Yale to greens: "abandon climate change, focus on energy"

Luboš Motl says:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/black-body-limits-climate-sensitivity.html#more

There’s no reason for environmentalists to have any say on energy anyway, especially when they don’t know one thing about science and oppose nuclear. Our energy use has been decarbonising for generations as explained by many scientists and writers from Dr Patrick Moore to Michael Crichton.
Whenever environmentalists do get involved, it is to try to steal credit for what is happening anyway or to do the dirty work of western governments in persuading poor nations, especially black people, not to develop or to bribe the political elite of those nations to keep their people in a state of backwardness. They also purchase land for cheap in the name of conservation to prevent productive use of those lands, then after a while sell them on to favourable corporations.
Apart from Patrick Moore’s Greenspirit I can’t think of any environmental organisation which isn’t damn dirty.

I agree with the message of this particular essay. However, after reading the authors’ 2004 article, The Death Of Environmentalism, it appears they simply blow in the political winds. My kingdom for a progressive who is capable of critical thought.

So let me understand, they were using climate change nee’ global warming merely as a ploy to get an environmentalist agenda through? In other words, THEY are not even certain whether it’s true, they were using it only to get their agenda through.
What next, the threat of cute polar bears starving to death?
Oh wait, they already used that one.

“George E. Smith (16:55:28) :
[…]
It isn’t the carbon;IT’S THE WATER; STUPID !”
Yeah. We need a low water economy. Dewaterize the economy! No Evian for you.

The irony of all this is if you understand economics there is nothing to focus on, free markets will take care of our energy needs. All government does is increase costs and delay technological innovation. If they want to see a transition to clean energy, then they need to get out of the way.

Getting the most out of fossil fuels: Globlal Trade should mean exchange of goods for goods, not pure transfer of wealth at the greatest expenditure of energy.
Excessive importation is the epitomy of energy inefficiency. That stuff doesn’t travel on sailboats, it requires lots of bunker oil to get it here.
Internal transportation should rely most on rail, which is far more energy efficient than semi. It’s out-of-balance.

Well the trouble with that Yale site is they don’t have somebody like Chasmod who is awake at the switch.
When it comes to placing a comment on that site; their moderator process is about as slow as postal chess.
If they ever post my short comment; it will be into its second or third half life.
[Hey! ~dbs, mod]

Don’t ethanol and biodiesel have carbon in them … how does their use equate with a low carbon economy? And if we are able to synthesise transport fuel from hydrogen (produced from off-peak nuclear generated electricy) and CO, produced by pyrolysis of biomass, would that count as part of a low carbon economy.
Methinks, if they want to focus on alternative fuel sources – good idea. But they need to forget this nonsense about carbon.

Looks like the ‘greens’ are going into retreat.
We have plenty of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future and, if industry is left to it’s own devices, alternative sources of energy will be discovered and commercialised.
CAGW and ‘peak oil’ are both false memes.

So is it finally time to put into the dustbin of history one of my pet peeve expressions ” carbon footprint ” ?
I will be happy never to hear that term again!
Lets face it, the truth is finally now out there, and the population are getting it. We have been scammed.
Too many people get caught up in the hype, including scientists and other professional folks, including journalists.
Think about it, the planet is 70 % water , 25 % desert ,mountain, ranges, and ice covered poles..Which leaves 5 % of the planet for all civilization, the most of which live along the coastal regions of the planet, including people , animals , and other aspects of all civilization. Lets also not forget that all of the earths inhabitants could easily fit in the smallest state in the USA. ( tight squeeze albiet ) . Doesn’t matter, it is just an example of how small we are.
The point is, man is an inconsequential presence on this planet. We have zero impact on its climate, but we do inpact local environments with pollution etc. That is something we can affect.
The Global footprint expression parlayed by many in the green movement ( including Al Gore gag me ) always left me with a sick feeling in my gut…….I knew it was wrong, and now finally I am proved right. Its time to put that puppy into historys dustbin.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak my piece.
Ian

The other myth that has yet to be exposed, like AGW, is what our carbon based energy situation really is. Supposedly we are running out, while ridiculous alternatives like wind and solar are explored.
This is doubtful. Why?
First some background. The Oil industry is essentially a cartel. Opec is of course the visible face which is the producing cartel. However, they rely on the support and distrubution cartel (formerly called the 7 sisters, Exxon, BP, etc, otherwise known as Big Oil) to get their oil and gas from the ground to the consumer. In effect, the controlling cartel is not the producers, and they have a symbiotic relationship, and may be considered one and the same.
So all we know about reserves comes from this cartel. By claiming shortages, and dwindling reserves, and in effect ensuring supplies just meet demand, they ensure high prices (used to be 3 dollars a barrel 35 years ago) . There is interlocking directorships in Oil and Investment Banking (David Rockefeller says hi) so the financial arm helps drive market prices up with speculation in futures (they also make money shorting these futures when they bring prices down from unsustainable increases)
Big Oil (not using any specific company name) does not pay market price for oil, having entered into long term contracts with producers. However, their refineries pay market price. Profits get hidden in the tax havens (ever wonder why the tankers are registered in places like Pananama?). The off shore company where the tanker is registered buys the oil for say 50% of market price from the oil producer (who is dependent on them for hardware needed to get the oil from the ground, store it and ship it). Then sells it to the refinery in the US at somewhat less than market price (locking up the profits elsewhere, hence less tax in the US). US oil production is problematic in this regard.
In any event, 35 years ago we were supposed to be running out of oil globally, and today have reserves double what they were 35 years ago (of course consumption has also doubled).
One curious thing which proves my point that we have far more oil than Big Oil would like us to know is their obvious reluctance to search for oil in the US. Leased land goes undrilled. Some will mention environmental concerns inhibiting their ability to search for oil. Ask yourself this.
In the aftermath of 9/11, with Arab oil producing nations looked upon as a threat, and this country dependent on oil, not to mention our military which uses more oil than most countries, how could Bush and Cheney, Big Oils biggest buddies, not be able to open up the drilling, especially along the coast. Even if Congress would not go along (it was a Republican Congress), he could have used an Executive Order siting National Security concerns and he would have had the full support of most Americans. He didn’t. Why?
The answer is that Big Oil does not want to increase supplies. Things are doing very well as is thank you.
There is also Thomas Golds abiogenic theory of oil in the deep hot biosphere. He claims some oil wells thought to be depleted are being refilled (although not at the rate in which it was depleted), and that fossil fuels are not of biogenic orgins, but are upwelling from the deep earth, even in areas not thought to have oil do to the lack of sediments (just have to drill deeper). As an astro-physicist at NASA he claimed most planets have plenty of hydrocarbons, and that these compounds exist naturally throughout the universe from the beginning and did not require carbon based life to form them.
Obviously, nobody can prove this but Big Oil. The Russian scientists know, informing Thomas Gold that they developed this theory first, and have implemented their knowledge to increase Russian oil production despite having been thought to be running out of oil 20 years ago . They have no motivation to speak out publicly as this would depress oil prices, a commodity their economy depends on.
This takes us to nuclear energy. An accident at TMI that many say was sabotage cooled Americas interest in nuclear power. At the same time, double digit interest rates caused by the Fed, the banking industries lackey (remember the interlocking interests) made the financing cost for nuclear power plants so high the venture would be unprofitable. In addition, the US refusal to recycle spent nuclear power rods means waste is accumulating (recycle rates can be as high as 97% , and new generation power plants can use the spent power rods from older plants as is), and is used by environmentalists as the key argument against nuclear power.
Thus the biggest threat to Big Oil was removed. Since then, Big Oil through other companies and with the cooperation of the US and European nations and Australia have been acquiring land containing uranium oxide supplies and uranium enrichment plants. Once the cartel for this energy source is ready, there will be a push for nuclear power. Energy prices will of course be kept high since the supplier will be a cartel. In the meantime, those countries seeking to develop enrichment plants will meet with threats and sanctions.
The banking industry will be in a position to make a pile by loaning money to finance nuclear power plant development. This will probably happen when oil prices test 150 dollars a barrel again. Double digit inflation will likely be on the horizon, and the banks making such loans to these nations will need to be bailed out, and in return more resources from these nations will be promised to cover the loan in default. In the meantime, more loans will be available for them to buy oil if needed. Maybe at that time loans will be in the form of carbon credits and payments in carbon dollars.

So stop scary stories for kids and focus on getting more energy and energy independence. Sounds like the right approach for our country with the highest fossil fuel reserves on the planet.
No? What, that’s not what he means?

Too bad the Green’s ideas for energy are just as wrong as their ideas on the climate.
We had windmills. We got rid of them. Why? Because they suck as a power source.
Solar is just as bad, probably worse because it’s even more expensive than wind.

P.S.
Here’s a link to a video showing an example of how truly God-awful the Green’s energy ideas are.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d24b56MmIts&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Doug Badgero,
If “The Death of Environmentalism” is by the same guy I think it is – sorry I don’t have his name handy – he was the rising young star of the environmental movement when he wrote that… almost in a fit of rage about how unyielding, uncompromising, and ineffecive the Green Movement had become. He now works, of all places, with Wal Mart and is making potentially thousad of times more difference with them then he was “fighting the good fight”. If I recall I ran across him on an episode of Penn and Teller’s “BS” (real name of the show is Penn and Teller’s Bullshit but mods feel free to snip)
I was a Boy Scout when I was a kid and me favorite, albeit inconsistent, pastime is going to National Parks… hiking, and photographing nature. I cannot stand for the political advocacy and outright scam groups like the Sierra Club have become. I’d rather burn my money than let a cent of it go their way – they are not about nature, they are anti-humanity.
Kudos to these kids for realizing that reason trumps extremism, and that hitching their wagon to a f…. (not the four letter F-word but the five letter one) will only backfire in the end. I wish them all the best!

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=3163105453918493460&ei=JUqxS5_EDtir-AaG3aTaBg&q
ENDGAME by Alex Jones investigates & attempts to join the dots & explain the powerful agendas behind CLIMATEGATE. Greens & Climate Scientists don’t have the power to orchestrate the UN, National Governments, Corporations, Banksters, Media & Science. [SNIP. Aargh! Post the “truther” (and worse) conspiracy theories elsewhere. We don’t do those here! ~ Evan]
It is most recently being employed to demonise the truth & libertarian/tea party movements in the US.
Greens & Scientists were just the patsies for what our prime minister loves to refer to as the NEW WORLD ORDER.
Know your opponent. Join the dots. Take back your power. Love & Truth.

“rickM (18:29:51) :
I’m sorry, but I don’t see the objectivity of an essay who’s intent is still to de-carbonize our economy, and that the revenues raised would be solely used to develop low carbon industry. ”
Maybe they are Malthusians and see limited resources as a principal problem. As i said, we would have at least 500 years to solve it but some people, especially people paid for, just want to rush it. The German solar industry has a very well-oiled (oops!) lobby, for instance.

—
Hm. Problem is that when you “Break the link between global warming research and the push for low-carbon energy,” there’s no reason to suffer the prohibitive costs of “low-carbon energy.”
The combustion of fossil and non-fossil hydrocarbons for the generation of energy obtains not because of collusion or conspiracy or corporate plotting, but because, ceteris paribus, it is the most cost-efficient way to power vehicles, drive railroad transport, fuel aircraft, and power commercial maritime and riverine shipping.
The “low-carbon energy” alternatives – except for light water moderated nuclear reactors in the generation of baseload electrical power – simply aren’t workable. Petrochemicals beat the hell out of everything else.
No global warming scare, no “low-carbon energy” requirement, and that leaves the ‘viros standing there in the street with their pudenda hanging out and no idea how to fumble their zippers up.
—

You better sit down for this one…
Alan S Blue,
The claim to bio fuel is not at all that they produced less carbon at the tailpipe, but rather that it “recycles” what is already out there.
Consider the lifecycle involved in producing a gallon of bio fuel. First it must grow. Canola oil, grown from rapeseed, is a feedstock for bio diesel. In order to grow rapeseed, CO2 is consumed from the air. It is stored in the plant as it grows. Also, by-products are produced from rapeseed, mainly the stock of the plant. This stock can be burned to create fuel to diminish the use of fossil fuel in the production of the fuel.
Now think about fossil fuel. When dealing with fossil fuel, carbon that has been isolated from the atmosphere for thousands of years is released. IE You pull it out and burn it, releasing it into the atmosphere.
Bio-fuel at the tailpipe of a car or in an electrical generation system generates more equivalent CO2 emissions at virtually every step of the life cycle of a fuel (Feedstock extraction, land changes, feedstock transport, production, distribution, dispensing, operation of vehicle, vehicle assembly and decommissioning). Still bio fuel has approximately a fifth of the equivalent CO2 emissions due to Carbon in end use fuel from CO2 in air and emissions displayed by by-products.
That is not to say that bio-fuel does not come with challenges. Very few cars can run smoothly on 100% bio-fuel, as it is very viscous (thick) and does not perform well in extreme temperatures. There is also a humanitarian aspect to it; how can we justify using farm land to produce fuel to power our SUV’s and minivans, when that land could be used to grow corn for the millions of starving people in the world.
To address the overall tone of this message board, I would like to say that I am completely depressed by the majority of your comments. You really want to challenge that we are ruining our environment? Really? Talk to any one from New Orleans. True, global warming was not the culprit there, but the rather the destroying of wetlands for profit. (Note, historically, the wetlands surrounding New Orleans have protected the area from massive damage due to storms as they have acted to slow and minimize swells before they reached the in land areas. Not only that but the minerals provided by these regions have kept the soil rich and healthy, and now that the wetlands have been depleted, these minerals are being wash out to sea). While I do agree that Green Issues have become a political statement lately, this sudden push against all things green is equally political. As stated in this article, the green industry has been growing for the past 20 years. Why the recent push back? What has changed?
Being environmentally friendly is expensive. Green energy costs more and there is no way around it. When the economy was booming, politicians, industries and corporations were happy to have an enemy (global warming) to throw money at to increase their approval ratings. But now that they are counting every cent, don’t think for a second that they are not pressuring scientists to say “Oh we don’t need to worry about global warming, it was just a fad”.
I am not claiming to know all the facts, but I AM BEGGING YOU TO THINK CRITICALLY about what you are agreeing with here. Over the past hundred years we have changed our environment more rapidly than ever in the course of human history. Not to say that this is the fastest the world has ever changed, but you must agree that we are doing some serious damage. Historically, rapid changes have not bode well for the earth’s inhabitants of the time. If we continue down this swiftly accelerating path of change, I cannot help but draw the conclusion that we are heading for a similar fate.
* Note I am NOT an Environmentalist. I am an engineer in the Oil and Gas industry, which I would think would make me bias in the opposite direction of my opinions stated above.

I have spent my whole working life in nuclear power. I can assure you that the accident at TMI was not sabotage. It was a combination of design deficiencies and operator error, as these things usually are, e.g. Exxon Valdez, etc. Also, since we generate essentially none of our electricity in the USA from oil, the expansion of nuclear will have little or no effect on our demand for oil.
Peak oil theory is idiotic The price of oil, or anything else, is largely determined by monetary policy, in particular the growth of the money supply. Money supply growth has been high since the beginnings of the housing crisis. All you have to do is look at the price of other commodities. Are we also running out of gold, silver, sugar, copper, etc?

I guess the conclusions of this “Green Think tank is a kind of breakthrough but I simply don’t agree with the entire focus on a low carbon economy.
We simply need carbon fuels, not only to produce steel, aluminum, glass, concrete and other construction materials.
We need oil to produce plastics, clothing, pesticides, fertilizer, medicine, resins, paints, you name it.
For the current and next generation we don’t need to focus on energy at all and we certainly don’t need the climate gang on our shoulders meddling with the very basis of our economies.
Energy in fact is a non item because we have plenty of it.
We have cheap shale gas available to power highly efficient natural gas fueled power plants for a very long time.
We have plenty of oil available, we can generate gasoline from coal and sulfa free diesel from natural gas.
We already know how to handle and burn these fuels without negative effects for the environment and our health. We only need to apply those technologies world wide and further optimize efficiency.
Even if we don’t further optimize efficiency rates, there won’t be a peak oil situation for a long time.
We have all the time in the world available to further develop real innovating technologies that is not only able to replace fossil fuels, fulfill our energy needs, but also our need for raw materials and food production and help humanity through the onset of the next ice age.
The best way is to invest in new propulsion technology for space exploration and power generation.
In terms of time we are at the brink of real quantum jumps in development that are currently underway.
Future technology will enable us to manipulate matter on a molecular level and it will enable us to produce any material we need in any required quantity.
Power and energy will be a spin off of such a process so we will also have sufficient energy available for fresh water production from sea water where ever we need it and hydrogen for transportation.
Within a few decades from now we will look back and laugh about this period in time especially about those who are prepared to role back our civilization for individual profits, power and the desperate attempts to “save the planet” that needs no saving.
I see a bright future for all of us only threatened by wacko politicians, politicized science and a frightened public putting their trust and faith into the hands of the wrong people.

jorgekafkazar (17:54:10) :
Yes, the Chinese and EU are getting our coal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-commodities-exports-on-the-rise-2009-10
Who’s getting the best of that deal?

openunatedgirl (19:05:59) :
“You really want to challenge that we are ruining our environment? Really? Talk to any one from New Orleans. True, global warming was not the culprit there, but the rather the destroying of wetlands for profit.”
We were warned for two generations about what would happen in New Orleans if a major hurricane came ashore there. The levees were designed for a fast moving category 3 hurricane and Katrina was a slow moving storm. The city had to be constantly dewatered to keep it from flooding when it wasn’t even raining. Much of it is below sea level for goodness sake. Storm surge did not damage that city, flooding beyond the design capabilities of the levees did.

And why are we having China build our clean-coal technology?
http://cleantech.com/news/4381/china-huaneng-plans-clean-coal-expo
So much for those ‘green’ jobs.

I remember saying back in late November (and in this forum, I believe), that I give AGW another nine months of momentum. That was based on the time between Nixon’s “I am not a crook” speach and his resignation. This latest news , methinks, is right on schedule!

Monique (18:34:38) :
“Green think tank tells environmentalists: Leave climate change science behind”
Wow. The first major crack from within.
————————–
Reply:
Yup. Who’d want the albatros of “climate change science” around their neck? Now, not even the AGWers!

This quote….is worth repeating again….and again. The true CRUX of the matter.
“Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy. Efforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future should we fail to embrace green proposals, and to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning, have only served to undermine the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy.”
And it also has served to undermine legitimate environmental concerns, such as pollution, habitat destruction, and the disastrous overfishing of the world’s oceans.
One day soon…it will be a matter of historical record…as to the scam of CAGW and thus Al Gore…for the duration of his life…will never, EVER be taken seriously…again.
No loss! And good riddance!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Maybe I was just agreeing to part of openunatedwhatshername.. on second read at least
The important part here is *oppurtunity cost*, for each dollar we spend on X we do not spend it on Y (unless, of course, the government has gone completely out of control and just printing money with no thought to its repurcussion… but that would never happen amirite? 😛 )
That’s what I was trying to get at. To reclaim the wetlands around New Orleans we’d need to shut down the dredged out deep shipping lanes of the Mississippi River – what effect do you think that might have? As others have pointed out, New Orelans had its own economic equation when it came to the levee system, which in hindsight was a complete miss. The wetlands had nothing to do with the storm surge overtaling the levee system through Lake Ponchetrain.
As DirkH mentioned, there are many *very* effective ways by which money can be spent on environmental issues… but they should be debated openly and honestly.

“NickB. (19:14:47) :
DirkH,
I have always thought that the Greens, if they really wanted to pursue it, should pursue a “decarbonization” of energy on its own merits – particulate pollution (haze) is a bit of a downer, for example, when I go to places like the Grand Canyon or Big Bend National Park (Big Sky Country as we call it)”
Probably you mean sulfate and black carbon particles. As i said in my comment to openunatedgirl, both can be filtered. The sulfur can be filtered with flue gas desulfurization, PM10 and other black carbon particles can be removed with catalysts. In Germany, Diesel is cheaper than gasoline due to less tax – don’t ask me why the tax is lower but it is so – that’s why german carmakers all have a lot of Diesel cars to offer. They now get equipped with catalysts that filter the carbon particles out and when the filter is full they burn the collected particles to CO2. I guess similar filters are used in power plants as these particles are cancerogenous, the smaller the worse.
We have a cogeneration plant near the city center of Braunschweig, my home town. All that you see coming from the smoke stack is some condensed water vapour. You get a little industry snow from it in winter. The plant runs on coal and gas, i think.

magicjava (19:15:52) :
[quote openunatedgirl (19:05:59) :]
“Talk to any one from New Orleans.”
“Hurricane Katrina was a category 3 storm, which makes it middle of the road. Katrina was an unprecedented political failure, not an unprecedented natural force.”
I certainly agree about the unprecedented political failure part, magicjava. However, even though Katrina was technically downgraded to a three by the time it made landfall, it was no ordinary three.
It carried with it the energy (especially storm surge and battering wave action) of its recent past, as a strong category five.
The weaknesses of the Saffir-Simpson scale are coming to light. Case in point, in 2008, Ike was a technically a two when it hit Texas, but it carried with it the storm surge energy of a strong four. And the extreme damage on the Bolivar peninsula bears this out.
Also, back to Katrina, the person citing New Orleans was off, as you said, but more than the reason there was political and infrastructure failure in New Orleans. The REAL damage was to the east of New Orleans, on the Mississippi coast, which was obliterated by the worst storm surge since Camille (and in some cases worse) in 1969.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

encouraging:
29 March: BusinessGreen: James Murray: “Climategate” blow fragments corporate response to global warming
Survey reveals more than half of respondents believe “jury is still out” on the urgent need to tackle climate change
That is the conclusion of a major new survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which polled more than 540 senior executives…
The survey, which was sponsored by the Carbon Trust, IBM, Hitachi and software company 1E, found that just over half of respondents believe the “jury is still out” on the urgent need to tackle climate change, while 32 per cent of companies polled said they do not yet have a coherent strategy in place to address energy use, an increase of seven percentage points on last year.
Moreover, just 12 per cent of businesses said they were introducing new green products to keep up with rivals, and seven out of 10 respondents said that carbon reduction policies are primarily driven by public relations issues…
But report co-editor Chenoa Marquis said that the findings represented “good news for GE, Siemens and those companies that are moving ahead with low-carbon products as they have an opportunity to open up a gap on their competitors.”
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2260372/climategate-blow-fragments

I found the cogeneration plant in Braunschweig in the german wikipedia:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heizkraftwerk_Braunschweig-Mitte
Link to various map services:
http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?language=en&pagename=Heizkraftwerk_Braunschweig-Mitte&params=52.278611111111_N_10.514722222222_E_dim:1000_region:DE-NI_type:landmark_&title=Heizkraftwerk Braunschweig-Mitte
Link on google maps:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=52.278611,10.514722&spn=0.01,0.01&t=m&q=52.278611,10.514722
So you see, it’s not far from the city center.

For kicks and giggles I went to a “Green” precinct meeting once in the Minneapolis area (and believe me, this is a socialist state). There were about eight shaggy, unshaven individuals there – and they were the women. The Green’s don’t have the same political steam in America that they seem to have in Europe. I can’t see them having any substantial leverage with our Congress or with our culture for that matter. I’ll tell you what does though. The UN and the EU. The UN and the EU have strategically used global warming as the principle attack engine in its endless and relentless campaign for global socialism. It’s the same old bunch, Baby. The usual suspects and their intellectual surrogates in government, media and finance. AGW = social control.

Robert of Ottawa (19:28:57) :
That type of move (lawsuit your recovery efforts into the dirt) is exactly the m.o. that has ruined much of California’s forests after fires. They go cherry-pick a judge and get an injunction to stop all salvage.
Lawsuiting energy and manufacturing in the US is their next planned move.
The have 3 test cases already in motion.

Here’s the story on the ‘nuisance’ angle the Greens are going tort over:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/29/global-warming-advocates-threaten-blizzard-lawsuits/

“DirkH (20:47:22) :
[…]
And i wish the US all the best with their own projects in this regard.”
Not to be misunderstood: The best of luck for the shale projects, not for Cap&Trade “projects” which i find rather detrimental.

Re green energy (carbon-less) and carbon-based energy, this might be of interest.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/more-musings-on-grand-game.html
The short version is that OPEC is not going to let oil become sufficiently expensive for alternatives to oil to become economic.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger: “In recent years, bipartisan agreement has grown on the need to decarbonize our energy supply through the expansion of renewables, nuclear power, and natural gas. . .”
Last I heard, natural gas was made of carbon and hydrogen, and when burned produces CO2 and H2O. So you won’t ‘decarbonize’ our economy by using it.
But so what? If not for putative ‘climate change’, why do the greens want to ‘decarbonize’ the economy at all? It is nice to see these two authors admitting that the alarmist warnings of dire catastrophes from imminent ‘global warming’ caused by CO2 are so much poppycock. Clearly they are admitting that most of this vaunted ‘climate science’ was not science at all, but scientism in the service of a political agenda.
Is that agenda the ‘decarbonization’ of the economy? Or is that aim really an excuse for something else, something having to do with control, with an end to the values that have driven our civilization to ever-new heights of prosperity, abundance, and freedom?
Having them retreat from the alarmist tactic is a battle worth winning, and certainly worth posting here. But it’s not winning the war, not yet.
We’ll win when they throw in the towel and admit, ‘carbon’ is good and vital for the continued progress of mankind.
/Mr Lynn

@DirkH (17:26:25) :
“Poptech (17:13:02) :
The irony of all this is if you understand economics there is nothing to focus on, free markets will take care of our energy needs. All government does is increase costs and delay technological innovation. If they want to see a transition to clean energy, then they need to get out of the way.”
Actually, no. Energy companies would go for the cheapest energy, and that is hydrocarbons for at least the next 500 years or so (oil, coal, gas, and now huge amounts of shale gas becoming economical).
– – – – – – –
Dirk, you’re only half right. Your figure of 500 years is easily off by more than factor of 10 (I initially thought that “500 years” was a typo, but you repeated that figure again in a later post, so I guess not). In less than 50 years, other alternative sources of energy, including solar panels, solar sterling engines, wind turbines, and solid hydrogen will be cheaper than hydrocarbons. If you doubt that, take a look at the price of gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel, and natural gas vs. the CPI over the past 50 years, the divergence is striking, and it will only continue to worsen. At some point, certainly during the first half of the 21st century, alternative sources of energy will begin to compete with hydrocarbons. (As for shale gas becoming economical, it is only due to the increased price of natural gas as it continues to diverge from the CPI.)
One example of an alternative energy scheme which is already less expensive than hydrocarbon fuels is passive solar. I was involved with passive solar energy research almost 30 years ago. People have been utilizing passive solar heating ( I use it myself as an auxiliary), at less than 1/10th the cost of heating with natural gas, heating oil or electricity. Granted passive solar is not a panacea, but it is also acutely under-utilized.
The efficiency of solar panels continues to increase, and the price will continue to decrease as economies of scale begin to affect the price, but that’s a few decades off into the future. If wind turbine manufacturers would get their act together and shift their model to microgeneration, the wind energy industry will thrive. There are numerous alternative energy souces being researched. One is here:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html
Another is a solid hydrogen fuel:
“The US Air Force finances a project using ammonia borane (H3NBH3) to pack hydrogen gas for using it in fuel cells
. Jadoo Power Systems was given a contract this week to develop ammonia borane pellets for hydrogen generation.”
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2009/02/04/ammonia-borane-hydrogen-storage/

I have to disagree Mr. Watts.
Their goal is still to remake the “entire global energy economy.” They only claim that they can’t do it with the soft climate science any longer. They still want to send us back to the caves.
I wish I was as smart as they are. I wonder if they are as smart as Mao and Stalin, their heros. Get ready to slaughter another hundred million souls, in your name, if they are.
I wish I could dictate the perfect solution, legislate that the Earth will be at the perfect temperature, like they can. Are we to believe that if we cut our carbon emissions there will be no more bad weather? Obama oversaw the worst winter in decades on the east coast. I thought he could control the weather, or have we not done enough to limit our carbon footprint?
Their stated mission remains to decarbonize the blah, blah blah to save us from ourselves.
If we decarbonize like they want us to, we trash all of our fridges, microwaves, stoves, cars, computers, cell phones and light bulbs.
These environmentalists have realized they can’t waste any more time trying to justify their goals with climate science because it is viewed as fraudulent.
What will be the new threat? Meat diets? Dairy products? Ocean acidification? Tundra thaw? Future famine due to droughts and floods? The next doomsday scenario will rear its ugly head very soon, I am sure.
I hope to debate a young Yale environmental evangelist someday.
EJ

I have to agree with what a lot of other commenters already said. The article is very clear that the climate propoganda has discredited itself, and thus “new” reasons for a “low carbon” economy must be found:
————-
understood in its proper role, as one of many reasons why we should decarbonize the global economy, climate science can even help contribute to the case for taking such action.
————-
They don’t say what those “many reasons” are, and the wording suggests that they simply assume that “high carbon” is bad and should be obvious to everyone that it is. Here lies the ultimate fallacy that somehow a return to “simpler times” and a less industrialized economy is “obviously” better than what we have now. Having read a thing or two about history, this doesn’t seem that obvious to me.

EJ: EJ (21:33:32) : “What will be the new threat? Meat diets? Dairy products? Ocean acidification? Tundra thaw? Future famine due to droughts and floods? The next doomsday scenario will rear its ugly head very soon, I am sure.
It already has: Ocean Acidification.
As a close half-sister to the CO2 scare, this one follows the same farudulent premise: Reduce manmade CO2 or the world will end.
Unfortunately, sham policies based upon scientific scams [ the spuedo-religion of CAGW] does nothing whatsoever to advance cleaning up the Earth from man-made pollution, habitat destruction, and overfishing.
Rather…it throws all of of those legitimate concerns, under the bus.
Where was Al Gore when he could have spoken up for the wholesale elimination of large sharks in the world’s oceans who have ruled the deep for hundreds of millions of years?
Where was Al Gore when he could have championed finding a solution to the disastrous gigantic Pacific trash gyre?
Where is Al Gore speaking up for 1/4 of the world’s population who does not have electricity, and their chances are even more dire now given that hydrocarbons have been demonized by he and Hansen and others?
The world’s first poised carbon billionaire was conveniently silent…because he KNEW he could not make any money on any of the foregoing.
It is for THAT reason, and for the millions of third world women and children who will die due to some “green” experiment gone bad, that Al Gore’s name will always be a well-deserved curse word on my lips!

Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

The more I think about it…the more I see red…and lightning bolts start to shoot from my eyes:
Al Gore [forgive me but he really is culpable here] can not make money on real and legitimate environmental causes…so, curiously, you never hear him using his platform to speak out on such.
But he CAN make a lot of money…on telling and propagating a lie and a fraud.
That is royally *****d up!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Correction on “spuedo-religion of CAGW”. Meant “pseudo-religion of CAGW”

Marlene Anderson
Canada and the US should be standing shoulder to shoulder to push back on AGW nonsense. Instead, Obama starting drinking the kool-aid>>
Canada will stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the US, only in that our economy is so intertwined with the US that we must adopt the same basic regulations or see our products stopped at the boarder. That said, Obama and Clinton seem more interested in slapping allies like Canada around while apologising to and appeasing enemies. A lot of Canadians were swept up in Obamamania. I wonder how they will feel about being p****ed on for trying to get a converation going between the countries that border the arctic on how to administer it:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2740472
The arrogance of being told how we should be dealing with our native peoples (the US having such a stirling record on that), and being told that countries like China and India and others who don’t border on the Arctic should have had a seat at the meeting? Is that the whole list now Hillary? Are you sure you don’t want Al Queda invited too, they’be been complaining about climate change as well. How about Khadaffy and Chavez while we’re at it? Ar are you just ticked that some tiny insignificant country actually took a leadership position on something without you? I thought that the end of the Bush era was no more bullying the planet. Well turns out that meant no more bullying enemies, just allies instead.

I still laugh everytime I see that southern hemisphere cyclone off the coast of Mexico on the cover of Al’s book. It’s all about marketing. The science be damned!

The truth is that all climate scientists have been silenced by the corrupt and shameful actions of their role models. They have become aware of a massive army of interested observers who will take apart any paper or pronouncement they make and expose every flaw to a world-wide audience.
Let’s face it, they’re scared and their work is now largely pointless.
The politicians ,who have been so ready to seize every doom-laden word of the scientists, helpfully distorted and ratcheted up into a barely-controlled hysteria by the media, find themselves without a product to use for an alibi. What are they to do? They change the argument into one of social justice, energy supplies, and healthier living.
Politicians also rely on the public having a short attention span and short memories. Eventually, when they judge the time is right, “global warming” will come back onto their agenda, minus all the current crop of tainted climate science and discredited climate scientists.

@ pft:
One very good reason the US does not look for oil in the US is that it is foolish to use up a resource when it will only get more expensive. Use the resource as sold by others while it is cheap – when it is expensive, develop your own resource potential to cover local demand, and even make a profit of those with less foresight.
It is what I would do, and as I understand from my father’s girlfriend who has a well in Texas (as many there do), the govt puts strict limits on production in the US. It makes sound economic sense to me.

More than thirty years ago I was convinced that looking after the global environment was what the Green movement was all about and I approved of the movement in general terms. Then I noticed that various individuals of my acquaintance who had joined Green organisations were beginning to display many of the slightly odd mannerisms of other old acquaintances who had become Charismatic Christians.
It was no great cognitive leap to realise the Green movement had, sadly, become a religion and one that was seeking world domination. I put them to one side, in my mind, until Climategate arrived and my personal bull**** detector went into full alert mode. I am grateful that I was steered to this site in my search for information and I am cheered that this group from Yale are at least beginning to distance themselves from CAGW, CC or any of the permutations of doom. But in their pursuit of ‘low carbon energy’ they have missed the very relevant fact that Man continually refines technology; as an example, in the late 1950s I owned a 650cc 4stroke British motorcycle which was grossly unreliable, drank copious quantities of petrol and oil and was generally an exciting beast. My son now rides, among other machines, a 1200cc Yamaha which uses a fraction of the petrol my old 500cc bike did, uses no oil between services and is not only utterly reliable but is increadibly fast compared with my old beast. And sounds about as exciting as a sewing machine. The error many who are clueless about machinery of any kind is that they do not realise just how powerful and dramatic changes in established technology and machinery can be; most Greens shudder when they see a fast car, but Porsche is one manufacturer which has refined current design to the point where they now have built a very fast sports car which uses a fraction of the energy that a Toyota Prius does and yet the Prius with it’s enormous carbon footprint (silly term, I know, but the Greens love their mantras) will no doubt remain a religious icon to the Green movement..

””””Kate (01:29:35) :
The truth is that all climate scientists have been silenced by the corrupt and shameful actions of their role models. They have become aware of a massive army of interested observers who will take apart any paper or pronouncement they make and expose every flaw to a world-wide audience.
Let’s face it, they’re scared and their work is now largely pointless.
The politicians ,who have been so ready to seize every doom-laden word of the scientists, helpfully distorted and ratcheted up into a barely-controlled hysteria by the media, find themselves without a product to use for an alibi. What are they to do? They change the argument into one of social justice, energy supplies, and healthier living.
Politicians also rely on the public having a short attention span and short memories. Eventually, when they judge the time is right, “global warming” will come back onto their agenda, minus all the current crop of tainted climate science and discredited climate scientists.”””””’
Kate,
Your excellent points I concur with, but your tone I think should be more hopeful.
Not only do politicians have long memories, the blogosphere has even longer memories . . . . . . and there are a hell of a lot more of us. : ) And people like Watts, M & M, etc etc, too numberous to mention here.
Cheer up.
John

R. de Haan (21:29:14) :
What every person on the planet should know!
Access to cheap and safe energy should be a human right! . . .

Point of clarification: Let’s not make the mistake that the socialists do with ‘healthcare’: access to goods and services produced by others is never a ‘right’. It may be eminently desirable, a wish devoutly to be achieved, but not a right.
“True rights,” says Walter E. Williams, “such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another.” The government cannot provide goods and services as ‘rights’, because the government has no resources of its own; it must first take in order to give. See Prof. Williams’s illuminating essay here:
http://www.creators.com/opinion/walter-williams/is-health-care-a-right.html
That said, the rest of R. de Haan’s contribution is right on the money! I recommend you all print it out and post it prominently for all the alarmists, warmers, doomsayers, Luddites, Marxists, and faux-environmentalists to see and contemplate.
And also read and re-read E.M.Smith’s (03:20:24) seminal “There is no shortage. . .” posts, linked in his comment above.
/Mr Lynn

I am not sure if this will work. AGW theory has cost many billions in direct and indirect costs, and an accounting should be demanded.
AGW true believers dearly love their apocalypse, and actually believe.
AGW profiteers, like Gore, windmill salesmen, and the industrial groups pushing for cap-n-trade smell trillions in trading revenues.
This is not going to go away easily.
And promoting the idea that non-carbon based energy will work without nuke power is a delusion.

Do they still count as a think tank when their conclusion is a decade late and patently obvious?
I’m going to start a real estate think tank and issue a report that states that federally fueled real estate speculation is a bad idea.

First of all I agree with those who regard the Yale Environment 360 article positively. For too long here has been a concerted effort to link every environmental ill to climate change. (A recent link was between whaling and CO2 emissions). The downside has been that many urgent dangers, hunting, habitat encroachment, etc. have been ignored. There are also good reasons for the long-term future of the planet to develop safe renewable energy sources. The next ice is due in a few centuries time; imagine trying to survive if we’d all used our fossil fuels for long-haul holidays.
openunatedgirl
My understanding is that for the US or Europe to replace 10% of its petrol with ethanol would require 40% of its agricultural land. If these facts are correct then biofuel can only be a small part of the solution.

“toyotawhizguy (21:24:04) :
[…]
Dirk, you’re only half right. Your figure of 500 years is easily off by more than factor of 10 (I initially thought that “500 years” was a typo, but you repeated that figure again in a later post, so I guess not)”
You *could* be right. I was thinking about known reserves here. As soon as some other technology is cheaper it will overtake the market. But it needs to become cheaper first! This is more difficult than it seems to be – as Roger Sowell points out, the guys with the oil wells will try to counter any pretender technology by lowering their prizes. Their technology is proven, they can exploit a huge existing infrastructure and economies of scale.
A lot of the shiny new technologies will fall by the wayside.
I (and a lot of other people) place my bet on microcogeneration in individual households, using gas as the fuel (synthesized from wind/solar power if you want or the fossil variant), a fuel cell, producing heat and electricity.
Hydrocarbons are just the best way to carry hydrogene with you.

D. King (20:14:04) :
“R. de Haan (19:17:07) :
Good post Ron.”
Thanks for your kind remark, you’re welcome.

toyotawhizguy (21:24:04) :
In less than 50 years, other alternative sources of energy, including solar panels, solar sterling engines, wind turbines, and solid hydrogen will be cheaper than hydrocarbons. If you doubt that, take a look at the price of gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel, and natural gas vs. the CPI over the past 50 years, the divergence is striking, and it will only continue to worsen. At some point, certainly during the first half of the 21st century, alternative sources of energy will begin to compete with hydrocarbons. (As for shale gas becoming economical, it is only due to the increased price of natural gas as it continues to diverge from the CPI.)
If you’re using the government derived numbers for CPI, then you are off by a factor of at least 4.

Pressed Rat (04:52:30) :
I was thinking Triumph Bonneville. You’re probably right though as the Triumph engine was better than the Norton.
On the other hand, the Norton frame was better than the Triumph which is why so many put the Triumph engine in the Norton frame to get the Triton.
DaveE.

Did anyone actually read the article in the Yale Journal? How do you square that with the headline here? Yale said NOTHING to the greens. Two guys, who are generally reviled, wrote an OPINION piece. That’s the kind of misrepresentation Climate Depot does takes to an art form.
And yet, at the end of the article the authors say:
“Climate science can still usefully inform us about the possible trajectories of the global climate and help us prepare for extreme weather and natural disasters, whether climate change ultimately results in their intensification or not. And understood in its proper role, as one of many reasons why we should decarbonize the global economy, climate science can even help contribute to the case for taking such action. “

spitthedog
My understanding is that Nuclear produced electricity is the cheapest source of electrical energy, with coal the next cheapest but still a lot more expensive. France has predominantly nuclear produced electricity which is divorced from the world price of hydrocarbons. Why have the rest of the higher technology economies not followed this cheaper energy route? Perhaps the market economy is distorted by polital and environmentalist ideology, but apparently not in France. There can be no economic reason for not going nuclear with electricity production. Coal and oil will find plenty of opportunity in the chemical industry.
Cliff

I’m still in shock because I can’t figure out the combo environment+yale, after all yale hasn’t produced an intelligent environmentalist for, well, ever, but now suddenly they get it together. It’s prolly a trick.

“”” Ed Shearon (07:55:03) :
Did anyone actually read the article in the Yale Journal? How do you square that with the headline here? Yale said NOTHING to the greens. Two guys, who are generally reviled, wrote an OPINION piece. That’s the kind of misrepresentation Climate Depot does takes to an art form. “””
I believe that Anthony’s citation was to the Yale Environment-360 forum article; not to the Yale Journal article. So I read what the 360 forum article said; and that is what I commented on.
I’ll leave it to the Yale Journal to demand a retraction from those two authors, if they have misrepresented the Journal paper; they are the ones who know what they meant in their forum article.

“”” Claude Harvey (06:01:45) :
All the talk about wind and solar replacing conventional sources because economy of scale will make those technologies’ economically viable in the future is pure fantasy. The numbers cannot possibly EVER pencil out because of horrendous capital cost that can never be brought to heel due to: “””
If you substitute Claude Harvey for Ed Shearon above; you might end up with a combination that makes sense; If you can figure out what I did wrong; please keep it to yourself; it’s embarrassing enough, as it is.

There are so many reasons to become better stewards of our beautiful earth. Picking global warming and pointing fingers only served to push people who are not being over the top recyclers further toward a fringe. Hence comments I have seen on here before that say forget the environment, I will let my hummer idol all day, I left my lights on during earth hour for the fun of it. When you ask the same people if they think we should be more energy independent, they agree. When given the option that lowers their monthly bills by 15%, they agree. I just purchased an energy efficient washer not because I buy into global warming, but because it saves energy, it uses less water, and frankly, it lowers my drying time. Doing these things is logical for me personally. FYI, newegg.com has a sale on “green” energy savers. I might just buy a solar panel for my house that would run my fridge and another 2 outlets during a power outage.

NK (06:34:24) :
Thanks for the kind words. You should know that my hobby is trading. I have to keep my eyes open. It’s an ideology in its own right if you will.

As DirkH has pointed out above , we can clean up fossil fuel emissions . Indeed , we’ve done a good job here in the US . We’ve done such a good job , in fact , that about the only major effluent left from burning fossil fuels is co2 . Unfortunately , the greenies have obsessed on fossil fuels for decades , so they had to find something hideous about co2 emissions . Hence the advancement of the AGW theory . Fortunately , the wheels seem to finally be falling off that one .

“Cliff (08:50:02) : you have been badly mis-informed on the price of nuclear-based electric power. It is the most expensive of coal, gas, nuclear, geothermal, and hydroelectric, and is more expensive than some forms of solar and wind.”

Not so.
EIA – 2016 Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources from the Annual Energy Outlook 2010
Nuclear is slightly cheaper than hydroelectric, and significantly cheaper than any form of wind, let alone solar power. Nuclear is even cheaper than a couple of forms of natural gas, and one form of coal. On the other hand, it is more expensive than several forms of coal and natural gas, and slightly more expensive than biomass and geothermal.
As for New Orleans, best everyone do a little historical research. There is no good location for a city at the mouth of the Mississippi, not when the city was founded in 1716, and not today. The geology and hydrology are terrible.

However, the Mississippi’s flow of water and volume of sediment is such that the river extends its delta into the Gulf and fills its embayment, even as it sinks. A cross-view of a section of the delta from east to west would reveal pre-glacial bedrocks filled with layers of deltaic material–i.e., silt, clay, sand, and a large bulk of soupy organic matter produce by rotting swamp and marsh vegetation. The bedrock itself is not really “rock,” but instead is a varied mix of semi-compacted clay, silt and silty sand. This Pleistocene bedrock lies seventy to one hundred feet beneath New Orleans (explaining why, until recently, it was a chancy and expensive business to build skyscrapers; requiring pilings to be driven down to at least seventy feet), runs below Lake Pontchartrain, and crops out on the north side of the lake, where it forms a low bluff that gives way to low hills covered with spindly pines. A cross section, then, resembles a shallow saucer filled with layers of jello.

Mr Sowell,
I have worked my entire career at a nuclear plant and you are in part correct about the costs. Nuclear is expensive to build and cheap to operate. Currently constructed nuclear plants are the cheapest base load generation available save hydro. This is, of course, because coal and gas pay much higher fuel costs and those costs vary significantly year to year and month to month.
I am also skeptical of anyone who claims to know how much it costs to build a nuclear plant in the USA today. We have not attempted to build one in 30 years so in my opinion any estimate is a complete WAG. Although I certainly would agree it will be more than a similar sized coal or gas plant. What you get is more price certainty for the future. Nat gas is currently about 4.00, even at that relatively low price it is easily twice as expensive to operate a nat gas plant today than it is a nuke. That is why they are always some of the last resources dispatched as load rises.
Wind and solar don’t even get to play in this discussion because they are not dispatchable and never pay off their capitol cost absent subsidies and mandates. If we build these facilities then we will use them when they are producing power – which we have no control over.

I read it.
Nordhaus, Ted, and Michael Shellenberger. “Freeing Energy Policy From The Climate Change Debate.” Opinion. Environment 360, March 29, 2010.
http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/print.msp?id=2257
That dog won’t hunt.

Mr Shearon,
I am most definitely including levelized capitol cost in total nuke cost. As does the EIA report referenced by Larry D.
Regarding solar thermal generation you are factually incorrect. There are two ways to make electricity from the sun. PV cells take sunlight and turn it directly to DC current and solar thermal focuses the sun’s rays on a body filled with a fluid (can be water) to create steam. The steam is then used to drive a turbine to make electricity. This is thermal solar energy and it most definitely only works when the sun is shining. Even if you could “store” the energy of the sun for later use, you can not store more energy than has been incident upon your particular part of the globe.

Layne Blanchard (17:02:24) :
“So, essentially: The fraud isn’t working, time to throw in the towel, and just admit the real motive..>…… an irrational hatred of hydrocarbon fuels…. oh, and a death wish to shut down all civilization.
… the first in a 12 step process?”
I though it was the first in a Ten step process –
Ten Steps to Dictatorship by Naomi Wolf
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external threat. check –  CAGW and world Financial meltdown
2. Create a secret prison system – a gulag – where torture takes place that is outside the rule of law, perhaps employing military tribunals. Start by targeting people outside the mainstream of society. As the line blurs, more and more ordinary citizens get caught up in the noose. It’s always the same cast of characters: journalists, editors, opposition leaders, labor leaders and outspoken clergy.  check – reports of military torture of prisoners and rumors of military type trials being considered on mainland USA
3. Create a paramilitary force – a thug caste. You can’t close down a democracy without one. You can send that paramilitary force to intimidate civilians. Then it doesn’t matter if you still have the essential institutions of a democracy functioning, because people are too intimidated to push back. check – Blackwater
4. Create an internal surveillance apparatus aimed at ordinary citizens. You don’t need to surveil everyone. If everyone thinks they are being surveilled, that’s inhibiting. check – cars with Ron Paul  bumper stickers are stop by police check points as Terrorists
5. Infiltrate and harass citizens’ groups. That helps ensure citizens won’t have the trust level to work effectively together. Boy are we seeing this. Food and Water Watch, Organic Consumers all have ties to Rockefeller and the UN so they SUPPORT corporate take over of our food supply.
6. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens. This will frighten them. check  farmers/co-ops targeted and all those roadblocks and license checks as well. And do not forget the torture and deaths by tazer of innocent people.
7. Target key individuals: lawyers, people in the press, academics, people in the media, performers, even civil servants, so people see there are repercussions if they stand up against you. Again Ron Paul, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin supporters are on the terrorist watch list. 
8. Restrict the press. Investigate, intimidate and imprison reporters. Accuse them for treason.. Start using the words of a closing society: terrorist, enemy of the people, sabotage, espionage, treason. Over time, replace the real news with fake news.  Derry Brownfield kicked off the air and two Florida reporters fired, not to mention John Munsfield’s story about e-coli contamination at Con Agri being pulled at the last minute. Reporters knocked down and tazered at political demos. Also Wiki leaks is supposed to have a video of reporters being murdered????
9. Expand the definitions of espionage and treason so more and more people are included. Recast criticism as espionage and dissent as treason.
The list is now over a million and that doesn’t include bumper stickers. I was just told by an ex-secret service guy that ALL ex-military, ex-CIA, ex-FBI…. are now on the “Homegrown terrorist” possibles list
10. Suspend the rule of law. Subvert it by decree and/or declare martial law.  Is that what the tea parties are about, to start a major confrontation?
Boy can’t you have lots of fun with this list and the scuttle butt drifting around on the internet….

Mr Lynn (05:26:56) :
R. de Haan (21:29:14) :
What every person on the planet should know!
Access to cheap and safe energy should be a human right! . . .
“Point of clarification: Let’s not make the mistake that the socialists do with ‘healthcare’: access to goods and services produced by others is never a ‘right’. It may be eminently desirable, a wish devoutly to be achieved, but not a right”.
Mr. Lynn,
I have made this point to prevent Government from enslaving it’s populations by charging excessive energy taxes and “Cap” policies.
I did not state energy should be made available for free! I only said it should be available to everybody on the planet at an affordable price!
In the case of shale gas, available in 75% of the world’s sediments we have the opportunity to generate affordable electricity all over the world with explortion companies and distributors still making good profits.
I don’t agree with your “Health Care” example because in this case Government is forcing Americans to buy Health Care. If they refuse they will be fined, if they can’t pay the fine, they go to prison and they will have a criminal record!
Besides that, if Government is in a position to force people to buy health care, what will be next? Will they be forced to buy a car from Government Motors?
Anyhow, thanks for your support for the remaining content of my posting.

““”” Ed Shearon (15:14:50) :
You’ve been had by the nuke folks. The cost of nuclear that you usually see are the variable costs: fuel and operations and maintenance. They do not include capital recovery, which can be enormous. …”
The capital cost of wind is 1 1/2 times that of nuclear. The cost of manpower for wind is also 1 1/2 times nuclear. The cost of solar is higher.
The arguement that nuclear fuel is energy intensive is provably false. The fuel is a very minor cost. the cost of producing kilowatt hour of nuclear energy is the lowest cost of any power except water power and is a fraction of wind or solar. Another major cost of wind or solar is the requirement to run high power lines to remote locations which, in many cases, doubles the capital cost. Nuclear plants have to be constructed near water sources which coincindentally is where most people live and work. ……..and, of course, nuclear fuel can be recycled as it is for France at the Hague in the Netherlands. A concern is the by-product plutonium which Carter outlawed as being to easy to convert to weapon grade material.
There is no logical reason not to utilize nuclear. We could also continue to utlize coal and clean it by desulphurization and with flyash precipitators. We could burn nutural gas which is pretty clean. I agree there is no economic or ecological reason to build wind and solar. They are pork projects. They clean no air by any measurable amount and they cannot shut down one fossil fuel plant.
Pork, pure and simple.

Correction (last sentence of penultimate paragraph): The trick, in this Republic, is to make sure we elect people who understand this imperative, and a government that will not seek to curtail human freedom and enterprise in the name of providing for its citizens what they should be providing for themselves. /Mr L

Jon:
New nuclear costs between $6,800 and $7,200 /kw. See http://southerncompany.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=2044
Other generation, $/kw installed (the capital costs):
New wind costs $1,208
Solar electric $4,751
Solar Thermal $3,149
“advanced” nuclear (does not commercially exist & same number predicted in 1986) $2,081
http://www.jcmiras.net/surge/p130.htm
Facts are pesky things, Jon.

openunatedgirl (19:05:59) wrote:
“To address the overall tone of this message board, I would like to say that I am completely depressed by the majority of your comments. You really want to challenge that we are ruining our environment? Really?”
It’s much easier to fault the other person’s tin gods than to admit that one’s own tin gods are melting. That would partially account for the Libertarian perspective of many commentators here at WUWT, since from that Weltanschauung, it’s not difficult to be skeptical about ‘problems’ that require Big Government as a ‘solution’.
Take AGW-abandonment . This particular kind of disillusionment is a much bigger step for Lefties, most of whom were educated to believe that truth is a linear combination of ‘expert’ opinions.
I agree that there are genuine environmental concerns–like overfishing in the world’s oceans. I also think that the mythology of the Flying CO2 Monster is a major distraction from this and other real problems. And I don’t view governmental regulations as bad in their own right, if there’s full public access to the data and reasoning–if any–behind them. Sometimes the Greenies get it right, and sometimes they don’t.
If you haven’t seen it already, please check out jennifermarohasy.com. Jennifer is a biologist and a proponent of evidence-based environmental policy, with an emphasis on issues that affect Australians. However she’s writing a novel at the moment, and there hasn’t been much current stuff on her blog for the last several months. When it was more active, I regarded Jennifer’s blog as the very best on environmental issues other than climate change, even though I’m not an Aussie.
Given your engineering background, I think that you can make a real contribution here. Please don’t feel like the Lone Ranger.

The future US electric power generation will be based on Natural Gas.
Here you find some of the arguments.
http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/uses_eletrical.asp
For the price of five Nuclear power plant we can build the entire US future energy
requirements based on Natural Gas power plants!
That is if we let free market principles do their work in a free energy market!
Any other energy policies driven by Government grants, semi science and ideology are nothing more but a kind of robbery of the American consumer.

Legitimate reasons for saving energy:
Make best use of scarce resources
Reduce our dependence on foreign oil and gas
Save money on energy bills (for cheapskates like me).
Illegitimate reason:
Fight AGW.

Another thought regarding efficiency.
There is a common fallacy in the anti-AGW dogma: the one that goes something like “investments in renewables and efficiency are only being done to get carbon credits because they are too expensive otherwise.” Or, “the only people who invest in clean energy plan to make a killing via carbon and thats why they support it.”
No one, and I say again, no one with any business sense develops a project because of carbon. It is icing on the cake if it ever happens, but these projects must stand alone economically. Carbon could be an additional revenue stream but it is way to small to tip the scales one way or the other.
Efficiency is far more cost effective than new generation, of any type. We could take out 20% inefficiency in the transmission grid alone. Think about that. the US generation base is around 1,000 GW. That’s 200 GW of waste. Or 200 large scale nuclear or coal plants. At far lower costs per kW. That’s where the priority needs to be, not on perpetuating a business and regulatory model that has been outdated since WWII.

Ed,
You may continue to believe what you like about the SCE solar thermal plants. I have worked all my adult life in thermal power plants and the only difference between what solar thermal does and what coal, nuke, or nat gas do is in the heat source. When the heat source goes away so does the power output. Your 75% availability defies the laws of thermodynamics unless the turbine-generator is grossly undersized compared to the solar array.
The PA act liability pool currently stands at approximately 10 billion. This is the amount that has been funded by industry.
Commercial nuclear power plants pay for their fuel, although can’t own it but that is another issue, that is what pays for the current enrichment facilities.
We are idiots if in the long term we store high level waste – we should reprocess like the rest of the world does. In any case, much more has been paid into this fund than has been spent to solve the problem.
I would love to see your numbers supporting net negative energy generation.
What were my apples and what are your oranges?
Losses in the HV transmission network are closer to about 8-10%. Distributed generation will in part simply relocate those losses to the distribution network. If distributed generation can be made cost effective based on other issues.
Business men most assuredly agree to buy wind power in large part because of the 1.8cent per Kwhr tax credit – including the company I work for.

Ed,
This is my last post on this thread.
The first link is to a hypothetical plant. It is not the plant SCE is building. Nothing can overcome the limited energy density of solar. To get a continuous 750Mw you would need to install a 3000-4000Mw peak absorption system and store the peak to use at a later time – with loss of efficiency at every step.
The 10 billion provided by PA is industry funds. To date they have issued a total of 151 million, about half as a result of TMI. These federal insurance schemes are not unique they exist for flooding, agricultural catastrophes, financial failures and maritime accidents. To date it has cost little or nothing to the taxpayers. I do not disagree that like all insurance the protection after the first 10 billion has economic value but to date it has been revenue neutral to the taxpayer. Any value assigned is simply a ledger item. Some of the other federal systems cannot say the same, e.g. financial system failures have cost billions over the years.
What does France, etc do with their transuranic elements if not “reburn” them?
If local generation is both more efficient, more economic, and of better quality why do we not use it now? I could install a wind turbine at my house except it would cost about $40,000+ last I checked and never pay for itself. I suspect I will disagree with your answer. I am curious, what power source do you envision for your distributed generation? Wind and solar with storage? Micro-turbines? I do not disagree that distributed generation has the potential to be more efficient but that has always been the case. The downsides have, to date, outweighed this potential advantage.
I looked at your link regarding negative net energy. It looks like a rather unique calculation and I will have to spend more time reading it to fully understand the author’s assumptions. I did notice one statement describing how if we build out nuclear power plants eventually nuclear plants would have to load follow. This would make them uneconomic based on all of the idle capitol. This is, of course, correct but we would be fools to build out nukes to that point. Any economic asset that has a high capital cost must also have a high utilization. No one I know of is proposing such a plan. For instance, the EIA report assumes a 90 percent capacity factor. About what the industry average is now. Although much better than it was 20 years ago.
I consider your final paragraph simply unsupported by the facts unless some rather curious assumptions are made – such as those about PA.

Ed
As I understand it from several sources the actual amount paid out under PA ever is 151 million. Of this, about 75 million was paid out to various plaintiffs and lawyers as a result of TMI. In addition, the collective industry is obligated to pay the excess damages above the 300 million each utility must carry, up to 10 billion total. Paid as a little less than 100 million per reactor in installment payments of 10 million per year max. Again, this has never cost me as a taxpayer anything. I do not question your assumptions on the cost to put TMI into it’s current state but I suspect it was borne primarily by the utility.
Utilities are obligated to serve me but I am not obligated to buy from them. Again I ask what is the system you envision? It seems like from your discussion that you want to provide your own power but use the utilities assets to both sell excess at a rate you determine and probably buy from them when your own generation is insufficient to supply your own needs.
By the way:
I have a BSE in mechanical design and I am about half way done with an MSEE in power systems (I did not quit, I just started).
I held an operating license and senior operating license at a nuclear plant for 14 years.
On paper I guess you win on impressive qualifications but I am sure I could find someone with a PhD who agrees with me. I think we will simply have to agree to disagree.

openunatedgirl
Thanks. You do have to look beyond that also though. My qualifications and experience can provide context but it can never be justification for an opinion by itself. I point this out only because this argument has been used so frequently in the AGW debate. It is possible to have an opinion that is not in your own self interest. For instance, it would be completely self serving of me to line up firmly behind the AGW hypothesis. I am definitely not there.