Kevin Kilty leaves a brilliant comment at The Manhattan Contrarian website: Wisdom with humor
This comment, from an article I recommended on the January 4 links list, below just got a comment which included a classic quote (in red), that I wanted you to read:
MC asks, "Can we here in the USA learn anything from this folly before it is too late?"
I doubt it for reason that the average person doesn't understand much about, well..., anything really, and this applies spectacularly to energy. Never mind what the EPA doesn't know. I was reading an article on "Alpha" this morning and found a quotation by someone who believes they know enough to write a book about "the grid". What they were quoted as saying about wind turbines for this particular magazine article was this.
“They have a capacity factor of about 30% … that is the percentage of time that they can operate,”
This definition of capacity factor is just plainly wrong, and the average person reading such a quote will wonder why it is we don't solve our problem with wind turbine capacity factor simply by operating them more of the time. They won't understand that the problem is fundamentally beyond the control of people and unsolvable.
It seems to me not possible to learn anything before it is too late when fundamental understanding. the core concepts of an issue, are a complete mystery to most folks, and are not clarified by so-called "experts." Experts are a lot like hired guns in the old west -- shoot up the town and injure innocent people.
Probably after it's too late is exactly when people will have the incentive to learn. Kevin Kilty
MC asks, "Can we here in the USA learn anything from this folly before it is too late?"
I doubt it for reason that the average person doesn't understand much about, well..., anything really, and this applies spectacularly to energy. Never mind what the EPA doesn't know. I was reading an article on "Alpha" this morning and found a quotation by someone who believes they know enough to write a book about "the grid". What they were quoted as saying about wind turbines for this particular magazine article was this.
“They have a capacity factor of about 30% … that is the percentage of time that they can operate,”
This definition of capacity factor is just plainly wrong, and the average person reading such a quote will wonder why it is we don't solve our problem with wind turbine capacity factor simply by operating them more of the time. They won't understand that the problem is fundamentally beyond the control of people and unsolvable.
It seems to me not possible to learn anything before it is too late when fundamental understanding. the core concepts of an issue, are a complete mystery to most folks, and are not clarified by so-called "experts." Experts are a lot like hired guns in the old west -- shoot up the town and injure innocent people.
Probably after it's too late is exactly when people will have the incentive to learn. Kevin Kilty
Original Article and all comments are here:
EPA And The Electricity Cost Crisis — Manhattan Contrarian