Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
It’s a bad week for poor people around the planet. First, and with great fanfare, our President unleashed his patented climate plan, affectionately known as Obama’s War on Coal™. He hasn’t said yet how much Obama’s War on Coal™ will cost, but we can be sure that it will not be cheap. And as in any war, it is guaranteed that the poor will suffer the most.
Sadly, this was followed by even worse news. The World Bank has decided it wants to keep the developing world from having inexpensive electricity. They will not make any more loans for coal-fired power plants.
You remember “inexpensive electricity”? When I was a kid, the US Government used to be in favor of inexpensive electricity, because it was rightly seen as the savior of the poor farmer and the poor housewife. That’s why the Tennessee Valley Authority came to be. I wash the clothes around our house, and I don’t do it by hand. I have inexpensive energy to do that. Now, however, the government and the environmental NGOs and the climate alarmists are doing every single thing that they can to make energy more expensive. And the World Bank has just officially joined the baying chorus.
The World Bank thinks that inexpensive energy will harm the poor … not now, of course, but in fifty years. And on that basis, the World Bank thinks it is justified to harm the poor now.
This is the madness at the base of the climate alarmists policy—it actively harms the poor now, with the justification that it might help their grandkids avoid harm in 50 years.
The wealthy fat-cats running the World Bank are unwilling for school kids in India to have cheap electricity to study by, on the grounds that it might, not will but might, make those students’ grandkids a bit warmer in a century. I doubt that the poor in India would vote for that plan, but I guess the World Bank is our economic paterfamilias who knows what the poor need, much better than the poor know themselves, and it’s not cheap electricity …
The same thing is going on in the US. Where I live, California, the resident burglars are called the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, known as PGE. They are a monopoly utility, and supposedly they are run for the benefit of the ratepayers.
Now, if you had a monopoly public utility for say water, and your water supplier said they were going to charge twenty times the going price for a glass of water if you were really, really thirsty, would you think that was in the public interest?
That’s exactly what’s happening to Anthony, PGE is gouging him on the price because that’s when he really needs the electricity … what kind of a screwed up world has this become? A public utility is supposed to provide cheap energy, not gouge the customers at the time they really need the electricity.
Now, the East Coast and the Powder River country is going to feel the pain, as coal-fired plants close and their electricity costs start to creep up. So, since war has been declared, let’s see if Obama’s War on Coal™ is worth the billions and billions of dollars it will cost … what are we buying for our money?
Well, fortunately I don’t have to go through all the math to figure it out. There is a strong supporter of the Obama climate plan named Chris Hope, who has done the math for us. His blog says:
Chris is a climate change policy researcher, PAGE model developer, and faculty member at Cambridge Judge Business School, interested in environment and energy.
He has used his whiz-bang model to do the calculations. His assumption is that the US will do the following
1) Lower the CO2 emissions to 83% of the 2008 level over the next seven years, and
2) Maintain that low level of emissions for the succeeding 80 years.
Now, absent a huge technological breakthrough or another depression, there’s little chance of us getting to 83% of 2008 emissions in the next seven years.
But that pales before the improbable idea of the US maintaining that low a level of emissions for the next 80 years.
So to start with, we see that Mr. Hope has made the most hopeful assumptions about the climate plan—first that it will meet its initial goal, and second that it will maintain that goal for over three-quarters of a century.
And with those likely unattainable assumptions, what does Mr. Hope calculate as the effect of Obama’s War on Coal™?
Well … um … well, he says that by the year 2100, nearly a century from now, that the temperatures will be much cooler.
…
How much cooler, you ask?
…
Well … two …
…
Two degrees C?
…
Er … no …
…
Oh … so, it’s two tenths of a degree C, then, not two degrees C?
…
Um … no.
…
I have to confess, in writing this I find that I am very reluctant to reveal the expected outcome of Obama’s War on Coal™ for a simple reason—it is at times like this that I’m embarrassed to be an American.
…
Because the reality is that Chris Hope, an ardent supporter of the War on Coal™, using the most optimistic (and unattainable) assumptions, says that IF we win the War on Coal and we put hundreds of people out of work and increase the cost of electricity for poor and wealthy alike (although obviously, Obama and his rich pals don’t care about the cost increase), here’s our prize. Here’s what Chris Hope says we’ve bought for the all the pain and suffering:
In the year 2100 the world might be 0.02°C cooler.
Two hundredths of a degree in a century. Maybe. That’s the prize. That’s what Chris Hope has proudly announced will be the reward for the job loss and the pain and suffering of the poor.
Two hundredths of a degree of cooling. An amount that is far below our ability to even measure …
Me, I think that that one fact alone should be our emblem and our rallying cry in opposition to this gob-smacking lunacy. So the next time someone says they think the War on Coal™ is a brilliant plan, gently point out to them that they are advocating spending billions and billions of dollars to cool the planet by two hundredths of a degree in the year 2100, and in the process harming the poor … and ask if that strikes them as the most rational of plans …
Or you could just shake them until their teeth rattle and say “You think we should spend billions of dollars to cool the planet two hundredths of a degree a century from now, while hurting the poor today? Have you gone barking mad? Billions for a reward that’s too small to be even measured, while pensioners shiver in fuel poverty? Unhand my wallet, you thieving varlet, and slink back to your hole!”
I swear, this unremitting attempt by Obama and the activists and the environmental NGOs to crush the poor back into their hovels, while they proudly declaim the noblest of motives, turns my stomach and threatens to fair unhinge my reason … how can they do that?
Billions and billions of dollars for two hundredths of a degree … bad news, folks, the Emperor not only has no clothes. He’s lost his mind entirely.
Grrrrr, bad for my blood pressure … in any case, here’s what coal did while Obama was declaring war on it …
w.
Surely if they wanted to cool the world it would be simpler to cover some patches of desert with white plastic, or put some sulfoxides into the atmosphere (an artificial version of a volcanic eruption), or use atom bombs to force a few volcanoes to erupt, but fracturing their magma chamber – at least your billion dollar investment would have measurable results.
Presumably the NET result they perceive is more like 2.02 degrees below what it would have been, but your coal graphic says it all. They DON’T want all these benefits? I think they should explain why that is rather than worry about what the temperatures might or might not be.
100% organic.
I can only hope that we can reverse this mess quickly and efficiently once the Obama Regime is out of power.
The EPA’s analysis of the effect of the proposed US 2010 Climate Bill was .01C degree.
Upper middle column
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=57cadd3c-afb0-4890-bae5-3d6a101db11f
It is the elitist mentality of I know better than you and you shall obey that really gets me going.. The World Bank wants people in poverty and dependent on them just like Democrats want Americans in poverty and dependent.. CAGW has always been about power and control never about the climate.
A revolution was started when King George tried to keep people in chains. This too will likely cause a war and it wont be coal flying back and forth.. There is a reason our founding fathers gave us the right to keep and bear arms.. Tyranny knows no boundaries unless it is stopped by a gun.
Those men 237+ years ago were smart men to see this coming. Your unalienable rights are only yours if you can defend them.
We’ve found Mr. Hope; desperately seeking Mr. Change.
Obama promises to make electrical power costs more expensive in the US and promises to spend money in Africa for power plants.
Obama is fortunate to have his own government. It is a shame there are no longer checks and balances in the US system. When did Obama become King?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/barack-obama-pledges-energy-cash-to-light-up-africas-darkness-8680599.html
“Barack Obama pledges energy cash to light up Africa’s darkness
US President promises funding to provide ‘the energy to lift people out of poverty’ by doubling Africans’ access to electricity
Mr Obama said his government (William: it is nice to have one’s own government to promise money that one does not have during your summer holidays) would provide $7bn (£4.6bn) in public funding,”
Wasn’t it LBJ that declared “War on Poverty”? Now we have a “War on the Poor”.
glenncz says:
June 30, 2013 at 7:07 pm
Thanks glennez for the opportunity to enjoy EPA reasoning at its finest. After stating that the effects of their regulations on greenhouse gases will be to reduce global temperature in 2100 by an unmeasurable 0.006 to 0.015 degrees C, they go on to argue:
“Another commenter indicated that the
projected changes in climate impacts
resulting from this action are small and
therefore not meaningful. EPA disagrees
with this view as the reductions may be
small in overall magnitude, but in the
global climate change context, they are
quantifiable showing a clear directional
signal across a range of climate
sensitivities.320 321 EPA therefore
determines that the projected reductions
in atmospheric CO2, global mean
temperature and sea level rise are
meaningful in the context of this rule.”
So it’s “meaningful” (even though you can’t measure it) because it is IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION!
Your are spot on that this makes electricity more expensive for poor people, but this does not matter for Western (pseudo) Greens: “let them eat cake”. They worry about sea level rise – which is NOT happening – and projected absurd temperature rises – nightmares THEY have.
I think the real agenda of the World Bank, President Obama, et al, is to materially reduce the population of the world through increased poverty and starvation.
(Most WUWT followers will already know this, so just for the newbies.)
Coal is dirty. Burning coal is dirty. There is some coal that is cleaner than other coal (less sulfur). We have the technology to use coal, even if it is dirty.
Coal is not a problem–how we use, or don’t use it, is the problem.
We need to use our technology to safely use all the coal we can mine.
Yup, it’s just that simple….
AntonyIndia says:
June 30, 2013 at 7:25 pm
Thank you, my friend. I don’t mind if they have nightmares and fantasies about Thermageddon.
I do mind if the nightmares lead them to screw the poor while they claim to be helping them … helping them fifty years from now …
Even if that were true, and we have little reason to think it is, I doubt the poor would trade a guaranteed loss today for the possibility of a gain in a century.
And when they tell the poor that the prize is two hundredths of a degree cooling in a century … maybe?
w.
Cap and Trade, nope.
EPA, plan “B”, yep!
The moment China became the richest society on earth our western elites moved the goal posts on just what elite means.. Environmentalism is nothing but a running excuse to explain away why our standard of living is dropping like a stone..
Without environmentalism we would have to compete with China on a equal footing and end up failing.. This would leave our leaders responsible and most importantly expose the rich ruling class to social revolutionary upheaval..
Clearly its not about a fraction of a degree, its about (like always) controlling the narrative..
And of course, 0.02°C assumes positive feedback to H2O, which is not evident on this planet. Insanity.
They know they have passed the point of no return as far as the private sector is concerned..
So its rich people and government workers as believers and the rest of us are supposed to slave away for the rich people and pay ever increasing taxes to support the ever increasing demands of the government workers..
its pretty obvious that the people who ruined our society came up with this plan..
Brilliant and provocative as usual Willis but you left something out. Not only to green plans for energy from useless windmills (birdchoppers) and solar panels harm the poor they kill. How would you like to be the aging pensioner in London shivering in your tiny flat because you can no longer afford both heat and food? Not to mention air conditioning in the summer which the greens assure us will be torrid. There is no circle of Dante’s Inferno COLD enough for these pitiful excuses for humans.
The Aztecs sacrificed virgins atop their pyramids with their own hands to plead to their Gods for a bountiful harvest. The greens are cowards; they sacrifice second hand. The greens sacrifice coal plants, the elderly, and the poor for what? 0.02F? Maybe? Then they have the colossal nerve to claim it’s “for the children”. What sort of monsters are these charlatans?
When their platitudes and arrogant witticisms are stripped away, the sorry truth that remains is that AGW fanatics are at war against humanity.
Obama must create more deficit to create more high quality collateral for the banking sector / more debt for the Fed to buy. Fed is running out of buyable debt; already buys half of newly issued debt. In the “modern monetary system” GDP growth correlates with debt growth. No debt, no growth. (nominally)
Umm,
the scary part is that nothing will change, no matter which party is in charge.
They’ve all drunk the kool-aid.
It is up to us, to cut them off.
I agree with U.K’s comment. It is up to us. After all we created government. We can un-create it. We will have to drag the politians kicking and screaming from their offices. How do you create a group of people to look after the stuff you need looking after without letting them get carried away? The point is that the poor will not stand for this. At some point they will do the dragging of polititians out of their offices for us but not before they have burned down everything else.
u.k.(us) says:
June 30, 2013 at 9:06 pm
“Umm,
the scary part is that nothing will change, no matter which party is in charge.
They’ve all drunk the kool-aid.
It is up to us, to cut them off.”
Maybe I don’t understand what you are saying, but it is not correct that the Republicans are also pushing this green agenda in the US. It is clearly the Democratic party in the US along with their worship of the environmental and progressive agenda which allows complete control of our lives.
Agree that may not be the case in other countries.
The “coal war” will probably continue until the major sources of coal are driven out of business. Then, after a suitable period of mourning and soul searching, the green crowd – led no doubt by Al Gore [he of Al Jazeera fame]- will step in, buy cheap, and have a climatalogical epiphany that the earth is actually cooling and that coal was really not all that bad, don’t ya know, and that all new power generation should henceforth be made by fast tracked coal powered plants.
My God how the money rolls in, rolls in.
Hypocrites.
The World Bank will soon be redundant for financing of third world projects in any case. Obama can say what he wants but the BRICS countries are in discussion on forming their own bank for financing projects. What Obama and the World Bank says will become completely meaningless except as a footnote in history.
Chris Hope is hardly the first warmist to publish such numbers for the possible value we could expect for all the pain, misery, and death we are told we must embrace for the sake of the “planet” and the “children”. Although the purveyors of climate catastrophism have always been seriously reluctant to give up these kind of figures, whenever someone has succeeded in holding their feet to the fire for a length of time sufficient to actually make them cough them up, the values are always the same i.e. totally unmeasurable differences.
And of course they all so economically illiterate that they have no idea what “opportunity costs” are, and how they compound almost infinitely into the future. When significant portions of the world’s wealth are diverted into less productive or totally unproductive uses now, we lose not only the current value of that wealth, but all the extra wealth that could have been created if a more efficient choice had prevailed. One place where the much ballyhooed 97% statistic may actually apply is that since this assault on the Demon Carbon began, 97% of the world’s wealth that has been diverted because of it has been completely ratholed.
It’s hard to come up with what that total value of wealth is to this point, but it has to be in the hundreds of $Billions by now. Even if market forces had been allowed to completely control where that wealth was allocated there would still have been significant inefficiencies but the difference compounded out to the end of this century will probably grow to hundreds of Trillions or perhaps Quadrillions. A totally laissez- faire market comparison is admittedly unrealistic, but China, India, Brasil, and other developing economies have demonstrated over the last couple decades that allowing elements of market forces and entrepreneurship to act in what had been complete top down command economies can have amazingly profound effects.
Sadly, if the currently discussed plans are allowed to proceed, we may end up by the finish of the Emperor Barry era with Mao’s China as more of free market economy than the US of A.
“If a foreign nation had launched an attack on America to destroy its coal-fired plants, to shut down its coal mines, and to thwart its ability to drill for oil and natural gas, we would be at war with it.” – Alan Caruba
As I recall, the EPA came up with similar minuscule benefits for requiring ethanol in the gasoline pool and not anytime in the near future, yet the fools are now pushing even more ethanol while the runoff creates a huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey.
There is no scientific logic to the agenda supported by the parrots in the MSM.
Cat cracking: yeah, and my new cummins diesel has a huge warning sticker warning to avoid using biofuels. I buy bulk “un polluted” diesel fuel for the farm and I avoid fuelling from locations promoting biofuels to prevent damage to my Diesel engines. Let the greenies buy it and pay the repair bills.
No sooner have the people of Egypt successfully protested en masse to remove one set of toxic rulers, than they have to do it all over again to try to remove another toxic lot. Sorry, USA, but it’s now mass protest time for you too. You can’t afford to leave your current toxic rulers in charge for another 2 1/2 years and I think you have no other way of disempowering them. Good luck.
Sometimes I just wonder. Isn’t it better for someone in a developing country to burn coal for cooking that chop down a tree?
These nutters are going to accelerate the global rate of deforestation. India, China and other nations will probably wipe out that “0.02°C cooler” by burning more coal, oil, gas, biomass etc.
Time to stock up with tar and feathers methinks.
What if the crazy bastid in the Whitehouse decided the fastest way to carbon neutrality would be to nuke the crap out of China and India? Given the other crazy things he’s doing this would not surprise me.
I bet the members of the Work Bank don’t hold their meetings in a mud-hut heated by burning animal dung……
“The World Bank thinks that inexpensive energy will harm the poor … not now, of course, but in fifty years. And on that basis, the World Bank thinks it is justified to harm the poor now.”
So, a new version of an old saying has emerged: In order to save the people, we have to sacrifice them. What a cynical way to sell depopulation.
It makes me sick that this is what the world has come to. When will people realize that an era of total failure is about to begin? Still, people don’t care and when they finally get it, it might be too late.
The endgame for preservation of freedom has begun.
Thank you, Anthony, Willis and all pubicly explicit skeptics, for fighting the good fight!
You DO make a difference and people WILL appreciate it.
I pray for your health, strength and persistance.
And may the good Lord be your guide in these troublesome times.
Every molecule of CO2 is surrounded by 2500 other non-CO2 molecules. Nobody seems to care what these are doing, besides not being affected by that lonely CO2 molecule.
What greenies fail to understand is that CO2 contains 2/3rds oxygen. CCS will not only remove useful carbon from the atmosphere that would have been used by plants for food, but a vast amount of useful oxygen will be buried with it.
It’s time to implement Greenie Capture and Storage™.
Sorry Willis. In your eagerness to write this article you misread The phrase ‘Obama’s war on coal’
It actually should read ‘Obamas war on civilisation.’
Hope you don’t mind me fixing that for you
Tonyb
I have the feathers. Someone get the tar.
Our governors have also done the calculations, and did them before they announced the coming measures. Unless they are using sliderules and slipped two decimals, they, too, understand the immaterial benefit they will achieve. So why are they doing it?
What else is going on? What other consequence should we be looking at?
The non-loans: exactly who was going to get the money who now won’t? The economic crisis may mean that the World Bank doesn’t HAVE the money to lend, so there must be cuts somewhere with a surficial acceptability. Perhaps this is the real reason. But perhaps it is the specific non-recipient we should be thinking about. After the general keep-the-others-powerless thing, I mean.
When something doesn’t make sense, you’re missing part of the story.
Doug Proctor says:
July 1, 2013 at 1:22 am
I disagree entirely, Doug. These are not bad people setting out to screw the poor. It would be much easier if they were. Instead, they truly believe that they, and they alone, are preventing untold pain and suffering by helping avert Thermageddon.
The proper name of that disease is “Noble Cause Corruption”, wherein the luminance and the refulgence of the coruscating beauty of your noble cause justifies the ugly collateral damage your actions are causing in the real world.
The old adage applies here, “There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.” Or as the song has it,
“Still, a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest …”
Regards, and thanks for the comment,
w.
W. ,
You have to realize that greens have this religious level belief about what is natural. Supposedly burning coal is not natural and so is evil. You see, man must have zero impact on the planet otherwise armaghedon will occur.
Nukes which emit no pollution are likewise not natural. And so on. Of course I never saw what was all natural about destroying land in china for rare earths could possibly be natural in relation to solar and wind but I digress. Their beliefs are rather funny and I call them beliefs because they make no sense logically.
Deep down these people think their religious beliefs about the planet trumps all and so their cause of ripping the poor off is justified. The problem is that these nuts are taken advantage of by politicians who use them to further causes of getting rich(al gore) or to gain control of the people (Obama) and so these weird greens who have irrational beliefs are just useful idiots for the politicians to further their own agendas.
Don’t get mad at them, laugh at how stupid they all are. Laugh at how clean nuclear energy is bad but dirty and obsolete wind is good. Laugh at how backwards their beliefs are and how they are nothing but another group of Amish who want to force everyone to be like them( unlike the real Amish for that last part)
You can not allow them to get to you because there is little point into getting upset. They don’t Care about anyone but themselves so knowing that you can respond to them directly and counter their claimant by not calling them crazy but just another religion which is just as nutty as Scientology. Face it, if we laugh at them and get the rest of the world to laugh at them we win. No one is going to side with the village idiots, so treat them as such. When. They grow up they can rejoin the conversation and be treated as adults but why give them dignity when they have none? Just my two cents really because after being told once by a green that I was being selfish when I pointed out how their policies were going to make the poor poorer I kind of just lost any respect for greens in general. That was awhile ago and I haven’t looked back. So: when Obama declares war on coal, just laugh at the immature child who is plainly waging war in coal because ‘it is evil’ and move on. Laugh at the idiots advising him and telling him coal is bad. Laugh at the morons who believe an all ti recor high is proof of the end of days. In any event I hope some of those spark an idea or two.
The Tyndall Centre are holdinf a conference in December, where they will discuss how we all reduce energy consumption by 60% in a decade.
They say this is necessary as current low carbon technologies are ineffective. It appears that Obama’s and the EU’s plan to make energy much more expensive is a means to this end.
Details on the conference below.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/the-taxpayer-funded-tyndall-centre-want-us-to-reduce-energy-consumption-by-60-in-next-10-years/
I really do hate to appear to don a tinfoil hat, but the more I see of the global elitist’s policies being enacted in agriculture, farming, crops, fuel, industry etc, I cannot help but connect the dots and see Agenda 21 being enacted everywhere with the aim being of those elitists in control of the EnvironMENTALists agenda being the death by starvation, hypothermia/dehydration and genetic mutilation, of BILLIONS of humans over the next 100 years.
They have written openly of their aims. When Hitler killed millions, he was rightly labelled a monster.
These ecoMENTAList savages want to kill BILLIONS!
Obama is the worst and now most stupid President the US has ever had. He does not exhibit the intelligence he is credited with to listen to advisers so obviously full of BS.
I heard the head of the World Bank in Australian ABC radio (where else?) recently and IMO there was coolaid by the gallon
dp says:
Thanks dp, you actually made me laugh 🙂
That thought has crossed my mind as well. However, I can sleep at night because I know many people in the US military. I doubt they would ever, ever find anyone who would carry out such an order. I suspect the first salvo would “accidentally” hit the White House. Hey, it’s been rebuilt before.
So – I sleep, knowing that the most inept president ever to hold the office can’t do as much harm as I suspect he has contemplated…
They’ve been killing birds, abusing the scientific process, infuriating people who can use excel, and making our first world lives a little more expensive for decades — but now this crap is going to start killing people.
No, sorry, Niff. It’s the maximum (im)possible US contribution towards the global goal of 2K. Not in addition to it.
Sorry, but tar and feathers are no longer politically correct. However, on the other hand, bio-tar and free-range feathers…
1) Lower the CO2 emissions to 83% of the 2008 level over the next seven years….”
No one bothers to tell you what that actually means. Those who advocate this believe the Hegelian Philosophy or the Modification of Hegelian Philosophy made by Marx.
I actually had some idiot Professor (a nice guy but still an idiot) try to teach this concept at a Management seminar full of foremen at Louisiana State University.
Unfortunately Mother Nature is REAL and she will often reward this type of thinking with a Darwin Award. Only the luxury of a rich country and (gobs of cotton batting) allows this type of thinking to exist. Now the entire US government is asking for a Darwin Award. and plans to take the rest of us off the cliff with them.
I did quick calculations on what it means to lower our footprint by 80% a while ago. It means a straight dive into third world poverty without the survival skills of a third world peasant. (links maybe stale)
Let us look at what real facts tell us.
The average energy use for the USA is 335.9 million BTUs per person. link (our total population is ~ 246,081,000)
In 1949, the U.S. energy use per person stood at 215 million Btu. link
The U.S. in 1800 had a per-capita energy consumption of about 90 million Btu. link (Total population: 5,308,483)
Therefore if the USA reduces its energy consumption by 80% it equals 45 million Btu. per person
Given the increase in technology and the present day hydro and nuclear power lets use the 1800 consumption level of about 90 million Btu. per person as the level of civilization we can expect. What does that mean?
The site Inventors helps us figure that out.
Farmers made up about 90% of labor force in 1790 and 69% of labor force in 1800. It was 2.6% in 1990 but as the massive red tape from the Food Safety Modernization Act, another obamination kicks in, expect family farms to completely disappear and your home garden to be targeted next. link
In 1830 about 250-300 labor-hours were required to produce 100 bushels (5 acres) of wheat with walking plow, brush harrow, hand broadcast of seed, sickle, and flail. (1987 – 2-3/4 labor-hours required to produce 100 bushels but that takes lots of oil.)
1810-30 saw the transfer of “manufacturing” from the farm and home to the shop and factory. It wasn’t until the 1840′s that we saw factory made farm machinery, labor saving devices and chemical fertilizers become at all common. It was in the 1860′s that kerosene lamps became popular. Also up until the 1850′s dung and wood were the major source of energy. link
In other words for the USA to use HALF the energy per person that was used in 1800 we must abandon ALL factories and 90% of the population must return to subsistence farming using animals. Remember in 1800 there was only 2% of the current population in the USA. Solar and Wind just are not going to produce enough power to keep us in anything but a few lights and if we are lucky a refrigerator per village. FACTORIES use a huge amount of power and that is why cotton mills and other primitive factories were built on rivers.
Anyone who tries to tell you differently is talking baffle gab because at present less than 9% of the US labor force is in manufacturing. The USA got rid of most of its really energy intense industry like smelting the ores to make machines. The USA has already shipped its factories to China so there just isn’t that much left to cut.
The ‘man-made’ global warming’ hoax is merely a ‘Trojan Horse’ by which the UN’s Agenda 21 is being delivered, the two key objectives of which are deindustrialisation and depopulation. The World Bank is complicit in this heinous crime against humanity.
Just look at the biofuels-driven starvation massacre which is taking place right now – 250 million people in the third world have already been starved to death. And countless thousands of the old and infirm frozen/starved to death in the ‘developed’ world every winter by demented policies to deliberately drive up the cost of energy.
Let’s hope there are enough lamp posts and piano wire to go around when this abhorrent period in history ends and the hoax finally unravels…
The World Bank has become a global warming scare-house since Obama’s nominee, Jim Yong Kim, took over the Presidency last summer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Yong_Kim
The World Bank used to be about financing large infrastructure like dams, and refinancing government debt when it became unsustainable. Now all it seems to be about is GHGs and the global warming scare.
They need to replace “Bank” in its name with “Waste-of-Resources”.
Willis is at his best when fired up – and rightly so.
Obama might just have thrown away the next election with his AGW activism and war on coal. He has from the start surrounded himself with activists and has made the mistake of thinking that AGW activists represent the popular mood. They don’t. He just insulted more than half of the USA calling them the flat earth society – the majority not convinced that earth’s climate was always static before human produced CO2 caused warming last century.
– By 2016, energy prices might rise due to his green policies, in spite of non-con gas.
– By 2016 the economy might be in worse shape when all the unforeseen consequences of printing money (and calling it “economic growth”) come home to roost.
– By 2016 the UK, partners in the anglosaxon fashion of AGW extremism, will have already started experiencing power cuts and rationing. Energy prices there will be sky-high, and also throughout Europe, due to eco-Ludditism.
– By 2016, as the AMO turns south, climate cooling might be gathering pace and becoming hard to hide from ordinary people if not from academics.
So Obama might be fashioning his own gallows, Haman-style, in the form of his war on coal and war on the poor.
[ First we had the wrrrrr on trrrr’rrrr
now its the wrrrrrr on the prrrrr – God bless America!! sorry couldn’t resist ]
I’m not one to ponder conspiracies so, I’ll just question why?
I don’t believe those in this administration are stupid but then again, I don’t believe they’re interested in saving the world. (I’ve seen what they’ve done to Chicago)
Therefore, I have to try and formulate a reason for them doing what they do when CO2 doesn’t go down, temperature doesn’t go down and people’s way of life isn’t improved, huh?
Why would they be using the “Brewster Effect” where you have to spend as much money as you can without having anything to show for it?
I can think of two things this will cause:
Money will be made; and people will suffer and die early.
So, If they’re not stupid and not humanitarian, what’s up with what they’re doing?
How can they take oil, hydro, nuclear and coal off the table?
The short answer is they can’t and they won’t.
I believe they’ll continue to milk the system and when this proves no longer doable they will shift gears to ensure they continue to progress…but to where?
And most importantly, why?
cn
phlogiston says:
July 1, 2013 at 5:13 am
[ First we had the wrrrrr on trrrr’rrrr
now its the wrrrrrr on the prrrrr – God bless America!! sorry couldn’t resist ]
In the UK of course – depending what part you’re from, it could be:
wore on the pore
were on the pere
waar on the paar
wuwa on the puwa
Willis, this is so simple to understand. These people are anti-modern civilization.. They want us to return to a poorer standard of living. They want to cull the human population. All to “save the plant”. Of course, they want us to reduce our footprint on Mother Earth, but not themselves. The lunatics are truly running the asylum.
I strongly disagree with Willis on one point, that this will make electricity expensive for the poor. The way this is being done, electricity will not be more expensive, it will simply be unavailable.
Obama does not just want coal to be more expensive, he wants to shut down many of the coal plants, and also shut down nuclear, hydro, and especially frakking, and replace them with “green” power, which simply produces too little power to replace any of that. The result, when introduced to any power grid, will not be less electricity, it will be no electricity.
Electric grids do not operate on, say, 70% of the power they need and keep operating, the best that can be done is to shut 30% of it down and keep the rest at 100%. Now, the question is, who gets the power, and who doesn’t? If it is rotated, how long can you go without power and live? How long will the food still last in a refrigerator? How long will you be willing to watch your children freeze to death in the dark (assuming you can see them)? How long can your place of work stay in business only operating 70% of the time (a time that might not be reliable)? Some businesses need to operate 24/7, what about them? And when the voters demand power for their homes, what happens to those businesses then? And when it happens, not even including the problems that what those businesses do may be vital, can you live on only 70% of the money you live on now? Of course, that assumes that your business can live on that as well, and is not forced to shut it’s doors, in which case you will be living on 0% of your pay. Unemployment lasts how long? Unemployment lasts how long when the taxable income shrinks how much? How much is your government in debt already? How much is a dollar or euro or whatever worth when there is nothing being produced to back it up and nothing you can buy with it? How long will the Chinese keep making us stuff if they receive nothing in return? How much more can they make if the pollution there is literally off the scale even if they do accept nothing but debt in return? If you have to accept rolling blackouts, how many blackouts do you expect your ‘great leaders’ in Washington DC will see? Yeah, that’s right, zero. The lords in the castle get the good stuff, you serfs in your dark, cold hovels get whatever they have left over, now do you understand what is really going on?
But don’t worry, our ‘great leaders’ have a plan, conservation and ‘efficiency’. What that really means is, from now on, you will only do what they tell you to do when they tell you to do it. You know, like in the good old days, when people were divided up into two classes, nobles, and serfs (another word for slave). You will do what they tell you and, as reward for his great leadership, AlGore will live in his lighted palace. And this will allow you to have power, right? WRONG! Think about it, exactly how efficient is something run entirely by our present leaders? After all, they have to have pensions, and light AlGores house, and pensions, and light and heat and run the expensive coffeemakers in all those now all important (we’re saving the planet!) government offices, and pensions, and the ever accelerating salaries of all these planet saving leaders, and pensions, and graft and corruption (greatly increased from even now), and pensions, and an ever increasing horde of government workers for such important jobs as the federal bunny inspectors, and their pensions. Did I forget pensions? Mustn’t forget pensions! Big pensions, early pensions, spiked pensions. You will be lucky to get power half the time, at ruinous expense, on your reduced or no pay.
But don’t worry, the government has another plan! Now they install the new, more efficient power meters in your house (at your expense, probably already installed). The efficiency part, oh, they can remotely shut down power one individual home at a time. Why do you suppose they were designed with that capability? I’m sure our great leaders will allocate power in a completely fair and impartial manner, they will not assure power first to their own homes and offices, oh no! They will operate in the same fair and impartial manner that the US IRS tax agency did when they held up tax exempt status to ten times as many anti Obama organizations as pro Obama ones (despite what you read in the papers, this is what they actually DID). AlGore will still get all the power he wants.
And do you think you can get by by going back to the old ways? Wrong, even if we turn back thousands of years of civilization and try to go back to the stone age (which is basically what a power less world will be), you will not be permitted to do so. Want to build a fire, just ask the beach bums in California how that is working out for them. That assumes, of course, that you have the tools and know how to get wood, the expensive and hard to get permits to do so, actually own a fireplace, and that we don’t simply run out of trees like in Haiti.
This is NOT a war on coal, this is a war on YOU. Your LIFE is at stake.
War does not determine who is right, it determines who is left.
I would like to comment about the pot shot at PG&E. If you look at a PG&E bill, you will discover less than a third of the money they bill you for actually goes to PG&E. More than half the rest is simply for taxes and fees PG&E is required to collect for federal, state, county, and city governments. The remainder is to buy the electricity they distribute – a price they have very little control over – it’s controlled by the state. Of course, what money does go to the Utility then has the normal corporate tax draw – Property tax, Income tax, etc. Though the three investor owned utilities in California effectively used to be monopolies, state and federal laws have been changed so that is only vaguely true now.
The problem I am concerned about is not that PG&E, SCE, and SDGE are being blamed for high energy costs in California. It is that it is a smoke screen to do so. The problem is the high taxes, franchise fees, and multiple competing administrative law judges forcing these utilities to appear to be robbing the public and threatening them with more penalties if they mention this to the public! (Administrative law judges decided what information may be passed to the public.)
Catcracking says: @ June 30, 2013 at 9:29 pm
….Maybe I don’t understand what you are saying, but it is not correct that the Republicans are also pushing this green agenda in the US. It is clearly the Democratic party in the US along with their worship of the environmental and progressive agenda which allows complete control of our lives…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Republicans like Fox News, and NGOs are the Controlled Opposition. They are only there to give us the illusion WE are in control and have choices. In reality a decision is made behind closed doors and then a plan devised to convince the public. If the public is not convinced, Animal ID and Bank Bailouts are good examples, it is implemented anyway and the controlled opposition is put in power but the true agenda, accumulating power and wealth for the elite always moves forward.
Thirty years ago was 1982. We have had Ronald Reagan (R) 1981, George H. W. Bush (R), Bill Clinton (D), George W. Bush (R) and now Barack Obama (D). ALL of them helped to destroy the USA by moving wealth from the poor and middle class to the elite. Reagan gave us the Leveraged Buyouts that wiped out many excellent US corporations and transfered the accumulated wealth of those companies in to the pockets of Corporate Raiders and the banks that lend them the printed to order
funnyfiat money used to place a loan on property they NEVER HAD TITLE TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. The Bushes wanted the World Trade Organization. When George W. failed Clinton picked up the ball and got it ratified. The WTO has starved third world peasants and exported first world jobs. Again the only ones who really won were the international corporations buying cheap subsidized grain in the USA and selling it bellow production cost in third world countries thereby bankrupting the local peasants. Then the international corporations moved in to exploit that newly made and desperate labor (ex-farmers) and have little to no restriction on polluting the environment from the desperate third world government.This is a well researched example of how the political class worked for the sixty years to get control of the US food supply. That goal is about to be reached within the next decade or so. WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture just exported that blue print world wide. link and link
Try reading:
How the regulating class is using bogus claims about climate change to entrench and extend their economic privileges and political control.
The US government has even removed our right “…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The United States Supreme Court in 1984 stated:
“Nothing in the First Amendment or in this Court’s case law interpreting it suggests that the rights to speak, associate, and petition require government policymakers to listen or respond to communications of members of the public on public issues” link
This was followed by
Oh and forget about a trial by a jury of you peers, that has also been eroded with the help of a (self-snip) Supreme Court. See older comment 1 and older comment 2
The flat earthers are out numbered by the freeloaders. So Obama has calculated correctly. Pump the money no matter how worthless it becomes.
Legatus says:
July 1, 2013 at 6:35 am
I strongly disagree with Willis on one point, that this will make electricity expensive for the poor. The way this is being done, electricity will not be more expensive, it will simply be unavailable.
I agree that what is at stake here is fundamental. The scientific method (the Arabs – Galileo – Regiomontanus – Copernicus etc..) introduced something profoundly subversive and disruptive to the “contract” of human societies and human interaction. An independent path to truth.
Why did humans evolve intelligence? It has been argued that the intellectual games we have learned to play and hoops we have learned to jump through, have developed either as sexual display (impress the lady-folk) or as a way to control other human beings. This control is exerted more by deceit – forcing on people’s consciousness a false picture of reality, than by educating people about truth. Control of human beings is most effectively achieved by generating and controlling collective fear. In this respect natural disasters have always been the most valuable currency. Why did a sabre-tooth tiger eat the chief? Why did uncle so-and-so get struck by lightning? Why did a drought starve half the group to death? The approach developed independently in all human societies has been along the lines of “we offended such and such a god, so we must give such and such a sacrifice to the appropriate representative of said god (e.g. me) …” Psychological group experiments have shown the extraordinary degree to which our behavior which we imagine to be largely free, is tightly controlled by social pressures. For instance, in a room full of people unfamiliar with each-other, no-one will even get up to leave to escape a fire if the established social leaders say that there is no problem.
Why do teachers get such low pay? Why is open and honest discussion of issues such as climate confined to blogs at the margins of socio-economic-political power? Truth is toxic to political power. Truth is a force for anarchy. Truth destabilizes and subverts the way humans control each-other.
The scientific method places in the hands of people a direct, independent path to truth unfiltered by anyone else’s control. People who like controlling other people, don’t like this. Economic empowerment of people is correlated with empowering people with knowledge and truth. It is alien and hostile and threatening to a tendency deep in our genomes to want to control what people believe, in particular what they fear, in order to control them. When people are very poor they tend to be ignorant and superstitious and easier to implant with numinous dreads leading to effective control.
Therefore regardless of what truth and science (the finding and keeping of knowledge of truth) give to society, society will always repay evil for the good that science brings. Society will always drift toward hostility toward open, transparent communication of scientific truth.
Unless, that is, we change, and decide that truth is OK and we will live with it and according to it. Humanity faces this decision and crossroads, we can all influence which way it goes. Breeding more autists (resistant to nonverbal societal pressure) will help fix the problem and prevent us evolving back to chimps. If you’re autistic – find another one and get busy!
Actively harms the poor?
That’s OK, Hillary will come out with ‘energy stamps’ for low income families in her second term, around 2022.
/sarc
Dreadnought: …250 million people in the third world have already been starved to death.
Reference, please….
Wayne Delbeke says: @ June 30, 2013 at 9:39 pm
The World Bank will soon be redundant for financing of third world projects in any case. Obama can say what he wants but the BRICS countries are in discussion on forming their own bank for financing projects.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, the Cyprus Hair Cut really really ticked-off the Russians.
Anyone who puts their faith in a Fractional Reserve bank and a government who can change the rules as it suits them is nuts IMHO. Of course the USA has forfeiture laws that make holding onto cash “Illegal” and subject the cash to confiscation without trial or even bringing charges. link
When you start digging it is amazing just how much our rights have been eroded by the Supreme Court re-interpreting the Constitution in favor of more control by the elite.
Dave Wendt says: @ June 30, 2013 at 9:40 pm
….Sadly, if the currently discussed plans are allowed to proceed, we may end up by the finish of the Emperor Barry era with Mao’s China as more of free market economy than the US of A.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We are at that point already….
Makes you sick doesn’t it.
Gail Combs says:
July 1, 2013 at 7:19 am
From your comment as linked/posted:
….Most in official Washington tend to think that their elite community is smarter and better than the rest of us. Many hold a condescending view of voters and suggest that the general public is too ignorant to be treated seriously…..
===========================
Official Washington has it right. Obama was reelected. The majority in the Senate is further evidence. Should I add to the results of this, EPA to start with? I would continue but the list would burn the servers supporting this blog.
Edohiguma says:
July 1, 2013 at 12:55 am
I have the feathers. Someone get the tar.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Our friends in Canada have that covered or we could go really green and use Pine Tar.
Ken Hall says:
July 1, 2013 at 2:48 am
I really do hate to appear to don a tinfoil hat, but the more I see of the global elitist’s policies being enacted….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Unfortunately you are correct.
For more info on Agenda 21:
Video
The Post Sustainability Institute
Democrats Against Agenda 21
The opposite point of view, Fearful of Agenda 21, an alleged U.N. plot, activists derail land-use planning
Background
Since then Pascal Lamy, World Trade Organization Director has come right out and said:
Articles and excerpts from/about Quigley:
excerpts from the book Tragedy and Hope A History of the World in Our Time
by Carroll Quigley, 1966
The Anglo-American Establishment by Carroll Quigley GSG Associates publishers, 1981, paperback
excerpts from the book The Naked Capitalist a review and commentary on Carroll Quigley’s book Tragedy and Hope by W. Cleon Skousen
Tragedy and Hope: A History of Banking and Money by Carroll Quigley [chapter 5]
From Carroll Quigley to the UN Millennium Summit
My uderstanding of the US coal fired generating situation under Obama’s plan is that 288 plants out of a total of 589 plants will be shut down . This represents the power production of 11 states . Where is the money coming from to finance the replacement electricity .?Ultimately this capital cost which wiil be much higher than the existing plants plus the free subsidy will find its way into the consumers electricity rate. We in Ontario are already suffering from plan somewhat similar where coal fired power plants commissioned as late as 1972/78 are being phased out prematurely and replaced by solar and wind . Our consumer electricity rates are in the process of doubling .
eyesonu says: @ July 1, 2013 at 9:18 am
Official Washington has it right. Obama was reelected…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Was he??? That is also a matter up for debate.
http://obamavoterfraud.blogspot.com/
Ohio Poll Worker Who Admitted to Voting Twice for Obama Is Convicted of Voter Fraud
Officials found guilty in Obama, Clinton ballot petition fraud (Yeah, its Fox, did you really expect Huff’nPuff to carry it?)
Vote Fraud – Diebold Whistleblower Speaks Out
And this from Huff’nPuff
Diebold-SEC Fraud Settlement Reached: Former Voting Machine Maker To Pay $25 Million
More voter fraud articles at Huff’nPuff
Of course the whole system is rigged from the get go because of campaign contributions from the big corporations. The CEO of Archer Daniels Midland Co. Dwayne Andreas has made a fortune with the help of politicians from Hubert Humphrey to Bob Dole. But, he says, their talk of “free markets” is just wind.
I stumbled onto what I think is the real reason for Agenda 21, Transit Cities/Smart Growth. The reason why the elite want to herd us into closed cities.
Of course even Hope’s paltry .02C° by 2100 is extremely optimistic. Indeed, there is 0 evidence that it would have any effect at all.
What is really being proposed is that many humans must be killed off.
The validity of this website’s commenters is taken into question by the wild ad hominem attacks against Obama. He may not be a very good president, but I doubt that he is part of some insane conspiracy.
Willis,
A really great treatise on the subject. It all makes sense to me based on my years of experience in the energy sector, especially knowing full well the high cost and limited availability of so called “clean” alternative fuels. Also my intuition tells me that this is phase 1 and if successful oil and natural gas are the next targets.
I personally take all the calculations like the 0.02 C with a grain of salt since I am skeptical about the arbitrary assumptions that are used in the calculations. I understand that since this is an anti coal person that made the calcs. they likely lean on the high side.
Based on EPA calculations re the impact of Ethanol, I tend to accept that these are likely in the ballpark.
To enhance the credibility of your post, which I accept, do you have any independent calculations or studies to bring to the party which I can cite to those I forward your excellent post? Surely the EPA must have something besides the nonsense that the President stated when announcing his attack on coal. Otherwise I assume the coal produces would have a legitimate challenge in court? I could not find any in my search.
Again thanks for your tireless efforts.
Chuck Nolan says:
July 1, 2013 at 5:23 am
I’m not one to ponder conspiracies so, I’ll just question why?
I don’t believe those in this administration are stupid but then again, I don’t believe they’re interested in saving the world. (I’ve seen what they’ve done to Chicago)
Therefore, I have to try and formulate a reason for them doing what they do when CO2 doesn’t go down, temperature doesn’t go down and people’s way of life isn’t improved, huh?
*****************************************************************************************************
The reasoning goes like this. The people in charge of the Western World are all Marxists. The world they want to create is modeled on North Korea where there is the Elite Elites and Poor Poor. However there is one thing they have left out of the equation and that is ,”What guarantee do your children and grandchildren have of being one of the Elite in the future? Obama can guarantee the future of his children? The poor sucker lives in cuckoo land if he thinks that and the same with the 10’s of 1000’s of the other so called Elites living around the world. Od course they don’t even think about the consequences of the poor rising up against them.
Alex says:
July 1, 2013 at 5:22 pm
The validity of this website’s commenters is taken into question by the wild ad hominem attacks against Obama. He may not be a very good president, but I doubt that he is part of some insane conspiracy.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Obama has said he will cut the carbon footprint of the USA by 83% in the next seven years. This will dump the USA into a third world life style without the infrastructure or survival skills of a third world peasant.
My neighbors and I will survive… maybe… because we are farmers with horse drawn equipment and more important we can isolate the area by destroying two bridges.
Think of the L.A Riots and picture that in every city in the USA as government buildings and factories remain lit while homes go dark, permanently. Think of the disease problems if there is no refrigeration, no water and no sewage treatment. (There is a darn good reason the Department of Homeland Security is stockpiling Ammo and city police are stocking up on surplus military equipment.)
The US government was expecting to transition to a smart grid but like everything else when dealing with the government you are looking at a real SNAFU.
The EPA and Department of Energy drastically underestimated the effects of the new EPA rulings. Many more plants are closing than anticipated. This means electricity prices will sky rocket and the electric grid could become very unstable 6/7/12: New Regulations to Take 34 GW of Electricity Generation Offline and the Plant Closing Announcements Keep Coming… According to EPA, …. these regulations will only shutter 9.5 GW of electricity generation capacity. That is 10% of our generating capacity GONE – OOPS, I guess the government miscalculated.
So what about the “Green Energy” companies funded with tax payer dollars that are supposed to replace these coal fired plants? They are going bankrupt at an alarming rate So far, [thats] 34 companies OOPS, I guess the government miscalculated.
A power systems engineer commented on WUWT:
“Letting non-professionals get involved in the power grid is like giving the keys to the family car and a bottle of whiskey to a 14 year old boy and his pals. If the renewables were viable, we’d adopt them by the train-load and build them so fast your head would spin.”
So ERCOT in Texas is already having problems. I talked to my local electric coop and they are very worried. They were even looking at a a self-contained nuclear reactor like the STARR.
As problems with an unstable grid due to Solar/wind becomes worst expect Smart Meters to become mandatory:
Add onto that the cost of energy in the USA sky rocketing (when and if you can get it.)
Ohio is the state with the most coal plants closing (19) in or near the state so rolling blackouts and major sticker-shock can be expected in the near future for the people in that state. Most of the closings are in the mid-Atlantic area and will effect major US cities from Chicago to Washington DC to Philadelphia to Raleigh NC.
Then there is public opinion. 41% Willing to Pay More to Fight Global Warming, 47% Are Not and 58% Favor Building the Keystone XL Oil Pipeline on top of that 56% View Feds As Threat to Individual Rights so shutting down our electricity and trashing our economy is not going to go over well especially with the inner city types.
The politicians in DC darn well know this so they passed an “Anti-Occupy” law [that] ends American’s right to protest The actual law link
So yes, I consider Obama and his mad scheme worse that an enemy invasion. At least with an invasion we would know who the enemy is and how to fight it. Now we are fighting a tar baby.
(Oh and I disliked Bush too esp. his bank bailout and patriot act)
It may be possible for the US to reduce residential consumption, though I doubt they can get down to European levels. The average US household uses 2 to 4 times the amount of energy that the average European household uses.
On the whole more US houses are larger than European houses and so will always cost more to heat / cool. A far higher number of US homes use air conditioning than European homes, though to some extent European homes have has higher insulation requirements for many years and have need less energy for heating cooling.
US vehicles on average do less mpg than the European equivalent, but Europe is a more compact place and more densely populated and so average mileage is lower as well.
I think that the US could gradually reduce it’s energy consumption to some extent by improving insulation levels in houses and divorcing US citizens from their love affair with pickup trucks and moving more of them into European / Japanese style vehicles, which nowadays can get 80 miles per UK gallon, that’s 67 miles per US gallon.
I am sure there is room for improvement in energy efficiency in the US, but it can only be a slow process. But at the end of the day US energy consumption will always be higher than UK energy consumption.
J Martin says:
July 2, 2013 at 12:44 am
It may be possible for the US to reduce residential consumption, though I doubt they can get down to European levels….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First The UK and Germany have much milder climates than the USA has. For New England, the temperature swings are -15F (-26C) to 95F (35C) and I have seen up to 100F (38C) and below -30F (-34C) while living in that area.
Second pickups, if diesel can get 23 mpg if they are not hauling ( 28 to 30 mpg for Canadian model) and my small pickup got over 50 mpg. The mileage seen in the USA has a lot to do with the anti-pollution junk put on the engines. My 1976 full size Oldsmobile with a carburetor and 8 cylinders got 27 mpg but our 4 cylinder 1991 Ford Taurus only got about 22 mpg after EPA.
You see the small cars a lot in the cities where people rent apartments or own townhouses (attached) In the rural area you are going to see a lot of pickups. They are used to haul the stuff needed to fix the house and yard or haul the boat or horse trailer or camper or for farmers and other small business people who need to haul stuff.
The much maligned SUV fills the same niche the old (outlawed) station wagon filled. It is used for hauling the kids and their friends and their junk (sports equipment) around. The USA has more kids per couple than the EU.
Last, the USA is just so darn BIG (~ 3,450 miles from Key West Fl to Seattle WA and 2800 miles from Washington DC to San Francisco, CA.) We do not have the mass transit system the EU has and therefore we travel a lot more in personal vehicles.
These are the reasons that are given by the pushers of Sustainability (UN Agenda 21) for moving Americans into transit cities.
Thanks, Willis. Very good!
Chris Hope should look carefully at his own results, what they mean.
For the people, it is a good thing 2014 will be here before 2016. 2014 will be decisive.
Is the USA on a path to tyranny?
Nuclear, coal and natural gas have the power to keep us developing the next step in energy; Thorium?
This isn’t about a War On Coal.
This is about about a narcissistic, Progressive”s plan to cut the legs out from underneath the rich, evil, Capitalist United States, leveling the playing field for the rest of the planet’s third-world countries.
This is Socialism’s goal and Obama’s goal: distributed misery and mediocrity.
@Willis –
It’s pretty obvious that there will be no benefit received for sacrifices today. Never was there a promise more mendacious than this. So we “save the planet,” and reduce the standard of living for everyone except the super-rich leftist elite? The “benefit” will be dirt poverty and unlimited suffering and needless death. for billions of people Remember der Fuehrer preaching to those poor people in Ghana who burn shit to cook their food, that they must rely on “bountiful resources of biomass”? Well, I’ve been to Ghana, and no one in their right mind would want to live in a world like the one most Ghanaians – apart from the socialist-kleptocratic elite – have to live – and yet that’s what der Fuehrer has in mid for us, after he’s taxed all our wealth away and handed it over to those socialist-kleptocrat elites. Interesting case study in wealth redistribution – I .e., from poor to rich.
Except coal is becoming uneconomical regardless of its impact on climate change. Solar is getting cheaper now at a fast rate, enough that it could be cost competitive with new coal plants even disregarding environmental benefits and ignoring subsidies:http://www.businessinsider.com/citi-the-solar-age-is-dawning-2013-5 . Coal is not only terrible for the health of citizens (especially with unregulated power plants), it is becoming a bad investment regardless.
Justin says:
July 2, 2013 at 11:11 pm
Yeah, that’s why we have so many coal fired power plants that make money for their owners all over the freakin’ world … because they are so uneconomical …
That citation is pathetic, it’s a puff piece designed to fool the rubes, and a successful one it seems. Here are the real economics. It turns out that if the solar panels were free, it still would be very expensive. These days it’s the cost of the land and the interconnect equipment and the transmission that is the problem, see the citation for details.
As my daughter is fond of saying … “In your dreams, Dad!”. Many more folks die in the US from mining coal than from its use in power plants. That was true before they regulated them, but now? You’re just recycling thirty year old information.
w.
A little outdated in your projections. As I said, solar is rapidly getting cheaper: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf . And I didn’t say that coal couldn’t make money, just that it’s not economical compared to other energy sources (mostly natural gas, also wind and hydro when appropriate). In the US, there is absolutely no reason to build a coal power plant over natural gas. In developing countries, I seriously doubt that coal power plants are well-regulated.
Justin says:
July 3, 2013 at 10:29 am
Oh, please. Your citation shows that solar PV is about 50% more expensive than coal.
Solar has been both more expensive than coal and “rapidly getting cheaper” for three decades or so, ever since Jimmy Carter’s big solar push, and you think that’s supposed to impress me?
Give me a call when solar is actually competitive with coal … but I won’t hold my breath.
Historical revisionism. You said:
“Uneconomical” means it doesn’t make money, so yes, you did say that coal couldn’t make money. But it’s not because of its “impact on climate change”. I think what you were trying to say was “coal is becoming uneconomical because of pointless expensive regulations pushed by well-meaning cretins” …
Yes, and outside of a dog, a cat is man’s best friend, but inside of a dog, it’s dark … I fear your statement is equally logical. What do developing countries have to do with anything?
As to whether there is “no reason to build a coal power plant over natural gas”, sure there are reasons. Some areas have coal but no natural gas. Other areas don’t have gas pipelines.
More to the point, the World Bank has just stopped funding all coal power plants … which definitely indicates that someone has reasons to build them.
As to whether plants in developing countries are “well regulated”, usually nothing in developing countries is “well regulated” … but what does that have to do with coal over natural gas?
w.
A 35% decrease in projected cost over the last two years is “unimpressive”? Yes, solar is still nearly 50% more expensive than coal, for now, not taking to account its potential benefits in providing more high-demand electricity or its still-significant environmental and health benefits.
uneconomical – inefficient in use of time and effort and materials; “a clumsy and wasteful process”; “wasteful duplication of effort”; “uneconomical ebb and flow of power”
I stand by my statement that coal is becoming uneconomical. Solar is too in most circumstances, but unlike coal, it is improving rapidly and has a lot more potential to provide clean electricity. I’m not too familiar with natural gas supplies across the United States, but I seriously doubt that it is that hard to find. Also, you dismiss solar because it’s 50% more expensive than coal but you think coal is so great when it’s 50% more expensive than gas?
As far as developing countries are concerned, considering that natural gas is cleaner-burning than “clean” coal, it is much, much cleaner than conventional, unscrubbed coal power plants. And yes, people don’t die immediately from coal burning unless there is an accident, but just like with smoking, its health impacts are real and lasting.
Justin says:
July 3, 2013 at 4:48 pm
A 35% decrease is unbelievable, and only possible because in the last couple of years there has been a glut of solar cells on the market because of the solar mania.
As to 50% more than coal … yeah, that’s totally unimpressive. Call me when it’s below coal.
Uneconomical means it loses you money. Coal does nothing of the sort. Currently, it is providing 37% of the power in the US, and the states where the most coal is used have the cheapest power … uneconomical, my aunt Fanny.
Perhaps you’re not as old as I am, but I’ve been hearing about the “potential” of solar and that it’s “improving rapidly” for thirty years or so now … so you’ll forgive me if I ignore your nonsense.
I think coal is great because it is cheap. Not as cheap as natgas, to be sure, but there’s lots of places that are not on pipelines.
The part you seem to be ignoring is that Obama’s war on coal will cause the closing of a lot of existing coal plants. Since the capital costs are already paid on those plants, the cost of the power from the plants Obama wants to close is about 3¢ PER KILOWATT HOUR … and you are claiming plants producing power for 3¢ per kWh are uneconomical? Don’t make me laugh. Closing those plants will screw the poor, but you and Obama don’t seem to care …
You really need to take a trip to some developing countries. It’s easy to mine coal. It’s technically very complex to frack natural gas. Guess which fuel is more common in the developing world? You’re as foolish as the World Bank, claiming that non-existent natural gas is better than available coal …
Pollution from modern coal-fired power plants is pretty much a non-issue unless you are the EPA, which is the same as saying unless you have your head up your fundament. The claim that they are “dirty” is a claim about CO2 these days. Modern pollution controls on coal plants mean that their effect on health is trivially small. You’re talking about the 1920s or something, I don’t know what.
If you wish to claim that people are dying from coal burning, you’ll need something more than your firmly held belief to convince anyone on this site. Bring out the studies or the corpses, or go home.
w.
PS—Note that the American Lung Association is part of the “sue-and-settle” network of the double-dealing secret-email EPA scum, so don’t bother citing their bullxxxx about pollution … they’re on the take.
The world bank is talking like it runs the show look to 2014 for the launch of the BRICS international bank that will compete with World Bank/IMF