Energy
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Genesis 1:24
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”
‘Staying with some family members in Kentucky, I was delighted one dark evening to see little flashes of light in the air, low over the garden lawn. Although I was too far away to see the insects concerned, these must have been fireflies. Fireflies are not actually flies – they are beetles. Their light-producing organs are in their abdomens. Most species use these bioluminescent displays for courtship.
The bioluminescence is caused by a type of luciferin molecule, commonly called firefly luciferin. The name has nothing to do with evil! It comes from the Latin word for light. Firefly luciferin reacts with oxygen, and the reaction is catalyzed by an enzyme, luciferase, as well as the presence of magnesium ions and adenosine triphosphate – the energy-giving molecule ATP. Luciferin first forms another highly tensed molecule called a dioxetane, which releases CO2 to form a ketone. The ketone is in a highly excited electronic state, so it “relaxes” back to normal state by releasing energy. This energy is at exactly the right frequency to be in the visible light range. The fireflies in Kentucky emitted yellow light.
If one were an evolutionist, one would have to wonder – what would have been the evolutionary advantage for the beetle to produce luciferase if there was no luciferin, or vice versa? We have a lot more work to do to investigate the chemistry of the process, but we still marvel at the wonder of God’s design for these insects.’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/fireflies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fireflies&mc_cid=5dc2fcd79c&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
‘Alcoa Corporation today announced new agreements with multiple power generators for the Portland Aluminium Smelter in the Australian state of Victoria. The five-year agreements with AGL, Alinta Energy and Origin will each commence August 1, 2021, when an existing agreement with AGL expires on July 31, 2021.
The Australian Federal Government has committed, subject to approval, to provide up to $14.8 (A$19.2) million per year for four years to underwrite the smelter’s participation in the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) scheme. The arrangement will recognize the smelter’s ability to rapidly shed load when required to help protect the power grid from unexpected interruptions when it is under duress.
In addition, in recognition of the valuable contribution Portland Aluminium makes to the Victorian economy, the Victorian Government has agreed in principle to a funding package to match the Federal Government contribution.’https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/alcoa-announces-multi-repowering-australia-223000804.html
Genesis 1:28 “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
Wouldn’t it be marvelous if God had given us a material from which we could extract energy? The material could be solid so that its energy content would be concentrated, and it could be mostly carbon, so that when we burned it, the most common product of combustion would be safe, non-poisonous carbon dioxide. Perhaps it could contain small amounts of other useful materials which we could easily extract for multiple purposes while burning it to prevent these materials polluting the air. And the material could exist in large quantities underground, even in areas of the world where other natural resources are few.
God has given us such a material. It is called coal. It is very possible that a lot of the Earth’s coal was formed during the worldwide Flood.
It is popular to despise coal today. It is true that smoke and sulfur dioxide are pollutants, but today they can easily be removed. Meanwhile, we have frequently explained in these Creation Moments that carbon dioxide is actually beneficial for plant life and is not causing the problems ascribed to it by certain climate alarmists. Moreover, large deposits of coal are being found in developing countries that could lift their populations out of poverty with the utilization of this God-given resource.
Let’s not overlook the resources that God has given us in our pursuit of other alternatives. Such resources are for our blessing, and it is ungrateful for humanity to ignore them.’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/god-gave-us-coal/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=god-gave-us-coal&mc_cid=57f550fdd6&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
The Australian Federal Government along with every state is driving the cost of electricity beyond what the average person can afford. What is the Government’s answer to the high cost of electricity? Take note this is from an Australian Federal Government web site!
‘Cooling choices
- ceiling, pedestal and personal fans (low to medium cost)
- electric reverse-cycle air conditioners (medium to high cost)
- electric evaporative cooling (medium to high cost)
- intake of cool night air (free)
- purging of hot air (free)’https://www.energy.gov.au/households/heating-and-cooling
So, to save money on electricity the cheapest way is NOT to USE IT!! Now, I am old enough to remember what it was like living in Iowa in the middle of summer in the early 50’s without air-conditioning. That’s EXACTLY what these climate scam politicians want us to live like in 2020! I would say we can let them know what we think at the ballot box but I think the recent Presidential election in the USA gives an idea of where that would go.
Now, take time to read the following.
So-called smart meters are a very dumb response to intermittent wind and solar, even dumber energy sources. Wherever governments attempt to run on sunshine and breezes, the push to control and micromanage household power use, quickly follows.
Over the last few Australian summers, we’ve been treated to power rationing on a grand scale – which the Market Operator euphemistically tags “demand management”.
‘Demand management’ is not about supplying power consumers with what they need, it simply means shutting off power to industry, businesses and households – and even forcing hospitals to switch their lights and air conditioners off – among other indignities, whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in. That’s what our ‘inevitable transition’ looks like at the macro level.
At the micro level, there’s the push to have smart meters installed in every home or business premise, in order that the grid manager can literally hold consumers to ransom, whenever renewable energy output collapses.
Now that the choice is between paying through the nose or freezing or boiling in the dark, a few are starting to wake-up to what’s really going on behind the meter.
The Critics Of ‘Smart Meters’ Were Right All Along
The Daily Telegraph
Ross Clarke
19 September 2020
Once electricity companies have established the principle that they can cut off consumers in order to cope with shortages of supply, they are bound to come back asking for more.
Imagine that you do as the Government wants you to do and buy an electric car. Then you replace your dirty old gas boiler with an electric heat pump and install a smart meter. You think you have done your bit to help the environment.
So what is your reward? To have your electricity company use your smart meter to turn off your power because there is not enough juice in the grid. Suddenly, you find yourself sitting in a cold home and your plans to drive to Birmingham tomorrow are scuppered because your car won’t be fully-charged.
Smart meters have been sold to us as part of a green future where we can manage our homes via mobile phone, switching appliances on and off remotely so as to cut our bills. But it is the cynics, so often denounced in the past few years as paranoid and backward-thinking, who have worked out the real reason why electricity companies are so keen to install them in our homes: they want to ration our electricity.
It isn’t just us who will enjoy the convenience of being able to access our appliances remotely. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks has proposed a system in which it will be able to turn off certain devices in our homes, such as electric vehicle chargers and heat pumps, when the supply of electricity is too small to meet demand.
For the moment, the company says it will only do so with consumers’ permission and that it will only be for two hours at a time. But I don’t expect that promise to last. Once electricity companies have established the principle that they can cut off consumers in order to cope with shortages of supply, they are bound to come back asking for more. And at the current rate, they will have to do this, because we simply don’t have enough storage in the electricity grid to cope with the switch to renewable energy.
Here’s the problem. Yesterday afternoon, Britain was using 34 GW worth of power. It was a sunny and windy day across much of England – ideal conditions for renewable energy. Wind was producing 5.3 GW and solar 7.6 GW, with most of the rest being produced by gas (12.1 GW) and nuclear (4.7 GW). We were also importing 1 GW from the Netherlands.
But what happens when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, as it all-too-frequently does in cold, anticyclonic conditions in midwinter, when demand for power is at its greatest? Moreover, what happens when electricity demand has been boosted by the switch to electric central heating and electric vehicles?
It ought to be obvious that if we are going to rely on intermittent sources of energy we are going to need massive investment in energy storage. Quietly over the past few years, large battery installations, housed in rows of shipping containers, have indeed popped up across Britain. At present, however, there are only enough of them to meet 1 GW worth of demand – and even then only for an hour or two. The Government is desperately trying to encourage more batteries by speeding them through the planning system. Even chuck in proposed capacity, however, and it would only supply another 4 GW of electricity for an hour or so.
But don’t expect even these batteries to get built. The Government is trying to solve the problem of a lack of energy storage through what is calls “capacity auctions”. The bids for batteries, however, are losing out to something called Demand Side Response. If you haven’t heard that jargon before, it means exactly what Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks is proposing to do: persuading people to turn off appliances when electricity demand is too high.
In other words, the electricity industry has worked out that it is going to be cheaper not to bother building batteries but instead to cut us off when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing. As far as the Government’s capacity market is concerned, a kilowatt-hour of energy saved is the equivalent of a kilowatt-hour stored.
For the consumer, however, there is every difference. Cutting off our electricity threatens seriously to interfere with our lives – especially if we are going to have to rely on electric cars and heating systems in future. It doesn’t matter too much if our heating goes off for a few minutes, but if electricity companies try to plug the enormous gap between supply and demand on a still winter’s night entirely by cutting off our electricity supply to demand, we are going to find ourselves sitting in the dark rather a lot.
Unless the Government acts quickly on this problem and invests in a proper energy storage infrastructure – either that or finds another way to back up supply from intermittent wind and solar – we are going to be back in 1973 and the three-day week, when homes had to take it in turns to go without electricity. Then, it was the miners’ unions who were to blame; now it is a failure to plan properly for a green future.’https://stopthesethings.com/2020/11/04/held-to-ransom-smart-meters-shut-off-power-whenever-renewable-energy-output-collapses/
This green energy deal is simply the pagan Gaia religion. Guess who they want to win?
However, ‘In a refreshingly honest article in the Boston Review, David McDermott Hughes confirms something that we energy evangelists have been saying for some time: Environmentalists do not simply want people to transition to “green energy,” they want humanity put on energy rationing, for the good of the planet. Now, apparently, they’ve also decided that we need to add intermittent fasting to our energy diet because, gosh darnit, electricity in developed countries like the United States is just too darn reliable for our own good! It needs to go out once in a while, or, well, the planet is doomed.
According to Hughes, “For those seriously concerned about climate change, the inverse—the demand for electrical continuity—may be the real problem.” Yes, you read that right, the desire to have electricity available 24/7 is the cause of our global climate catastrophe, and we need to learn to live with intermittent energy like the happy campers of Zimbabwe and Puerto Rico which “provide models for what we might call pause-full electricity.”
And who is first on the new electricity diet? Why, you are, you single-family home-dwelling environmental heretic. Hughes explains that “…each household demanding continuous electricity marginally exacerbates the climate crisis. Perhaps, then, it is critical that we not store energy for these houses. At least, we should not do so in a way that hobbles the transition away from fossil fuels. We ought to consider waiting a few years for storage—enduring much more than six hours of downtime every year—for the sake of transitioning more rapidly away from fossil fuels.”
Surely you can handle a “few years” of intermittent blackouts and brownouts, right, suburbanites?
This energy-rationing agenda has been hidden, heretofore, by a huge raft of bogus promises that would make the switch to renewables easy. Batteries, we were told, will adapt so fast that we can go ahead and just build out wind and solar power, while letting conventional power plants wither and die, and everybody will have their cake and eat it too! Unfortunately, the reality of battery storage limitations is just too obvious to people who see, day in and day out, the reality of batteries: they aren’t getting that much stronger over time. As Mark Mills, of the Manhattan Institute points out (and do read the whole thing!):
About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent of one pound of hydrocarbons.
At least 100 pounds of materials are mined, moved and processed for every pound of battery fabricated.
Storing the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil, which weighs 300 pounds, requires 20,000 pounds of Tesla batteries ($200,000 worth).
Carrying the energy equivalent of the aviation fuel used by an aircraft flying to Asia would require $60 million worth of Tesla-type batteries weighing five times more than that aircraft.
And even Hughes now admits that, well, making batteries is environmentally destructive, and environmentalists don’t want you doing that, even if you can. After all, batteries are just not woke:
Lithium-ion batteries are moving into position to overcome that constraint, but they create problems of their own. Like most form of mining, lithium extraction produces toxins—imposed, on this case, on indigenous down-winders in Chile. Also like mining, the lithium trade concentrates power and wealth in the hands of few, corporations. Sometimes called “bottlenecking,” this process converts a resource too plentiful for profit—like sunlight—into a scarce and lucrative commodity. Not even environmental savior Elon Musk is safe from abuse, because, it seems, Tesla “seems on track to gain a controlling share of any smart grid connected to electric vehicles; its Powerwall battery is out-competing less toxic technologies, and it could eventually dovetail with software known as “demand response.”
Oh My God. You mean, Elon Musk is a – gasp – businessman? Perish forbid!
The moral of this story is, when the “green” energy, “green economy,” “green new deal” types tell you that all they really want is for you to have “greener” energy, what they mean is that they want you to have less. Less quantity, less reliability, less affordability, and less consumer flexibility. And you can take that to the ballot box.’https://papundits.wordpress.com/2020/11/02/reliable-electricity-bah-humbug/
Australian politicians must have a death wish for the nation. Why would I say that? ‘Australia’s renewable energy policy reads more like a suicide note than an energy roadmap. In a couple of months – as temperatures rise and, so too, the demand for electricity to power millions of air conditioners – the power rationing will begin in earnest (again) and the daily spot price for electricity will go through the roof (again).
Like the alcoholic husband who keeps promising his long-suffering wife that he’ll go easy on the grog next time, those in charge of Australia’s energy debacle quickly forget what happened the summer before, and the summer before that.
Instead of getting serious about serious power generation, energy ministers, both state and federal, just keep on keeping on – with mandated renewable energy targets, soft loans and endless subsidies to wind and solar.
The result is that Australia’s reliable, dispatchable and dependable fleet of coal-fired power plants are unable to turn a profit, denied the ability to deliver power around-the-clock. The long-term consequence is a slow and inevitable destruction of Australia’s once reliable and affordable power supply.https://stopthesethings.com/2020/10/22/renewables-reckoning-wind-solar-deliver-power-pricing-supply-calamity/
whatyareckon 