At least he didn’t say A-1

Doubtful. But there are PLENTY of Americans who are and that includes the president*. And all news outlets, podcasts, social media (not Fox or RW) both sides this like it has any truth instead of discussing energy storage options

He's just repeating a GOP talking point. "Batteries aren't real."

We're this close to the Insane Clown Posse getting cabinet posts.....

He might be, Kai. You don’t know. bsky.app/profile/funm...

By expensive, he means cheaper than coal and oil, right? Cuz......... Thanks, I hate it here. Sigh.

And, he said "nu-cu-lar." What an idiot.

Seems right 😉

Dumb enough to work for Trump….

Batteries aren't real.

This is so different from petroleum, which is everywhere, easy to extract, and never runs out.

I am screaming into the void!

@kairyssdal.bsky.social the only failure out there are their arguments

I wouldn't take that bet.

Oh, he knows. But he also knows the script, and that’s all that matters.

I wish it was.

You don't have to be smart to be a billionaire.

He is, we “met” him on a teleconference when he took over DOI…he’s this dumb

It's feigned ignorance in service to the cause. To support the regime, suck it up and play stupid. Your personal dignity is a small price to pay for your tax and regulation cuts. Everyone at the country club will understand and buy you a round.

No, but the audience is

My motto when assessing any Trumpster: "Assumed dumb until proven otherwise". Strangely, it's never been proven otherwise.

Maybe if we call them Burgum Batteries

It is possible. You know what they say: believe people when they you who they are (even if they are shifty politicians).

This is what happens when you bring in people with “business experience” and fail to check if any of it is actually relevant to the area they are supposed to lead. (That’s being generous. We all know he was brought in as a Trump lackey to make money for obscenely rich people. He IS doing his job.)

I believe you have answered your own question sir.

I mean everyone in this administration is willing ignorant or malliciously ignorant.

For decades we were told that being a billionaire was proof of their skill and intellect. Wealth was proof they were better than us. It's been a lie.

Another word that starts with S. Like shit-for-brains synchophant.

When your paycheck depends on it, yes, absolutely they can be.

He’s not ignorant, but he wants viewers to be.

When it comes to this regime, you'll rarely miss by applying the principle: Never suspect ignorance when malice could apply.

Or god forbid a megalomaniac builds a device to block the sun! We cannot be building brittle energy systems that are potentially rendered useless by normal diurnal solar energy fluctuations or outlandish evil schemes to control the populace. If only we possessed the tech to store this energy. /s

🤮

Right. His cred is dead.

You are so naive.

Wrong.

They believe, with some justification, that a significant number of Americans will accept these lies.

Yep, and they're "grooming" more lie-swallowers by destroying education and free speech.

You hit the nail Firmly on the head. Lack of education and the ability to call that out is Exactly the goal.

It’s just sewing misinformation. They’re not that stupid. They just want to gunk up the information-space so people can’t tell what is true or not

*sowing

He has an audience of one.

The dumbest people in the universe. Smh.

I think it’s Big Lie stuff. The more lies they get ppl to commit to, the more corrupt they are.

Another guy who can’t pronounce nuclear! Jeez - Bush league mistake!

He's lying.

Technically, he’s not wrong. Yes, the sun goes down, yes sometimes there are clouds or weather. But that’s like saying we shouldn’t grow crops in the soil because it doesn’t work and it’s unreliable. It’s bullshit twisted thinking. Not to mention… the sun is here to stay. Generally speaking.

Batteries and hydroelectric pumped storage facilities are used to store the load when the sun goes down. Also energy demand peaks during the day ya dingdong.

@kerrybe.bsky.social I didn’t mean you are a ding dong - Burgum is…

He is pandering to the ignorant crowd

kakistocracy example #173

Not literally impossible. Don't underestimate human capability! Still, I would like to see more investigation & implementation of geothermal. More stable output than wind / solar, less cost & risk than nuclear.

I want to see up explore it all. We should not rely on one single source. We should also be exploring every reasonable method of energy storage to fill in any gaps. Putting all of our eggs in one basket is a foolish thing.

Of course not. He is just lying his ass off to prop up his and his friends’ investments.

You’re watching the definition of sycophant in action.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

I would bet it’s that he thinks his audience is that ignorant.

His audience is Trump, so he's right.

They say stuff the base wants to hear so then the base repeats it in the echo chamber. As George Costanza once said, “it’s not a lie if you believe it.”

Neither answer is flattering to Doug as a human being

Burgum's not ignorant. He's just saying what he knows his boss wants to hear. That's not a defense of Burgum. If anything it's a condemnation: he knows better, and yet he spews this bullshit anyway.

Exactly. He's playing Political Survivor so that he can run again for president in 2028.

If so, I expect his campaign will go roughly as well as his 2024 campaign did 😎

I will do my part to make sure of it.

Of course he isn’t. He’s shilling for the carbon interests that fund the GOP and the Fox News watching demo eats it up.

Between climate change denial and promoting self-evidently ridiculous disinformation about renewable energy like this, it’s amazing how successful right-wing charlatans have been deluding the public while the MSM pretends to take their false claims seriously.

Um

They are all ignorant or conniving. Neither is a good look.

When it reaches this point ignorance is trumped by stupidity.

Most of them are just gaslighting. Speaking to their knuckledragging MAGA mouth breathing voter base....

I’ve been assuming Bessent is lying rather than stupid but I could be wrong

Why Not Both.jpeg

No. He's just not allowed to be publicly smarter than Trump, who really is this ignorant.

And that’s why I have a whole house battery. When the hurricane takes out the grid, my food doesn’t spoil, I still have air conditioning. The next day the sun comes up & replenishes my power supply. The solar stuff works & saves me $. These people are fools.

So wait…. We’re giving away +- 12 hours of free energy a day??? I thought free stuff (like 747’s) was a no brainer…

North Dakota, where he was governor, gets 1/3 of its electricity from wind. This is from the beforetimes in 2024: nationalcleanenergyweek.org/north-dakota...

This idiot once paid me $20 for donating $1 to his presidential campaign…and then I gave the money away…I look forward to his next campaign if it lets me grift him like that again…

To those in the MAGA cult, he is speaking the truth because they are stupid or willfully blind. To those of us with a functioning fore lobe, it is immaterial. He is just flat out wrong.

Mind boggling ignorance.. at sunset it stops. How are these people elected is their electorate even more ignorant. Is it even possible?

bsky.app/profile/dbon...

I figured he was referencing an old Colbert Report bit.

He’s a Republican so of course he’s lying and he knows he’s lying. When a Republican is speaking, he’s almost certainly lying, or speaking in the worst bad faith.

And the problem is that our side is so invested in “the GOP are our colleagues across the aisle, we know they want what’s best for America” that they always behave as if these vile liars are actually acting in good-faith (but are just misguided, and once they hear the right slogan, they’ll change)

Presumably the oil industry is paying him to be this ignorant, so…

How does he think non-solar power is stored? Why doesn’t someone ask him that? The media is useless.

I believe it was faux snooze. He accomplished the mission he chose to accept.

Penny jars. That’s how he became a billionaire!

Come on Kai. This is purposeful...

He's not that ignorant. Doug was one of the smartest GOP governors. He sold his soul to the crazies because he still hopes he can become President some day.

They don’t care if they sound or actually are ignorant! But gotta live the catastrophic failure of sunset. 😂 🌅

I know it's about money, but so why don't the fossil fuel folks just go make money with wind and solar too? Someone is going to

I work on monitoring right wing misinformation on renewable energy and this sentiment is EXTREMELY common. This line is used in township/county gov't, especially around permitting discussions all across the country.

Seriously, why are we reluctant to see the point of all this unexplainable but malicious, even violent, nonsense? Who does the destruction democracy and the the rule of law in America benefit?

Ron Howard: But he was that ignorant. (and every time he says something this stupid I think about the auditory statement that REI sent out to all the co-op members when his appointment was announced.)

*laudatory. Frickin’ autocorrect.

No, pretty sure he's disingenuous. But we can have fun demolishing his idiot persona in the meantime.

America deserves better.

Narrator: yes, in fact, he is.

Batteries are such a recent invention.

More likely he just knows MAGA will eat up whatever toxic BS they dish out.

They assume their audience is that ignorant and, so far, that bet has paid off.

Him and most of the dopey felon cabinet.

The problem is, when you lie enough, you begin to believe your own lies. Then, and here's where we are, the truth becomes irrelevant. That's when lying turns into bullshit.

The projected ignorance is a feature, not a bug.

Trump said something like it back in term 45. The WHAI just recycled the assigned talking points. Not unlike the AI that looked at a database of science and confidently hallucinated that the moon had an ameliorating effect on climate change. (NOT). Posted by a troll account that stole ID of a fed.

Wait until he finds out about these things called "batteries"

It’s the same thing Trump believes—if the sun goes behind a cloud (from an astronomical perspective, I guess a cloud goes in front of the sun is more accurate) all your appliances will switch off.

Unfortunately yes

Being part of a cult often requires feigned ignorance.

Blows my mind, and no push back

They talking about school shootings being a problem because of "too many doors". Their audience is that stupid

The sadder part is how many people will buy into this idea and repeat it.

He’s shorting whoever it is that makes Duracell batteries.

This guy may or may not believe his own BS, but a lot of people do which makes me think people are so close to going back to not knowing where the sun goes at night.

Perhaps he has not heard of this newly invented technology, the battery.

No, it's not possible. But that's the price you pay for serving as Secretary of the Interior for Trump.

Catastrophic failure is the GOP's MO.

Purposely ignorant. Former governor of the Great Fracking State. Purposeful disinformation for the rubes from the fossil fuel industry spokesman. According to experts like Wood McKenzie, rest of world on pace to install 1.9Terawatts of solar plus storage while US struggles to do 10% of that in gas.

No, he's not ignorant, just lying for Big Oil, like most of the right wing.

Doug never used to be like this. When he was in NoDak he had some genuinely good ideas re: smart power grid and the like. He endorsed Trump during the gubernatorial campaign even though he could’ve won with only 60% of the electorate instead of nearly 70%. He decided to sell his soul for power.

It's an audience of one, Jake.

Eh, I think calling him ignorant undersells it. He knows, he just hopes everyone else is ignorant. I ascribe everything to malice these days.

tax schemes... like those that apply to the oil, gas & coal industries.

He is a Republican Kai.

Well, when reality doesn't matter to someone, it becomes really hard to distinguish between stupid, evil, weak, and ignorant.

He speaks to an audience of one.

This is the "They're eating the cats and dogs" of the energy sector. Everything they say is predicated on how dumb they assume MAGA is.

Patience grasshopper, for he shall prove you right. Impossible is nothing when it comes to the abject stupidity of these people.

I always say there are three possibilities: stupid, evil, or crazy. Doesn't really matter which, they have the same result.

Yes he is that ignorant. It a trait in the current administration, not a flaw.

I formally worked in power generation, and I know it doesn't need to be said, but for the folks who just never think about these things: Building enough power plants to handle peak load is very expensive. Generation which addresses peaks instead of baseload drove the expansion of LNG.

He’s banking on maga stupidity.

Ummm batteries???? What a dumbass

And he’s one of the smart ones…

We're ruled, formally & informally, by a cadre of failsons who do nothing but fail up.

Kai I’m beginning to wonder.

He's playing to the the willingly ignorant base that refuse to learn about how solar and wind work and are stored. Including trump.

Of course he's not. But when you're hell bent on defending something indefensible, your arsenal of arguments is limited.

Oh my God! Are you kidding me?

No, not possible. But he knows their supporters are.

No but he’s betting his listeners are

Blah blah blah nonsense.

Nah. I believe the word you're reaching for is "obsequious". Yep. Yep. He sold his soul... cheap.

With Trump, he not only sold his soul, but he got stuck with the bill too!

They're absolutists, and dumb ones at that. Gun control won't stop EVERY gun crime, so there should be none. If an entitlement program has some fraud, the whole thing should be trashed. Solar doesn't produce energy 100% of the time so it's pointless.

They are willfully lying to appease "dear leader" no one can be this stupid otherwise.

Not just possible, but likely.

You know, I didn't get the clue that the sun died every night. No wonder these guys are running Arkham.

It's hard to make a man understand something when his paycheck depends on not understanding it.

There a truly shocking number of Americans who don't understand diversified power grids and use this argument. I watched people who I KNOW should know better make them against a small solar farm nearby a couple of years ago. Absolute brain rot caused by right wing media

Almost 20 years ago I was at an energy conference in Pebble Beach sponsored by Shell (yes, the oil corp) and Toyota, and back then they expected peak oil right about now with energy diversification from wind, solar, and natgas causing the decline. These Trump jokers are just... I dunno, ideologues?

But, it's expensive to store. (We've been to the Moon and dropped some droids off on Mars. But, ok.)

You gotta have more faith in the power of human ignorance

Nope. It’s not just possible, it’s likely.