nationwide are unprepared for EV fires.

Promoters of electrification, especially government, are not telling us the whole story. These are not ordinary fires.

Hat Tip: D.S.

We Must Think About Fossil Fuels with Honesty

The great Alex Epstein (who has, from the beginning, been correct about the way to fight back against the idiocy) has put together a bunch of Energy Sound Bites that are just terrific. Here are a few:

• Most “experts” look at the negatives of fossil fuels but ignore huge positives.

• Many “experts” ignore that much of the world would starve without fertilizer from natural gas.

• Many “experts” ignore that much of the world would starve without oil-powered agricultural machines…

• If we just looked at the negatives of antibiotics and ignored the positives, billions would die…

• Fossil fuels do impact climate—but even there we must consider positives along with negatives.

• We can’t just look at how warming increases heat waves, we also must look at lives saved from cold.

• A huge, ignored climate positive we get from fossil fuels is the ability to master climate danger.

• Fossil fueled cooling allows us to dramatically reduce danger from heat.

• Fossil fueled heating allows us to dramatically reduce danger from cold.

• Fossil fueled irrigation allows us to dramatically reduce danger from drought…

• The climate death rate has decreased by 98% over the last century as fossil fuel use has risen.

There many more and still more here.

Hat Tip: R.N.

Back to Diesel for Virtue-Signaling School District

On July 25, Megan Davey Limarzi, Inspector General of Montgomery County, Maryland, issued a blistering memorandum regarding her office's (OIG) investigation into Montgomery County Public Schools' catastrophic management of an electric bus contract, which has cost taxpayers millions and forced MCPS to rely on diesel buses.The sad story began with the usual virtue signaling…

"On February 23, 2021, as part of its commitment to sustainability, MCPS announced it was replacing 326 diesel school buses with electric school buses," Limarzi wrote.

That ambitious purchase came at a cost of $168,684,990…

Alas, Limarzi found that the electric bus contractor "did not deliver any of the buses expected in FY2022 through FY2024 by August 1st as required by the agreement’s delivery schedule."

Nor will the contractor meet said delivery goal for the 2024-25 school year.

With that in mind, MCPS should have assessed fees, as it would have done under a diesel bus contract. But it did not do so, which cost an additional $1.8 million.

This led Limarzi to conclude that MCPS had utterly fleeced taxpayers.

"MCPS’s failure to hold the contractor accountable to the terms of the contract and their decision not to include provisions to offset incurred expenses has led to millions of dollars in wasteful spending," the local inspector general wrote.

Furthermore, MCPS ignored the electric buses' chronic mechanical failures.

"Mechanical and/or charging infrastructure issues resulted in buses not being able to run routes on more than 280 instances from February 10, 2022, through March 31, 2024," Limarzi wrote.

And yet, despite the contractor's repeated failures to service the buses, MCPS inexplicably assessed no fees. That decision cost taxpayers another $372,100.

Incredibly, lost fees alone cost taxpayers more than $2.1 million.

Meanwhile, MCPS has spent another $14,749,919 on 90 diesel buses to cover the shortfall. Thus, in light of the original purchase, the total cost to taxpayers has approached $200 million.

This is what happens when government is turned over to special interests, which is the case in nearly every urban area where the rich and poor dominate and the common sense middle class has been eviscerated.

Hat Tip: T.Z.

And, Briefly:

Texas Pipeline Capacity Crunch May Restrict US Oil Exports, from S.H.

“CopenPay” – Europe’s First Climate-Centric Social Credit Scheme, from D.S.

The Great ‘Green Economy’ Is Failing As Costs Hammer Consumers, from S.H.

Global Power Demand Is Soaring, IEA Expects 4% Growth in ’24 & ‘25, from R.B.

Lie to Me: How Climate Change Hype Is Our Insurance Problem, from S.H.

The UN’s Green Agenda Will Spark Famine, from R.N.

Not Even Super Woke Austin Can Afford the Shift to EV Buses, from D.B.

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