That's not what I was told. Peak power consumption typically happens shortly after sunset as people turn on lights, TVs, ovens, and so forth. Business and factory loads are winding down at that point but residential loads are winding up at the same time and overlap.

Solar power not only does not help in this case it hurts. There's all kinds of good information on this if you take off your solar powered blinders long enough to read some of it.

Solar is winning? If that was the case then why are these people have a connection to the largely coal powered grid at all? Or, why doesn't the utility just put up their own solar panels then?

Solar power is not winning. If these homeowners with the solar panels on their roof had to pay the real unsubsidized cost of solar power they'd be paying about ten times what coal power costs. After decades of solar power research it still makes up less than 1% of the total electric power produced in the USA. That's not even close to "winning".

Natural gas is winning. Nuclear power is winning. Coal is losing. Wind power is in the race but its still too early to tell if it can win. If the government money dried up for solar power today then all the solar panel makers would not open up tomorrow.

Does coal get a lot of government money too? Yes they do. That just means they should stop getting government money as well as solar.

Solar winning in a "free market"? Not likely. I would like to see a free market though. We used to have one in the USA, I'd like to see it return.

Doing things differently can also mean you don't do them at all.

If you ask someone to sign off on a building design under penalty of prison time then you are going to have a hard time finding someone to sign.

Here's another reason why the corporate veil will never disappear. The people that get elected to office are often also people that own corporations. The government is effectively a corporation too. If you tell an elected official that they can get prison time for signing funding for something that ends up killing people then the government will grind to a halt. If we are going to put people in prison for a building falling down then should not the government officials that allowed the building to get constructed also go to prison?

The "evil corporation" argument means nothing to me any more. Fukushima Diaichi was not just built by some evil corporation, is was built within the regulations defined by the government. The government could have shut down that plant at any time for not having a high enough sea wall, insufficient redundant power supply systems, improper site selection, or any of a number of things wrong with that plant. But the government didn't shut the plant down. They allowed it to operate for decades with its flawed design.

Changing the laws won't help. Who watches the watchmen?

The reasons we have nuclear power disasters is because governments will not allow new and safer nuclear power plants to get built. No government official wants to sign off on a new nuclear power plant precisely because they are "too big to fail". What they will do is allow an old plant to continue operating well past its safe operating life span. That's because if it blows up they can blame some politician that is out of office and probably already dead from old age.

Government is not always the solution, sometimes they are the problem. It's odd that you use Challenger as an example for more government, that was a government project from top to bottom.

So what if they did think it was creepy? Not illegal... and at that point the man will have a family. Try to start something. You'll lose.

I stopped at the third specious argument... I think that was around the fifth sentence.

Pretty much without exception every argument was nonsense.

The price trend is easily tied to ecological regulation.

Oil refineries are paying big taxes and fees that they weren't before. One of the funnier ones requires that they use more ethanol in their fuel then the auto companies will allow them to use. As a result, the oil companies can pay a fine or they can use less then the amount the auto companies consider damaging for the engine. They pay the fine. And that gets passed on to the consumer. Most refineries in the US pay more for this fine then they do for labor. So yes, adding an expense that exceeds labor costs which are often the most expensive component of business operations is going to cause prices to climb.

As to energy pocketing profit from jacking up price. Its true that the government does get a lot of that money. However, they also have limited our ability to drill which has increased the value of sites that can drill which has increased the value of the oil removed from those sites via simple economics. As a result, oil companies ARE making more money because the value of their product by the barrel has increased.

As to conspiracy theories revolving around the ultimate point. I did say that "if I didn't know better" which means I don't believe in the conspiracy which means that implying that I am suggesting one is itself idiotic. Rather, my point was that the environmental movement is not rational or goal orriented in regards to the environment. IF they were, they wouldn't take actions that are this stupid.

As to offloading emotional burden, that is what the keystone pipeline is in the first place. It is not a rational thing to oppose in this way. Its just a political slogan, a symbol, a talking point... for the environmental lobby they don't even know why they oppose it. Its just something to do. Because ironically... they are the sheeple.

And I could go on but to what end... you're a fool and I see no reason to further deconstruct your delusions.

If you raise the price of food we'll still buy it so you shouldn't try to discourage us from using food by interfering with the supply.

Inelastic goods.

Energy is effectively inelastic. Its also a core resource. Its right there with food and water. And you're fucking with it.

Its a basic economic concept.

You're out of your depth. All you're doing is hurting poor people and making everyone angry.

Exactly. That is how I pay for my natural gas, a monthly service fee and charges for BTUs consumed. In the summer my service fee is typically more than my charges for the fuel but in the winter the fees are a fraction of the total bill.

I have no problem with having to pay for the utility to maintain the connection to the service separately to the services provided. If these people want to have the utility buy their power then someone has to pay for the connection. One might assume the utility should pay but it's not the utility that wins out in this arrangement, the homeowner does. Without the utility there the homeowner would have to invest in an expensive battery pack or have the power go out at night.

Without the connection to the utility the homeowner could not sell their power so the homeowner can pay for that connection. The utility might not mind buying the power but the hassle of having to deal with single provider that provides them so little power they might rather not deal with them at all if the utility had to pay for the line to their property too.

The change does not "discourage" wind and solar any more than any other homeowner provided power source. It just turns out that most people don't have a coal fired steam generator on their property.

I can hear it now, "But shouldn't we encourage wind and solar?" I'm not so sure. If wind and solar can't make a profit on its own merits then it's not a viable energy source. "But coal and oil gets subsidies too!" Yep, and they shouldn't get subsidies either. No more energy subsidies.

I like distributed power and we should have more of it. Problem is that the nature of wind and solar have tendencies to destabilize the electric grid. People with solar panels on their roof spreads out the energy generation sources but without utilities keeping the grid in order the rooftop solar panels don't help much. These homeowners need the utility more than the utility needs them. Let them bear the cost of the benefit of the grid connection.

Everyone raise your hand if you know the difference between proprietary software that's closed source, and open source with viewable binaries! That's right kiddies, if you have open source with viewable binaries you can even compile your own, and fix any bugs you find. You can even fork it! You can't do that with closed source, you're at their mercy for patches, fixes, and security holes.

Simple, by requiring that these companies get paid at the same leveled costs as anyone else would without specialized subsidies. In Ontario, if they were competing against the nuclear energy sector which is the largest(providing about 68% of our power) they would be in at 18c/KwH, not 64.8c/KwH, if you wanted to peg them against say Niagara Generation, it would be 2.4c/KwH, and they provide 15-22% of the electricity of the province. The rest is made up from NG, Oil, or Coal. There would also be no special hand outs for "not producing energy."

And really, I would end the policy of selling energy at less than what it costs to the US, than what residents of Ontario can buy it for.

But your second sentence? You're right and so far the Liberal party has done a bang up job of making sure that they're in charge of that rule book and screwing everyone over.

...a utility that would go through my gazillion saved bookmarks from forever, and see if each still has something of value there. :\

I sometimes in an odd moment sift through the oldest, and easily 8/10 are dead links.

It is consistent with appropriate due process against the enemy during war*, including American turncoats, to attack them. If you don't agree then you are apparently against the Constitutional war making powers of Congress, and the President's role as Commander in Chief. You may notice the courts don't have a role there.

* Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force, equivalent to a declaration of war.

Correction: Crony capitalism is a failure. Finest example of this is in Germany and Ontario with "Feed in Tariffs" for all the "green energy producers" where we pay excessively high prices including to pay them to not to produce energy. And that can be as much as $0.70/KwH.

He doesn't have to go anywhere. All he had to do was not break the law in the first place.

You make good points, but I think EMP would be considered as a sort of "decapitation" strike while not necessarily creating the conditions for a full nuclear counter-strike.

How much in the way of modern microelectronics was in use at the time of Starfish Prime as opposed to vacuum tubes which are much more resistant? The ability of EMP to damage modern computers is known.

How much would the EMP attack be enhanced by optimizing the warhead for that in a fashion similar to what is done for neutron bombs?

If EMP doesn't do that much, why would the military harden its electronics against it?

If you've only got one shot in the face of missile defenses, do you go for an obvious high value target that may fail, or maybe something else?

Either way I think that it is prudent to take steps to harden the infrastructure, especially where it can be done at moderate cost.