Actually, Global Warming Was in Presidential Debates
NCF Annual Report 2010 (the latest available) discusses this further:
- NCF grantees are working to make clean energy innovation a core component of the new mainstream approach to climate policy.
- Experts estimate that it will take annual investments on the order of $500 billion to $1.5 trillion globally to effect a transition to a clean energy economy. Most of that money will need to come from private investors and NCF grantees are engaged in a complimentary set of efforts to ensure that those investments will be made.
- They [NCF grantees] are working to develop a more powerful advocacy community for clean energy investments.
NCF and their allies have certainly succeeded. Media now regularly report glowingly on so-called clean energy projects, activities that have as their main objective reducing carbon dioxide emissions — or “global warming pollution,” as many journalists erroneously call it. President Barack Obama used this approach in his 2011 State of the Union address, and then in his 2012 address as well.
As a consequence, public opinion surveys now often show strong public support for “clean” energy sources such as wind turbines and solar power. By January 2011, Rasmussen, after polling in the U.S., released a document titled “Support for Renewable Energy Resources Reaches Highest Level Yet.” In July 2011, Rasmussen even found that “51% Say Government Should Force Oil Companies To Use Profits To Develop Alternative Energy.”
But alternative energy is extremely expensive and relies on huge taxpayer subsidies. To use such intermittent and diffuse power sources requires that the consumer pay between three and ten times the price of power from conventional sources.
Energy independence is not a good reason for promoting new renewable energy technologies, either. Energy independence is more easily — and much more cheaply — attained by exploiting abundant national fossil fuel reserves, and then by spending some of the wealth created on research into potential new energy technologies.
While large direct climate change programs continue across the world as well, the child of the climate scare — the drive for low carbon dioxide emitting energy sources — has grown up and now threatens our energy security. With twenty-nine American states and the District of Columbia now enforcing renewable energy mandates, hundreds of billions of dollars are being squandered on wind turbines, solar power, and most biofuels.
At the same time, conventional power supplies are often neglected, thereby threatening our energy security, triggering higher energy prices, and placing millions of jobs and the economic futures of many countries at risk. Tragically, most energy companies have totally succumbed and now are feeding the fire that threatens to burn down their industries.
We can no longer allow our politicians to promote so-called green energy solutions without holding them to account for what they actually cost and for their ineffectiveness at providing the reliable base load power needed by a modern industrial society. Unless this climate policy by stealth is recognized for what it is and halted quickly, millions of people will be left hungry and freezing in the dark.
At this point the Common Core education curriculum pushed by Obama through Race to the Top and NCLB waivers and Positive School Climate mandates and all the “equitable” proposed computer modelling and real life group problem solving activities deemed to be “relevant” and “engaging” are all centered around Sustainability and Climate Change. All the educators are being bombarded in their coursework and professional development with systems thinking of the type I wrote about here.http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/who-granted-permission-to-spearhead-societal-evolution-to-a-global-cooperative-consciousness/
Even the ones not invited to Camp Snowball or another Peter Senge training session for Systems Thinking and the Common Core. Systems Thinking and treating the discredited Club of Rome Limits to Growth assumptions as realty to be modelled from is to be ubiquitous in K-12 and higher ed. We are also globally in the UN Decade for Education for Sustainability through 2015 so this is an attempt to create a global mindset that thwarts skepticism by altering perceptions. And at an emotional, non-rational level to boot.
The media knows all this. It is the public that does not. Calling attention to AGW and the fallacies of Green Energy and a Green Economy risks calling attention to this likely to be effective if not stopped soon stealth attack on personal and cultural noetic systems. The UN Secretary General has actually said education has became their primary method now and they do not really need further treaties.
I can guarantee you the accreditation agencies will do everything they can to keep this Future Earth Alliance initiative intact even if Obama loses his reelection bid. And the accreditors are the UN’s global enforcers in pushing all this propaganda and assaults on individualism and promotion of communitarianism through poorly understood but pleasant sounding terms like Quality Assurance and College and Career Readiness.
And the power and utility companies are among the biggest supporters of this toxic Equitable Society vision. They seem to simply assume everyone should either be employed by the government or a politically connected business. That being entrepreneurial means coming up with political innovations in a state directed economy. It really is far more than Solyndra involved in Obama’s and the UN’s belief in an Ecosystem world.
We are also globally in the UN Decade for Education for Sustainability through 2015 so this is an attempt to create a global mindset that thwarts skepticism by altering perceptions. And at an emotional, non-rational level to boot.
All linked to the “transnationalist” impulse, world global governance with the morons and fat cats at “the UN” imagining themselves calling the shots.
On green energy per se, the UN has turned out successive reports filled with lies and egregious errors in the name of imposing controls and restraints on energy worldwide, the so called Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
At some UN confab in Denmark early on in this administration, Obama promised reparations from our so called rich country to poorer countries.
The UN has tried to get the US to subject its legal process to their criminal court at the Hague.
The UN’s Human Rights Council (the US would not participate in previous administration but Susan Rice (yes, that Susan Rice) and Barack joined. The HRC has announced it will send out representatives November 6 to “monitor” US elections, a clearly illegal move having nothing to do with the organization’s legitimate scope.
The impetus for the “Ecosystem World” has almost nothing to do with maintaining a clean, healthy planet and everything to do with destroying the sovereignty of the United States, the destruction of nationalism in the name of transnationalism.
I have read most of the relevant UN reports. My joke is that the good confessions and declarations are usually on page 160 of a 200 page report.
At to the UN, Literacy is not about deciphering accurately print anymore. It actually contains a heavy dose of having the right collectivist beliefs. So UN Literacy initiatives are heavily about political indoctrination while looking to an outsider like an altruistic push.
On the global Green energy statist push, do not leave out the OECD. As they have said Everything they do and sponsor is about “Green Growth.”
So, without the climate scare, there would be little reason for wind and solar power to have such prominence now. They would only be considered as niche applications in special circumstances.
And yet…
A hefty portion of our nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer “stimulus” went into re-training for “green jobs”, with a 16% return rate, a number which may even be stretching the truth.
This President constantly demands more cash from “the rich”, while his stimulus/boondoggle “created” jobs at a cost of…something like…$5,000,000/job.
Audit: Green jobs stimulus program wastes cash
Demanding more and more taxpayer cash to down the drain, criminal on both sides.
The current campaign, in not addressing climate change in regards to a rational energy policy for America, will rival slavery as a taboo subject which was a cancer on our society. Every politician has kicked the can down the street, for generations. The issue is simple. The combustion of carbon is the bedrock of advanced industrial society. It heats our home, delivers our food, and powers our work place. It, and the fission of uranium are absolutely necessary for life, as we know it. If carbon combustion is bad for man kind, billions will die in poverty and pain, and they will not be happy about it. The clean, green, alternative energies all fail on one vital point, cost. They all cost too much. This is not a guess; it exists all over the world. In most societies, gated communities of the super rich are the only ones who can afford electricity. Very few nations have a grid, a cheap, ubiquitous, dependable, safe source of energy. America can pour generations of wealth on this issue; it will not change baring a miracle, or another new discovery. The costs sit on the laws of physics, chemistry, and economics. All the hot air from politicians will not change this reality.
Climate change and energy has proven without doubt that American politicians, both parties, are gutless wonders. The issue is simple. The USA can not survive without the inexpensive combustion of carbon.
I spent my life engineering energy.
The bottom line is that we are not capable of reducing atmospherica carbon dioxide enough to make a significant difference in global average temperature w/o crippling civilization. This has always been about wealth redistribution from the western industrialized nations to the Third World.
We are coming out of a chilly age into a slightly warmer one. Good. Heat will kill a hell of a lot fewer humans than cold. Get over it and break out the sunscreen.
Do the earth a favor and barbeque a communist enviro-whacko today.
And make sure to cook them over coal!
Without climate concerns, clean and green energy would refer only to low pollution energy sources, not to low CO2 sources (which is an essential reactant in plant photosynthesis and in no way a pollutant).
This is fundamentally incorrect. Low CO2 output by definition presumes no pollution whatsoever, not a choice between (e.g.) SO4 or NOX or CO2.
Wind power is in fact ready for prime time. The problem is that the powers that be are mandating improper utilisation. There is no energy storage mechanism. However if you combine wind with other tech that has a storage mechanism, things change. Here is an example:
You have two reservoirs, one at a higher elevation that feeds the lower. The lower one has a hydroelectric plant running 24/7. Wind power which is intermittent would run pumps that send water back uphill from the lower unit to the higher one. Obviously there are losses. It ain’t perpetual motion. But enough water flows back uphill that it works constantly. In other words wind power is the mechanism by which hydroelectric is “fortified” (for want of a better term.) The energy storage medium is water. This usage takes advantage of decades old tech, emits no pollution, and doesn’t rely on constant wind or sun to be effective. The goal is 24/7 uptime and no pollution (even assuming you [mis]classify CO2 as a pollutant.) That’s how you do it.
And yes there are in fact working pilot projects out there demonstrating this very approach. Google-fu skills will help the reader here.
The point is that merely because wind power is a political football as implemented at present (improperly and ineffectively) doesn’t necessarily imply that the underlying tech is either improper, doesn’t work, or is politically owned by one or the other party.
As for your implied notion that CO2 isn’t dangerous, we don’t know this. We don’t know that there is any sort of major global effect one way or another. What we DO know (the Tyndall Gas Effect) as postulated by Arrhenius over 100 years back is that CO2 does trap energy. We also know that land use changes also affect the temperatures. That doesn’t mean that the sky is falling. But pretending that increasing CO2 has no effect at all is simply incorrect.
I’m no green. I’m what you call a “lukewarmer.” What that means is that I get the overall physics: all things being equal, more CO2 makes the world slightly warmer. But I don’t claim to know what that really means to us. Could be good, could be not so good. I prefer to think that more CO2 is benign, not a big deal, no reason we ought to be wetting ourselves. But I’m not going to pretend that there is no physical effect at all.
There’s a lot of difference between rational skepticism at a scientific and engineering level and what you advocate.
co2 rises follow warming.
not cause of warming.
The technology you discuss is called pumped storage. It uses electrical energy, from some source, in off hours, to fill a mountain lake. During the peak demand hours, the electric motors are switched to become generators, as the reverse flow drives them to supply the grid. Water will always flow down hill. Pumped storage has been used for generations, but as all technologies, it has its limitations. The lakes and loads may be far apart, so there are losses. Lakes leak, and there are droughts. The prime generator can be any source which can cheaply (the KEY word, unknown in Washington D.C.) supply energy in off hours.
Man has studied the storage of electric energy for over a century. In small amounts, it works. Nothing exists which can cheaply supply a city for a day. He has studied flywheels, pumped storage, batteries, capacitors, and wound up rubber bands. Nothing works for cheap bulk supply except a pile of coal, an oil tank, or a nuclear reactor. We consume electricity a microsecond after we generate it. The secret is to do it cheaply (the word no politician can utter.) Electricity has become necessary for life. If you can not pay, you die.
Worry far more about this than flooding your beach house in 3,000 years.
My apologies. I am Anonymous, here. Cant type and answer the phone.
The technology you discuss is called pumped storage.
I was pointing out that electrical generation via wind is suitable for this variant, that it is not utterly useless as the article implied. (Although as presently configured to feed the grid it *is* pretty much useless.)
And so is much of the grid in some ways. Up to 40% transmission loss. Obviously what’s needed is a lot of smaller power generation plants that are regional.
Where did you get the notion I was worried about flooding? Did I mention this? WTF?
It is difficult to discuss complex technologies in a few sentences; thus it is very easy to be misunderstood( or confuse depending on your purpose.)
In summary, I agree that any green energy, wind being one, which has an inherent characteristic of intermittent energy, could be utilized, in small markets, via the use of pumped storage. But. The end result is quite expensive because you need several infrastructures to do one thing, provide continuous power. All of it costs money. And. Intermittent juice is worth less in the market, can not command high prices due to its nature. So. You have the double whammy of high production costs and low sale price. However. The world is a big place, somebody will need it, and wind power will have a market, in a free society. I just will not invest my money freely in wind power, unless my government, who owns lots of guns, makes me.
A hot tip. My guess is that High Temperature Superconductivity, HTS, is a better bet, for the reason you mentioned, losses in transmission. Superconductive grid back bones can pump oceans of juice across country. Maybe. Ten years ago the longest one on earth was 4″ in length. But. Good things are happening. This will open up a host of possibilities, maybe even distant wind generators. And it may save the significant cost of synchronizing many generators because it is DC. (The general problem of power conditioning still exists, however.)
I do not agree that distributed generation (zillions of stand alone unsynched generators) can replace the grid for bulk supply because of the economies of scale.
I mention flooding because lots of scientists claim it is a real climate change problem, which I know nothing about. Depending on who you believe, the timing of the end of world due to carbon combustion is ill defined. A median value might be 3000 years, if you care. I do not worry about this. I worry about Al Gore dipping his hand in my wallet.
Lukewarmer position re climate acknowledges the reality of basic physics and that all things being equal more CO2 = more warming. Land temps have risen, and some of this is people. But all things are rarely equal and the suspicion is that the planet has mechanisms we don’t understand, hence CO2 rise is likely a wash. Re land temps land use changes (by people) do change the local climate e.g. that it’s 2 degrees warmer in a city is reality; e.g. changing land from pasture to irrigated crops raises temps (more humidity) and so on. None of these things however indicate catastrophe imminent or otherwise.
In short humans can and do cause the climate to change and… so what.
This is a much more sane position than regarding Al Gore as a saint or the antipodal rejection of all things climate as being a massive hoax. As in all things objective truth is usually in the middle ground, never the extreme.
Meanwhile.
You can sort of watch the room temp superconductor via
http://nextbigfuture.com/
There’s also lots of up to date stuff on storage tech, etc. This is essentially a news aggregator for all things tech.
The problem with RTS is simply that replacing umpteen zillion miles of wire will be a bit spendy. There will be a hand in your pocket. At least you get something from it.
But the GreenshirtFascists will not allow reservoirs !
Heh. This is slowly changing and another reason to support the GOP this cycle. Ever since the climategate affair the “greenshirt” problem has been alleviated somewhat and this looks to continue. Their zenith was 2007. Climategate started a lot of people looking closely at things, one of them being the ‘outing’ of IPCC reportage as being partial science and partial NGO (e.g. greenpeace) op-ed crap packaged as if it WERE science. The IPCC lost enough credibility that it is being slowly rejected worldwide.
The Germans for example after Fukushima went overboard and decided to shut down their nuke generation. This after a zillion euros invested in green crapola. And then they discovered reality, that the green crap didn’t cover the power grid. Quietly and with zero fanfare the German government has started 23 new coal plants, i.e. screw CO2. This of course never made the papers…
The point is that the climate hysteria crap and the green crap is on its way out and sanity looks to prevail.
Carbon and Life
-It is hard to overstate the importance of carbon; its unique capacity for forming multiple bonds and chains at low energies makes life as we know it possible, and justifies an entire major branch of chemistry – organic chemistry – dedicated to its compounds. In fact, most of the compounds known to science are carbon compounds, often called organic compounds because it was in the context of biochemistry that they were first studied in depth.
-What makes carbon so special is that every carbon atom is eager to bond with as many as four other atoms. This makes it possible for long chains and rings to be formed out of them, together with other atoms – almost always hydrogen, often oxygen, sometimes nitrogen, sulfur or halides. The study of these is the basis of organic chemistry; the compounds carbon forms with metals are generally considered inorganic. Chains and rings are fundamental to the way carbon-based life forms – that is, all known life-forms – build themselves.
-Silicon is capable of forming the same sorts of bonds and structures, but opinion is divided on whether silicon-based life forms are a realistic prospect – in part because it needs higher energies to form them, and in part because whereas carbon dioxide (one of the main by-products of respiration, a process essential to all known life) is a gas and therefore easy to remove from the body, its counterpart silicon dioxide (silica) has an inconveniently high melting point, posing a serious waste disposal problem for any would-be silicon-based life form.
EPA official’s ‘crucify’ comment continues to draw fire Apr 27, 2012
http://video.foxnews.com/v/1603185814001/epa-officials-crucify-comment-continues-to-draw-fire
Blowing Away the Windmill Lies Windfall exposes a huckster’s cure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBYjZG8O6qE&feature=player_embedded
First off, I don’t believe in global warming or climate change or whatever they are calling it nowadays. Gee, we’re emitting too much carbon dioxide? Plant a tree or two and get over it. Other pollutants causing a problem? Find a way to filter them just don’t bother me while I’m grilling my steak on the backyard bar-b-que.
Find a new alternate energy source? Also fine, I’m all for it. Just don’t rush it to market before it’s ready. Don’t force something on me that doesn’t do the job. If it works it will find a market and pay for itself. If it’s a good idea and you can show how it will work you will find backers to invest in your idea, don’t mess with my tax dollars and force me to pay your way when you don’t know for sure your idea will even work. You want me to buy something, show me it works, it’s affordable and it’s something I want or like. I like gadgets but I’m not going to be forced to buy one if I don’t want to. In other words, bring me something I can use, even if it’s just to play with or leave me alone!
The Globe has not warmed one jot over the last 16 YEARS but Man Made CO2 emissions have continued to rise during the same period. So unless it has slipped my notice and Man has miraculously discovered BENIGN INERT CO2 and made its propagation mandatory all over the world then Green NAZI’s should wind their necks in and start looking for the next IMAGINARY DISASTER to panic over and to hang their POWER GRAB on.
As Lord Monckton so wisely said ‘There has NEVER been any Man Made Global Warming, there IS NOT now any Man Made Global Warming, there NEVER will be any Man Made Global Warming.’
CO2 is Plant FOOD, more plants – more food for men and for animals,so by wanting to eliminate CO2 Green NAZIs are essentially anti LIFE.
Beware!!! The!!! Oncoming!!! Ice Age!!!!!