The Humor Page, T+48 -- July 18, 2018 -- Nothing About The Bakken

At least two stories.

From readers.

Much appreciated.

First story: something called energynews.com is reporting that "Illinois regulators are stymied in pursuit of coal mine cleanup funds."

Stymied.

In Chicago? Are you kidding?
When I saw the headline, I thought it was a "slush fund" story. I guess I'm wrong. Sounds like something else.

The coal mine permit expired in 1989. Illinois didn't go after the bond until 2005 (16 years later).  The case was dismissed by the court in 2014 (what? and the reporter provides no explanation why?). Now a new bank has acquired the bank that originally held the bond.

But we're missing a big part of the story: why did the court dismiss the case in the first place? And not only that, $325,000 seems like a pretty paltry sum. Strange, strange story.

Second story.

Another bank story. This one in Africa. Something called the African Development Bank.

Apparently Multilateral Development Banks "use manmade climate change alarmism to justify lending policies that reject funding for fossil fuel electricity generation, promote expensive and unreliable renewable sources, and thereby help keep impoverished nations poor."

Apparently the African Development Bank was one of these Multilateral Development Banks. I hate all those capital letters, but we will move on.

The ADB has seen where this renewable energy policy has gotten them: an hour of electricity every day in much of Africa -- and that hour, relying on solar and wind energy -- is unreliable and sporadic.

So, breaking with the rest of the MDBs, the ADB will now allow fossil fuel, other than just natural gas (yes, that would mean coal), to provide electricity for Africans.

The writer "explains why Africa, China, India, Indonesia and others refuse to reject coal and gas – and rely on “green” energy technologies that don’t exist … except in classrooms, computer models, IPCC reports, Al Gore lectures, and renewable energy company promotional literature."


The article is a wonky article explaining the transition from the Obama energy policy in Africa and the Trump-Perry energy policy in Africa. It's a painful article to read but great for the archives.

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A Note For The Granddaughters

Years ago -- decades ago -- I was sitting in a bar in west Africa, in Banjul, The Gambia, just south of Senegal.

About 9:00 p.m. the lights in the hotel go out. Two chaps -- and they were chaps, from England -- excused themselves. About thirty minutes later the lights came back on and a few minutes later, the chaps returned to the bar. They said the country's electricity was provided by a couple of diesel engines -- probably GE engines -- and that someone had forgotten to refill the diesel fuel tanks. I am not making this up. I can't recall now if it was the entire country, the entire city, or just the hotel -- doesn't matter -- probably one and the same for all practical purposes -- that lost power that night ... until more diesel fuel was put in the tanks.

Talking to those two chaps felt as if I were talking to Harris and Wilson from Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene, 1946.

That was 1946. Sounds like most of Africa hasn't progressed much farther, except now they've been suckered into using solar energy instead of diesel fuel. Some call it "carbon colonialism."