Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Vox thinks the Republicans are torn between young members who want climate action, and older members who oppose a new carbon tax. But Vox are overlooking something important.
Frank Luntz vs. Grover Norquist: the GOP’s climate change dilemma in a nutshell
Republican ideology is on a collision course with public opinion.
By David Roberts@drvoxdavid@vox.com Jun 21, 2019, 10:10am EDTThe Republican Party is in a bind on climate change.
On one hand, it has spent decades denying that global warming is a problem and is ideologically opposed to all the public policies — taxes, investments, and regulations — that might solve it.…
Frank Luntz warns that the GOP is being left behind on climate
…
- “58% of Americans — including 58% of GOP voters under 40 — are more concerned about climate change now than they were only one year ago. The appetite for seeing real action is palpable to voters of both sides.”
- “Three in four American voters want to see the government step in to limit carbon emissions — including a majority of Republicans (55%).”
- “69% of GOP voters are concerned their party is ‘hurting itself with younger voters’ by its climate stance.”
…
Grover Norquist warns the GOP not to touch a carbon tax
The pressure to be productive on climate change is starting to get to some Republicans. Recently, Mitt Romney let it slip that he was open to a carbon tax.
In response, Norquist pulled together a group of 75 conservatives, mostly from various think tanks and right-wing advocacy organizations, to sign a letter to Congress. Here’s the full text:
We oppose any carbon tax. A carbon tax raises the cost of heating your home in the winter and cooling your home in the summer. It raises the cost of filling your car. A carbon tax increases the cost of everything Americans buy and lowers Americans’ effective take home pay. A carbon tax increases the power, cost, and intrusiveness of the government in our lives.
The letter was signed by such notable conservative intellectuals as Thomas Pyle of the American Energy Alliance, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Phil Kerpen of American Commitment.
…
The issue Vox and the Republican progressives are overlooking is that carbon taxes, green solutions simply don’t work.
In 2014 engineers working for Google tried to find a viable pathway for the world to embrace 100% renewables. They failed.
“At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope …
Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change
Before anyone suggests “yes but prices have fallen since 2014…”, not that the Google engineers looked at hypothetical cost saving solutions well beyond current technology, such as self assembling wind turbines which erect themselves without human assistance. They still couldn’t get the numbers to add up.
Why is there such a deep divide between younger and older generations?
Part of the reason I suspect is that older generations remember past failures. It is not just the climate deadlines which have come and gone, with no disaster in sight. Older people also remember all the failed carbon taxes and renewable programmes which never produced any value.
You see, this isn’t the first time the USA attempted a green revolution.
Jimmy Carter’s Solar Panels: A Lost History That Haunts Today
By John Wihbey
Tuesday, November 11, 2008…
For President Jimmy Carter, it had been nearly three years of tough fighting for clean energy. After a long rollout of green tax credits, the creation of a nascent Energy Department, and a pledge to conduct the “moral equivalent of war” (at the time, spoofed by critics as “MEOW”) against an energy crisis, Carter had built up scars. And there would be more to come. He had had battles with Congress and with his political enemies over green issues. But he had some victories, too, and this day brought one more, a small moment of symbolism.
Solar panels, some 32 of them, were on the roof of the White House. The set was just right – the sun had come out for the press as though for a stage call. Tape rolled, the cameras snapped.Self-conscious about his own idealism, or perhaps just realistic, the President gave voice to his doubts about the panels: “A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”
The point of all this was simple, Carter said. America was to harness “the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”
…
Read more: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2008/11/jimmy-carters-solar-panels/
Politicians who commit the nation to green energy end up being blamed for the inevitable failure. Politicians who fail are remembered as incompetents.
” Recently, Mitt Romney let it slip that he was open to a carbon tax” ?
Mitt Romney is a RINO….Period….
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”……
Ummmm, nuclear ?
There is no “climate emergency” other than the political emergency that it is not happening, pulling the rug from under their outrageous claims. As the world heats less the propaganda and rhetoric heats up as the urgency of installing laws before everyone realises it’s con job.
There is no “mass extinction” : name them. Hint naming things “think may go extinct” if your failed climate models are right is not counted as *being* extinct.
“we need a fundamentally different approach.”
Yep , fact based policy decisions. Not lies and falsified/distorted science.
In late 2008 John Wihbey writes;
But Carter was NOT talking about “clean” energy, “dirty carbon” lie had not been invented in his day. His aim was a more credible one: ending a crippling dependence on foreign oil.
He could have done what Reagan did, end the “Windfall” oil taxes that was hamstringing the oil industry. Instead he did what liberals always do, turn to government to create a solution.
The Green New Deal should be a gift to the Republicans, as endorsing that melange of fascist socialism and unworkable renewable energy proposals fails with any real examination.
However, the establishment Republicans have a long history of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory by trying to appear “moderate”, and not mocking the proposals of the other side enough.
It seems that Republicans think a little like engineers, Democrats think a little like teenagers with Asperger syndrome.
Ah the Great Thunderbox.
Who has accumulated all the green wet excrement the world has produced, composted it and discovered…
..,.it’s marketing gold
As an engineer, I propose a “Carbon Tariff” as it will apply pressure on the true CO2 culprits. But as an engineer, I also see the benefits of releasing pent-up CO2 back into the atmosphere so we can Make Nature Great Again.
The 2016 election outcome was basically a total repudiation of Frank Luntz era, 2000-2006 era, politics. Did you know that Frank Luntz was responsible for calling it “climate change” as opposed to what it’s really called, global warming? Was this a mere accident at the time or an intentional giant huge mistake by a future fraud like Luntz? In any case, absolutely no one in the GOP should listen to him after he prognosticated a major Democrat victory in 2016. His era of politics were repudiated in 2016.
AND HE HAS A GREAT RUG COVERING THAT LEFT SIDE OF THE BELL CURVE
This is a great example of the fuzzy thinking of pollsters and politicians.
“Left behind”? This is not an evaluation of the latest fashion trends; it is not a popularity contest.
Science (and fact) are not established by poll numbers.
Time to trot out Einstein’s famous quote on what he thinks about the fact that many scientists disagree with him.
He is not arguing science he is arguing political popularity. You are the fuzzy thinker if you think he was talking about science.
However, all his claims are just spin, not a reality. Being “left behind on climate” is one of these “on the wrong side of history” claims, which supposes that the writer knows the future and able to look back and tell us we are wrong. Hubristic or political lies, take your pick.
Whereas science, a limited frame of reference philosophy and practice, once prevailed, monotonic divergence has fostered the normalization of conflating logical domains. People want to believe.
Anything involving polls should not be taken at face value. The results you get depend on the way you ask the questions. In other words, you can get whatever result you want, if that’s your goal.
Gallup has an ongoing poll which asks folks what they think is the nation’s most important problem. Four percent said something that could be classed as “Environment/Pollution/Climate change”. So, even Democrats think other things are more important.
Frank Luntz’s standing in the GOP is basically rubble. Throughout the 2016 election cycle, he prognosticated a massive Trump loss. Guess what? The largest Republican victory in 30 years. Frank Luntz is so 2000.
“Anything involving polls should not be taken at face value. The results you get depend on the way you ask the questions. In other words, you can get whatever result you want, if that’s your goal.”
One Poll asked the following question. “Are you in favor of curbing the pollution that causes global warming?”
Skeptical science bragged about how the response was 80+% positive and even republicans voted in favor of approx 70%. I pointed that the poll was worthless because of the extremely leading question. Multiple responses, including from the moderator, were that the question was not in the least a leading question and any criticism was in appropriate since I was not a polling expert.
The responses also raise the question is how do those who lack basic critical thinking skills manage to maintain the superior intellectual capacity to ascertain the validity of climate science?
The poll question needs to have a slight tweak to improve its accuracy.
Are you in favor of giving up your automobiles and air travel to curb the pollution that causes global warming?
Or maybe “Are you and your family in favor of paying $400 per month per person for curbing the pollution that causes global warming?
Spot-on. Luntz is good, but you can’t isolate the issue and not have skewed results.
The gap isn’t between young people and older people — it’s between people who can do math and those think with their feelings.
Half of Americans decide with their gut, and the result is something that proceeds from the colon.
I don’t think with my gut.
By 2050, relative to the year 2007, both U.S. coal consumption and gasoline consumption will be down by more than 80 percent. More than 90 percent of the coal-fired power plants that were operating in 2007 will be shut down, and no new coal-fired power plants will be built. More than 90 percent of the passenger-miles traveled by small passenger vehicles in 2050 will be by fully electric vehicles.
There’s no need for a carbon tax in the U.S., because the U.S. will be rapidly decarbonizing from now to 2050 even without a tax.
“More than 90 percent of the passenger-miles traveled by small passenger vehicles in 2050 will be by fully electric vehicles.”
And how will those fully electric vehicles be charged if the electrical power supply is “decabonized?” Wind turbines and solar panels can’t even begin to do it.
That’s great news. While you’re predicting the future can you let us know who wins the World Cup in 2050?
You claim that you don’t think with your gut, then you proceed to declare that every trend that is in existence now will not only continue, but accelerate.
By definition, you are thinking with your gut.
Not a single one of your claims has even an outside chance of happening.
Coal is has been more expensive than gas for the last few decades. However that can’t last. As more gas plants are built, the price of gas will go up.
I also notice that you are ignoring all of the natural gas plants that are being built.
90% of passenger miles are going to be electric by 2050? What orifice did you pull that imaginary number from?
MarkW (and everyone else who commented negatively on my predictions):
I’ve done energy and technology analyses for a living for years. If you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, I think that means you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Fortunately, there’s a way to resolve this apparent conundrum. I’ve made a blog post with my predictions in one column of a table, and room for your predictions in another column.
You tell me what your predictions are, and I’ll add them to my table. Until you come up with your predictions, I consider you just to be another dime-a-dozen Internet blowhard.
My predictions are on the record. I’m waiting for your predictions:
Let’s see who knows what they’re talking about
roflmao !!! crystal balls have you ?
No, by then the anti-CO2 myth will be busted and sent to the great disposal unit of history.
Nobody wants UNRELIABLES. Wind and solar can never provide the future of America
Not crystal, brass.
“… no new coal-fired power plants will be built . “
You forget, China has at least 300 coal fired power plants currently being built or scheduled. And they conveniently don’t have to do anything about CO2 emissions until 2030.
“You forget, China has at least 300 coal fired power plants currently being built or scheduled.”
I don’t “forget.” You don’t read very carefully. Both my predictions were exclusively for the U.S., not any other country.
But while we’re at it: In 2050, China’s coal consumption will be at least 10 percent less than it was in 2018.
I predict you are wrong about the de-carbonization of America … and of China … based on the fact that while you don’t think with your gut you obviously don’t use your brain for that either …
They are building new coal plants as fast as they can, yet in 30 years, they aren’t going to be using them?
You can prove anything if you have no problem making up whatever data you need.
It is my understanding that the levels in the Paris Accord are in terms of “per capata. “
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/26/6722
Reality vs pipe dream
IF Mark jacobson study had any validity, he would command 7 figure income with most any power company. That aint happening.
Every industry, Every manufacturing process, etc has been for centuries and will continue to develop systems, that are more efficient, smaller and more reliable. Think about computers, engines, etc.
Renewables are just the opposite of progress, Less efficient, larger footprint, less reliable
But somehow, the promoters think that is a good idea and that it is progress
Even if true; every ton of de-carbonization in the US will be replaced ten fold by carbon in China, India, SE Asia and Central Asia et al.
so you don’t think with your gut ? then what organ do you use ? because the nonsense you just spouted certainly didn’t come from a human brain … your colon maybe ? your appendix ? the ACL of your right knee ?
nice cherry pick of 2007 though … that took some brains … which occurred at the website you cut and paste that nonsense from …
There’s a column in a table on my blog with your name on it. I’m waiting for your predictions.
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2019/06/lets-see-who-knows-what-theyre-talking-about.html
Nope.
Irrational thinking there.
Unless something technological miraculous happens, electric vehicles will be urban use only.
While coal fired electrical generating facilities in the USA may not be constructed soon, gas powered generating facilities will be built. Though it would be nice if nuclear power plants were built instead.
There will be more backup generators, both natural gas and diesel installed throughout America where politicians built unreliable renewable energy facilities.
Where coal facilities will be built are where industrial energy facilities are needed for mining, smelting, refining, rolling mills, machine shops, etc. etc. Since coal facilities can be built far from natural gas pipelines.
Especially since renewable energy is unable to provide high quality consistent electricity industry requires.
You are correct that “There’s no need for a carbon tax in the U.S.”. But that’s because the rationale for a carbon tax is false. That rationale is to gouge citizens to fund world socialist government, not address anything related to climate.
No “right action” even if the reason is wrong rational applies here. It is all about taxing citizens to fund another failed attempt at socialism which unelected elites plan to rule as tyrants.
Which is not a surprise, since the entire renewable energy fallacy, the Paris Agreement, the 2°C bogus limit, the fright fest conducted by alarmists about atmospheric CO₂ are all fallacies. Falsely denigrating CO₂, a trace gas while alarmists claim a slightly warmer Earth’s temperature portends disaster when history and archaeology prove otherwise.
Worse is that a significant portion of the transportation portion of fossil fuel use is Railroads.
As of 2011, U.S. freight railroads operated 139,679 route-miles (224,792 km) of standard gauge in the U.S. In 1973 only 1,778 route miles (2,861 km) (Class I railroads) with the top 3 being: Penn Central 829 miles In 2014 the only electrified lines hauling freight by electricity were three short line coal haulers (mine to power plant) and one switching railroad in Iowa.
That means to electrify railroad would require over 137,000 miles of transmission lines, and Third rails and/or overhead lines, often called “catenaries.” These will cost tens of thousands of dollars per mile and require extensive high voltage transmission lines to supply them costing more than double that. And these Transmission lines will meet more opposition than the underground oil pipelines. Where is this several trillion dollars going to come from? shipping costs will near double.
Mark Bahner – June 23, 2019 at 11:26 am
“HA”, ……. “by small passenger vehicles”, ….. HUH?
Maybe in a small section of downtown London, England.
“DUH”, …… “In Q1 2018, there were some 272.1 million vehicles operating on roads throughout the United States.”
In another 30 years (2050) there will probably be 320 million vehicles operating on roads throughout the United States with 290 million of them being powered by ICEs.
They cannot even replace 90% (244.8 million) of the current vehicles in 30 years.
But keep the faith, …… I pretty sure all those Dem POTUS candidates will agree with you (they need your vote)
Here’s a table with a column with your name at the top. Provide your predictions. We’ll see who knows what he’s talking about.
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2019/06/lets-see-who-knows-what-theyre-talking-about.html
The more frequent nomenclature is “light duty vehicles” (LDVs).
My prediction is specifically about the percentage of passenger-miles that will be traveled by fully electric LDVs. What is your prediction specifically about the percentage of passenger-miles traveled by LDVs that will be using ICEs versus fully electric vehicles?
How many of the current vehicles are fully autonomous (fully computer-driven)? What percentage will be fully autonomous in 2050?
Yup Mark Coal is dead, especially in the USA
https://endcoal.org/tracker/
all growth indicators are down.. its just a matter of how long the zombie walks
https://endcoal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/BoomAndBust_2019_r6.pdf
See the appendix pg 13 for the USA
0 in construction, 0 in pre construction, 0 in active development.
and no relicencing…
dead
Republicans have an opportunity to make a big push for nuclear, but they will
waste their political capital by denying the need for any change whatsover in our
energy infrastructure.
It really is fascinating how those with limited brain power manage to convince themselves that any trend they approve of, must continue into the future.
Provide your predictions:
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2019/06/lets-see-who-knows-what-theyre-talking-about.html
Of course we think with our gut: we have as many neurons in our gut as we do in our head.
MY gut says I want to eat. My head knows all food comes from photosynthesis, basically carbon dioxide.
My gut says I like to be warm and Florida is a more attractive vacation destination most of the time than Alaska.
My gut and my head say the only thing more harmful to health and well-being than AGW and the attack on fossil fuels is the OverPopulation Lie, a half-truth that justifies every other atrocity.
WHY do I keep seeing these economic arguments, or the engineering of solar/wind vs other energy sources?
Oh, those are valid concerns, but why are they all I see, when 90% of the concern should be our fight for LIFE ITSELF against threatening lunatic greens?
My gut wants more Life on Earth.
My gut is MAD. Very mad indeed.
The general public is too stupid for 1st grade math. This group has discovered algebra and calculus and statistics and other good stuff. I enjoy the highly intelligent company.
But I want LIFE, too. It comes from carbon dioxide.
I think it is partly between young and old, but it also between idealism and realism.
To put it short, it is the difference between young inexperienced people willing to ‘do something’, and elder people smiling and saying not to worry about it so much about plastic straws.
The people just can’t go and tell grid specialists how the grid works. They will need to stick to straws.
Yet another example of how the leftists in charge of education have brainwashed our youth with lies.
Yes Don.
The younger generation has indeed been brainwashed and denied the processes of rational thought. OK generalities are always subject to objection; but the trend was indeed there, with of course, many exceptions.
The GOP needs to address this and re- educate these young with simple examples of history and consequences attached to their views. Boring science will just pass them by.
For instance maybe asking them to guess the CO2 emissions which resulted in those sophisticated trainers attached to their feet. Might get them thinking.
Ask them what happens when the wind stops and you are employed in making these trainers. Will you object if the boss fires up the emergency diesel generators ?
A mere suggestion. The republicans should think about that and come up with better ideas.
Here in the UK we have a load of wobbly jelly politicians of all persuasions so the problem is more complex.
Your right Don. Specifically, the problem is that our colleges and universities are overun with professors pushing postmodernism. Postmodernism teaches our students that reason, facts, the scientific method, etc. are nonsense and what matters are their feelings. Objectivism is out and subjectivism is in. Education, sociology, psychology, and history programs have been taken over, I can only hope that some sanity remains in the STEM programs. Thank goodness Jordan B. Peterson is fighting the good fight. Imagine having to learn 60 to 80 personal pronouns.
STEM is now under attack as a hotbed of sexual harassment. So says the National Academy.
Their recommended solution is political oversight of all STEM departments, including medical schools, by progressive Sociologists.
I’ve written about this at WUWT here. It’s a deadly threat.
University presidents and Provosts will likely fall into line, as they have done so supinely in the past.
If the sociologists get their way, the result will be the Lysenkoization of science in the West.
It’s destruction, in short.
So I guess it is Apparatchiks and Commissars in our future. It is so sad that we have let it get this far.
I’ve submitted an extended critique for publication.
If it passes review and gets published, the shame of the NAS and the extraordinary incompetence of the authors will be on view to all.
That’s a terrifying prospect. The West is lost if this trend continues.
“if this trend continues” …… ??????
Goodness gracious, the Public Schools are turning out another generation of brainwashed believers at every High School graduation, just like they have been doing since the 1990’s, …. and there is no possible way that they can be re-nurtured or re-educated.
They won’t listen, ……. thus they will have to feel the pain of their beliefs and bad decisions.
Unfortunately, the giant learning lesson will hurt all involved for decades or generations to come depending on the scale of the Dem’s next over reach campaign.
Yes, an important observation that’s rarely mentioned. Recently, Australia’s last car manufacturer closed its doors. It’s an industry that may never return. The path to extinction was mapped out by politicians over 30 years ago, nothing to do with climate change policy just the law of unintended consequences.
Future generations will look back in pity and anger at this vast, intertwined mess that seems likely to collapse the economy of the western world as China, Russia and India look on.
This is seen as disarray by the Chinese communist party and Russian leaders. They will be emboldened to stay on their course and expand just as they did with weak Obama in office.
Vox thinks…no they don’t….they propagandize
I do not believe the polling data cited by Luntz.
We know how people answer polls can changed dramatically depending on how questions are phrased, leads ins to the questions, and numerous other factors.
This issue ranks last or second to last on polls of voter concerns.
And when asked how much they are willing to personally spend on fighting global warming or climate change, the answer came back at an average of about a dollar per person.
Less than one Starbucks coffee.
conservatives do not poll…they hang up..or use caller ID
with all the dangerous liberals out there…no one is going to tell some stranger over the phone
Tell them again, Latitude, ……. tell um again.
I’ve been getting telephone calls from political pollsters for the past 40 years and have NEVER given my opinion to any of them.
I do sometimes respond to “questions” about a purchased item.
I said this here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/22/a-national-narrative-for-media-on-climate-change/#comment-2729925
Gunga Din June 23, 2019 at 12:47 pm
Polls.
I don’t do polls or pay attention to them. (Except those like Anthony has put here at times regarding the functionality of WUWT.)
Anymore, whether for a product or politics, “poll” results are just fodder to sell a product or political view.
“4 out of 5 proctologists prefer our BS to their BS.”
From Wiki:
Reply
While I am sure Frank Luntz is still making a good living polling and doing focus groups he is apparently not as popular as he once was.
What is missing in almost every poll, even those striving for a specific preconceived answer to feed the news media, is they seldom delve into why someone believes what they do.
This difference between young and old is all about the failures and slow but steady decline our education system the past fifty years. It is truly sad. We no longer even teach people how to actually think. Instead they are indoctrinated from K-12 and then from freshman to graduate degree. I had older high school educates support staff that had far more common sense and could think better critically than most of our PhDs who were under fifty.
Seems like the usual thing: that people who disagree with you clearly need psychologically analyzing for their mental pathologies.
On the other hand, I almost feel like congratulating Vox for getting one thing correct:
They actually managed to say that people deny that global warming IS A PROBLEM, not that they deny it exists altogether. This almost feels like progress!
“Seems like the usual thing: that people who disagree with you clearly need psychologically analyzing for their mental pathologies.”
Which is what regular commenters here say about CAGW alarmists.
But they don’t congratulate us when we are correct, which is also pretty regularly.
Inevitable. The publlic’s conscious and policy are being shaped by the loudest,
happily amplified by the media.
While Trump fiddles, Rome burns.
Of course the younger generation is favorable toward CC. For twenty years the preschoolers have been indoctrinated with climate change propaganda in every preschooler kids show on any channel/network on TV. Shows that have nothing whatsoever about science have subtle hints to downright falsehoods about the disaster of climate change purposely designed to shape the thoughts of the child. Once in school the Public School Indoctrination start piling on with their misinformation, half truths and “True Lies.” Any documentary on just about any subject shown on TV or designed for the classroom use includes at least five minutes of of the disaster, death, destruction that will come if actions are not taken. I have even seen several Discovery Channel documentaries about the exoplanets with a discussion that one way we can tell if there is life on the exoplanet by measuring the GHG. This is propaganda is intensified in college with term papers, research papers and Thesis penalized of anti CC and boasted for being pro CC. Joseph Goebbels would be proud.
Carter is remembered as incompetent because he WAS incompetent.
This is unfair. Carter was far from incompetent. He attended the US Naval Academy, studying nuclear engineering, but failed Economics 101: Nuclear is more favorable than Renewables for Base Load.
I feel worse for him that the DOE has resembled the War on Drugs, much spent, no positive result.
As a President he was most certainly was incompetent at that job …
Nope, he was incompetent just not stupid. I’ve know many Phd’s of that stripe. If you start from false premises you wind up with the wrong answers. Look at Bertrand Russell. Great mathematician but a lousy philosopher. Carter may have even been a decent nuke engineer in relation to subs. Didn’t transfer to governance.
This is a story about two brothers, a smart one and a dumb one. One of the brothers attended the Naval Acadamy, was stationed on a nuclear submarine, and after serving, went into politics, eventually becoming governor of Georgia and later President of the United States. But the smart brother got a beer named after him.
Heh. I remember that. The beer was quite popular, for a time, here.
sorry Enginer01, but being smart in one field (nuclear engineering) does not make one competent in another (running the country).
Don’t forget Carter’s great contribution to energy policy of full scale lignite to gas plant in Beulah, ND and the Federal price guarantee for Colorado oil shale delivery at $70 per barrel when market prices had fallen back to $20. Also, the original stupidity of Edward Markey dates back to those days and later dismissed with the famous phrase–“who could have known.”
What was the price per watt of the solar panels from the Carter era virtue signaling? I know it was sky high.
What Carter installed on the White House were solar water heating panels, not photovoltaic panels.
More important, what was the energy output of the WH solar panels when they were installed 40 years ago? What is it now? Seems like a good long-term experiment with solar energy. There should be available numbers for energy produced, maintenance/replacement costs, etc.
Hiskorr, Those are good questions. Ronald Reagan had them removed as many of the panels had failed and the Security guys did not like them as they restricted fields of view etc. Many old green types are still bitter about this because they liked the symbol of the installation, never mind that it failed. An ounce of appearance is worth a pound of performance when it comes to virtue signaling.
Republicans tend to be more aware of markets and business, I think. At least they seem to better understand how markets, business, investments and other parts of economics function than say, Bernie Sanders.
Given that, I wonder how many Republican voters who favor action on climate change would keep listening to their financial advisor if the advisor was thoroughly and consistently wrong for many years? Perhaps the advisor said “Put your money here, it will grow.” And indeed for some years it grew but not at the rate promised. Then it stagnated – gains measured in tenth of a percent, if that, for 20 years, even as the advisor said “Hey, it’s gonna go way up!!! Believe me, I have a bunch of computer models that say so!!!”
If that were my financial advisor, I’d dump him/her/xer/xit, and say in no uncertain terms where to stick his financial models. Climate models have done no better. So why give creedance to them?
I told my financial advisor that I would never invest in anything
which competes with hydrocarbons.
Good. But.
That’s kind of insane because rate changes don’t depend on the value of stuff as is, but on the changes of expectations of future profit. Let’s assume for the sake of it that Trump and Sanders are the candidates. Now a news headline comes and changes the probability at which they win. This should have an immediate effect on rates of companies that depend on wind and solar mandates, or some EPA overreach. The rate change comes not from the small or imaginary use value of a random solar cell powering something in Minnesota. It is about the possibility ‘an sich’ to make money in New York by trading stocks and futures, which requires just a change in the environment.
It is like bitcoin. People who believe in stuff make a lot of money to people who know or guess how those beliefs work.
Discussions about the level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere are bedeviled by the fact that we do not ask the right question. The right question is:
What is the optimum level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere for the well-being g of plant life and this al ll life on Earth?
The younger GOPers suffer from the same lack of critical thinking that ALL leftist suffer. This is probably due to the never ending propaganda stint that these younguns are bombarded by on a daily basis. Leftist live in a world of emotionalism, but emotion about a topic is misplaced if it is not based on conclusions from an exercise in critical thinking.
A climate crisis simply fails any attempts at critical thinking.
Most Leftists ideas look good on the surface because they appeal to the heart and not the brain. The first problem they always run into during implementation is human nature. They typically assume the ‘ultimate goodness of mankind’ and can therefore never work in the real world.
It’s a pity we can’t afford to do as Israel and draft all males and females right out of high school. I think a little exposure to the real world would do wonders for their attitude toward many of the current theories in political science, the social sciences, etc.
“Polls” huh ? The same type of people who predicted a landslide Clinton win. The same type of people who predicted a landslide Labour win in Australia last month ? The same type of people who predicted Brexit would lose in a landslide. Polling organisations are another part of society along with the media, academia and the entertainment industry that is completely filled with leftists who will lie and deceive for their cause.
ggm
They should conduct a poll on the accuracy of polls on political topics.
Certainly we need a poll on how many people don’t tell the truth when polled. It was a major factor in Hillary’s loss. There is little point in polling people about something private and secret and none of anyone else’s business.
Not to mention all the people who have caller ID and don’t bother to answer the phone if they don’t recognize the caller – I know I do. If they think it’s important enough, they’ll leave a message on voice mail and I’ll call them back if _I_ think it’s important.
They reside in a world of fairy tales and myths, so this notion that they are “winning” is laughably absurd. Their Warmunist religion is not long for this world.
It seems President Trump’s rejection of the climate change fraud has forced globalist republicans out of the closet to openly support it. Without it the foundation of eco-totalitarian world government collapses, so DC globalists in both parties are colluding to prop up the monster of Big Lies to survive the Trump Era before going full techno-totalitarian on our asses – exempting ‘elites’ of course.
The problem with polls is we are polling mass ignorance and knowledge of propaganda. What the heck does the poll prove?
Same as 97% of scientist believe in climate change or 97% of Democrat economists believe deficits do not matter and printing money makes a country stronger.
Germany has proven that forced spending of billions and billions of dollars on sun and wind gathering has a limited engineering benefit to reduce CO2 emissions and makes electricity very expensive.
As more and more money is spent the ‘green’ schemes become less and less effective.
The first wind turbines are located in the best windy places where land is available. As the scheme is forced, wind turbines are installed in less and less favourable sites, reducing the average system capacity rate (capacity rate = wind turbine average power output/wind turbine maximum power output, reduced from 40% best case to in German’s case 17.4% average which is ridiculous.)
Germans and British governments have acted using legislation to stop installation of land base wind farms construction because of complaints from the public and in the case of Germany because the CO2 emissions did not drop as they installed more wind turbines, as they have reached the point where energy storage is required.
https://notrickszone.com/2019/06/11/wind-energy-woes-german-expansion-collapses-to-near-zero-2019-threatens-to-be-a-disaster/
German news site iwr.de here reports that the expansion of wind energy in Germany has “come the a stop” as the government has scaled back subsidies and enacted stricter permitting laws.
“A catastrophe” for wind power
At Twitter green energy activist Prof. Volker Quaschning called the collapse a “catastrophe”, tweeting that the expansion of wind power “collapsed completely”. He added that “it will be impossible to meet the CO2 reduction targets” and that 40,000 jobs in the wind industry are “on the brink”.
Germany has reached the engineering/economic end of the green scheme fiasco.
http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/04/germanys-energiewende-leading-to-suicide-by-cannibalism-huge-oversupply-risks-destabilization/#sthash.8tE9YRDj.PSllYaQF.dpbs
The coming age of power cannibalism…Germany on the verge of committing energy suicide
So far €500 billion has already been invested in the “Energiewende”, which is clearly emerging as a failure. Yet all political parties continue to throw their full weight behind the policy rather than admitting it is a failure (which would be tantamount to political suicide). Instead, the current government coalition has even decided to shift into an even higher gear on the path to achieving its objective of generating 80% of German electric power from “renewable” sources by 2050.
Germany has a couple of decades of experience with renewables. The actual numbers regarding costs and reliability are only 200% higher than the promises…WITHOUT coming close to reaching emissions goals…Achieving zero CO2 by 2050 will be far far more expensive than the inadequate and expensive systems in place now.
Instead of the promises of getting cheaper energy while achieving zero carbon emissions, emission reductions have flatlined and costs have soared.
Calculations based on actual experience with solar and wind indicate that the cost of achieving zero emissions going forward will cost every family in Germany over $700 month a month…forever. And that doesn’t include making all of their industries uncompetitive internationally due to high energy costs.
If there are any actual systems engineers in Germany, nobody is listening to them…or they are corrupt and were listened to. Renewables were never a good option. All the political planners should be prosecuted, heavily fined, and incarcerated. Instead, they will probably “double down” for another decade of insanity.
A fraudulent climate emergency followed by a fraudulent remedy. Larceny on a grand scale.
Related…the USA needs to quit subsidizing Germany’s defense. Cut them off and bring our troops home. WW2 is over already. We gifted them 6% of their GDP for 75 years…worth several $Trillion compounded. And they don’t appear to be especially grateful.
The definition of “Vox” is: “________________________________________________”?
Latin for “voice”, presumably as in vox populi (voice of the people). What are you driving at Steve?
vox is a consistently left-wing outlet of political opinion. Any “concern” that vox expresses about Republicans missing the boat on some issue can be safely concluded to indicate that the leftists there fear that the Republicans have a winning position.
When I Googled “Vox definition” non sequitur results came up. Down the list on a review of that search shows:
Vox – Urban Dictionary
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Vox
If you disagree with Vox it means you’re a racist, sexist, homophobe, xenophobe, … Top definition. Vox … Derived from the latin word “vox” meaning voice.
I didn’t read that far on the initial search. Well I suppose, not as bad and undefined acronyms but pretty darn close. Yeah Vox is voice I know that, but who’s voice just wasn’t defined. The whole thing just doesn’t read read right, “The issue Vox and the Republican progressives are overlooking is…” Huh?
Some people are so immersed in their lingo, they can’t imagine that some people aren’t subscribers to their gorp. Me and my long gone brother understood Gorp to mean unintelligible meaningless crap not trail mix.
Lies.
I like to say that the only warrant for government action is existential peril.
It could be the Huns; it could be the Mongols; it could be the Commies; it could be a famine; it could be The Flood.
But if no Huns, Mongols, or Flood, no need for politicians and activists. Not yet.
And that, in the view of politicians and activists, would be Sick and Wrong.
The quote from Ross Koningstein and David Fork’s Google RE<C project "Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” is not the full sentence in the source document https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change
The full sentence is “Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.“.
Like it or not, it makes an important difference. [NB. The quote is preceded by a preamble which does make staving off catastrophic climate change the context, but the preamble is not as highlighted as the quote.]
I my mind no it doesn’t … you are just spinning to try and save the hoax …
ya the author made the stupid mistake of linking to the document he butcher quotes out of.
Like we wouldnt read the quote and see that the Google engineers are talking about an entirely different issue
Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work
vs
[R]enewable energy technologies simply won’t work
in the context of assumed necessary CAGW mitigation. Doesn’t look too bad though not a perfect quote.
Now that I have nuclear grid connected I will continue.
There is some difference between the two, but the key is clear, you can’t reduce CO2 emissions to zero using renewables like solar, wind, biomass.
That there could be a future renewable that does it, well they can’t rule it out anyway, nor they investigated if the whole idea is necessary in terms of what, say 600ppm of CO2 in atmosphere will do. That was outscoped as a broad and uncertain question.
My opinion is that the core result is solid – they did their best. The (my) conclusion is we should agree to use nuclear as safe and almost carbon dioxide emission free energy. We should also stop using renewables as a principle, but develop new energy sources with investments in promising or proved ideas like pumped hydro, new nuclear technologies, fracking.
Also: no-one can promise expensive mitigation is a good idea compared to simply adapting to for example sea levels, what ever they are in 2100.
Are the incompetent because they failed, or did they fail because they are incompetent.
PS: This is by far not the only Carter fail.
Ah yes. Jimmy Carter,.. I remember him and his policies well.
I graduated with by ChE degree in 1974, and drove my brand new Chevy Malibu Classic across country to my new position with Atomics International,.. an Rockwell Division. My mission was to develop Liquid Metal Cooled Fast-Flux Breeder Reactors which at the time was a promising solution for the country’s energy woes.
What a disaster the efforts to develop alternative energy sources were back then. The reason for this was very telling,.. namely because the moment the government lost interest in research , (Carter left office)__ all funds and interest dried up. Companies quickly learned from and applied the lessons they’d reaped from the work they’d conducted. We quickly moved on to coal gasification as applied to high sulfur coals obtaining promising results. ( Spoiler: They turned out to have zero interest in investing any money of their own.)
Back then, the focus was NOT on Carbon Dioxide at all, but instead the sulfur that was liberated, thus “Acid Rain”! That was the great bogyman then. This was the early efforts by the Globalists to determine what they needed to focus on until they finally brainwashed enough of the youth in the universities so that the injected”Intellectual Ignorance” based propaganda could take on a life of it’s own.
At this time, even the communists themselves were astounded by the fervor the the movement took on once it was sparked by the social justice creed they kept feeding the media and universities. Romania’s leader, Nicolae Ceauşescu, loved Jimmy Carters naiveté and would often remark to his foreign agents how astonished he was that America’s leftists had quickly become malignant to the society. The movement’s results far exceeded what the communists thought they could ever have hoped for and did so at a much faster pace than they had foretast.
This is what we are suffering from today and the only cure is “Light”. In other words for the American people to be shown what has been going on behind the scenes over the past 100 years at least.
It is amazing how close the parallel is when I compare communism to malignant cancer. Both start a a single cell and for a time remain very small even to the extent where the body’s defenses kill them off. But once they achieve angiogenesis they quickly explode in their growth rate.
So the answer seems to be:
1.) Awareness that there is actually a problem which can become lethal if not addressed and understood for what it really is.
2.) Cut off the “Blood Supplies”.
It thought I’d share a bit of my story with WUWT readers and friends, Once again I appreciate everyone here who come to dialogue with other inquiring minds. You are all so inspiring. Thank You.
Charlie A,
Please embark on a series of stories about your past experiences. Hands-on histories are an asset that the young cannot possess. Only older, experienced people like you and me can describe what was tried, what failed succeeded and why. This reduces the need to reinvent the wheel.
Also. I often tell of the weak intellectual base of the Greens. Of those I have fought in Australia, many are drop-outs from one educational system or another. Few have met hard Science; soft humanities are not much use for the task of design of future global electrical generation.
Tell others about your experiences as often as you can. It helps. Geoff
If they are really serious about lowering CO2 emissions then they need to replace fossil fuel power plants with nuclear power plants. But the reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing has been very small and is caused by the sun and the oceans. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So even if mankind stopped using fossil fuels world wide, the climate would keep changing as it always done in the past. But even if mankind could somehow stop the climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue because they are part of the current climate. An optimum global climate has not been defined so even if Mankind could change our climate to something else we would not know what to change it to. This is all a matter of science.
there are 2 climate extremes, an ice age and only ice at one or more poles (everything else is weather) … period … we are going from a ice age to not an ice age … that is the only climate change occurring … humans have thrived in not an ice age climate … there are NO bad outcomes for humanity as a whole or the planet in a climate opposite an ice age …
Vox is a joke. I’ve written a few things that their writers commented on, and those critiques made it clear that they hadn’t understood what I had written. Why learn to read when you can easily build carbon-neutral straw men? A totally laughable organization, but far from alone in that regard.
I cannot overstate the potential impact that the most recent scientific studies regarding the imminent Grand Solar Minimum will have in these tumultuous matters.
The NASA Ames Research Center just released a study validating the work of Dr. Valentina Zharkova regarding Solar cycles and the sun’s magnetic fields.
This new study – headed by Irina Kitiashvili- comes to the same conclusions as Zharkova.
The appearance of noctilucent clouds, the observable dearth of sunspots, the extended winter seasons all give powerful evidence that this Globull Warming scare is unfounded.
Learning of – and spreading the word – may be a highly effective tactic in ending this collective madness.
“ . . . not that the Google engineers ”
Seem to me the word “not” should be the word “note” – – thus becoming:
Note that the . . .
This whole thing is ludicrous and based on the false premise that CO 2 is harmful. CO 2 increases follow warming not the other way round. Puny man has no way to influence the climate. It has always changed and always will. The current increase in CO 2 is increasing crop yields, a good thing. We are as likely to be heading into a global cooling as warming so let’s drop all the foolish solutions to a non problems which we would be powerless to influence anyway.
An absolutely useless metric.
An absurd claim that does not bear any resemblance to polls conducted over the last thirty years. Leaving readers to wonder what statistic fallacies vox used to attain such absurdities.
Another numerical claim that does not relate to major polls.
Nor is anyone seriously worried, as even today’s millennials, snow flakes and woke sjws will grow up. Usually about the time they find out how much hot water actually costs, how cold it gets without heat and cooking is downright tough without fossil fuels.
We’ve simply experienced a lot more weather for starters-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/winter-records-broken-as-melbournes-thick-fog-icy-temperatures-going-nowhere/ar-AADis4r
and recognise that whitefellas only rolled up in 1788 and it was only around 1910 that a whole southern hemisphere continent had a reasonable Stevenson Screen rollout and not a touchscreen one as a younger generation and their educators seem to presume.
Bemusingly after lecturing us oldies the sky is falling in the next breath they’ll segue into how we should pay homage to the indigenous folk who were here anything from 40 to 60 thousand years with only an oral history and no thermometers. If the touchscreeners are right then the ample scientific evidence of climate change in Gondwanaland in that time is all down to aboriginal cooking fires and traditional burnoffs to flush out game but where’s my sorry and compensation I ask?
In fairness to the time of the Carter White House, the USA was facing
a energy crises. The massive use of private transportation coupled with
the then almost total dependency on foreign oil was a true energy
crises.
The fact of the young thinking in a different way to the older person goes
back to at least the time of ancient Egypt, with comments about it on many
of the remains of that culture still visible today.
As a example I myself at age 14 years . I had just left school and started
work, normal in 1941, t here was a War on, and Hitler had invaded Russia.
Churchill immediately promised all aid possible to the Soviets. When
challenged by some as to his well known hatred of he Russians he replied
that he would make a pact with the devil if it helped him in his fight against
Hitler’s.
Then we had Hollywood producing films such as “”Mission to Moscow” the
recollections of the US ambassador to Moscow. This film portrayed all
the purges in Russia, the “Show Trials” as correctly dealing with the bad
people. Uncle Joe was a good guy.
So naturally I thought that Communism and its carbon copy Socialism
was wonderful, but as I grew up and saw for example what Socialism did in
practice such as the post war Labour government in the UK from 1945 I
slowly changed my mind.
In effect I grew up. Today I am very right wing in my thinking. I realise
that its not perfect, no government political system is, but its a lot better than
the left wing versions.
In regard to the left wings obsession with renewable energy, what about the Trump government setting up a “”Pilot scheme””. Plenty of spare land in the USA.
As the Greens are against Dams, no hydro power to help hem out, the only
choices are windmills and solar. Of course they can be asked if they would
like to add Nuclear power to the mix, but of course they will refuse.
So then invite the Green types to come and live with the power available
from those two sources, and lets have massive government publicity about
how they manage.
If they refuse as I expect they will its not a total loss, it is still a power
source but very inefficient, the output figures should of course be
published.
As to where is the money to come from, that’s easy, just take a large
percentage from all the government grants to the various Climate studies,
referring them to the Pilot scheme instead for their studies. In fact thy
could actually choose to live there as a real life experience.
So what to call this Pilot scheme, what about “” Sun City.”
MJE VK5ELL
Actually, Carter and his Party partisans made things worse in energy policy. Go do the research on Carter and Howard Metzenbaum–I did academically and professionally.
A joke from the Carter era.
The people of Plains Georgia are eating peanuts this Thanksgiving.
They sent their Turkey to Washington.
Their greatest accomplishment was in airbrushing from history the other Carter nominee to head the Federal Reserve–before Volcker.
I am not a scientist. I have no idea id this CO2 thing does effect the climate or not. We have developed a different take on this CO2 that is going into the atmosphere out of the combusted fossil fuel exhaust.
We want that CO2. All of it. Not a slip stream like Petra Nova or Boundary Dam. We want All of it. We turn that CO2 into full time good paying jobs and money. That’s it. We don’t need any steam or heat from the power plant. We will need a small bit of electricity. Less than 1%.
We will manage the CCU System from start to finish. The Utilities will monitor their CO2 emissions and collect on their Q45 tax discounts.
How is this done? https://youtu.be/RQRQ7S92_lo
This train needs to be stopped in its tracks. Period! No more ‘can’t we all get along’ to avoid ‘ruffling feathers’; no more political nuance. Remove the politics — politicians are inherently self-serving even when their noses are rubbed in the fact that they’re chasing failed computer modeling. Discussion and debate on this issue is pointless since the media insists on misreporting it. Every credible (and responsible) person, understanding this threat, who does not stand up on his hind legs and assert himself is hastening the demise of a great country! Time to take a stand, OUT LOUD!
Mitt Romney doesn’t represent the Republican Party thinking on climate change or tax increases.
The roots of Green political strength are rooted in resentment of the oil cartel and it’s economic and social consequences to the West. Climate change is just one branch of 60’s and 70’s fears and collectivist Utopian government control fantasy. It’s populist Marxism such as it is. The spoiled English arm chair leftism that dominated the affluent certainly through the later 19th and early 20th centuries while the British empire rotted.
It’s the elite that support globalist “climate change” policy. Media, academics, crony business parties and a spoiled but threatened establishment claiming moralistic power. That the oil cartel is corrupt at the root, OPEC, certainly enhanced the Green wing in the 1970’s in particular. A global free market without price fixing, production quotas and world politics are a core of the reactionary Green movement.
You have to look at why central planning has a particular base of support. Climate is just one of many tools in this cause. Monetary policy and central banking are the precursors of the coming climate authority model, another disaster for individual freedom.
President Trump tweeted today
“China gets 91% of its Oil from the Straight, Japan 62%, & many other countries likewise. So why are we protecting the shipping lanes for other countries (many years) for zero compensation. All of these countries should be protecting their own ships on what has always been ….a dangerous journey. We don’t even need to be there in that the U.S. has just become (by far) the largest producer of Energy anywhere in the world! The U.S. request for Iran is very simple – No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!”
It is true, America’s -Freedom of Action is entirely due to the President’s climate and energy policy. This success is threatened by the current wave of anti – CO2 hysteria and law making see EG https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/6/20/18691058/new-york-green-new-deal-climate-change-cuomo
My approach – based on the likely Turning Point in the Millennial natural cycle at about 2004+/- ,rejects the consensus science approach and the associated forecasts entirely .This would provide a useful basis for supporting Trump’s cyclic approach to the science and his wish to maximize US energy production.
See http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-co2-derangement-syndrome-millennial.html
Quote “……..The reality is that Earth’s climate is the result of resonances and beats between various quasi-cyclic processes of varying wavelengths.
It is not possible to forecast the future unless we have a good understanding of where the earth is in relation to the current phases of these different interacting natural quasi-periodicities which fall into two main categories.
a) The orbital long wave Milankovitch eccentricity,obliquity and precessional cycles which are modulated by
b) Solar “activity” cycles with possibly multi-millennial, millennial, centennial and decadal time scales.
When analyzing complex systems with multiple interacting variables it is useful to note the advice of Enrico Fermi who reportedly said “never make something more accurate than absolutely necessary”. The 2017 paper proposed a simple heuristic approach to climate science which plausibly proposes that a Millennial Turning Point (MTP) and peak in solar activity was reached in 1991,that this turning point correlates with a temperature turning point in 2003/4, and that a general cooling trend will now follow until approximately 2650.
The establishment’s dangerous global warming meme, the associated IPCC series of reports ,the entire UNFCCC circus, the recent hysterical IPCC SR1.5 proposals and Nordhaus’ recent Nobel prize are founded on two basic errors in scientific judgement. First – the sample size is too small. Most IPCC model studies retrofit from the present back for only 100 – 150 years when the currently most important climate controlling, largest amplitude, solar activity cycle is millennial. This means that all climate model temperature outcomes are too hot and likely fall outside of the real future world. (See Kahneman -. Thinking Fast and Slow p 118) Second – the models make the fundamental scientific error of forecasting straight ahead beyond the Millennial Turning Point (MTP) and peak in solar activity which was reached in 1991.These errors are compounded by confirmation bias and academic consensus group think.See
See the Energy and Environment paper The coming cooling: usefully accurate climate forecasting for policy makers.http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X16686488
and an earlier accessible blog version at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-coming-cooling-usefully-accurate_17.html See also https://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-millennial-turning-point-solar.html
and the discussion with Professor William Happer at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/02/exchange-with-professor-happer-princeton.html
Well, if Google engineers can’t make the green dream add up, then there’s no hope. Hurray fo WUWT!
MarkW, Kaiser Derden, fred250, Samuel C. Cogar:
Where you boys at???! Looks to me like y’all ran away! I’m still waiting for your predictions:
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2019/06/lets-see-who-knows-what-theyre-talking-about.html
And Conservatives LIE to pollsters. We don’t trust them to ask fair questions, or to accurately represent what we tell them.