▪️This meme makes the classic error of equating electricity with energy (i.e. a country “running on renewables”). Typically, electricity is only about 20% of energy consumption. Transportation, heating, agriculture & industrial uses, etc. make up the rest and are dominated by fossil fuels.
▪️Portugal had a recent streak from Oct 31 to Nov 6 where their electricity was provided by “renewable sources,” primarily wind and hydro. The weather was windy and rainy, which was ideal for Portugal’s unique grid.
https://www.ren.pt/en-gb/media/news/renewable-energy-production-sets-new-records
▪️If you look at their current grid today, it fluctuates but you see about 1/3 nat gas and 1/2 hydro, with wind supplying most of the remaining. (I’ll post a photo in comments)
https://datahub.ren.pt/en/electricity/daily-balance/
▪️Hydro in Portugal is much greater than in most countries, supplying nearly 1/3 of their total electricity, and sometimes well over 50%. In the US, hydro provides just 6%. So this is the answer to the meme’s question “if Portugal can do this why can’t we?”
▪️Hydro is not very scalable, as it needs the right geography to work. It’s also opposed by environmentalists nearly everywhere, as it impacts river ecosystems, so building any new plant let alone enough to power a modern economy is virtually impossible in most countries.
▪️Portugal also has issues during droughts, like during the winter of 2022 when 45% of the country was in severe or extreme drought and they had to shut down 5 hydro plants to ensure enough drinking water.
https://www.euronews.com/2022/02/02/portugal-limits-hydroelectric-power-amid-unusual-winter-drought
▪️While hydro is much more reliable than wind and solar, in most cases it still can’t be relied on to power a modern economy without a fossil fuel/nuclear backup (Portugal chooses a natural gas backup for when their renewables fail).
It’s funny to see the left use the same conspiratorial rhetoric as the right did a year ago regarding the jobs numbers being downwardly revised. So many on the right, who knew nothing of how the jobs numbers are calculated or why they revise them, were convinced the downward revisions were a conspiracy to help Biden win.
If people want to have a debate about the birth death model or the survey methods, ok, but that’s not what’s happening here. Most people are under the delusion that the BLS report is the govt reporting every job created and lost, and are thus easily swayed it’s rigged when it suits their political ends.
This is almost laughingly misleading, as it leaves out everything before the letter.
▪️After being repeatedly lampooned by the Smothers Brothers over Vietnam, Johnson finally had enough. One night at 3 am he called the head of CBS William Paley, demanding that he “get those bastards off my back.”
▪️Paley then asked the heads of CBS entertainment to get them to back off of LBJ. However, instead of backing off the Smothers Brothers doubled down, booking a folk musician performing “Waist Deep,” an anti-war song about a soldier being stuck in the mud while “the big fool says to push on,” clearly a dig at LBJ.
▪️At the last minute, CBS cut the song from the pre-taped show to the outrage of the Smothers. They continued to push the boundaries off and on for the rest of his presidency, with CBS sometimes cutting segments that they thought went too far. Basically, it was a soft form of censorship.
▪️It wasn’t until Johnson made his surprise announcement not to run in 1968 ...
