__________
#7 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-05-09 12:01 AM
If solar power has resulted in a [transitory] period of negative power cost, why does Pres Trump seem to be so against solar power?
Because he is the same kind of dumbass who lives in the past and as incapable of processing or remembering new information as the people who think that if solar (or wind) power generation resulted in a short [transitory] period of [theoretical and 'unsold'] "negative" power cost due to "surge," it means that solar power is cheap and is the "solution" to energy needs everywhere, because it's also "clean and renewable" and is also the answer to AGW / climate change.
First, just adding a new installation, however small it is, will create a new "record" of that type of energy. So the headline "records" of generation some place are meaningless.
It's like "stable genius" telling people that "beautiful tariffs" will generate Trillions of dollars and would replace income tax.
Or banning gas appliances, mandating "electrification" of transportation / cars without building electric capacity to handle new demand, then finding out that renewables will take huge land "footprint", be more TCO-expensive and still won't provide anywhere near enough power to accomplish it. Then restarting old nuclear plant that was supposed to be scrapped to prevent brownouts. Look at California, Germany, UK... which went all-in on renewables.
Or California deciding to build a "train from nowhere to nowhere" because Japan, China, Europe have efficient high-speed light-rail systems.
"Why can't we do that?" should be replaced by "Why do we need that?"... and "because climate change" is not the answer - e.g., world's renewable energy capacity increased substantially in the last 25 years... but climate change has gone unabated.
In the EU they reclassified NG as a "green" energy, to meet their self-imposed "green" goals. Recently they lowered barriers to methane.
BTW, USA is already producing 11% of world electricity from renewables; China is #1 at 32%, Brazil - 7%, Canada and India - 4.5%.
We've been through this here a couple of years ago, when someone kept posting about "record power generation" from "renewables" in CA. Not surprisingly, it also caused much higher usage of natgas for a backup, since wind and solar are INTERMITTENT and batteries which are toxic, degrade within relatively short amount of time and take humongous amount of space, require much higher maintenance and (at least, in the US) are not even close to TCO-competitive as e.g., NG alone - IOW, these intermittent solutions have a huge "FOOTPRINT" and very low ENERGY DENSITY.
Many US solar and wind companies went out of business long before most state and federal incentives expired because promised cost savings didn't materialize.
Just because few small countries like Costa Rica and Nepal are 90%-100% reliant on renewables for electricity (not a lot of "heavy manufacturing" and datacenters in those countries) no "one size fits all" energy solutions exist.
CA is #1 in solar (but buys wind power from as far as WY), TX is #1 in wind and #2 in solar.
So why is CA electricity so much higher when most of it is from renewables?
www.thinkcpi.com - Where California's energy comes from - 2023
www.gov.ca.gov - In historic first, California powered by two-thirds clean energy
www.electricchoice.com - Electricity rates by state
__________
More: Donald Trump wins, Republicans lose. The Indiana primaries on 5 May, in which five of seven Trump-backed candidates ousted stalwart conservative Republican state legislators who had refused his command to redraw congressional districts, has been the only victory Trump can claim recently. Indiana, happily for him, is not Iran. His appeal still prevails at least over the increasingly narrow band of Maga voters. But the persistence of Trump's domination is a sign of mounting haplessness. His victory is an augury of repudiation. Maga devotion is hardening in response to his dwindling popularity, a telltale reaction of true believers to a failed prophesy. The cult survives, the party withers.
On the same day the Indiana Republicans went down to defeat to sate Trump's vengefulness, a Democrat won a bellwether Michigan state senate seat by 20 points in a district that Kamala Harris carried by less than a point. The bell tolls for thee.
The Republicans have no instinct for separation from Trump, no will to stage an intervention, no ability to muster an ultimatum. They have been complicit in their captivity, co-conspirators in their demise.