Thanks as always to The Other McCain, Bacon Time, Pirate’s Cove and Whores and Ale for the Rule Five links!  Also, check out the latest installment in my current fiction series over at Glibertarians.

Now then:  I found this an interesting read:  The Day The Electricity Died.  Excerpt:

First, we need to understand a little bit about how electric grids work. They cannot store electricity without a battery. Batteries are scarce and expensive. Electric demand must be met with electricity generation, always. If supply cannot keep up with demand, the utility will shut down electricity for some or many.

For nearly a week, Texas utilities were unable to meet demand. They shut down the electric grid. Five million people lost power, and from 250 to 700 died. If an electric grid breaks, all the people it serves will be without electricity for weeks or months.

Nonetheless, Progressives favor energy policies that will make grid failures more frequent, widespread, and prolonged. They want to close coal plants without enough full-time power ready to take their place. They seem unconcerned about reliability. They want coal plants torn down even if we have to keep paying them—like selling your car to get a newer one while you still owe lots on the first.

The people of the upper Midwest will pay the price this summer. Their multi-state grid operator, MISO, has warned that it will be 5 GWs short of electricity this summer. California also could be up to5 GWs short, enough to power 1.3 million homes. Texas warned that there might not be enough electricity for last week’s unexpected 90° weather, or for hotter days coming this summer.

What do they all have in common? Increasing their reliance on solar and wind and closing coal plants. A dirty green secret is that coal is full-time power and wind and solar are not. Electric grids must have full-time, on-demand power all the time—plus some—or blackouts are guaranteed.

The author refers to “Progressives,” but most of the policies attributed to those people here are regressive – as in, regressing our technological society back to about 1850.

Truth is, our current technological society if a tremendous, tottering house of cards.  (Read William R. Forstchen’s One Second After to get a look at what a complete collapse of the electrical grid might look like.)  Anything that could disrupt that house of cards – already very fragile – has civilization-ending possibilities.  Some folks will come through better than others, of course; plenty of folks up here in the Great Land as well as in rural communities elsewhere in the States are capable of fending for themselves.

But imagine our major cities going without power for even a few days.  Then imagine them going without for weeks, or months.

“Catastrophe” doesn’t begin to cover it – but that’s where “green” energy policies are driving us.