It's freezing down in Texas

[Big Sur]

A silicone bong! Been meanin to try one out. I’m done spending money on german glass only to drop it or kick it over.

Mu

Silicon and acrylic bongs are not so good either. They tend to melt with heavy use. Years ago in the 1970s we had all these large bamboo bongs. But they tended to split and crack. So my brother bought an acrylic one. We were hitting it pretty hard one night at his apartment in Gilroy. While really trashed and goofy, we looked at the bong and the metal bowl tipped forward and dropped to the table, dragging a stream of melted stem with it. It all happened in really slow motion and we rolled on the floor laughing after seeing that happen. I went with a brass chambered pipe after that. And of course rolling papers, roach clips and evil eyes. Of late I have a large hand blown glass bong. Its a piece of art. Green and speckled. Also heavy. No thin glass for me. No silicon or plastic. No bamboo either, though I could make them from poles from my timber bamboo here.

 

[slabsofdank]

A silicone bong!

Go for it. Virtually indestructible.

 

[Big Sur]

I usually don't get political, and in fact lean libertarian, but I'm pissed that some news outlets are spinning the grid problems in Texas as being caused by over-reliance on renewables. While intermittent wind and solar certainly complicate the management of the grid, loss of most renewable generation on Monday morning in Texas was not THE cause of the rolling blackouts. From what I read in the WSJ (the only news source I found with at least some actual reporting going on) one nuke had to shut down on account of freezing inlet water and gas pipeline capacity was reduced because a number of gas wells had frozen up. Clearly, it was once again a series of cascading failures that should have been relatively easy to predict. Probably good that it happened in the long run as the fixes shouldn't be that difficult to implement (LNG-fueled peak shaving plants, use groundwater as backup cooling water source, etc.). Here's the big, important question the fossil fuel industry doesn't want asked: How much natural gas was being compressed into LNG and loaded onto ships for export along the Gulf Coast while the grid went to shit and Texans froze to death because the pipelines were severely under capacity?

Well, I would counter with the opposite insane spin that is prevalent here. They blame the fires, storms, outages and basically everything on FF here now. And GW is now being pegged as being caused mainly by social injustice. Seriously? Meanwhile they have busted dams and decommissioned many hydro plants here, and they tore down the Trojan nuclear power plant and banned nukes. Most nuke plants in the west are gone or scheduled to go off grid, along with all the coal fired plants. Some mystery miracle power source yet to be invented will replace the sources of energy apparently. Wind, solar and alternatives make up less than 5% of the power grid. Salt/thorium nuclear is a viable large scale option, but no one will allow that. Far safer than water cooled nuke plants, they simply power down safely if something happens. They have been proven long since by the USAF, they can burn spent nuclear waste, and there is a large thorium supply. But politically? It is dead.

Truth is that oil, coal and LNG suppliers would love to sell more locally in the US. And they want to export more. But in many cases they are being prevented from doing that. Biden just killed off oil pipeline from Canada. They have restricted current and banned all future burning of coal in the Pacific states, as well as gas burning cars and trucks. All while trains on both banks of the Columbia River carry coal from Wyoming and Utah and oil from North Dakota to export terminals and ships heading to China and Korea. There are also NG pipelines running here along the Columbia from Canada. The greenies blocked the expanded NG pipeline and large LNG ports here. They want some miracle energy solution that does not exist. The US has a massive trade imbalance, and FF is one big export that we have to balancing that equation. We have spent too much in the US trying to live too high a standard of living, and gotten into too much debt. So we will continue to export energy, and apparently (as you indicate) starve ourselves of FF energy in the process. I see it happening here every day as hundreds of carloads of coal and oil roll by on the tracks headed west to Asia.