The Greying of Green?
It has been reliably estimated by many researchers into the subject of “Global Warming” (or any of the other sobriquets by which it is known) that in fulfilling the draconian prescriptions of the Kyoto Accord or its successors, such as the United Nations IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, millions of jobs will be lost in the developed world, the quality of life in the industrialized nations will sink to substandard levels, and the inhabitants of the Third World will be deprived of the minimal immunities, comforts, and amenities to which they aspire.
Fiona Kobusingye, coordinator of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda, has vehemently denounced the attempt to impose energy restrictions on African nations in the name of fighting global warming. “These policies kill,” she writes. As for the combustible Al Gore, he “uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year.” Her conclusion: “Telling Africans they can’t have electricity—except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels—is immoral. It is a crime against humanity” (Townhall.com., July 29, 2009). Her article is a must read. Graced with common sense and logical reasoning, it is one of the best puncturings of the hot air balloon in the relevant literature.
H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the nonprofit National Center for Policy Analysis, would clearly agree. He correctly argues that recommendations based on “flawed statistical analyses and procedures that violate general forecasting principles” should be taken “into account before enacting laws to counter global warming—which economists point out would have severe economic consequences.” Such consequences are already in evidence. Benny Peiser, editor of CCNet science network, speaking at the Heartland Institute’s 2009 climate conference in New York, sounded the death knell of the green movement in Europe owing to huge costs and minimal results (Climate Realists, March 11, 2009). Environmentalist Lawrence Solomon quotes Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada, whose studies show that “every green job created ploughs under 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy” and that green jobs are proving to be unsustainable since the creation of even one such job costs $1 million in government subsidies (National Post, March 31, 2009).
These are costs that may be suffered in other, frankly ludicrous, ways as well. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in its 2008 Annual Report, published in 2009, jubilates over the replacement of motorized vehicles by “bicycle rickshaws”—which, it must be admitted, will certainly help to decongest metropolitan traffic. That it would reduce America and the West to Third World Status does not trouble UNEP overmuch. Perhaps that is the plan.
The much-ballyhooed T. Boone Pickens strategy of introducing large-scale windmill technology is now proving to be a similarly quixotic project, unsightly, land-consuming, bird-killing, neurosis-inducing, expensive and totally inadequate to its declared purpose of meeting even a fraction of our electricity needs. Alex Alexiev of the Hudson Institute has laid the cards on the table for all to read: green electricity bills are rising exponentially; Europe is gradually abandoning many of its green energy programs as cost-ineffective and injurious to both wildlife and human health; and, as of the end of 2008, American solar and wind-power stocks had lost 80% of their value (FrontPage Magazine, March 31, 2009). Rhode Island’s Public Utilities Commission has rejected a deal to build an offshore wind farm that would have entailed “hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs…” (The Providence Journal, March 31, 2010). New Zealand has repealed its carbon tax scheme and Australia’s opposition party is vowing to follow suit.
The writing is on the wall in majuscule. The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) has closed shop, putting an end to its estimated $10 trillion carbon trading scheme. In August 2011, President Obama’s pet green project, the California-based Solyndra solar plant, filed for bankruptcy, costing the U.S. $535 million in wasted stimulus funds and 1,100 jobs (NBC Bay Area, August 31, 2011). Other such futilities are impending. The Beacon Power Corp, recipient of a $43 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, has filed for bankruptcy after being delisted by the NASDAQ (Moneynews, October 31, 2011). The solar cell company Spectrawatt, recipient of a federal stimulus boost, and Nevada Geothermal, which profited from Federal DOE and Treasury Department subsidies, are on the brink of failure (FrontPage Magazine, January 26, 2012.) Ener 1, which received a $118 million stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop lithium storage batteries for electric cars, has filed for bankruptcy protection (Bloomberg Businessweek, February 2, 2012). This is bad news for the plug-in Chevy Volt, the president’s car of choice, which is beset with problems anyway; GM had to suspend production to cut inventory owing to anemic sales (Left Lane Online, March 2, 2012). Abound Solar, which makes cadmium telluride solar modules to the tune of a $400 million federal loan guarantee, has laid off 300 workers, amounting to 70% of its workforce (New York Post, March 10, 2012). And now the electric vehicle battery company A123 Systems, beneficiary of $300 million in Obama’s Recovery Act funds and $135 million in state tax credits and subsidies, courtesy of Michigan’s former Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm, is about to go belly up—another instance, to use Michelle Malkin’s term, of a smart grid, crony-inspired “enviro-boodle” (National Review Online, March 30, 2012).
The reason for many of these failures in green energy-production companies is simple. As noted environmental consultant and author Rich Trzupek explains, the energy density of convertible wind and solar is risibly low and dispersed, which renders electricity-generating power plants, whether large or small, “the most inefficient, least reliable, and expensive form of power we have” (FrontPage Magazine, March 23, 2012). As happened in Spain, Europe’s bellwether country for climatophrenic ruination, Obama’s “solar alchemy,” which demonizes traditional forms of energy extraction and application, has become a recipe for an American economic debacle.
Finnish professor Jarl Ahlbeck, a former Greenpeace member and author of over 200 scientific publications, points out that “real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.” Contrary to common belief, he continues, “there has been no or little global warming since 1995” (Facts and Arts, November 25, 2008). His findings have been supported by many other studies. To adduce just a few instances: geophysicist Phil Chapman, basing his results on careful analyses from major weather-tracking agencies, reports that global temperature is “falling precipitously” (The Australian, April 23, 2008); geologist Don Easterbrook, associate editor of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Professor Emeritus at Western Washington University and former U.S. representative to UNESCO, is also convinced that recent solar changes suggest the advent of a new cooling cycle which could be “fairly severe” (GlobalResearch, November 2, 2008); and a new study conducted by three Norwegian scientists, Jan-Erik Solheim, Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum, indicates that the next solar cycle, which is imminent, will see a “significant temperature decrease” over and above the current decline (Climate Depot, March 7, 2012).
Moreover, as Robert Zubrin has decisively shown in his recent Merchants of Despair, there exists robust scientific proof derived from ice core data and isotopic ratios in marine organism remains that Earth’s climate is a stable system, that CO2 emissions create surplus plant growth that in turn absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide, thus restoring climate equilibrium over the long haul, and that under cyclical conditions of global warming agricultural productivity naturally increases and human life immensely improves.
In a brilliant article for the Financial Post (April 21, 2012) analyzing the eleven logical fallacies on which the argument for man-made climate change rests, Lord Christopher Monckton, known for tracking and exposing scientific hoaxes, has effectively proven that the anthropogenic thesis has absolutely no basis, neither in fact nor in theory. So-called climate skeptics need nerves of steel to oppose the reigning ideology. It takes no less courage and perhaps even more for a climate “Warmist” to buck the trend, as culture-hero James Lovelock has recently done. Lovelock, who in his 2006 The Revenge of Gaia prophesied the charring of the planet, now admits he had been “extrapolating too far.” Despite predictably hedging his bets and deferring catastrophe into the indefinite future, he avers that “we don’t know what the climate is doing” and disparages his previous work, including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers, as “alarmist” (MSNBC.com, April 30, 2012).
Nevertheless, the Global Warming meme continues to circulate in defiance of the accumulating evidence, which leads one to wonder who the real “deniers” are. In my own country of Canada, “Warmist” foundations are determined to continue issuing environmental fatwas, in particular to tie up state-of-the-art, economically productive oil pipelines in endless litigation. That such a move would impact national revenues and cost thousands of potential jobs is a matter of no concern.
But the problem does not extend only to adversarial institutions and fellow-traveling NGOs. In other respects, Canadian governing parties, on both the federal and provincial levels, have not yet caught on to the perilous, impractical and pixilated nature of the Green crusade. Unsightly, government approved wind farms, for example, are literally driving people crazy and adding steeply to electricity bills. Despite being hyped by the left-leaning CBC News (May 22, 2008), solar energy installations and SpongeBob-looking photovoltaic panels disfiguring the landscape do not seem like a reasonable proposition in a country already burdened by a dark, six month winter, as the Ontario Power Authority will shortly discover. Government and industry supporters, to cite the enthusiastic CBC report, base their projections on the presumed success of the German model. But there is a slight hitch, namely, the German solar experiment is a possible “government boondoggle,” is “cost-inefficient,” will soon be obsolete, and has become “debatable” (MIT Technology Review, July/August, 2010). Indeed, it is now being phased out (Slate, February 18, 2010).
And then we have the soon-to-be-mandated mercury-laden CFLs, an undoubted domestic hazard, that are replacing standard light bulbs. Like many of my fellow citizens, I am assiduously hoarding incandescents in my basement, enough to see me through at least five years of environmental madness. Perhaps by that time, Green may have greyed sufficiently to be put out to pasture. One can hope.
The green movement has chosen to ignore the clean water needs in my rural state of West Virginia and instead squawks about mountain top removal to mine coal. Too many folks here still have sewers that dump into streams or wells with untreated drinking water. There are public sewage sytems that are falling apart as communities shrink. Communities cannot grow anew without public services and there as not been adequate government funding to help with these enormously expensive health and safety projects. However, we have had subsidized giant wind mills erected (made in Canada!)that now, can only run certain hours a day so birds don’t fly into the blades. By the way, “valley fill” the rubble that comes from mountain top mining is nothing more than rock and dirt. How polluting is that really?
This is because the Gang Green has a financial interest in receiving government money for the solar and wind crap. They don’t get research money for technologies that are already working. Follow the money and you will see why your sewer lines get ignored. Any time government decides to throw massive resources at solving problems, they create other problems and we make no progress. The sewers and roads are in terrible shape all over this country and West Virginia’s problems are not unique. This outcome is the result of our march to morph into a collectivist nation. ABO2012
GANG GREEN??!!!?? LOLOLOL!!!
I am soooooo stealing that!
It’s so apt too! What is gangrene but a disgusting rotting infection!
True enough and add to that the fact that Al Gore, Hillary Clinton and other anti-luminaries were disciples of Maurice Strong and will gladly see industrialized nations and their populations destroyed for the purported salvation of Mother Earth. These tyrants shed no tears over the multiplied deaths of innocents, but rather gleefully rejoice that the growth of the human population is being stymied as a result of their vacuous theories. Some fifty years ago Rachel Carson and her ilk, in the banishment of DDT, became unwittingly responsible for the unnecessary deaths of millions of defenseless Africans, South and Central Americans and others due to malaria and typhus. Until we return to true moral and spiritual integrity we will continue to witness the acceptance and the consequences of this leftist insanity.
But West Virginia has plenty of seasonal jobs. Just think how many people are hired every year after the Turnpike slides down the mountain. Or is that the mountaintop sliding down on to the Turnpike?
Ever been here? I didn’t think so. In WV you won’t see any mountains or mountaintops sliding anywhere. Instead there are 160,000 unemployed due to the shutdown of the coal mining industry, thanks to the EPA’s war on “carbon”.
The statement:
“…economically productive oil pipelines in endless litigation. That such a move would impact national revenues and cost thousands of potential jobs is a matter of no concern.”
While the “rank-and-file”, man-on-the-street Warmist may very well see such things as “of no concern”, the Leaders of the Global Warming Cult-and-Profit-Scheme do not.
Those at the top of this charade see this not as “of no concern” but as Principal Aim.
The leaders mean to garner all the Money and Power they can, and then–like one of their heroes did while fleeing Russia in 1944-1945–leave nothing but devestation in their wake.
Don’t get too upset about the mercury in CFLs. Like many another leftist hysterical rant, the dangers of lead and mercury have been VASTLY overstated.
Elemental lead and mercury are stubbornly NOT bio-available, and pose no virtually threat until they are compounded into forms which ARE bio-available, such as various salts and organic compounds.
Just ask the thousands (ten thousands) of men running around with chunks of lead in their bodies. Doctors will often leave a bullet in place, if its location presents no hazard to major blood vessels or organs.
Somewhere in a dusty attic (or several such attics) lies a box of old National Geographic magazines. In one of them (from the 60s, IRRC) there is an interesting article about the mercury mining industry. One of my favorite photos is one of a miner floating, fully clothed, in a pool of mercury. The miners end each day in a sauna to sweat the liquid mercury out of their pores.
No adverse health effects were noted.
HINT: Mercury and lead are primary components of ammunition. Ban, or at least, tightly control, these two metals and you can effectively cripple the ammunition industry, or better yet, make it unavailable to civilians.
Now I think I’ll go eat something with my mercury-laden teeth. Which are, y’know, in my MOUTH. And exposed to ACIDS. Daily. Repeatedly.
it’s not just that cfl lightbulbs contain mercury. It’s that they FLICKER. This flicker overwhelms vulnerable people’s eyes, and forces them into migrainous states, or even into epileptic seizures.
If one knows that one is vulnerable to such stimuli, one can try to arrange one’s life to avoid as much of this as possible. However, in one’s home? How is a person to avoid home? Live from sun-up to sunset, only?
Edison created the incandescant lightbulb. He ended, nearly single-handedly, “eye-strain” from inadequate lighting. Adding hours to the day increased American productivity, first, and then the rest of the electrified world. It’s a sign of despair that there aren’t lights all over North Korea.
And, goodness, mercury can poison nerves. I’ll point out that regular incandescant lightbulbs have never shattered, at my house, while CFLS have burst on being turned on, showering my children with glass. I’ll leave out the mercury, since you don’t seem to think that Minamoto is real.
The flickering of FL bulbs is worse when either the ballast is dieing or the bulb is dieing. The medical issues are real and very difficult to deal with because FL are very common in the work place.
No, some mercury COMPOUNDS can poison nerves. Actually, that’s where we get the phrase, “mad as a hatter”. The mercury salts used in early hat making (Victorian England) gradually poisoned the hat makers, making them insane.
But the key is that these were mercury COMPOUNDS, NOT elemental mercury, which is what’s in CFLs.
And if you object to the flickering, fine, object to the flickering.
But don’t buy the completely unscientific hysteria about mercury being some extreme health hazard.
Or better yet, forget the drawbacks of CFLs and object ON PRINCIPLE to the federal government assuming the authority to regulate such things.
There is a huge difference between the two.
I object to congress outlawing the perfectly good incandescent bulb. A bulb which has worked fine for over 100 years to a mandated, horribly expensive product that no American would ever buy on their own (unless FORCED) that doesn’t even work as well.
Incandescent light bulbs are not illegal, new ones just have to meet the efficiency standards. There are plenty of new incandescent bulbs coming out. In a year you will forget why you had a panic attack over light bulbs.
CFL bulbs flicker and they give the ambiance of a truck stop at midnite. Bald, Cold, flickering, all Natural color blasted away.
Why do we have to put up with them?
Nope. Just checked it out and its illegal to dispose of cfl bulbs except as toxic waste, and the justification given was. Yep. Mercury. So some discrepancy exists.
We can’t even throw the damn things away.
You go, Mark V! The only reason lead is considered a poison is so that the distribution of lead can be tightly monitored and taxed. Government can’t find a way to take away our right to have firearms, but they have made ammunition so expensive that nobody gets to practice their shooting anymore.
I would not go too mercury or lead is friendly happy. The human tolerance for mercury is zero and lead is 4 parts per billion. Mercury is lethal at 4 parts per billion and lead at 8 parts. Bullet wounds encapsulate which reduce the risk of lead poisoning. Dental amalgams are more toxic to the dentist if he has to redrill them. Heavy metals can become organic molecules through the food chain, i.e. metal to microbes to fish to humans. Mad hatters’ disease is not funny. Vaccines are still an ongoing source of mercury poison, especially in third world countries, where the U.N. would equalize the U.S.A.
Compounds which contain mercury are NOT mercury.
You can safely play with mercury.
Many mercury compounds are lethal even in small doses.
Ahh, just when you think they’re up against the wall with reality. This summer we have the Rio+20 Summit. Expect new dire warnings leading up to the summit. None of this is about the environment, sustainability,etc.. This has always been only about creating a new way of living, a new world, a new Man. They will never give up their dream. This is an endless war on reality.
This whole carbon scheme is like shouting FIRE in a crowded theater and then selling tickets at the door to leave. The people in line to leave are going to eventually notice the place is not on fire and also that the guys at the door are getting rich and don’t seem to be worried about getting burned. It’s time to deal with these criminals.
Is this really a surprise? Environmentalism is nothing more than cutlural imperialism.
On an unrelated note, can whoever is in charge of this website make it so that we don’t have to manually type in our names and e-mail addresses every time we want to leave comments?
But the Red Greens insist that they are the champions of the Third World, conservation of resources, and Gaia lovers. I wrote them as irrationalists here: http://clarespark.com/2012/05/15/progressive-uplift-vs-new-left-nihilism/. By comparison, the original progressive movement was rational and orderly.
Try using Mozilla Firefox. It automatically remembers your name and etc. after the first time you type it in on a given website.
cheers
eon
GAO: Recoverable Oil in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming ‘About Equal to Entire World’s Proven Oil Reserves’ By Terence P. Jeffrey May 11, 2012
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gao-recoverable-oil-colorado-utah-wyoming-about-equal-entire-world-s-proven-oil
And in Cal. because of a snail darter, valuable farm lands are going to waste and the economic climate in Cal. gets worse because despite what pelosi and others may say, having people on food stamps and welfare and unemployment is not the best way back to prosperity.
Try this on for size.
1000 people in a population. All are working and government gets taxes from each and pays no one. For this example let’s say that each person pays, on average $1,000 year. That is $1 Million budget. That pays for all services for this town.
100 people aren’t working, so the money for the budget is $900,000. $100,000 is not collected because 100 people aren’t working. so now $900,000 has to pay for all the services that used to cost $1 Million. But the city makes it work
Now the snail darter stops farmers from working, and 200 more people are out of work. That is 700 people working and the money coming in is $700,000
Now the city needs to make do with $300,000 less, and what they want to do is raise taxes on those that are still working.
But the 10 % that pay 30% of the revenue to the city say that if the city is going to raise taxes they will just up and move. The city decides to raise taxes and 100 more people leave, but this time the city loses $300,000 more. So with 300 people not working and 100 people leaving the city is now receiving only $400,000 to fund all services that used to cost $1 million and also must now try to fund resources to help those not working.
Result is Greece, or what is looking to be the US if the policies keep up.
I’ll say it again: the Green agenda will be impractical until they (or someone) come up with the “Ford Model A” of alternative energy. Something cheap, simple, dependable, understandable, and ubiquitous. Show me something I can get excited about buying, something that will solve my energy problems BETTER than coal, petroleum, natural gas, hydroelectric, or atomic power AND that I can afford – then I’ll change my my horse & buggy habits. Merely punishing me for being old-fashioned won’t make it happen. Neither will forcing me to adopt half-assed “alternatives” by government fiat.
As far as I’m concerned, the ball is firmly in the Greens’ court. Where’s their solution? I can’t wait to see it.
They don’t want a new energy source. UC Berkeley physicist John Holdren (yes that John Holdren) pointed out that “clean burning, non-polluting, hydrogen-using bulldozers still could knock down trees or build housing developments on farmland.”
In 1989 environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin’s view on cold fusion. “It’s the worst thing that could happen to our planet.” Inexhaustible power, he argues only gives man an infinite ability to exhaust the planet’s resources, to destroy its fragile balance and create unimaginable human and industrial waste.
This whole “movement” is anti-human, except for themselves of course.
Hydrogen is NOT an energy source. It must be manufactured, and that takes energy. Oddly enough it takes more energy than the hydrogen can supply.
It is an inefficient energy STORAGE medium. Converting to hydrogen does NOTHING to provide any energy.
At MOST it can solve some air pollution problems, or (more likely) move them somewhere else.
They are working on ways to collect more government subsidies for research on this all important problem. Don’t hold your breath expecting environmental moralists to ever invent something that would make their subsidies dry up. Face the facts.
Greenies are losing ground but not because of the failed science. They are losing because of the economy. This week in Ohio a new fracking law passed with greatly watered down regulations. A decade ago it would not have permitted any drilling at all.
The Ohio Senator pushing for the bill said “Folks, we’re sitting on a mountain of money, people who have been poor as church mice for 150 years are now going to be the latter-day Jed Clampetts.”
Then he launched into a rendition of the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies. Awesome.
The science and economics are not important. These people are on a sacred mission to save the planet. All they have to do is label something as good or bad and the perception will stick. So Organic is good, plastic bags are bad, local small farms good, ugly mercury bulbs good, petroleum is bad etc.
Someone came up with a study a few years back proving that large scale farming actually has a much lower carbon and energy footprint than local or organic crops due to economy of scale and transportation. Did that stop them from pushing for “local”? Nope because it is not the planet that matters. What matters is how something makes ME feel and making sure YOU notice how wonderful I am.
The Greenies may lose a battle or two but they are not losing any ground. where I live they are not getting in your face. My town council a year or so ago started a “green team”. At first it seemed harmless: organizing volunteers to pick up trash, clean the parks etc. Now they have done things like pushing through an “anti idleing ordiance” A man of 78 years of age whom I know was parked in a local park one cold sunday morning drinking a cup of coffee and turned his engine on to run the heat. A punk college age kid banged on his window and indentfied himself as from the “green team” and told him what the town law was on idleing. Then one day I was on line in the local CVS where a woman who was ahead of me was buying styrofoam bowls and a college age girl who said she was from the “green team” began to give a lecture to the woman and the cashier about how bad the bowls were for the enviroment.
Someone came up with a study a few years back proving that large scale farming actually has a much lower carbon and energy footprint than local or organic crops due to economy of scale and transportation. Did that stop them from pushing for “local”? Nope because it is not the planet that matters. What matters is how something makes ME feel and making sure YOU notice how wonderful I am.
Then you need not worry. Monsanto is busily taking over third world farming. No need to own the land. The farmer, the seeds and fertilizer belong to them. What will become of the millions of smallholders around the world with your large-scale corporate farms? Indentured servitude? Co-operatives of small farmers would solve the transportation problem. A larger cut of the profits would also help.
The ongoing argument of man-made climate change vs natural event is irrelevant. Look at the Niger delta. Look at our once protected national parks here in Cambodia. Look at what the mining magnates of Australia intend to do to the Great Barrier Reef.It is not the ideology behind the need to clean up the planet that is at fault, but the corruption in the implementation of the Protocol.
Example: I set up a forestry company and head of to Africa where I do a deal with a corrupt politician whereby I come by a large tract of land. The villagers are no problem. Chase them off violently. Kill them occasionally. Plant a forest of pines, say, where no animal nor plant can co-habit, and claim my annual reward from the Carbon Trading Fund. A couple of years later, I chop down the forest and sell it for wood, and then repeat the process.
It is the corruption the Ugandans rail about. It is corruption that drove the New Zealanders to eschew the system. Ditto Australian opposition.
There is no green movement, and to attack it as one cohesive unit, is creating a straw man to attack. That being said, the renewable energy market is not going anywhere, drive through Illinois and Indiana, and you will see wind power under construction. Please explain to me how a private company putting up wind turbines, hurts the economy or takes away jobs. Lets not forget that the solar power industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the US. Also, Germany is currently on track to be 100% renewable. In the face of the facts, it is not reasonable to saw the renewable energy movement is going anywhere. Noting that the stock price of solar companies dropped in 2008 is really low hanging fruit, essentially all stock prices dropped at that time.
Anyone who does not believe the average global temperature is rising, is senile. Whether or not the cause is man made, is a relevant questions, but not whether the temperature is actually rising. Finding one “scientist” that agrees with you does not mean you actually did research and created a coherent argument. The author should be ashamed of this trash.
Because those “private” companies are only doing so because they are getting substantial government subsidies. Absent those subsidies, all “green” power technologies can’t compete because they are all CRAP.
When the gummit gets out of the business, the whole thing collapses.
Oh, wait, we didn’t have to wait for that – we’ve seen almost a BILLION dollars worth of “green energy” company collapses just in the last year.
Wind and solar are boondoggles. Suitable for small-scale power generation ONLY where conventional power isn’t readily available.
I have to agree. Talk about “sustainability” – how are solar or wind power ventures sustainable if they can’t survive without government sustenance? It’s an artificial economy.
To continue my car market analogy, we’re ready and willing to buy Mustangs but the Greens keep trying to sell us Volgas. Surely they can do better!
Show me information detailing any government subsidy for the Fowler Wind Farm, which is owned by BP. Also, what energy development in our country is not subsidized in one way or another? Given the fact that it is a private owned wind farm brings lots of money to the residents leasing the land. They are sustainable in the fact that the farm has long term contracts to sell the energy, and the wind is not going to stop blowing. Additionally, the technology is rapidly getting better, and wind is a booming sector. It is stupid to be against something just because you classify it as green and you hate everything green. It is an energy market, and is not going anywhere. There are more wind farms already construction.
Or possibly, looking at actual, uncooked data.
Seriously! The UK is looking a blizzard conditions ( and so much rain that they have newspaper comics about someone calling to get yet another beach whale out of their garden – but they are still in a “DROUGHT!”), the east coast is cold. California had a cold summer last year….need I go on?
It’s weather and weather patterns change. Just because some bozo had a hot summer doesn’t mean that someone else wasn’t up to their eyebrows in snow with “unseasonable” weather.
Yes please go on. It was high 80s in Chicago during the majority of March, record breaking heat. Notice how I said global average temperature. If those words are hard for you to understand, use the google. There are strong bio indicators (birds, plants, and other animal migration patterns) and those things that take the temperature. The last decade was the warmest in the last 100 years.
Global temperature has increased a bit. I don’t dispute that.
However, if you look at this reference page,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/global-temperature/
… you can see that its more complex than it might seem from most coverage of the topic. Is the increase of global temperature going to cause the sort of negative consequences imagined? Hardly… Frankly, I’m a fan of global warming. Bring it!
Besides the so called ‘solutions’ that would actually curtail global warming would cost quadrillions, while affordable ‘mitigations’ would have imperceptible impact. Environmentalism isn’t about saving the planet anymore; it’s about the power to control the behavior of others. We’re better off from a public choice perspective to forget about government solving a non-existent problem and simply focus on encouraging economic growth so we have the resources to adapt to whatever actually happens.
We seem set to have a really heavy monsoon in Cambodia. In fact, we have had no dry season at all. The rain has just got heavier and heavier, and it’s only May — many months to go.
The fundamental problem with the “green movement” is that they reject the advice of anybody with the relevant technical background: chemistry, physics, engineering, and mathematics, and are willing to tolerate, at most, descriptive biologists, essentially photographers and confirmed non-math majors. They are interested only in political results, not actual scientific inquiry.
#8 Washington 76: “GAO: recoverable oil…..” Your source is operated by noted right wing political activist L. Brent Bozell. He’s as suspect in his opinion as is his contemporary on the left, Al Gore. Suggest that you read the fine print of the GAO testimony. There is no economically viable technology at this time to “recover” all that “recoverable” oil.
#10 Bugs: “……the ball is firmly in the Greens’ court. Where is their solution?…….” Suggest visiting this web site: http://www.rmi.org . The Pentagon is among the Institute’s clients.
#13 Valerie: “….They are interested only in political results, not actual scientific inquiry.” The same can be said for the other side. The author of this piece cites Lord Christopher Monckton. However, Monckton’s degree is in classics and he’s a journalist. He knows nothing about climate science other than his “political opinion.”
14. SteveB/Colorado wrote:
#13 Valerie: “….They are interested only in political results, not actual scientific inquiry.” The same can be said for the other side. The author of this piece cites Lord Christopher Monckton. However, Monckton’s degree is in classics and he’s a journalist. He knows nothing about climate science other than his “political opinion.”
Your ignoring that Lord Monckton’s analysis of the facts is indisputable. Your response is an ad hominem. I have science degree and what I see happening to climate ‘science’ is group think among too many people with a financial stake in public grant money. The results I want is honest science, and rational public policy choices based on facts, but what we get from the keepers of the actual measurement data is stonewalling, not transparency. Show us the unprocessed data! Other scientists have to have the raw data so they can reproduce the results themselves. That is how actual science is done. Not this shallow illusion of science… sheesh.
SSN: there is no ad-hominem here. My point is simple: every person is entitled to an opinion. The more background knowledge one has of a topic, the more credibility they have. Or to put it differently, Lord Monckton is about as knowledgeable on climate science as is Al Gore.
Suggest a visit here (it isn’t perfect; you can do a Google and find those who disagree):
http://www.skepticalscience.com for those who are skeptical about climate change skepticism
David, get your head out of wherever it’s parked and take a look at the German economy, the strongest in Europe (also probably the strongest unions as well). They are heavily invested in building the economy of the future; the GREEN economy while we in the U.S. sit here with our fingers in our noses watching Dancing with the Stars – thanks to so-called leaders like you, people who are the equivalent of the old Flat Earth Society.
Not only is Germany BOOMING, it’s doing it completely free of nuclear power and is fast becoming the leader in alternative energy technologies. And, they’ll not only be in the enviable position of being the economy of the future, they’ll be selling the systems to the rest of the world and getting richer in the process – exactly what we should be doing.
Oh, wait, we can’t SUBSIDIZE our solar industry, that’s . . that’s SOCIALISM!!
As for the Third World, the best thing we can do for them is teach them how NOT to go down the same oil-dependant, nuclear-invested, dead-end road we did. Or, we could be like Germany and not only model the future but sell them the technology to create it.
You mean, like this?
http://thegwpf.org/international-news/5697-germany-faces-energy-disaster-next-winter.html
Germans in general aren’t very satisfied with the way their “green energy” laws are working. Among other problems, the insulation that is mandated for all buildings has had the effect of causing increased humidity and associated mold in older ones, notably single family homes.
But as it stands, Merkel doesn’t dare challenge the Green Party, which has just enough seats in the Parliament to be a power broker. Also, there are enough Green zealots in her cabinet (notably the Environment Minister, who rides a bicycle and demands everyone else does so, too- even in winter) who have the authority to make policy by fiat with no reference to her or the legislature.
Germany is facing an energy-deficiency catastrophe, of the “pray it’s a mild winter” level in the short term, and “the lights are going out for good” in the long term.
Anybody who thinks that is a “forward-looking” energy policy must be a bit confused about which way the flow of time goes in Einstein’s General and Special Theories of Relativity. (Hint; the Paleolithic is supposed to be behind us, not in front of us.)
clear ether
eon
Anyone who believes the future is in fossil fuel and nuclear energy, please contact me ASAP. I have the deed to the bridge to nowhere with your name on it..
I’m right here, Obi. I’m a newly minted nuclear engineer; I wouldn’t have spent 4.5 years in college studying something I didn’t think had a future. And unless you want thousands of nuclear weapons in the world forever, you need nuclear power, because the ONLY way to permanently eliminate nuclear weapons is to burn up their cores, either by detonating them or by converting them into fuel for a nuclear reactor. Dismantled weapons are easy to reassemble unless you burn up the cores. What do we do with the waste? Reprocess the used fuel- sell the recovered uranium to Canada or China to fuel their CANDU reactors, cut the transuranics with depleted uranium or thorium and use it to fuel our own reactors, and turn the fission products into autonomous generators to fuel remote sites that can’t be connected to the normal grid (i.e. Antarctica outposts, oil rigs, etc.).
Germany is not booming; their GDP grew .5% last quarter. They only look like their booming because much of Europe is collapsing. Solar panels are toys, not something you can power a country with. Windmills are toys. To power the country, we need BASELOAD power, not intermittent power, and baseload comes from fossil fuels, nuclear, geothermal, hydro and garbage incineration. And even if we could run our economy on solar power, where would we get the rare earth metals needed to build the solar panels?
It’s amazing how people gamble with the future of the planet just to protect the profits of the greedy oil companies. If there is even a chance that global warming will wipe out most life on Earth–and there is far more than a chance–why shouldn’t everything be done to stop it. Especially since the profits of the fat cats at Texaco and Exxon-Mobil are the only thing that would have to be sacrificed in the fight against global warming. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain–why do so many so willingly imbibe this corporate propaganda? What have oil companies done for you?
For the truth, go here:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2012/04/the-coastline-o.html
Go to China and then try to tell me there’s nothing to lose! These policies kill people, and I am not exaggerating. You cut people off from electricity, and many people will die.
Whoa Throbbin Yobbin! Who exactly are the fat cats at Texaco et al? Perhaps share holders who hope to build an adequate retirement by investing in prosperous businesses? Life will be wiped off the earth one day. Our Sun is just a star among billions that will burn itself out in the faraway future. Now that will be some real global warming!
the worst part about the recent green agenda is they ignore problem sites, obstruct new plants and refineries from going in (which would be easier to make safer and more environmentally friendly). If the site isn’t well enough publicized, they will just ignore it forever. Honestly, if they focused on a personal property rights style of conservation, as well as logical updates and working to build more efficient power grids for today (not 100 years in the future when we have figured out more about cold fusion), the environment for people would be much better, and the costs of energy would be less. For the record, the only time a majority agrees to environmental reform is when the majority has a good economy and low energy costs.
the EPA: Public Health is Top Priority. Please voice your support for clean air by letntig the EPA know you support the Mercury and Air Toxics