Wind Turbines Cause Bats to Explode

Wind projects have been encountering a pesky problem – exploding bats. (Not kidding). The environmental sciences have come up with an ingenious solution – shut down the wind turbines! (Really, I’m not kidding). So now that we’ve solved that problem (saving bats by shutting down wind turbines) we’re all set to mandate more wind energy. (Huh?) Here’s the article:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/23/wind-turbine-advocates-test-a-solution-to-explodin/

Personally, I'd prefer the bats over the windmills - at least bats are useful in that they eat bugs. But what the story really exposes is the disconnect between legitimate environmentalists (those trying to save the bats) and the illegitimate environmentalists (those trying to peddle windmills.)

Wind power, like solar power, in the power industry, is considered a joke; it only generates energy around 15% of the time in the best of circumstances (whereas power customers expect 24-hour service) and almost never during the period of peak demand, and is many times more expensive than conventional energy sources (gas, coal, hydro, nuclear, etc.)

So, as the engineer for a non-profit cooperative, whose main concern is to provide the best service to my customers for the least cost, it galls me to be asked (or worse, forced) to buy unreliable but expensive energy and then in turn force the members of my cooperative to pay extra for it. It is simply immoral.

As for creative painting, my experience is that paint doesn't stick to steel poles very well, so it's much better to leave them either plain galvanized or self weathering. I'm attaching a photo that I took of a power line with steel poles to illustrate that very point. As you can imagine, not very many people are volunteering to get up on the steel pole between the wires, energized at 345,000 volts, to repaint the structures.

The "Controversial" Topic

If you are shopping for a gun safe, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars, although you can. I purchased a very nice, medium size gun safe at Sportsman's Warehouse for just $300. It gives me a place to park the guns that I'm not keeping out for an emergency. I have some trigger locks that came with various gun purchases, but I don't use them; either the gun is in the safe or it's out and ready to use.

For an emergency around the house, nothing works better than a 12 gauge pump action shotgun. The sound of the action being pumped is distinctive enough to dissuade most invaders. I had worried that my wife would need to go down to a 20 gauge, but we have found that she is very good with a 12 gauge - she can hit more clay pigeons that I can and I've been shooting all my life. (But I'm still the best shot with a rifle.)

As for other calibers, there is something to be said for "caliber consolidation" - which is to choose guns with a common caliber so it is easier to find or trade ammunition. Following that line of reasoning, you should know that the military and police use .40 caliber pistols (usually Glocks), .308 rifles for sniping (or hunting, if you're a civilian), and .223 for assault rifles (for crowd control.) For my assault rifle I chose a 5.56 NATO caliber which will also shoot a .223 - that gives me two rounds to choose from, just in case.

Ammunition and guns have become very scarce and expensive since the election back in November 2008, BUT I keep asking myself: when the dollar becomes worthless and all of my "electronic funds" (like savings accounts, CD's, money markets, stocks, bonds, retirement fund, IRA, 401k) evaporate, what will I wish I had spent my money on back when I had the chance? Certainly food is at the top of the list. So are real property, vehicles, and guns and ammunition.

The attached photo is of three generations target shooting together. "The family that shoots together..."

Spring Break at Disneyland

We drove to Anaheim after church on Sunday the 15th of March. The traffic between Las Vegas and Barstow, California was absolutely brutal; stop and go the whole way. So our six hour drive turned into eight. But early Monday morning we got up and hit the park right at opening. First thing in the morning the park is pretty empty and we RAN from ride to ride, doing all of our favorites before the park got busy and the lines got long. So we hit “Pirates of the Caribbean” “Haunted Mansion” and “Indiana Jones” a couple of times first off, and then over to “Buzz Lightyear” (my personal favorite.) We also collected Fast Passes all morning so that by the afternoon we had a collection of passes that got us on to all of our rides without a wait. We had the three-day park hopper passes, but we spent the whole of Monday in the Disneyland park. At the end of the day we hit some of the big motion rides, like “Space Mountain” and “Star Tours”, and I ended up pretty green around the gills.

On Tuesday we got up early again and did our one early entrance day to Disneyland and executed our speed round of our favorite rides before heading over to the California adventure land when they opened a couple of hours later. There they had a new ride, “Toy Story 3-D”, which is my new favorite in California land. Mom and the girls did the roller coaster, but my stomach was still out of sorts from the day before, so I sat and held their purses for them. We lazed around the California land, hitting the “Tower of Terror”, “Monsters Inc.”, and “Bugs’ Life” until it closed that evening and then we went back to Disneyland for seconds on our favorite rides. Wednesday we did a combination of the two parks, hopping back and forth and hitting our favorites all around. All three nights we stayed until after the evening fireworks, almost until closing. I’m attaching a photo of us in front of Tomorrowland just before the fireworks. And then on Thursday morning, but not too early so as to avoid the rush hour, we headed back home to St. George where we found everything just as we’d left it. So, this was another successful family trip.

Misery Index

Back in the 70’s and 80’s, when we compared the economy to past years, to decide if it was getting better or worse, we talked about the “Misery Index.” It’s simply the sum of the unemployment, inflation, and interest rates. No one is talking about this index these days because they prefer to talk about the “worst economy since the Great Depression.” Just as an intellectual exercise I decided to recreate the Misery Index back to 1960 to see where we really stand. You can see on the chart that we’re not even half as miserable as we were back under Jimmy Carter. We’re not even as bad as we were under Nixon. Yet.

Where do we go from here? I’m guessing that the economy is going to get superheated by all of the deficit spending and we’ll see the inflation rate go from its current rate of zero to something HUGE. Then the government will drive up interest rates, to try to get inflation under control, and then we’ll WISH we had a misery index of only 40%. That’s my bet. So, I’m doing what the (LDS) Prophet says and I’m getting my year’s supply and planting a garden.

OK OK

Dear Friend,

Let me apologize for piling on. I will no longer inflict my conservative e-mails on you (or at least, I will do my best to remember not to do that - my capacity for remembering is somewhat diminished of late.) I would feel bad if you were offended by something I did or said.

And just for the record, I am also offended by the hypocrisy of the Republican Party - probably more so than you are - they really can't have it both ways. All of this deficit spending was just as bad when W Bush was doing it as it is now with Obama doing it - it's just that Obama is making Bush look conservative by contrast. And no conservative would ever be in favor of any bailout, nationalization, or abridgement of civil liberties, all of which proves that we have precious few conservatives in the Republican Party. In fact, the Republicans have NO claim on conservativism; and, as a conservative, I am shopping for a new party (and not finding one.)

I hope you will at least remember that while I am currently extremely unhappy with Obama and everything he is doing, I was equally unhappy with W Bush before him (see: http://powerletters.blogspot.com/2006/03/president-george-w-bush-and-iraq.html one of my first posts from back in 2006,) Clinton before that, and Bush and Reagan before that. Well, now that I think about it, I wasn't happy with Carter either. And since my first political memory is of Nixon resigning, I never really had a first-hand opinion of him, but in retrospect I don't like him at all - he was entirely too liberal (do the acronyms EPA and OSHA ring a bell?).

As far as I can tell, all of our presidents during my lifetime have been exactly the same - they just change party labels to make it sound like change is happening, just to make the voters feel like their opinions mean anything. Our political machines seem an awful lot like professional wrestling, where someone unseen behind the scenes is pre-determining who is going to win the match, while the match itself is just for show.

Can you tell that I'm disgusted with the whole thing? 8 years of W Bush were painful enough, and now Obama is just more of the same - a LOT more. Sorry to bother you with my politics - my wife gets tired of it too.

My trip to New Orleans

I started my trip on Saturday the 14th of February (leaving my wife home with the girls for Valentine’s Day.) On Saturday afternoon I drove myself up to the airport here in St. George and caught a plane for New Orleans, via Salt Lake City. I traveled with management and directors from my co-op, as well as a bunch of other managers and directors from the other co-ops in Utah. We were in New Orleans for the Annual Meeting of our national organization; they hold it in a different major city each year (last year it was in Anaheim and the year before that it was in Las Vegas.) When we got in to our hotel late Saturday night we were informed that they’d overbooked their rooms, so we were all doubled up in rooms for one night. So I ended up bunking with our Board Chairman; we had separate bedrooms but shared a bathroom in a large suite.

On Sunday morning I got up and met with some salesmen for a breakfast meeting, and then headed over to the big Expo, where I spent four hours chatting with salesmen and checked out all the latest in the new technology. It was fun to chat with my buddies from Abilene, TX where I used to work back in the early 90's. While I was there I bumped in to my old colleague from Bolivia and chummed around with him for a couple of hours. We ate lunch with the group up from Guatemala; it was fun to reminisce with them about our project there back in 2000-01. One of the guys was from one of the towns for which I built power lines, so he was appreciative of my efforts. I also ran into my colleague who is currently managing the project in the Dominican Republic. It was lots of fun. You could tell that New Orleans was smack in the middle of Mardi Gras week because they had parade floats lined up all along the street outside our hotel on Sunday morning and ran parades all day that day. I didn’t see the parades because I was in the expo, but I assumed that I’d have lots of other chances to see parades because when I was last in New Orleans, back in 2004, they had parades through the French Quarter every night I was there. Unfortunately for me, I found out too late that after Sunday they weren’t going to have any more parades until the night after we left New Orleans. Oops. That evening our billing software vendor took us out to dinner; it was a pretty lame meal, which is especially sad considering that we were in New Orleans, which is famous for its great food. So after the disappointing dinner I went on a walkabout with my CEO and his wife; we strolled through the French Quarter and down Bourbon Street looking for souvenirs (I found my typical round of souvenirs.)

On Monday morning we started our main meetings; it was a bit discouraging to hear from our national organization that “resistance is futile” and that there WILL be a carbon tax imposed on electric utilities this year. No surprise there since the democrats, who swept the elections this past fall, all come from states that will be the least impacted by the carbon tax, so it’s the best way for them to poke us in the eye here in Utah and around the west (except the left coast.) On a positive note: I ran into a gaggle of my buddies from the international program at the main meeting, including my pals from Yemen, Sudan/Nigeria, the DR, the Philippines, Guatemala, and from Afghanistan (but no one from Bangladesh.) I also met the two new engineers that they’ve hired for the main office, who both told me that they “knew” me from having to study the manuals that I’d written on how to do international rural electrification projects. That evening I met my buddy Eric for dinner. He’s honchoing the new big project in Yemen for which I did the feasibility study. That night we went to one of the restaurants recommended in my Lonely Planet guidebook and the food was wonderful.

On Tuesday we had more of our big meetings, and again we were told that we just had to reconcile ourselves to the impending carbon tax and that the best we could hope for was to get some funding from Obama’s $3T “stimulus” package; sad days – they’re trying to nationalize the utilities, like they have the banks and auto manufacturers. Around mid-day I went with my CEO and his wife out to the lower 9th ward, the area that was devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. We asked the clerk at the front desk of our hotel if she could give us an address in the flooded area and she gave us her own home address. She also told us that she was neither helped out by her insurance company nor any governmental agency. So we plugged her address into our GPS and drove out there; we found her home still ruined (see attached photo,) along with most of her neighborhood. There were very few homes that have been fixed in the four years since the big flood, but I’m not sure why anyone would fix their home in an area that has proven to be a flood hazard. We stopped for a yummy lunch a Cuban place, also recommended in my guidebook. That afternoon I didn’t have any meetings to go to, so I wandered up the neighborhood to check out the Civil War museum, but it was closed. So I toddled back over to the French Quarter and checked out Royal Street and the “Historic Voodoo Museum”; Royal Street was very pretty, but the museum was disappointing – two small rooms of dusty junk and a few pictures on the wall. That night a group of eight of us from our co-op went out to dinner together to one of New Orleans’s famous restaurants (the chef has a famous TV show;) the food was very good, although the dessert was bland.

On Wednesday we wrapped up our conference on a high note: our final speaker was Chris Gardner, the subject of Will Smith’s movie “Pursuit of Happyness.” He spoke to us for an hour or so and it was very enjoyable. So I bought his book and a video and had him autograph it. I’m looking forward to reading the book and seeing the video (not of the movie – I think it’s a video of his lecture.) After that talk we all headed back to the hotel to check out and mosey over to the airport. From New Orleans we flew to Salt Lake City via Atlanta GA; we had to make a big detour around an active storm front. We were fortunate – the other group from Utah, which were on the later flight, got stuck in Atlanta for the night when the storm blew into town and stuck around for a while. And yes, a week in New Orleans saw me put on three new pounds.