Weather: Sunny. Not as cool with highs around 70. North winds 5 to 10 mph. Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy in the evening, then mostly cloudy with a slight chance of showers after midnight. Not as cool with lows in the mid 50s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 20 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
In Court: Kristopher Henriqson, arrested last week on a capital charge of raping a minor, is in court as the State Attorney’s Office argues a motion to deny him bond, 2 p.m. before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse.
The Palm Coast City Council meets at 9 a.m. at City Hall. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here.
The Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
Notably: It has been increasingly embarrassing to be American–not because, say, because a U.S. Air Force plane drops a nuclear bomb by mistake on a South Carolina farm, partly destroying a house (as happened on March 11, 1958): mistakes happen. Not because the Pentagon put the cost of a human life at $12,000 (that was your family’s death “gratuity” if you were a soldier killed in action in 2005): Catch-22 never was fiction. Not because a certain brand of Christian evangelists were still preaching on national television (around the same time that we were paying $12,000 for a human life) that masturbation causes pregnancy: no one’s ever forced you into a church yet (that’s ahead in our public schools as the movement to bring back prayer gains converts). Not even because we have a knack for re-electing morons (Reagan, Bush, Trump) or crooks (LBJ, if you count 1964 as a sort of re-election, Nixon, Trump): American exceptionalism was always one of our more puerile myths. But because unforced errors on a national scale have never been daily, hourly embarrassments. Dial up any news source at any hour of the day. You’ll see one. (This just now: “With Congress Pliant, an Emboldened Trump Pushes His Business Interests.” What would have in more ordinary times been a banner headline across every time zone about the violation of the Emoluments clause is just another minor headline, not even above the fold, on the Times web page. It won’t be there at dusk. Or this: “I.R.S. Is Said to Be Planning to Give Musk’s Team Access to Taxpayer Records.” The banning of the Associated Press from White House press functions and Air Force One over the Gulf of Mexico idiocy not a time warp so much as a geographic warp: we’re going full bananas, as in banana-republic bananas. Nations have always had their own competing pet names (Malvinas v. Falklands, Strait of Dover for the Pas de Calais, English Channel for La Manche, or this tripartite typhoon over the waters between Japan and the Asian mainland–Korean East Sea, if you’re in North Korea, Sea of Japan, if you’re in Japan, and just East Sea if you’re in South Korea. (Incidentally, the South Koreas refer to North Korea as North Han, or simply The North, North Korea simply calls its southern neighbor “Hostile State,” the way moronic Arab regimes to this day call Israel the “Zionist entity” or some such idiocy, which is not half as bigoted or obliterating as Israel calling the West Bank “Judea and Samaria,” as if the Three Kings were on their way and the Sanhedrin’s members were still molesting the whores of Sodom). But Gulf of America? Reminds me of the time when lawmakers in Washington, in the early days of the war on Iraq, when France had the good sense to resist the insanity, wanted French fries renamed “Freedom Fries.” But they had the last laugh. What’s that replacement tower now called in Lower Manhattan? Freedom Tower. It’s a wonder the vulgar one hasn’t yet signed the executive order renaming it after himself. He’d finally have those extra floors he’s been lying about since first building the gaudy tower on Fifth and 56th.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Flagler County Commission Workshop
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Contractor Review Board Meeting
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board
For the full calendar, go here.
However, what America does possess in abundance is a legacy of colorful names. A mere sampling: Chocolate Bayou, Dime Box, Ding Dong, and Lick Skillet, Texas, Sweet Gum Head, Louisiana, Whynot, Mississippi: Zzyzx Springs, California, Coldass Creek, Stiffknee Knob, and Rabbit Shuffle, North Carolina; Scratch Ankle, Alabama, Fertile, Minnesota; Climax, Michigan; Intercourse, Pennsylvania; Breakabeen, New York; What Cheer, Iowa: Bear Wallow, Mud Lick, Minnie Mousie, Eighty-Eight, and Bug, Kentucky, Dull, Only, Peeled Chestnut, Defeated, and Nameless, Tennessee, Cozy Corners, Wisconsin, Humptulips, Washington, Hog Heaven, Idaho, Ninety-Six, South Carolina; Potato Neek, Maryland, Why, Arizona, Dead Bastard Peak, Crazy Woman Creek, and the unsurpassable Maggie’s Nipples, Wyoming.
–From Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue (1990).
Dennis C Rathsam says
As the greatest country in the world, the United States gives more aid to other countries. We are the watch dog of NATO. We are the 1st to respond to tragity, all over there world. With that said I like the sound of the Gulf of America. Should have been done a long time ago.
Pierre Tristam says
The wonderfully wrong Dennis strikes again: proportionately, the last time the United States led the world in foreign aid was during LBJ’s administration, or more than half a century ago. Since then, it has fallen back quite a bit, with most western European countries showing more generosity than does the U.S. That’s without getting into the ridiculous strings the United States attaches to its aid, or its even more ridiculous conflating of military aid to such countries as Israel, Egypt and Jordan as if it were “aid.”
Laurel says
State TV Fox Entertainment only.
Trump’ll fix it.
Ray W, says
I write this as a thought exercise.
An energy think tank publishes Joule as an industry journal. A recent Joule study on expected overall electricity costs projected out to 2050 the differences in costs between no transition in the way we generate electricity today and the costs inhering in a fast transition to green energy (geothermal, hydro, solar and wind).
The authors of the study qualify their findings: “Since the future is uncertain, all public policy and decision-making is ultimately a question of making the smartest bets we can, given the often precarious circumstances we face. Our results suggest that deploying technologies according to the Fast Transition scenario is a very good bet, both in terms of lowest costs and lowest emission.”
Like the Joule qualifier above, I, too, consider suspect the reliability of such long-term projections, as technological advances can easily upend the reliability of any projection.
For example, any projection of American crude oil production dating from 2005 that was based on then-current technology could not have anticipated the emergence of increasingly sensitive 3D seismic imaging methods, the development of new fracking compounds, and the development of more efficient horizontal drilling methods.
By 2009, through implementation of the three emerging technologies, the Shale Revolution was underway. By 2016, we had nearly doubled our extraction levels of crude oil from5 million barrels per day at the end of 2008 to 9.8 million barrels per day in 2015, with almost all of the increase coming from oil-bearing shale rock formations, not pooled oil deposits. Now, we are at an average daily output for the year 2024 at 13.2 million barrels per day. No one in 2005 could have predicted this eventuality, i.e., the three-headed revolution in drilling methodology undermining all prior projections.
Nonetheless, this may help some FlaglerLive readers better understand how the economics of electricity production directly affects their lives.
The extensive and technically dense Joule study assumed a 2% annual increase in worldwide demand for electricity. Using the Rule of 72, an increase of demand by 2% per year means that overall demand for electricity will double in 36 years, not 50 years.
Not anticipating continuing increases in efficiency in all forms of green electricity production, and with no discussion of increasing or decreasing costs of grid maintenance and enhancements, the total cost to produce the electricity expected to be needed by 2050 is estimated to be $6.3 trillion per year worldwide, should no further transition toward green energy take place. Should a fast transition occur, the already existing lower cost of existing green energy sources would yield a cost $5.9 trillion per year, not including future efficiency increases, giving a savings of $400 billion per year.
On the other hand, infrastructure costs, including grid expansion to handle the increased overall demand, for a fast transition are expected to be higher than that expected should no transition to green energy occur: $630 billion per year as opposed to $530 billion per year if no transition occurs.
Between the two scenarios, by 2050, an overall expected $240 billion per year in savings can be expected, should no further transition to green energy as it exists today occur.
So, what if green energy sources continue to increase in efficiency, thereby further lowering costs? According to the study, over the next 25 years, should a fast transition to green energy occur and should further efficiencies become available, an overall savings of between $5-$15 trillion in total energy production costs can be expected.
Again, the authors of the study build in the possibility that their projections may not come to pass. And I concede that my reading of their conclusions may be in error. It is a technical journal designed for industry use, perhaps not so much for the curious student. Anyway, that is why I described this comment from the outset as a thought exercise.
As an aside, nowhere in the journal article do the authors refer to the use of carbon-fiber reinforced high-tension lines. For 20 years now, we have had the technology to double the transmission capacity of our grid simply by replacing current iron-core transmission lines with the new carbon-fiber core aluminum lines, without the expense of expanding the grid, yet our nation’s energy companies are not replacing the old-style lines with the more efficient new technology, even after hurricanes drop the old lines to the ground.
Some energy commenters argue that energy companies make more money using the old technology because the regulatory process does not reward the companies when they upgrade their transmission lines. So long as regulatory agencies allow energy companies to pass on costs to consumers, the argument goes, there is less profit in installing the new technology. Think it through. If a hypothetical energy company is permitted by a regulatory agency to maintain an approved profit margin, then the more it costs to transmit electricity through old-style transmission lines, the more the company can make. In this scenario, doubling the energy efficiency of the grid just might actually cost the utility a portion of its permitted profit margin.
Again, since this is a thought exercise, make your own investigation and draw your own conclusions.
Endless dark money says
Are the “Christian’s “ praying for the 30 new babies with hiv which would have been prevented but the orange terrorist decided to cut the program?
Or are you simply Nazi supporters?
Ed P says
Clay Jones,
Feels very much like you are in fact “ a legend in your own mind”
Irrelevance is the foot steps you frequent think you hear these days.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. ( unknown)
Ray W, says
Here is another comment triggered by the Pogo-approved The Cool Down:
“According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, more than 30% of the nation’s utility-scale electricity generation capacity comes from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and hydropower. In other words, if all power plants in the country operated at full power capacity, 30% of the energy sources would be a blend of those renewables. That number is expected to climb to 37% by 2037, which shows how quickly renewables are proving to be viable in the marketplace. …
“According to Electrek, through October of last year, solar represented 79% of all newly installed energy capacity. In October 2024 alone, solar was 92% of all newly built capacity. That month also marked more than a year — 14 months in a row — in which solar had been the single biggest part of all new capacity generation in the U.S.
“What’s more, utility-scale capacity measurements don’t account for small-scale solar, including the panels that might be on your roof. Electrek said that if that gets factored in, within three years, renewable energy sources would represent 40% of the nation’s energy capacity, dropping natural gas to 37%.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I have long been commenting that, according to EIA cost comparisons, solar has been for some time the cheapest way to produce electricity at utility scale. And the costs keep dropping.
I am going to comment on this over and over again. About a year ago, the EIA published a cost-comparison between various forms of electricity generation. Factoring seven years to obtain permits, to obtain financing, to line up contractors, and to build the facility, and then factoring in 25 years of use, the EIA visited 142 electricity generating plants of all types and locations and averaged the expected costs of generating electricity by source.
The 2024 study anticipated that each style of plant would open in 2031.
Coal-fired plants came in at an average cost over $110 per megawatt hour over the 32-year lifetime of the facility. Solar came in at an average cost of $22 per megawatt hour. No other form of electricity generation came in lower than the high-$30s. And solar costs are expected to continue to drop.
During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton commented that the era of coal was over. The professional lying class of one of our two parties fashioned spectacular lies to demean her and her comment. Her opponent promised that his policies would save coal.
In the early 2000s, coal generated just over 50% of the nation’s electricity. The EIA says it is down to about 16% of the total and dropping. The gullible among us bought into the lies generated by the professional lying class of one of our two parties. Hillary Clinton told the truth and was vilified for it. President Trump did little for the coal industry, breaking his promises, and was celebrated for his failure.
Oy vey!