“I would love to see a change in government.” “Venezuela for the American oil companies will be a field day.”
Oil makes greedy men, and women, mad. They, their vassals, shills and enablers, cannot help themselves. An end to wars for oil is as good a reason as any to get away from fossil fuels.
Most Americans are against military action in Venezuela amid recent tension in the region, according to a poll from CBS News/YouGov.
In the poll, 70 percent said they were against “the U.S. taking military action in Venezuela,” while 30 percent said they were for it.
The U.S. military has recently bolstered its presence near Venezuela, with the USS Gerald R. Ford making its way to the Caribbean, and President Trump allowing the CIA to go ahead with covert operations inside Venezuela.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently advised pilots to “exercise caution” when they are near Venezuela due to the “worsening security situation and heightened military activity” in and around the country.
The agency’s Friday advisory said “threats could pose a potential risk to aircraft at all altitudes” in the Maiquetia Flight Information Region.
China continues to make inroads in the western and southern hemispheres, taking advantage of the incompetence and arrogance of the Trump administration.
In launching a new feature that identifies national origins of “X” accounts, the Elon Musk owned platform inadvertently confirmed what many of us have known for years – X, and it’s “MAGA” influencers are largely a platform for disinformation from enemies of democracy.
Business students around the world will be studying the brand reputation journey of the US startup Tesla for many years to come. They will have plenty of material to work with. While investors are still sweet on the diversified company overall, CEO Elon Musk seems more determined than ever to discourage prospective car buyers from putting up their own money to buy a Tesla EV.
The latest hit to Tesla’s brand reputation surfaced over the weekend, when word dropped that dozens of the leading, self-proclaimed MAGA influencers and US patriots who populate Musk’s personal social media site X (formerly Twitter) are not US patriots at all, or at least not the kind of patriots who are actually citizens of the US.
“Elon Musk’s social media site X has rolled out a new feature in an effort to increase transparency—and unwittingly revealed that many of the site’s top MAGA influencers are actually foreign actors,” Jack Revell of The Daily Beast reported on November 23.
The anonymity curtain was pulled back by the launch of X’s new “About This Account” feature on Friday, November 21, which included the location of origin for user accounts. “Upon rollout, rival factions began to inspect just where their online adversaries were really based on the combative social platform—with dozens of major MAGA and right-wing influencer accounts revealed to be based overseas,” Revell observed.
“Dozens of major accounts masquerading as ‘America First’ or ‘MAGA’ proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria,” he elaborated.
Florida Republicans are fuming as the Trump administration proposes to open up new drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
“The new maps released today by @SecretaryBurgum and @Interior outlining potential new offshore oil drilling sites in the Gulf of America are HIGHLY concerning—and we will be engaging directly with the department on this issue,” wrote Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) in a post on the social platform X.
“Preserving our state’s natural beauty is deeply important to the millions who call the Sunshine State home, our visitors, and those whose livelihoods depend on tourism,” Moody wrote.
The office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) also criticized the plan, noting that in 2020, President Trump blocked drilling off the state’s coasts.
“Our Administration supports the 2020 Presidential Memorandum and urges the Department of Interior to reconsider and to conform to the 2020 Trump Administration policy,” Molly Best, a spokesperson for DeSantis, said in a statement to The Hill.
Senator Whitehouse discussing how fossil fuels jack up electric rates, since fossil plants, particularly gas, are usually the most expensive plants in the system at any moment.
Below, Utility executive confirms, gas sets the price of electricity “90 percent of the time.”
Unprecedented policy to “pick losers” and keep an obsolete, uneconomic, coal power plant in service. This will be the template to foist dozens of other equally unnecessary plants on ratepayer’s backs. Operating any business in 90 day increments is a formula for skyrocketing costs – and much more so in the utility industry, which typically plans and operates in 10, 20 and 30 year time frames. So much for “running government like a business.”
A power plant on the Lake Michigan shoreline will continue burning coal through the winter months as the Trump administration triples down on prolonging its lifespan past its intended retirement date.
Federal officials used emergency powers to issue the third successive order requiring the 63-year-old J.H. Campbell plant in Ottawa County remain open Tuesday evening, Nov. 18, signaling they have no intention to allow utility Consumers Energy let it go cold and dark as planned.
The order lasts 90 days, the maximum time allowable under the law, running throughFeb. 17.
The repeated intervention from Washington is unprecedented, attracting criticism from Michigan regulators, consumer watchdogs and environmental groups, as well as ongoing legal challenges.
Opponents claim keeping the plant on life support will only burden utility ratepayers across the Midwest with millions in unnecessary costs, while propping up a polluting means of producing power in decline nationally.
Consumers has disclosed it lost some $615,000 a day running the plant over the summer. It ran up $80 million in net costs in just over four months, after subtracting revenue from the plant. The feds first intervened to prevent its retirement in late May, days before its retirement date, and extended operations with another order in August.
The Trump administration wants to churn dirt on a bevy of new nuclear power plants.
Electric utilities that power America have different plans.
Despite forecasts for spiking electricity use and pledges from the Department of Energy to bolster nuclear power, utilities aren’t inking contracts to build new plants with the large-scale, light-water reactors that have fueled American homes and businesses for decades.
“I wouldn’t build a nuclear plant,” Calvin Butler, CEO of Exelon, a major U.S. utility that doesn’t produce power but is aiming to do so in the future, told CNBC last week. “What I could do is lean in on combined-cycle gas turbines. What I could do is build community solar. What I could do is own battery storage.”
Duke Energy, a major utility in the Southeast, is now hedging after laying out loose plans in October to produce more than a gigawatt of new nuclear power by 2037.
“We still need to figure out what we’re going to do with cost overrun protection and how we’re going to protect our investors and our customers from overruns,” Duke CEO Harry Sideris said on an earnings call earlier this month. “Nothing going forward until we have those other items resolved.”
That hesitation is throttling Trump administration plans to reassert U.S. nuclear leadership globally — and to ensure there is enough power in the U.S. to win the artificial intelligence race with China. Experts say new builds are important drivers of industry advancement that will cut costs and boost innovation. They’re also needed to keep powering America with nuclear energy, as many of the 94 reactors in the U.S. near retirement.
“There’s not a single company out there talking about a brand new light water reactor, and that’s where the administration gets frustrated,” an energy lobbyist, who has close ties to administration and was granted anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO’s E&E News. “The administration is a little tone deaf in understanding the trepidations from a Wall Street standpoint.”
The utility sector is grappling with a laundry list of nuclear concerns. It’s worried about high costs, hits to balance sheets and the availability of enriched uranium in the U.S. following a cut-off from Russian imports in 2028. Utility CEOs are also skeptical that the capital-intensive power will be needed if demand forecasts contract.
Nuclear construction is one of many areas of discord between the White House and utility sector.
Rumblings about some extreme cold outbreaks possible this winter. If they occur, they will test electricity generators of all kinds, as well as the transmission grids that have been shaken in cold waves of recent years, but have been shored up recently, especially with new equipment and battery storage installations.
So far this fall it has been relatively mild across the Northern Hemisphere (NH) continents with the biggest exception of Siberia (see Figure). I do think that the fall temperature pattern across Eurasia has been supportive of a weaker polar vortex (PV) and is the focus of this week’s blog. The forecast does feature colder weather, mostly for Europe, Southeastern Europe and the Northeastern US this week and then Siberia and Western Canada next week (see Figures 3, 6). Eventually colder air spreads across much of Canada (see Figures 9). Longer term the weather will likely depend on the (almost) unprecedented disruption for late November. Potential is there for an interesting period of weather starting in December.
High above the North Pole, in a slice of atmosphere rarely noticed and even less understood, a transformation is underway. Over the next 10 days, changes in the stratosphere will upend weather patterns and set the stage for a cold, snowy December across parts of the Northern Hemisphere.
It will mean a dramatic swing in weather for parts of the US that are currently simmering in record heat just a week before Thanksgiving.
It could also be one of the earliest significant polar vortex disruptionsrecorded since the dawn of the satellite era.
If you think largest warship ever built, and its strike group, sailed from the Mediterranean, and are parked off the Venezuelan coast in order to intercept drug runners in speedboats, I’ve got an aircraft carrier to sell you.
The world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, joined other U.S. military in the Caribbean Sea on Sunday, as U.S. officials announced what’s believed to be the 21st strike on an alleged drug boat.
Why it matters: The increased activity in the region comes after President Trump told reporters Friday that he’d “sort of have made up my mind” on how to proceed with Venezuela, but “can’t tell you what it would be.”
Trump told reporters on Sunday there was “no update on Venezuela,” but he added “we may be having some discussions” with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro “and we’ll see how that turns out — but they would like to talk.”
The Trump administration is ratcheting up the diplomatic pressure on Maduro, with the State Department announcing Sunday night that it’s declaring the Cartel de los Soles — an alleged drug gang the Trump administration claims Maduro runs — a foreign terrorist organization.
Driving the news: U.S. Southern Command, which would oversee operations in Venezuela, is executing Trump’s strikes and is a leader of the newly launched Operation Southern Spear, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said would target “narco-terrorists” and shield the U.S. from deadly drugs, per Axios’ Colin Demarest.
