Funds Divesting From Fossil Fuels

Just on the news that electric rates in Texas this summer are 70% higher than they were last year. Rate increases like that will really boost solar adoption there. Plus Texas has lots of sunlight.

Texas has its own isolated grid so they could give the finger to federal regulators. It worked ok but beginning of 2021 that lack of regulation and no connections to other grids caused their big blackout. Now electric ratepayers are holding the bag.

Increasing fossil energy costs are just going to be a fact of life now. Today it’s Texas in the news. Tomorrow it will be somewhere else. But it’s coming sooner rather than later. The southwest is looking at losing hydroelectric generation in the near future as the reservoirs dry up. Where will that energy come from? Texas is heading into peak power demand with a number of power plants offline. Energy shortages, hard and mandatory conservation, and maybe even rationing is coming.

The company that installed my system is buried. They have jobs lined up just waiting for parts and enough time to get to them. They are expanding. But right now, call any good installer and ask them how far out they are booked.

If these posts convinced anyone of the need to get solar and they are able to do it, they will probably still have to wait to actually install. Permitting and design reviews and utility approvals also eat up lots of time before work can even start. Meanwhile, current events are just making the lines to get solar longer. Cleetus and others who think it’s all a joke won’t be changing the rates of solar installs. There is no shortage of customers. The only question is who those customers are.

I posted this stuff to hopefully alert others here to what’s likely coming. This whole Ukraine thing and a big looming energy shortage in Europe because of it are going to be spiking prices here too. US oil and gas will be selling at market price. They’ll be making massive bank while the world deals with high prices and shortages and all that brings to economies. Plus we probably have blackouts and brownouts coming.

I just wanted to alert to these issues. This whole energy and global warming thing is not going to get better going forward. With all the delays and availability issues, folks might want to look ahead to fall/winter and consider what their energy situation might look like. If forecasts are correct, we’ll be seeing things that will have people lining up.

Maybe Putin will die or be killed and Russia can open fuels back up to Europe. That should collapse oil prices and increase supplies but still leaves the whole issue of climate change. Putin may go away but global warming won’t. We have to move away from fossil fuels anyway.

Pretty much all I know about this is already here with enough keywords where anyone should be able to find out more if they choose to. I’m done on this. It’s a dead horse now, maybe long ago. Remember there are finance options too if you can’t buy a system outright. You can have solar and just keep paying that bill that won’t go up (assuming fixed interest rates). Texans‘ electric bills have almost doubled in a year. Check references. Educate yourself. Good luck.

Speaking of Fossil Fuels, just read this from National Geographic

Around here, and in a number of documented cases elsewhere, the police and criminals are cut from the same cloth. They may well be the perps themselves or in cahoots with them. Mmm no this is not hyperbole but neither is it universal. The reality is in my experience, I can't depend on them.

Gee. What a delightful thread. I studied the process and pieced together a solar electric system with a morning star charge controller, lifepo4 storage battery bank, and 2k inverter. I lived off-grid because of the remoteness of my camp. I got into a car wreck and had to move into town for various health reasons and recuperation.

When I had someone check my camp after a few months, all of my stuff was gone including my vehicles. My jeep was recovered and torn to hell but still running. I left it at a cousin's place who then sold it, as it turns out, to the original thief. There were a lot of valuable equipment and tools. but all my personal and "sacred" items, photos, gifts from significant persons in my life, photo albums, and news items of projects I had been involved in, were all gone. 3 years of earnings and hard work from the ND oil boom were invested in this now gone.

I know who a few of the culprits are and I've fought off thoughts of revenge and payback. Many times in my life when I've tried to live right and do the right thing, I've been attacked and all movements towards what I understand to be progressive, essential, and positive have been purposely been sabotaged and destroyed.

Since then I've made my life minimalistic. I've considered going full Luddite and joining the ranks of the homeless. I likely wouldn't survive long because of my age and the fact that older people are statistically easy targets for those criminally aggressive, possibly psychotic, and aggressive predators. They appear to be nothing but another animal on the planet without the qualities that make being human a worthy existence.

I don't care anymore as that which we title evil, is alive, well, and in some cases becoming more powerful. Man wants to destroy himself and the environment through avarice, arrogance, greed. and ignorance. In some cases, he/she has the ability to do so through the misuse and nefarious application of tech.

I am not going quietly into that good night, but I am going. In a relatively short time, knowledge of my existence will be forgotten and unknown just like the innumerable number of human beings that have come before me.

"...when I'm done I hit the OFF button and go back to reality" - Cleetus F

Debatable

I think I'm done in this thread now. I know I'm not going to get an answer to what I raised, because Cletus isn't here for a discussion of ideas. What others and I presented stand on their own merits. If he had something (anything at all) he would have posted it already. If he wasn't a liar about not caring about Internet service, he would already be calling his Internet provider to have it disconnected.

I don't waste (much) time arguing with liars. I still find it curious why someone is so committed to the talking points of billionaires and promoting them. I suppose that's why I could never be a conservative: I can't parrot talking points of my betters and refuse to reassess my positions based on new evidence.

Back to the main thread. Antivaxxers have the same mindset, but they sometimes inadvertently provide a laugh or two when they aren't actively trying to kill people.