Guest post by Robert Bradley, Master Resource
I have been studying the global warming debate from a physical scientific and political economy basis for 20 years. And I remain amazed at how the energy/climate alarmists will not concede (are ‘in denial’) that the human influence on climate can be positive, not only negative, from an ecological and economic perspective.
The work of leading climate economist Robert Mendelsohn calculates net positive externalities for much of the world from anthropogenic warming at the bottom of the canonic IPCC temperature range. And climate scientist Gerald North of Texas A&M convinced me that the models would eventually get to a warming range of 20C, plus or minus 0.250C, for a doubling of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas in equilibrium. (Dr. North was my paid consultant back in my Enron days, tasked with helping me figure out just where the middle ground was in the contentious debate.)
Mendelsohn plus North: a net positive externality from manmade greenhouse gas emissions. And a win for fossil fuels even before getting to the political economy question of comparing ‘market failure’ against ‘government failure’ to evaluate the case for government intervention.
Now to the renewable energy debate online at The Economist magazine where I was invited to oppose the motion: “This house believes that subsidising renewable energy is a good way to wean the world off fossil fuels.”
In my opening statement, I argued that renewable energy was doomed by physics for reasons that were first comprehended by British economist W. S. Jevons in his 1865 classic, The Coal Question.
Noting the taxpayer and environmentalist backlash against wind and solar facilities, as well as the inability of intermittent energies to exist without fossil-fuel blending/firming, I found myself squarely back at the premise to the motion: that fossil fuels were bad.
With peak oil and peak gas waylaid by the shale revolution, and the statistics of less pollution alongside greater fossil-fuel usage, the question then got back to global warming (my rebuttal statement). My closing statement summed up my case for the increasing sustainability of fossil fuels, not only the failure of renewable energy.
Economist debate moderator, James Astill, is upset. After all, we should all know that the human influence on climate is severe and bad and government must do something! He complains:
In my previous offering, I confess I underestimated how relaxed our opposer, Robert Bradley, was about global warming. I thought he did not consider it a problem. It now seems he is rather in favour of it. “A moderately warmer and wetter world, natural or manmade,” Mr Bradley writes, “is arguably a better world.”
I said “moderate warming,” Sir. And I said “arguably,” Sir. Why is your world so black and white, and black in favor of energy statism? Given the public and political backlash against climate alarmism and forced energy transformation, and the very comments and voting cast in this forum, perhaps it is time to debate rather than assume.
Astill continues:
This shows how far Mr Bradley has strayed from the question in hand: concerning the desirability, or otherwise, of subsidising renewables as a means to stop the world burning fossil fuels. I do not blame him exactly. It stands to reason that no one untroubled by the prospect of global warming would bother himself with wonky, expensive renewables. But, alas, that does not describe this house. It assumes that a way to get the world off fossil fuels must be found.
Astill is missing the energy forest for the politically correct trees. Compared to dilute, intermittent, and environmentally invasive wind and solar power, fossil fuels are socially advantageous. And even assuming high climate sensitivity to GHG forcing, ‘market failure’ must be balanced with ‘analytical failure’ and with ‘government failure.’ No more assuming the problem, the solution, and perfect government implementation of the ‘solution.’ The era of magical energy postmodernism must end!
I invite readers of WUWT to visit, read, and vote. I like my case. As I conclude my final statement: “The best energy future belongs to the efficient and to the free.”
Realism and optimism, anyone?
More Soylent Green! thanks for agreeing with me 🙂
Jon says:
November 17, 2011 at 4:37 am
There are many examples of species on planet earth that have suffered serious declines because of over population, resulting in habitat degredation. We are doing great harm to the environment around us and we will eventually have to pay the bill.
Then underdevelopment is the problem you should be worried about, partly due to its direct relationship to population growth and also to genuinely polluting individual lifestyles and resulting political-economic societies, and conversely: Regimes and Ideologies which lead to no development, underdevelopment, or de-development are, therefore, the component of the problem which we can control at a macro-level.
Hence, totalitarian Regimes such as the Obama Administration’s “Progressive” Communism and equivalent Ideologies seeking the same, such as Environmentalism’s regressive CO2 = CAGW, are the problem. See the comparison of the results of North Korea’s System to South Korea’s.
The U.S.’s Constitutional Capitalism is obviously not the problem. Or else give me an example of its unremedied “environmental degradation” or “serious declines” in a species, or a problem not likely to be remedied just like the rest have been; of course also with a comparison to a more effective System, and not in comparison to “perfect”. The only System I can think of is possibly France’s, or the like, where they’ve wisely turned to nuclear energy and have thus avoided the unremedied problem of fossil fuel development in Totalitarian countries; while they also seem to be in line for the usual failures of a Socialist-Communist System, and apparently are also getting closer and closer to being unable to even defend their own country without using nuclear weapons – if NATO’s performance in Libya is any measure, apart from the U.S.’s contribution.
And for the results of yet another set of experiments suggesting Communism’s direct relationship to the environmental degradation of habitat, check out the effect of the various congregated “Occupiers” on their immediate environments.
Is that the kind of “solution” you want?
[Also check out Willis Eschenbach’s investigation here at WUWT, “Where are The Bodies?”, concerning the lack evidence for species extinctions, since you also appear to be overly spooked by this particular spectre.]
Gail Combs … if you bothered to read this you would see that promoting western civilization would be crazy! http://www.sustainablescale.org/ConceptualFramework/UnderstandingScale/MeasuringScale/EcologicalFootprint.aspx
“Hence, totalitarian Regimes such as the Obama Administration’s “Progressive” Communism and equivalent Ideologies seeking the same, such as Environmentalism’s regressive CO2 = CAGW, are the problem. See the comparison of the results of North Korea’s System to South Korea’s.”
In such centrally controlled Totalitarian Systems, Jon, wealth creation simply does not occur, and wealth itself “degrades” down toward the level of being completely Slave-based, with similarly classically “imperialistic” solutions being the only other temporary stop-gap. The opposite occurs in a Market-based System. Therefore…..
JPeden … I am not proposing any solution … just making a statement based on the way we are heading with respect to resource depletion.
Jon says:
November 17, 2011 at 8:28 am
Gail Combs … if you bothered to read this you would see that promoting western civilization would be crazy! http://www.sustainablescale.org/ConceptualFramework/UnderstandingScale/MeasuringScale/EcologicalFootprint.aspx
From the link, right off: The Ecological Footprint is rooted in the fact that all renewable resources come from the earth.
But, Jon, wealth creation comes from the human mind’s creativity, involving innovation and invention which in turn can be rooted in deriving the energy necessary for Humanity’s true progress, and thus for increasing people’s “standard of living”, from the earth’s resources – as exampled by all of the inventions so far which utilize the earth’s resources for he betterment of Humanity, including the most recent invention as to energy supplies, nuclear energy. Nor has the potential for hydro-power come anywhere close to being exhausted. Etc..
Of course these resources might become exhausted or exceeded at some very far off time, thus resulting in your dreaded “ecological overshoot”, the fallacies of which have been examined in detail previously at WUWT.
The main fallacy is the usual one which plagues a panicked, uncreative mind, and also characterizes the CAGW Propaganda Operation: that in order to prevent ecological overshoot or our imminent demise at our own hands, we should produce it immediately “before it’s too late” by curtailing and even reversing wealth creation by imposing an obviously regressive Totalitarian System upon the whole world, with its well known and proven consequences. Such that “the alleged cure is manifestly worse than the alleged disease” in being immediately fatal!
Face it, Jon, you are not going to live forever. But you and your fellow neurotics and “save the world” controllists should at least leave the rest of us alone, to be able to push forward using our own genuinely miraculous capacities of our human minds, instead of trying to make us heel to your closed minded, uncreative and effectively clinically depressed mental state.
Ask yourself, Jon, are you really only Totalitarianist fodder? Or else just who is “crazy”?
Jon says:
November 17, 2011 at 9:11 am
JPeden … I am not proposing any solution … just making a statement based on the way we are heading with respect to resource depletion.
Yes you are proposing a solution, de-development via the curtailment of wealth creation, or else some kind of genocide, based upon your alleged “facts”. But if you are not proposing a solution, then at least stop calling real solutions to the problems which you seem to excessively fear “crazy”.
It’s not “common sensical” and you are only playing into the hands of Totalitarian Controllists, who are obviously already affecting your mind adversely.
Seriously, start using your own inherent capacities to find your own outlook and contributions to the real problems. And you’ll feel much better to boot.
JPeden .. what a heap of @ur momisugly#$%!
I agree with JPeden.
Try reading this: http://environment.research.yale.edu/documents/downloads/0-9/105flores.pdf
[Reply: When posting a link, please indicate what it’s about. ~dbs, mod.]
Jon says:
November 17, 2011 at 8:28 am
Gail Combs … if you bothered to read this you would see that promoting western civilization would be crazy! http://www.sustainablescale.org/ConceptualFramework/UnderstandingScale/MeasuringScale/EcologicalFootprint.aspx
________________________________
When looking at information it is always wise to remember H. L. Mencken”s words:
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”
So who are these people and what is their possible hidden agenda?
The first clue is the code word “Sustainable” which means the United Nation’s Agenda 21. Full text of Agenda 21: http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml
The second clue is the funding from the Santa-Barbara Family Foundation. Jack Santa-Barbara, with a PhD in Experimental Social Psychology, is a Board Member of the International Forum on Globalization: http://nz.phase2.org/about-sanz/phase2-board and http://alternativeenergy.procon.org/view.source.php?sourceID=007071
I do not know about you but I do not want to be part of Jack’s worldwide “Social Experiment.”
THE PEOPLE
And from the “first ever de-growth conference in North America” on the president of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy
WHO is doing the funding:
It is The Santa-Barbara Family Foundation ($5,330 in 2008)
Who else does the Santa-Barbara Family Foundation donate to? Well Well Well, The biggest donation is to the International Forum on Globalization!!! No surprise there since that is Jack’s baby.
This of course goes along with the Description
“The Santa-Barbara Family Foundation is a private foundation located in Lynden, ON. It supports selected organizations across Canada, with a primary focus programs for environment protection and sustainable communities.” http://ajah.ca/explore/fo/13433
International Forum on Globalization
From the Second Biennial Conference of the United States Society for Ecological Economics http://www.ussee.org/v2/pdf/USSEE2003_ConferenceProgram.pdf
The Sustainable Scale Project http://www.sustainablescale.org/specificprojects/EnergyFutureCampaign.aspx
Jon I suggest you read up on the World Bank and IMF
You can start here:
IMF:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/IMF_WB/Budhoo_IMF.htm
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/IMF_WB/Budhoo_50YIE.html
World Bank:
http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html
The World Bank and the environment. It is about money not the environment and not the people. I describe what is going on in these to comments.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/25/they-had-to-burn-the-village-to-save-it-from-global-warming/#comment-754959
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/13/borlaug-2-0/#comment-767559
Jon says:
November 17, 2011 at 8:28 am
“Gail Combs … if you bothered to read this you would see that promoting western civilization would be crazy! ”
We have constantly changed and revolutionized the technologies that maintain and increase our wealth, and this process doesn’t stop. The “ecological footprint” scare assumes a static state of technology and is therefore invalid.
“Finally, I personally dislike the word “capitalism”. It is a Karl Marx word that incites class warfare. The actual benefits to society come from the free market. Regulation is necessary to make a level playing field and set reasonable standards, and courts are necessary to adjudicate disputes and punish fraud. Other than that, the less government interference, the more wealthy the entire society becomes. The richest countries are the most pollution free; the direct result of the free market in operation.”
Most of this a completely agree with — it is close to what I said as well, although I’m less sensitive about the terminology per se. “Capitalism” and “Communism” at this point are religious mythologies to many people, as is “Socialism”. All this does is get in the way of common sense. There are no pure capitalisms any more, because “pure” capitalism doesn’t work for entirely common sense reasons. There are no countries that are pure communism AFAIK, and damn few microsocieties (e.g. religious groups that practice it), if any. If you view socialism as a spectrum in between, nearly all countries are hence “socialist”, with some leaning more towards the communist end of things and some leaning more towards the capitalist end of things, but even acknowledging this, or that this is actually a good thing, is too much for econo-religious zealots.
I don’t think that I agree that the entire reason gasoline prices are so high is because of artificial limits on the supply side — that’s a bit too simple. They’ve also risen because many of the “easy” oil fields have played out, and the cost of finding and drilling to new sources has steadily risen. There is no possible comparison between drilling a well in the middle of texas close to a road and drilling a well in the middle of the Gulf. They’ve also risen because society is less tolerant about the hidden costs of drilling that were previously ignored and is insisting that oil companies assume responsibility for cleaning up the inevitable messes and put things “back” when they leave so that they don’t leave a mess behind either. You can view this as government “getting out of the way” if you want to, but all it is really doing is forcing we the people to assume those costs for them — the cost out of pocket for doing the work has to be borne one way or the other.
Or, of course, we could just let them make a toxic mess and leave it all behind and NOT clean it up. It worked, and continues to work, in the Great Lakes — just don’t eat too many meals of fish, or any at all if you’re pregnant, or assume a risk of highly nonlinear and randomly apportioned hidden costs in the form of uncompensated cancer and early death and birth defects.
It is thus a matter of judgement as to whether or not it is better to permit/encourage offshore drilling or prohibit/tax the hell out of it to discourage it. There is a distinctly nonzero risk of catastrophe associated with every well that is drilled. It may be very small, but the payout when it hits is, as we have seen quite recently, astronomical — tens of billions of dollars. Furthermore, it is impossible to reduce the risk to zero — there are a dozen ways a similar accident could happen that cannot be anticipated or that somebody, somewhere, will deem to be a risk that is so low it can safely be ignored — until it hits anyway. Would a well withstand an 8.5 undersea earthquake with a nearby epicenter? Would the ten closest wells? We could have the gulf oil disaster times ten all at the same time with something that isn’t really even particularly unlikely, not on a hundred year time frame of exposure times tens of thousands of wells on all kinds of coasts. If the equivalent of the Charleston earthquake strikes with a dozen wells drilled right off of the atlantic coast, would we end up with a $200-300 billion price tag and a company bankrupt and unABLE to pay for fixing it? Unlikely, perhaps, but not unlikely enough that the expectation value of the cost is negligible. It’s a matter of judgement that determines the point at which you think Russian Roulette becomes a worthwhile game if played with a substantial payoff and a gun with a thousand chambers (one loaded) or ten thousand (one loaded).
The point is that unless you can conclusively prove that this sort of thing CANNOT happen — manifestly impossible, as it has — it seems as though it is difficult to claim that it is a “fault” for we the people to be involved in the decision of precisely what fraction of the risk WE are going to end up assuming in order to help make a very tiny subset of all of us rich (or so broke that we have to pick up the rest of a catastrophic cost).
In the meantime, we can point to TMI, Chernobyl, the nukes in Japan that are still toxic and hot, the Exxon Valdez, the Gulf Oil disaster, Love Canal, the mercury soaked ex-paper mills in eastern NC that are still leaching massive amounts of mercury into the ecosystem, the PCBs and mercury in the fish in the Great Lakes, the banks in the Fed, 2/3 of the telecommunications industry, and the entire tobacco industry as pretty much certain proof that no, corporations cannot be trusted to do the right thing and police themselves or each other and that yes, we the people can and regularly are left holding the bag when they “impossibly” melt down, run aground and spill, come apart and spill worse, dump toxic waste and hide it, walk away from toxic waste and leave it until it dumps itself, spew industrial waste and chemicals into the drinking water for a hundred or so unregulated years before at best SLOWING DOWN in modern times (it hasn’t stopped), manipulating the money supply to their own substantial and unearned advantage, loaning money as if they were banks to customers on an unsecured basis, and hell, just flat out poisoning everybody with an addictive carcinogenic substance and leaving we the people who don’t smoke to pay the enormous bill in the form of health care (and a dozen other incidental costs) of those who do.
Again, don’t interpret this as a statement that we should, or shouldn’t drill offshore for oil. What I think that we SHOULD do is soberly and honestly go over the cost benefit of doing so, compared to the cost benefit of dumping some of the money that we are indeed going to be liable for if we permit it (one way or the other — who REALLY pays for the Gulf, after all? — into alternative investments with a different risk/cost/benefit profile. I do not thing that it makes any sense at all to claim that we should “obviously” just permit it, or that high oil prices are the “fault” of people who are deliberately obstructing people’s opportunity to get rich mining something that is clearly in the commons — who owns the ocean bottoms if not everybody and nobody, after all — without considering the risks that WE assume without ever getting paid for them as they do so, without considering whether or not we collectively would rather hold onto the resource and preserve it for the future rather than “spend it” in this way now.
Less religion, more common sense. Oil, coal, and gas aren’t perfect. Only if one acknowledges and includes all of their upfront and hidden costs and risks can one rationally look at their benefits and make the BEST choices. I personally am not at all calling for gasoline and oil to be banned. I drive a Ford Excursion — the world’s largest passenger car and second least politically correct personal vehicle (behind the Hummer), own and fish from a boat with a large motor, cook on natural gas, and so on. I am unconvinced of AGW; indeed I’m mostly convinced that there is no significant AGW although arguablI am rationally concerned about the probable future progression of costs, benefits, and uninsured risks associated with their extraction, and think that it is painfully obvious that we should be pushing the development of solar energy as a mid-range and partial alternative, both to eke out our (still reasonably low cost) supply and to help us bridge the gap until fusion or improved solar and storage technologies do indeed let us SLOWLY restructure our society into one that is sustainable for thousands of years without the tremendous disparity in wealth and income that destabilizes the world today and causes much human suffering. I’d actually like to see us get there before the resources are too depleted, as well, as I still think that burning oil and coal is wasting much of their virtue as raw materials to get something (energy) that can easily be gotten other ways.
rgb
Robert Brown says:
November 17, 2011 at 11:10 am
“I’d actually like to see us get there before the resources are too depleted, as well, as I still think that burning oil and coal is wasting much of their virtue as raw materials to get something (energy) that can easily be gotten other ways.”
We have energy resources for 1,500 years at current consumption according to a German study.
613,180 EJ, to be specific. Yearly consumption is 457 EJ. This doesn’t count Uranium in seawater.
German:
http://www.bgr.bund.de/DE/Themen/Energie/energie_node.html
http://www.bgr.bund.de/DE/Themen/Energie/Downloads/Energiestudie-Kurzstudie2010.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3
As for the qualities of oil etc as raw materials, this argument overlooks that hydrocarbons can be synthesized given enough energy, or gained from plants if so desired. For instance, the algae E. braunii stores energy in oil droplets with a chemical composition very similar to Diesel. So, if the stuff is scarce enough, you might use that as the source for your chemical processing.
Jon says:
November 17, 2011 at 9:40 am
JPeden .. what a heap of @ur momisugly#$%!
Jon, wake up. I’m simply not frightened by these and your kind of Doomsday Scenarios once they are exposed to my rational capacities. Nor do I need a stifling Religion of Doom or Apocalypse in order to “cope” with my own ultimate fate and my problem of achieving meaning in my life by instead serving the Religion’s fabricated and destructive “blame game”, essentially blaming me for my own failure to cope – validly, if I subscribed to it such as you do in the case your chosen Religion of Ecological Overshoot – but then dishonestly trying to transfer the blame to everyone else and make them heel to my will, which already shows a given permanent failure to cope. In other words, by trying to take everyone else down with me because of Ecological Overshoot, CAGW, Social Justice, and the like.
You and the rest might as well be overtly Deathworshipping as an “ethic” smack in the face of your own life and actual potential!
So give up your chosen Religion right now, for your own good, Jon. You do have a real choice and yours won’t work for you. And the Religion’s side effects are blatantly evil when applied to the rest of us. Take the blame for your own very personal problem upon yourself, then do something about it. Unfortunately or fortunately, it’s something which only you can do!
I’m certainly not going to follow you, regardless.
“As a chemist I am in favor of not using hydrocarbons for producing electricity if there are better alternatives. The stuff is too useful for things like plastic.”
Gail, it is worth noting that, as a physicist, I agree with pretty much everything you say (with one modest exception). Not just in this reply, in your other reply on the population problem. I grew up in India (my father worked for Ford Foundation) and most Americans simply have no idea what they’re talking about when they attempt to minimize Malthus or argue for unconstrained procreation. Yes, the best way to defeat Malthus is to civilize the world and make it uniformly wealthy, but we’re at least decades if not a hundred years from managing that trick, and cheap, inexhaustible, uniformly distributed energy resources are a NECESSARY (and probably sufficient, over time) condition for managing it. Fission-based nuclear is itself at best a bridge technology in the long run, at least as far as proven e.g. thorium or uranium reserves is concerned, and not even that long a bridge if it becomes as common as it probably should be.
One thing nobody here seems to want to address is: What is the human species going to do for energy in the year 3000? In the year 2500? In the year 2100? The answer to this seems to be tightly linked to what we choose to do right now. In the year 3000 we will not be burning coal, or oil, or natural gas. The interglacial will almost certainly be over, and all of these resources will have run out. We will be starting up a (probable) 90,000 years of ice age, with no gas, no oil, and a vast reduction of arable land.
There are precisely two basic sources that could credibly be supplying enough energy to sustain a meaningful civilization at that time, at least as far as I can see (with more knowledge about energy than most). Nuclear fusion, presuming that we have mastered it at an economically feasible level, and solar. Sure, there will be dribs and drabs from hydro, geo, maybe wind, but the only reliable non-fossil fuel sources present in sufficient abundance to run the planet a thousand years from now with sustained, uncollapsed civilization (a high rate of energy consumption, in other words) in between are Deuterium (and other fissionables, perhaps) and insolation from the sun. Biofuels are solar fuels, by the way. Wood is a solar fuel. Hemp and other fast-grow crops are solar fuels. Whale blubber is a solar fuel. Even oil and coal are solar fuels, although they are OLD solar fuels, not sustainably renewed.
Oh, and the sun itself runs on fusion. So really, there is only one basic source — fusion, although it would be nice to be able to bring the fusion source down to earth instead of having to deal with its indirect collection and redistribution.
Solar is, of course broad — it encompasses many technologies. It isn’t just solar cells, it is solar updraft towers, it is solar heaters and solar heat engine generators, it is biofuels. It isn’t just one KIND of solar cell — the kind of solar cell that ultimately proves to be best may not have been invented yet. It might end up being bioengineered and not toxic at all, and by their nature, the toxic kinds of solar cells are pretty much 100% recyclable with very little loss of toxic compounds. Similarly, we may or may not have discovered or figured out how to mass-implement a sustainable energy storage mechanism, but there have been and continue to be pretty significant advances in this at e.g. MIT and elsewhere.
As several Northerners have noted, solar is far from perfect, although IF WE HAD THE WILL TO DO SO we could no doubt provide 100% of the energy per capita consumed in the US right now to every human alive on earth inside fifty years. We could accomplish this without even all that much sacrifice; it would be paying for itself completely in the not too long run. To get the energy from the sunny south or southwest US up to the cold dark northeast and Canada would be a pain in the ass, no doubt, but again this is the sort of problem that engineering and discovery are likely to solve, if we start putting enough energy and money into looking for the solution. For example, using equatorial electricity to make high energy density hydrocarbons and shipping THEM might actually be feasible if we can’t do better with very high voltage transmission lines, if we don’t invent a way to transmit it down a superconducting wave guide with minimal loss per thousand miles.
I don’t think that this is an either/or question, as many here seem to do. Solar actually is a good complement to fossil fuels and is already an economic win — even unsubsidized, a straight up win — in much of the Southwest. I don’t think it is necessary to burn MORE fossil fuels as an “in your face” to AGW fans just because they are wrong — expensive silliness at best — or to pretend that solar is much worse than it is to make burning stuff look better by comparison. Realistic common sense appraisal of alternatives plus the VISION to start researching and engineering a steady state world-spanning energy system will serve everybody better than EITHER of the religious dogmas that seem to dominate climate/energy discussions.
“We have energy resources for 1,500 years at current consumption according to a German study.”
Current consumption, if you add up all of the joules, and spread them out over the time. Not constant/current cost.
rgb
Jon says:
November 17, 2011 at 10:24 am
Try reading this: http://environment.research.yale.edu/documents/downloads/0-9/105flores.pdf
[Reply: When posting a link, please indicate what it’s about. ~dbs, mod.]
________________________________
Jon,
I used to be a member of Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy and WWF. My land is habitat to deer, bear, grey fox, hawks, owls, coyotes, bobcats and more.
I am not opposed to conservation by any means. What I am opposed to is a bunch of “Holier than Thou” hypocrites who wish to reduce me to slave/serf status while elevating themselves to the “Aristocracy” That in a nut shell is what you as a “Useful Innocent” are actually promoting.
Do you think for one minute the people promoting this “De-development” are going to live like us?
Do you think Al Gore, David Rockefeller, Maurice Strong or the founders of the WWF 1001 club, people like Agha Hasan Abedi (Founder and president of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International), Giovanni Agnelli (Fiat & International Advisory Council of Chase Manhattan Bank) Sheikh Ali Ahmed (convicted Diamond & gold smuggler….) and the Duchess of Alba (one of the richest women in Europe, owning 2 billion Sq. Meters of land across the country including castles and mansions) are going to give up their wealth and status and live a simple life? Not hardly or they would already be leading by example and living like monks. http://www.undovedmind.org/ISGP/articles/organisations/1001_Club_members_list.htm
Maurice Strong made it very clear who is the real target when he said:
“It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class — involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing — are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.” Rio Conference (Earth Summit II) 1992
The target is you and me not THEM, the ultra rich, soon to be our lord and masters if you and your fellow Innocents have your way.
Oh and to add insult to injury. Strong,”Godfather of the international environmental movement” since the 1972 1st Earth Summit, worked for Dome Petroleum, re-built Ajax Petroleum into the renamed Canadian Industrial Gas & Oil Co. and was president of Petro-Canada. On top of that are Strong’s ties to the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal that sent him scurrying to China to avoid prosecution. Mr. Tongsun Park who handed Strong the check, was an adviser and then the CEO of the Canadian Atomic Energy Co. (AECL) which marketed nuclear reactors to Asia.
Maurice (Strong) must now remain in China (where he is very welcome) to avoid questioning by the FBI and Canadian investigators about the $1 million that Tongsun gave him and which Mo(Maurice) tried to hide in his son Fred’s nuclear power company, which now is bankrupt.” (Pittsburg Tribune-Review, July 30, 2006.)
And speaking of nuclear there is the Molten Metal scam that Al Gore and Maurice Strong pulled off leading to a congressional investigation and law suits. Also Strong as head of AZL, was sued for hyping the stock ahead of a merger that failed. He settled for $4.2 million. Strong’s American Water Development Inc. was the target of environmental protesters afraid that the San Luis Valley in Colorado would be turned into a desert if he pumped and sold the water to Front Range cities as he originally intended. http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/baumanpr/geosat2/Dry_Land_Water/Dry_Land_Water.htm
FOLLOW THE MONEY
These people are about scamming us and not about “concern” for the environment.
“So give up your chosen Religion right now, for your own good, Jon. You do have a real choice…
Look at it this way, Jon. Simply being able to choose is a freaking miracle. Exercise your own capacity wisely!
Even Determinism, where people allege that they can’t do anything about anything, is a choice and displays a capacity to judge which disproves Determinism! And to make a long story short, that’s the only way the words “being determined” and “not being determined” can make sense to begin with in the real world, in other words by being quasi-falsifiable, and that we can even communicate to each other in relation to the real world.
On the other hand, Climate Science tries to totally evade the real situation and the rules which apply to it, in favor of its goal to manipulate people.
“Robert Brown says:
November 17, 2011 at 11:50 am
“We have energy resources for 1,500 years at current consumption according to a German study.”
Current consumption, if you add up all of the joules, and spread them out over the time. Not constant/current cost.”
Well Joules are Joules and not Dollars. But talking about the cost, which is of course an interesting issue: IF costs of non-renewable resources rise, which I expect, albeit only slowly AND renewable technology gets cheaper (which I expect for solar, but not for wind – wind seems to have reached the end of its downward price slope), then over time it will become economic to produce electricity with solar without the need for subsidies. A while later it will, if these trends continue, become economic to produce synthetic hydrocarbons, namely Methane, with excess solar electricity (or directly from sunlight via an as yet uninvented technology) and store energy this way.
What I wanted to point out is that we have all the time in the world for such a transition. There is absolutely no need to pour billions of subsidies into the renewable energy sector now – that’s pure crony capitalism if you ask me. You get a whole lot of Solyndra’s – Germany’s artificial renewable boom also continues crashing down, look at stock valuations for Conergy or Q-Cells – the Danish Vestas Wind turbine makers are at a 5 year low – so that’s all artificially inflated boom and bust cycles.
But WORRYING about where we’ll get our energy from in 2100? There’s not the slightest need for that. A much more pressing need is improving the standard of living the world over; using cheap fossil fuel; that should even be in the interest of Malthusians like Jon because a rise in living standards always goes hand in hand with dropping fertility and better environmental protection.
See http://www.gapminder.org ; or search for Hans Rosling on youtube, wait, here he is:
Robert Brown says:
November 17, 2011 at 11:48 am
Gail, it is worth noting that, as a physicist, I agree with pretty much everything you say (with one modest exception). Not just in this reply, in your other reply on the population problem. I grew up in India (my father worked for Ford Foundation) and most Americans simply have no idea what they’re talking about when they attempt to minimize Malthus or argue for unconstrained procreation…..
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Robert,
I have not been to India but I have been in Mexico several days walk from the nearest road. I have seen the pregnant 15 year old with two or three kids hanging on her skirts. However LOOK at the progress that has been made since you were in India as a kid and I was in Mexico as a newly wed. Mexico has a FR = 2.29 and India a FR = 2.62. Even in Africa the total fertility rate in both cities and rural are declining according to a study I read.
However the problem of “Over Population” is being “Taken Care of” whether we agree or not. It would seem there are those in our own government who have decided to play god and there is where I have a major nit to pick!
Epicyte, Calif. using a grant from the USDA came up with spermicidal corn. A North Carolina company based in Pittsboro acquired it in May 2004. Allegedly Dr. Ignacio Chapela, a University of California microbiologist, reported that the spermicidal corn is being tested in Mexico. However the actual transcript I found is about the 3 and 10 percent GMO genetic contamination of remotely grown corn in the Mexican hinterlands of Oaxaca. http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/Chapela-Interviewed-Metrofarm9feb02.htm
As far as energy goes, as I said thorium looks like the best bet with continuing work on fusion indicated as a long term solution.
As a farmer I would absolutely LOVE to see hemp grown in the USA. It is a very useful plant in so many ways. “Banning it” was one of the most idiotic moves the US government ever made! http://www.industrialhemp.net/
Time to push another hemp bill in congress. I was hoping while the democrats were in control we would get a bill passed.
Congratulations to Robert Bradley for winning the Economist debate!
Final score: 48% For, 52% Against [Robert argued against the question.]
Kudos. The enviro crowd lost another debate. It’s getting to be a habit.
@pittzer-Bunker fuel does offer some solutions, however a few company’s currently own re-refineries and have been able to take used motor oil and cheaply frac it back to original specs. A new re-refinery in being built in Georgia to accomplish this. Today’s technology offers some affordable solutions to the issue.
I consider this a valuable, if surprising, contribution from the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/node/21532246
On a personal, curmudgeonly note – since it seems to bother no one else – I hate that the Economist articles gives no names. [Note to Economist editors and writers: that white space beneath the dateline in your magazine? That’s where the names go. In a blog, I understand the pseudonyms, but in a magazine filled with (practically nothing but) editorials, it would be best if you would “man up” and sign your names. Congratulations, and well-done to Mr. James Astill in this symbolic effort to wean yourself away from your journal’s anonymity.]
I am amazed how so many people can read so much into a few sentences … this was my original question: “I’d be interested in some “positive” ecological impacts that humans have had on our planet … can you list any?” Like always on this site anyone who is even perceived to be an environmentalist etc. is jumped upon … and labelled with names such as greens, warmists etc etc. It’s interesteing that people do this when they feel threatened or need to push and agenda … similar tactics were used by the nazis against certain groups in the 1930’s.
I am not and never have been an environmetal activist … I am certainly not a Totalitarian as one comedian suggested. I do not believe in human induced global warming. I believe the world (or certain parts of it) is warming but that it is a natural phenomenon.
If you have no concerns for the environment then so be it … I feel sorry for you. Our natural surroundings are something we should cherish … it’s too late to think about it once it’s gone. I have spent my whole life living and working in the natural resource sector and I have a deep respect for it. I spend a lot of time utilizing natural resources through hunting, fishing. canoeing, hiking etc. Natural resources can give us so much if they managed to make them sustainable.
I realize that most people in the western world live in cities and have a total disconnect with the natural world … perhaps some education is in order so that people know where there meat, vegetables and other resources come from!