[TheRealThing]

The EO ending construction of the Keystone Pipeline wastes 20 years of construction materials, land acquisitions/fees, and labor costs; and results in the loss of at least 8.000 UNION jobs. And who knows but what the taxpayer will be forced now to pay for the demolition of the work already done? The ultimate irony is that many of these unions actively supported the Biden campaign. Are we learning anything yet?

I would like to sum all this up in just stating the old 'elections have consequences' cliche. But to do so I would have to have a higher level of confidence in our system of elections in the first place. IMHO those 8 thousand jobs are just the tip of the iceberg. And I do mean ice-berg. To illustrate, where is all this heading? Turning our backs on fossil fuels with no viable affordable alternatives in place, will ultimately destroy our economy and decimate the American lifestyle. Even in the rosiest La-La Land scenario wind and solar are not dependable alternatives for places with climates such as the Ohio Valley, where the gloom sets in during the fall and does not dissipate until spring.

For the average American who's just trying to keep a roof over his family's head, the renewable energy push to come gets a bit more basic. The real poison pill to heating homes during the transition off of natural gas for example, in areas like the Ohio Valley, is in the nuts and bolts reality of heat pump or base board heat. I mean you can talk solar all you want, but using electricity to heat boils down to convection heat or heat pumps. I tried to heat my home using a heat pump in the 70's and I can tell you it doesn't work well at all. Heat pumps only work when the outside temp is above 35 degrees. And even then pumps have to run continually to try to keep up, (which the air coming out of the registers btw still feels cold, especially starting in the evening until the sun gets high the next day which for the OV, is almost never) Back then I had a wood burning fireplace to supplement during such times. The green agenda wing nuts of our day will never allow one to pollute the atmosphere with wood smoke. So very soon I would predict the people can kiss that luxury off as well.

But most of the time the HP unit's electric heat strips have to bear the majority of the demand, at GREAT cost. Not to mention the breakdowns, gas leaks and defrost board issues are an oft occurrence. But there are only two options really, electric and geothermal. With electric one could conceivably still use existing duct work though, you're still looking at big bucks for a heat pump.  With baseboard heat you're talking big bucks for the baseboard heater installation which other than being continually expensive to operate, is very ugly. And unhealthy due to the associated maladies attributable to the incredibly arid conditions they created inside of any home. Whole house humidification systems might work to counteract the detrimental arid effects for the first season after the initial installation. But just because they are expensive to install does not mean that they are not fraught with performance issues as they don't work well, or at all after that first heating season.

Geothermal is likely only an option for selectively few homes and again, an expensive installation. The outside lateral lines use up enormously long runs which would intersect other in-city underground utilities. City lots are notoriously small and don't offer enough lot size in any case. And the in-house piping systems are invasive to understate to no small degree. So the renewable energy thing may sound all that, but all you get is strip heat or cold air blowing (at times) off a heat pump. And either case is very expensive to operate.