Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Did Manchin’s concern about the Texas Blackouts just save the USA from Build Back Better? Washington based reporter Tim McDonnell wants you to understand why a deluge of government cash would have made everything better.
Joe Manchin has a fundamental misunderstanding of climate economics
Climate reporter
…
In a statement, Manchin said the bill would “risk the reliability of our electric grid,” and that reducing emissions “at a rate that is faster than technology or the markets allow will have catastrophic consequences for the American people like we have seen in both Texas and California in the last two years” (referring to blackouts in those states that were often misleadingly attributed to renewable energy).
…
But his argument is hollow for several reasons.
First, “the markets,” especially in the energy sector, have never existed in a government-free vacuum. The US currently subsidizes oil and gas production to the tune of about $20 billion per year, which gives those fuels an advantage over renewables that then need tax incentives. Although the US, as Manchin mentions in his statement, has a history of innovation in clean energy tech, it has surrendered its competitive advantage to China on emerging industries like the manufacturing of batteries and solar panels largely because of its unwillingness to sufficiently subsidize domestic production facilities.
Second, the bill directs much of its support toward the very technologies—utility-scale energy storage and improved grid transmission lines—that are needed to improve the “reliability of our electric grid” and to mitigate the risk of future blackouts as renewables become more widespread.
Finally, the most important flaw in Manchin’s reasoning is that it propagates a false choice about climate action: Either spend money on climate, or do nothing and save money. In reality, maintaining the status quo—in other words, plowing headlong into climate catastrophe—is by far the costlier option and more damaging to the US economy.
After Manchin’s announcement, Goldman Sachs lowered its GDP forecast for the US in 2022.
Read more: https://qz.com/2104166/why-joe-manchin-wont-vote-for-the-build-back-better-bill/
I think the fundamental problem is many of the people promoting these gigantic government schemes have never tried to run their own business.
There are many more ways for things to go wrong than right. Anyone who runs a business knows every expenditure needs careful consideration. If I upgrade my laptop, will I be able to pay my kid’s school fees? Do I really need the upgrade now? Will the upgrade improve my productivity enough to justify the cost?
People who have never attempted to run a business and deal with these kinds of issues mostly don’t have this consciousness of risk. There are some exceptions, but for most people who have worked for someone else all their lives, money comes in predictable packets at set intervals. The laptop upgrade comes as a matter of course due to company policy. Government money comes from banks or printing presses. There is never any problem paying school fees from predictable wage income streams, unless you (gulp) lose your job.
If income is predictable and safe, what downside can there be, to the government gambling trillions of dollars on technologies which do not exist?
Senator Joe Manchin ran multiple businesses before he committed to full time to politics. He gets it, in a way many of his colleagues very obviously do not.
I have no problem with the government spending a few billion every year on research. Fundamental research into communication network resilience which nobody imagined would have commercial value led to the USA dominating the internet age. All the spinoffs from the space race, too many to count. People who want to commit their lives to understanding the universe, there is plenty of evidence the benefit of giving them a little support outweighs the cost many times over.
But that is where the government expenditure should stop. If the technology which scientists discover is not self sustaining, in the sense that businesses clamouring for access can go off and make a pile of money without further government help, in most cases no amount of government cash or market distorting rules will create an economic benefit for taxpayers.
He understands the [political] climate, state of science, and dynamic economics, better than most Asses.
Sen Manchin is a dem who is still electable- and like AGW, they are becoming too small to measure.
I gather that shares in unreliables and EVs have taken a massive tumble since his announcement. I have no idea why. Unreliables are so cheap, almost too cheap to meter, and nearly everyone is buying EVs.
Sales of EVs in the US are about 2% of the total car market. Hardly “everyone.”
I think the sarcasm tag was missing.
I think the sarc was obvious.
True dat
Does ZZW have to tell everyone when he’s being sarcastic and making fun of green nonsense?
yes
No
Maybe.
Admitting uncertainty, must not be a climate scientist.
Are you being sarcastic? Would your comment be more sarcastic if you had added “/s”? Minds wonder.
Minds also wander.
beat me to it!
Well I’m glad someone’s (or sometwos’) minds wandered!
I can’t remember the user here now (but I miss the blighter), but he said his sarcasm tag was permanently on.
Mine is too.
Keep in mind that there are those who read these scribblings, who see everything through a totally serious lens. Pity them for they are unprepared for life in the post Trump world.
*Whoosh*
that’s sound you heard was sarcasm flying above your head.
It ricocheted….
Too many people think like Tim McDonald and have swallowed the renewable BS line.
It is not the existence of renewables that threatens grid reliability, it is the incorrect assumption that renewables can replace a significant quantity of electrical generation without 100% backup by reliable electrical generation plants that is causing grid collapses.
As utility scale backup exists in service nowhere, McDonell is proposing pure vaporware.
Failure to notice that Texas allowed too much wind on the net, and failed to charge weather dependent suppliers for the required backup, nearly led to a total crash of the grid, and did cause rolling blackouts.
Subsidies are inherently socialist, and thus lead to market distortions, where conventional suppliers had difficulty competing with subsidized wind.
That was not the only problems in Texas, as the freeze was like 1913, which was not really all that long ago.
McDonnell also makes the error so common among Progressives of confusing tax write-offs with subsidies. Like every business in the World, the Oil and Gas industry uses its (huge) investments to reduce its tax bill. This is in no way a subsidy.
I have upvoted this but please do not fall into the trap of referring to ultra left wingers as Progressive. There is nothing progressive about trying to resurrect extreme socialism. Think Venezuela.
Mr. Green: Ultra left wingers are Progressive, but not for progress.
Their bank accounts are progressing, at the expense of the rest of ours.
In the UK they call tax allowances such as depreciation of capital equipment, field facilities abandonment cost offset etc, subsidies. We also have a scheme called an ISA where taxpayers can minimise tyheir tax liability by investing in businesses for a savings and retirement fund. They call this a subsidy to the oil industry if you invest in an oily ISA but if it is a green ISA of course it is not termed a subsidy. I can think of no subdsidy paid in the UK to the oil and gas industry, How about the US?
A subsidy is money someone puts in your hands you would otherwise never have had. In this sense, tax credits for EV’s are not subsidies, however much they may be bad policy.
So, now that that’s out of the way, no, I can’t think of any subsidies paid to the oil and gas industry. Dave Middleton would be the go-to guy for the final word on that, however.
I disagree. If you were to buy anything at a cost of X$, but the government gives you Y$ of the purchase price to induce that purchase, that IS a subsidy because it puts dollars IN YOUR HAND that would otherwise go toward the purchase. Of course those Y$ are OTHER PEOPLES MONEY.
Another example of tax credits that are subsidies are all credits for “higher education” which has created the massive student loan debt and the massive excessive pay scales for faculty and staff at institutions of “higher education”. Just look at the inflation of college tuition since Clinton/congress started the subsidies of college student expenses in the tax code.
Tax credits are in place for behavior modification. Almost the whole of the US tax code is for behavior modification, either for individuals or for corporations, and primarily to continue crony capitalism for the benefit of the DC swamp rule writers and political donations. How much of the Obama “green” loan guarantee money (read Solyndra, etc. which were subsidies) came directly back to political donations to Democrats?
You are arguing that unless the government taxes businesses on their gross income instead of their net income, then the businesses are being subsidized.
That’s a nonsensical position.
Depreciation/depletion are legitimate business expenses and if they weren’t being deducted over time, as they are now, would be totally deductible in the year the expense was incurred.
Alastair: They may Call them subsidies, but that doesn’t make it so. I fear this mis-use of the word is due the 1984-ification of the UK being further advanced than it is over here.
I wish us all luck dealing with that: And more than a few prayers.
It’s not an error, it’s a deliberate attempt to de-legitimize fossil fuels.
Would any of the Usual Suspects please explain to me how oil and gas production is subsidised in the USA? I thought that they had to pay huge fees for the rights to extract oil and gas. I must have been mistaken.
Just a standard lie
At base when you get enough info to break it down you find that the climate insane pile up an enormous number of supposed environmental costs that weren’t paid for hence subsidy
The climate nutters typically consider tax deductions which are uniformly available to all industries exclusively as subsidization when oil and gas companies apply them. As Pat says, is a standard lie.
Subsidization of alternate, and unreliable renewable energy has been stated to be as much as 60X that supplied too traditional, fossil fuel suppliers. I have a feeling that long about February, thousand of citizens are going to be feeling the folly.
The “tax deductions” are called Depletion Allowances for the oil and gas sector, and are the same as Depreciation Allowances for other industries.
Actually if you go to the reports they cite for the subsidies, by far the largest subsidy is the difference between any actual carbon tax and whatever level the reports authors thought should be applied.
The depreciation charges are chump change.
Given the benefit CO2 is doing for the environment, we should be rewarding the oil companies, not penalizing them.
Some business expenses are deductible from your income in the year in which the money was spent. Others have to be deducted over time.
Since money now is always more valuable compared to the promise of money sometime in the future, depreciation/depletion costs the company money compared to straight expensing.
I’m not saying there aren’t logical reasons for going with depreciation/depletion. However if you didn’t have those provisions, the companies would be allowed to expense those costs immediately.
what these people quote are actual expenses related to the business which are allowed as legitimate tax deductions – uneducated climate economists – dont understand the first part of actual real world costs
The largest bulk of this number is depreciation. Something almost every single corporation in the USA and around the world utilizes. This is the huge lie that undergirds the $20b number they throw around.
Leftists tend to feel that if you still have more money then they do when you are done paying your taxes, then you aren’t paying enough in taxes, and they count that as a subsidy.
Sorry Richard but you are incorrect.
The bulk of the subsidy is the difference between any actual carbon tax and what the authors feel those carbon taxes should be.
Every single report that these idiots cite all play this ridiculous con job.
the value of the depreciation is chump change in comparison.
I followed the links through to the Environmental and Energy Studies Institute. They claim depletion and drilling expensive tax considerations amount to a subsidy of between 2.5 and 3 billion dollars annually. The social cost of carbon and various environmental externalities are mentioned but not given a specific value within the supposed $20 billion annual subsidy, let along enough to max the tax advantages “chump change”.
Depreciation/depletion just means that the cost of buying and developing a field has to be deducted over many years, rather than all of it in the year the money was spent.
Unless your preferred option is to require all companies to pay taxes on gross income, depreciation/depletion is not a subsidy. In fact it costs the company money compared to deducting it immediately.
Also they never add back the ruinous duties and taxes paid for liquid hydrocarbons and they include the winter fuel subsidies allowed to the elderly. In short they are just propagandists.
I posted the same point above before reading your post. Sorry.
Hey, no need to apologise. It deserves repetition.
If I paid a dime every time I’ve duplicated a post, Anthony wouldn’t have to ask for donations.
The short answer is they aren’t. This is pure propaganda. The oil and gas industries pay the most in taxes. Even if the (false) claim was true, the net taxes paid is in the billions.
And on top of what the corporations pay in taxes and FEES, we peons pay additional taxes at the pump and on our utility bills and etc.
We don’t subsidize the oil companies, that’s flat out false. Just like all other manufacturers in the US, we grant oil companies tax breaks.
The total tax break granted to oil companies is about $4.4 billion per year, but $3.55 billion of that amount is the tax break that the US gives to all industries and manufacturers – for this tax break oil companies are NOT singled out for special treatment.
The only tax break for which the oil industry is singled out for special treatment compared to other industries is the tax break on oil drilling costs, $0.78 billion per year.
According to the Bureau of Transportation statistics, Passenger cars, buses, trucks, and other vehicles drive about 3,000,000,000,000 miles per year. Divide that into the 0.78 billion dollar tax break and you get a total tax break of 0.00026 dollars per mile. Multiply that by the 15,000 miles per year driven by the average car, and the total tax break per car per year is about $4. Four dollars PER YEAR. The total tax break per gallon of gas is MINUSCULE. Compare that with the $7,500 tax credit on EVs. Compare that to the total annual gasoline tax that ICE vehicles pay per car, about $375.
So unreliables don’t cause blackouts…
… and energy storage (aka batteries) are needed to mitigate the risk of future blackouts caused by unreliables!
You’ve actually got diametrically opposite arguments in adjacent paragraphs!
This is the new economics: Economic Scientology!
And the corker:
So NOT printing trillions of made up dollars to flood the USA with unreliables, and the batteries to back up the same unreliables that are so reliable that they don’t casue blackouts, will cause the production of unreliables to be less, so GDP will ‘lower’ (read not be artificially inflated by huge injections of made-up dollars). Duh!
That idiot went to journalism school rather than an engineering school for a reason. Yet he still thinks he’s smart.
He didn’t even go to journalism school:
Education: University of Arizona 2010 BA in Honors English with a minor in ecology and evolutional biology. (from his website cv at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4518249-McDonnell-resume.html ) His list of “Awards” is amusing.
Participation trophies. Typical of his generation.
Wow, how does he even make a living? He must still be at home with his parents.
I really like the ‘Workshop fellow’ ….
(If I ever send out another resume I am going to add ‘1996 City League final 8-ball tournament champion’; just to see if anyone actually reads the thing.)
The fact that they use totally opposing arguments is because they’ve become overly reliant on propaganda. Like during Soviet times, where the Soviets openly lied to us. They think that everyone will just shut down their brains and common sense when they hear the key programming phrases “save the planet”, “tackling climate change”, “green economy” etc.
Just notice the phrase “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” that everyone from Blackrock to Biden’s administration uses commonly. It’s pure propaganda and magical thinking – as if using these words will somehow make fossil fuels “inefficient” as opposed to renewables. That’s using words as magic spells.
“ inefficient fossil–fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption” – this really means that “we won’t achieve communism until people have nothing and are happy”.
They don’t.
“Climate economics”? Yeah, sorry, that’s not a thing.
“…largely because of its unwillingness to sufficiently subsidize” That, however, is a thing.
Tim McDonnell doesn’t know a watt from a T word for female genitalia about the reasons for the Texas blackout. The most expensive utility power source is grid scale battery storage. Also, grid scale battery storage can only supply power for hours not days. Texas is a closed supply & demand market to avoid FERC control. Therefore increasing transmission capacity won’t help much. Replacing the wind turbine blades with heated blades will eliminated turbine unavailability due to freezing rain. However, this wouldn’t have eliminated rolling blackouts. The natural gas supply issues can be fixed by heat tracing gas pressure regulating and flow control devices. Plus the state should pay gas gathering & transmission compressor operators that use electric motors as prime movers to install natural gas fired or diesel standby generators to keep the compressors running during utility power losses. ERCOT should pay peaking & base load natural gas power generators to use costly uninterruptable natural gas supply contracts so that these power generation assets don’t go offline during a wide area freeze that spikes natural gas demand above supply.
but one of the key things was the use of electric power to drive the compressors
sounds real eco friendly until you dont have power then it is a chicken and egg catch 22
no power equals no gas
no gas equals no power
outcome – black outs
“Tim McDonnell doesn’t know a watt from a T word for female genitalia “
True, but surprising since he is the later.
Heated blades make the blades more expensive to install, operate and maintain.
What percentage of the power being generated by the turbines is going to be used to run the heaters?
You would have to start the heaters as soon as icing is possible. Otherwise if there is already ice on the blades and the heaters start up, that ice is going to flung from the blades and it could travel for hundreds if not thousands of feet before hitting something.
If you have icing conditions when the blades aren’t turning, you will have to run the heaters for a period of time before the blades can be allowed to spin, so that any potential ice can be removed.
Heated blades may be a solution, but they aren’t a good solution. There aren’t any good solutions.
There is ONE good solution, don’t build that crap in the first place.
The stupid regulators went out of bounds when they required the nat. gas compressors to be run by expensive electricity instead of the cheap natural gas.
If they had wanted natural gas prices to go up they simply could have put a tax on every cu.ft. used.
Still dumb, but more efficient and safe. Would have saved lives and cut property damages by an order of magnitude or more.
If they’d winterised the gas plant it would have kept running. simples.
not without the power
You really are a moron griff.
The reporter’s biography states that his previous employers were National Public Radio (“NPR”) and Mother Jones.
In other words, as far as economics are concerned, he doesn’t know his arse from a hole in the ground.
“After Manchin’s announcement, Goldman Sachs lowered its GDP forecast for the US in 2022.”
Ah, so the giant monster vampire squid realised it couldn’t pump and dump on yet more government money printing!
How sad!
I’m sure they have a plan B.
And, in a predictable fashion, what officially passes for “the left” sucks up to Big Finance and distribute its talking points as the new gospel.
Government spending is included in the GDP. When the government spends less then its contribution to the GDP goes down. A lower GDP forecast is *not* a bad thing. Based on where we are now it is a *good* thing since it will also lower inflation forecasts since much of inflation is driven by more money chasing fewer goods.
And where does government spending usually come from YOU, so there is no reason to include it in GDP..
…except when governments borrow (then someone has to fund the borrowing) unless of course stupid governments think they can just print cash out of thin air…
Couldn’t happen to nicer people – Germans and Weimar republic, and we all know where that lead us!
Even when borrowing, it’s still coming from you. The money that is being borrowed could have been borrowed by someone who was going to build something to increase the economy.
Government borrowing always crowds out private borrowing.
Printing money causes inflation which robs from future generations.
From link within link:
The ‘foregone taxation’ probably refers to fuel tax that pays for public roads that coal miners for instance do not pay because the fuel is used on their operations on their roads.
It is typical of the sleight-of-hand used by the climate cabal, a tax concession or deduction for business expenses is not a subsidy.
Tim was a Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellow and a National Geographic Explorer otherwise ‘bakes a lot of bread’ hence ‘climate catastrophe’, the man’s hysterical.
It’s will be the diesel rebate for industry and primary producers but they are so stupid they ignore the reason for the rebate. Those groups get the rebate because 30% of diesel use is not on the road (its generators, machinery etc) and there is a road-use excise on all diesel fuel sold in Australia. That is why they are calling it foregone taxation.
Basically what these retards want is the tax applied to all diesel sales so the government would get a windfall and those companies would simply push the cost onto consumers creating inflation. That shows the level of understanding of these idiots but they don’t care because in there mind it makes the Fosil Fuel more expensive even though that is artificial and bad tax policy by the government.
Demand push inflation is not real inflation.
The reason for this is because when the money supply is fixed, if people spend more money on one thing, they will spend less on everything else.
It’s easy to see the one thing that is going up, it’s hard to see the rest of the prices that are going down. (Or at least rising slower than general inflation)
Real inflation can only be caused by the government printing money faster than the supply of goods is going up.
From the article: “In reality, maintaining the status quo—in other words, plowing headlong into climate catastrophe—is by far the costlier option”
There’s no evidence showing the world is heading into a climate catastrophe. This is scaremongering based on nothing factual.
It’s the author that fundamentally misunderstands the situation, not Joe Manchin.
“There’s no evidence showing the world is heading into
aclimatecatastrophealarmism“That’s what he meant to say.
Not only is there no evidence showing that the world is heading into climate catastrophe, there’s also no evidence that all the costly nonsense being touted to “mitigate” it would be cheaper than simply adapting to it should it happen. And, in fact, the existing evidence actually heavily favors adapting as being the far cheaper option.
But none of this is really about climate, is it? The greens hate fossil fuels long before they invented the fiction of global warming. Climate change is just an excuse. They wanted to eliminate fossil fuels back when they thought the world was heading towards an ice age.
However, for the really hard-core environmentalist, it’s more than just eliminating fossil fuels. It’s about ending capitalism and creating a magical utopia free from all our patriarchic, sexist, rasicst sins. And of course, with themselves in charge of this Marxist Never-Never Land,
The trouble is, none of those clowns ever lived under a Marxist regime (or apparently ever studied the economic or social policies they have). Such regimes have absolutely no time for all the nonsense “add-ons” so cherished by Leftists in free-market countries. Unions are counter-revolutionary … as are feminism and most of the other progressive goodies.
And you’re right, of course. It never was about climate. It was about creating a boogieman … a perpetual whipping boy to flagellate publicly. CO2 was magically altered from being the gas of life to a dangerous pathogen.
There are only two groups of people who like Marxism.
First those who have never lived under it.
Second those who think they are going to be the ones in charge.
Yes … especially those.
Anyone pushing socialism needs to read an unbiased account of Marx’s life. He lived the life of the idle rich without working a day in his life, writing utter balderdash while sponging off everyone he knew. In fact he lived off free enterprise (his father in law and even Engels) his entire life. Why he was considered some sort of great genius is beyond me.
Engels actually embezzled and stole cash from his employer in Manchester to keep the Marx family financially afloat.
Marx’ children were frequently hungry and dressed in rags while their father spent lavishly on fine wines and Cuban cigars.
I’ve never hard that of Engels. When people talk about a sense of entitlement Marx always comes to mind. He was a thoroughly unpleasant person.
For failed French ecoloon primary candidate Sandrine Rousseau, it’s also about having ecofeminist witches instead of engineers.
Not the Bee:
«Le monde crève de trop de rationalité, de décisions prises par des ingénieurs. Je préfère des femmes qui jettent des sorts plutôt que des hommes qui construisent des EPR»
The world dies from too much rationality, from choices made y engineers. I’d rather have witches that men who build EPR.
(The EPR is a new, allegedly “safer”, PWR of 1.5 GW or 1.6 GW, with black and grey control rod assemblies, designed by the French company formerly known as Areva.)
Key text:
The editorialist’s entire piece is based on his own misunderstanding of reality over wishful thinking. McDonnell attributes his own obviously false thoughts to Manchin, then rails against his own straw man.
“Climate Economics” is not even a thing: in the real world, there’s climate fantasy and economics. McDonnell shows himself a true believer in the first and effectively illiterate in the other. Manchin has done more, with this one move, to “save us all” from the impending doom of financial collapse than will any of the climate hysterics.
Politicians tend to be very wishy-washy. He may already have the speech written wherein he gives his most logical reasons for changing his stance and voting yes.
sadly, that’s certainly a possibility. Hopefully, though, his spine will remain intact. It’s a rare quality in a politician to have one, and it’d be such a shame to see him lose his.
It has been reported that Manchin was willing to sign off on $1.8 Trillion of the Build Back Better bill, and that included spending some of it on climate change, although there are no details.
Manchin was mostly concerned with increasing the Welfare State by giving away taxpayer money to people who didn’t need it, and he was concerned about how the bill was financed.
So some of Biden’s Build Back Better may make it into law.
We are not really out of the woods until the Republicans take over one or both Houses of Congress in January 2023.
One more thing in Trump’s favour, he has left a legacy of federal judges (and three good SCOTUS picks). That alone has kept the Democrats in check, as we have observed lately.
I’m praying that there are no Supreme Court vacancies before January 2023.
Me too. Barring sudden deaths, I don’t see any retirements in the offing.
Manchin is smart enough to know the direction the wind blows in his home state of West Virginia.
It’s hilarious that McDonnell thinks innovation cannot occur in a vacuum of government cash. Pathetic woke-think.
Remember the Tinker Bell crisis in Disney’s Peter Pan. If enough people (the party) “just believe”, everything will come out right. That’s all he needs to know.
it would have been very interesting to monitor/record childrens’ reactions (did they clap?) and compare to which are registered dems as adults.
Can I get a grant…. “This study will shed light on the age at which children are doomed to becoming non-democrats & non-dem supporters. As such we will know how early we need to start indoctrinating them into the percieved benefits of just believing & following.”
Socialists are convinced that nothing good is possible unless it is directed by government.
It’s telling that surveys of charitable giving show a strong trend, the further left a person is, the less they give to charities.
The continued comment about subsidies is pure BS
every company everywhere in the world that makes a profit can deduct expenses
The renewable energy industry doesn’t make a profit but gets subsidies
these uneducated talking heads will destroy our way of life so they can prove they are uneducated and have no ability to do research – they only repeat the reuters news feed
Love the perpetual lie and trash around oil and gas subsidies. This is the statement these retards sprout
So basically push inflation up and make the poor worse off and when the poor are worse off offer them welfare.
The dropkicks are aware of that because they note
They then go on about this makes political problems so it needs to be mandated by the UN etc … like us voters would ever allow that.
I don’t know what to say about these idiots, they are aware of the consequences and still think it’s a good idea. No amount of human carnage is unacceptable to save the planet.
It’s a bit like that village in Viet Nam. We’re going to have to destroy civilization to save it.
The “real” civilization that is hiding behind the estate gates.
Yeah, and I wish that I understood that…
The klepto/liar civilization hides behind estate gates.
“After Manchin’s announcement, Goldman Sachs lowered its GDP forecast for the US in 2022.”
Half-truth. That GDP forecast is just half the story. Any competent economist recognizes the horrifying inflation that would likely result if the US Treasury and Fed were forced to print another $2+Trillion next year out of thin-air to pay for Build Back Socialism.
why hasn’t the fact that the US prints nearly a trillion dollars every year to pay for its oversized miltary caused horrifying inflation? The annual cost of the build back better
scheme is about 1/7 of the annual US miltary budget that gets passed every year despite
being full of pork and not fit for purpose. The US spent several trillion over Afgahinstan and still managed to lose.
Your idol Joe Biden lost in Afghanistan not the US. Military can waste money, but at least keeps the wolves away from your lifestyle, whereas BBB is just useless
Lrp,
in 2021 the US miltary budget was $778 billion. The next highest spender was China which spent $252 million while Russia spent $62 billion. The US is wasting hundred’s of billions on miltary spending and can’t even defeat the Taliban despite 20 years of trying. Nor can it build a decent fighter jet and is pouring billions away in making the F35 work, despite the fact that UAVs will shoot it down at will.
The Chinese military really spends much more than what they claim- same for Russia. The American military isn’t well fit for insurgencies- but it is well designed to battle big nations with their own large militaries. As for decent fighter jets- there are lots of them even if some aren’t perfected. The American air force and navy have no competitors.
A lot of the ships counted in the Chicom navy are commercial vessels.
right- supposedly it’s navy is the biggest in the world- but with those commercial vessels- and, its navy can’t compare to the American navy with its vast experience around the world- and notice the Chinese aircraft carriers- with a rise at the end to help the planes lift off- resulting in less carrying capacity for the planes- I’ve come across a lot of military YouTube channels- which show the latest and greatest planes and ships from the major nations- very, very interesting stuff- a few years ago I was talking with a friend of a friend- a retired navy officer- he said that the American military has some fantastic technology that the public has no clue about
The “the Chinese aircraft carrier” is actually a knackered out old rusty tin can that stood in Ukraine for ages half finished, becoming steadily more and more obsolete.
It was a master stroke to sell them that heap of old rubbish.
America has a century experience with aircraft carriers. It’ll take a long time for China to catch up- probably never since it seems this type of boat may be obsolete thanks to anti ship missiles.
Or brown-water coastal patrol boats.
Are you joking? Do you really believe these numbers are the correct expenditures? No wonder you “believe” in CAGW!
China spends far more on defence than is announced in the military expenditure figures, unlike the US military where everything is included. Chinese military base operating costs, coast guard, paramilitary forces, research and development, mobilisation and recruitment and other military expenditures are not covered under the military expenditure figures. The real expenditure is probably at least 1.5 -2 times the figure quoted.
you said…The US is wasting hundred’s of billions on military spending and can’t even defeat the Taliban despite 20 years of trying.
you just PISSED OFF a lot of marines with that stupid statement.
The reason the Taliban were not defeated in 20 years is because U.S. policy allowed the Taliban to have a Safe Haven in Pakistan, where they were immune from U.S. attacks.
You will never defeat a ruthless enemy who has no regard for human life if you allow them a safe haven. If you hurt them in battle, they just run away to their safe haven and recruit more cannon fodder from their subjects and send them back into battle. Ruthless leaders can carry on for years doing this.
The key to victory is to never allow your enemies to have a safe haven. If you attack their safe haven, then they will surrender to you when they see the inevitable, or they will be removed from the planet as part of the process of cleaning out the safe haven. Either way, they are no longer a problem.
Allowing Safe Havens is the way Democrats pursue a war. Democrats are not willing to put out a maximum effort to defeat the enemy quickly. Instead, because of their reluctance to even engage the enemy, they place restrictions on how the military can conduct the battle, and as we all know, Democrat politicians are the last ones that should be weighing in on military tactics and strategy. So they screw things up from the beginning and leave them screwed up for years.
And Joe Biden has to be the worst one of the bunch as far as being completely incompetent in military matters. Biden’s delusional way of thinking has ruined the lives of tens of millions of innocent people all over the world during his time as a politician.
Biden is a walking disaster for millions of people.
er… weren’t there hundreds of drone strikes inside Pakistan?
Drone strikes in Pakistan – Wikipedia
A drone strike is not the equivalent of destroying the attacking force.
A drone strike is a show of political weakness.
I wonder if the Chicom’s F-35 knockoff works?
I wonder if the F35 works?
Another idiot weighs in.
A lot of nations are buying F-35’s. American F-35’s. Not Chinese F-35’s.
“in 2021 the US miltary budget was $778 billion”
For all the money the U.S. spends on the military, Barack Obama and Joe Biden managed to deplete resources to a critical level.
On Trump’s first day in office as president, his military advisors came to him and said the U.S. military had a critical shortage of ammunition!
How would you like to hear that on your first day?
So Trump took action and started rebuilding the U.S. military that Obama and Biden had neglected.
Democrats are worthless when it comes to U.S. national security. They are worse than worthless, they are dangerous because they are clueless.
I find it fascinating how socialists take as gospel anything printed by a communist government.
Izaak was one of those people who was declaring that the Soviet Union was solid and growing stronger, even as it was collapsing.
“There are no American tanks anywhere near Baghdad!”
All the communist and authoritarian regimes lie about anything to everybody. The numbers are shorted.
The US has a lot of waste in the military budget- such as having to take women recruits for combat jobs, they can make fine pilots though if they have the right mentality.
But the whole budget process has been so convoluted and politicized that it can’t run efficently, partly due to uneducated people who think they know it all and can make multi-billion dollar decisions.
Izaak the Idiot lives up to his moniker.
Got any evidence that a single “UAV” has ever “shot down” an F35?
Idiot.
Izaak can’t even get the facts rights it was the F35 that shot down the UAV which could be the only incident you would be talking about.
“Your idol Joe Biden lost in Afghanistan not the US”
There you go! It’s like Mohammed Ali, winning the fight against Joe Fazier, and all of a sudden Ali’s corner throws in the white towel.
Did Ali lose the fight? Of course not. A fool, in his corner, who had the power to stop the fight, is the one responsible for the loss.
The fool, Joe Biden, is responsible for the loss of Afghanistan, and the possible starvation of 25 million innocent Afghan people. And obviously, Joe Biden couldn’t care less.
The annual budget for military spending in the U.S. in 2020 was $714 billion, and as you point out, is an annual expenditure. The BBB bill is expected to ultimately cost $4.5 Trillion dollars, which evened out over ten years is $450 billion per year in ADDITIONAL expenses. In other words, over half the military annual spending. Did I mention it was ADDITIONAL expenses? I wouldn’t want to forget to mention that it was an ADDITIONAL expense as opposed to the recurring expense of the military budget. By the way, all it takes is one weak president to say “I give up” to lose a military engagement.
keep in mind that a huge military also pushed along technologies including the air industry, computers, etc.
and use of solar power on US air bases, biofuel…
ROFL yeah because those are so important 🙂
A big chunk of that US military expenditure is to keep Russia from expanding into its old sphere of influence. Another big chunk of that US military expenditure is supposed to keep China out of Taiwan and North Korea out of S. Korea which are where a sizable chunk of our chips come from, including those used in the US military. Another significant piece is keeping the anti-Semites in the Middle East from wiping Israel off the face of the globe.
If you *truly* think Europe can standoff Putin by itself or that Taiwan/S Korea can stand off China/N. Korea alone without US military assistance then you don’t live on this planet. If you think Israel wouldn’t disappear in days if we pulled our military assistance from Israel then you have your head buried in the sand. Just wait till Iran turns Tel Aviv into glass.
Nor did we “lose” Afghanistan. It was given away by Zhou Bai-den. Bai-den is close to giving away Ukraine and Taiwan as well.
Do you speak Russian or Mandarin? You might want to start learning if you don’t.
I suspect he knows that Taiwan, S. Korea, etc can’t survive without US help. Which is why he’s so eager to end that help.
“A big chunk of that US military expenditure is to keep Russia from expanding into its old sphere of influence.”
Can you explain exactly how that works given that Russia managed to invade Crimea and eastern Ukraine and the US did nothing?
How many American GIs needed to die to stop Russia? President Trump refused to get into yet another war.
Idiot.
Monte,
if the US isn’t going to get into a war then why does it need such a large military budget? If the President won’t send troops to die on foreign soil then most of the defence spending is a waste of money.
Evasive non-answer.
“if the US isn’t going to get into a war then why does it need such a large military budget?”
It’s called “deterence”, Izaak. The object of having the strongest military on the planet is to deter attacks from others. If the others know they will be destroyed if they attack the United States, then they won’t attack the United States.
Spending money on defense is cheaper than prosecuting a war, especially one you are losing.
Why is it socialists are convinced that if only the US stopped opposing world communism, that the would would be at peace?
Biden decided to pull troops out immediately rather than follow the plan Trump put in place where pullouts were determined by progress in various metrics.
I am not suggesting that the US should stop opposing anything just asking why the US needs a defence budget that is almost triple that of the next highest spending country and at a time when it is not fighting any major wars. The US’s military budget is overblown and the US could easily defend itself with a budget of 200 billion a year. Who exactly do you think would invade the US if it cut its budget by several hundred billion a year?
I guess the fed saying they will have to raise interest rates next year couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Goldman Sachs lowering their expectations for the US economy next year.
Forced too? Want to bet that they are not prime movers in bringing the idea forward?
This ‘Tim’ is categorically lying.
They can define any word any way they like, as long as their updated definition doesn’t totally exclude everything that was covered by the traditional definition (so they wouldn’t define wet as very dry but that’s about all they wouldn’t dare).
Examples:
It depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is, doesn’t it?
I suppose you is correct, Zig Zag.
😜
Oh, I is!
“They can define any word any way they like,”
Like Humpty Dumpty, when they use a word it means just what they choose it to mean. Even if it contradicts what it meant the previous time they used that word.
So get inside his head when he was responsible for stopping a bill that would be damaging to the USA? Typical attack the person instead of their actions by the Left/Marxists. That’s all they can do.
https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1472591347857174544
The “tolerant” left should learn when to stop talking… just kidding. They can’t and they won’t.
“tolerant” left? Is that like hen’s teeth?
rarer
Government spending on climate infrastructure increases GDP just like repeatedly breaking and then fixing a window increase GDP. Yes, there’s an economic output from the purchase of a new window, but ultimately it’s a cost not a benefit.
The journalist doesn’t understand this though perhaps more importantly he wouldn’t care if he did.
What in gawd’s name is “climate infrastructure”? I’ve been racking my brains.
I would like to see a purely mathematical explanation on the total costs of energy production for each way of doing it. Cradle to grave detailing all inflows from all sources and all outflows. Maybe then logic will prevail.
Logic will only prevail when one is dealing with rational people. They are an exceedingly rare commodity in government offices today.
it isn’t just about cost- all externalities and all uncounted benefits must be factored in- also, how dependable are each? Importing energy is a risk and must be counted too. It’s complicated.
Remember, the cost of any form of energy has to include the costs of backup.
For gas/coal/nuclear the cost is already being factored in. Very few plants are designed to run at 100% power. Most of them run closer to 90%. That way if one generator goes down, the remaining generators can step up to 91% to cover the loss.
We could do with someone like that
I don’t understand why people keep saying that the fossil fuel industry receives subsidies. Surely the government isn’t paying these companies to pump oil? I just don’t know what they’re referring to.
The alarmists are claiming that standard business tax deductions for oil companies are subsidies.
They are not subsidies. A subsidy is where the government pays a company with taxpayer money.
A tax deduction is where a company pays in less taxes to the government than it would have paid without the deduction.
Subsidies = Government pays money to companies
Tax Deduction = Company pays money to the government
The alarmists claim these two things are the same, but obviously, they are not.
Let’s revisit the events in Texas… this is what I found while researching them…
In short, it was demand and extreme weather which caused fossil fuel resources to fail…
On the demand side, for example, Texas on Valentine’s Day shattered its previous winter peak record by almost 5%. The peak was 11,000 MW above what ERCOT, Texas’s electric grid operator, was projecting and planning for as of November — some 15–20 good-sized power plants’ worth. And on the supply side, power lines taken out by the weather are a piece of it, as you’d expect.
Data from Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the grid operator for much of the Great Plains, show that 70% of its “outaged” megawatts (MW) were natural gas plants.
ERCOT, which is powered primarily by natural gas and wind, was warning that “Extreme weather conditions caused many generating units — across fuel types — to trip offline and become unavailable.” It clarified elsewhere, though, that the majority of the capacity it had lost overnight was “thermal generators, like generation fueled by gas, coal, or nuclear.” In all, Texas was out more than a third of its total capacity.
So checking on this, it seems the problem lies with failing fossil fuel power plants…
‘ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, did not conduct any on-site inspections of the state’s power plants to see if they were ready for this winter season.’
‘it’s becoming very clear that many power plants, including the natural gas system that supplies those plants with fuel, were simply not insulated well enough to protect against the cold and that ERCOT was way off in its assumptions about the state’s ability to weather a major winter storm.
Instead of sufficient capacity dozens of power plants crumbled when the cold hit, plunging the state into massive power outages and putting lives in danger.’
‘Ercot turned off power for millions of customers after several power plants shut down due to the below-freezing temperatures the state is experiencing. Officials at Ercot said the equipment at the plants could not handle the extreme, low temperatures. The choice was either shutting down power for customers or risking a collapse of the grid altogether.’
‘While Republicans have been blaming frozen wind turbines for the state’s blackouts, officials and experts say that malfunctions in natural gas operations played the largest role in the power crisis.
Ercot said all of its sources of power, including those from renewable sources, were affected by the freezing temperatures. The state largely relies on natural gas for its power supply, though some comes from wind turbines and less from coal and nuclear sources.
Natural gas can handle the state’s high temperatures in the summer, but extreme cold weather makes it difficult for the gas to flow to power plants and heat homes. Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas Austin, told the Texas Tribune that “gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now”.’
Texas has known extreme cold in the past without any blackouts whatever. Why should this be?
Yeah, what’s different now?
The difference is Texas didn’t used to rely on windmills for its electricity.
Griff is the sort of guy who kills 5 of the 6 horses pulling a stage coach downhill, because they are not needed.
Then he blames the sixth horse for not being able to pull the coach up the next hill.
So the takeaway from your spate of logorrhea is that Texas should eliminate wind power and build more thermal plants.
Got it.
Lying liars lie,.
The gas pumps failed because the lunatic greens forced the pumps to run on electricity when there were perfectly working gas-driven pumps already working.
Even so, gas ramped up to 150% capacity to make up for the unreliables shortfalls before failing because of the failure of unreliables, being unreliable and all.
You have been told this repeatedly. You never even attempt to refute it. Then you keep spewing the same lies.
You are a lie-spewing liar.
You lie.
Forcing pumps to rely on unreliable electricity generation instead of the gas that is inherently there caused gas pumps to fail.
You are a liar.
Malfunctions in gas pumping were caused by unreliables failing because the pumps were forced by green lunatics to use electricity relying on unreliables instead of gas which is inherently available.
You are a lie-spewing liar.
Failure of unreliables in cold weather made it difficult for the gas to flow because lunatic green policies forced them to rely on unreliable electricity instead of the freely available gas to run the pumps.
You are a lie-spewing liar.
Wind and solar dropped to zero. Natural gas increased by 450%.
Therefore it is natural gas that caused the problem.
griff you are nothing if not predictable.
The nutter is back spewing stuff about places he has never been to, and knows sweet F A about.
Making a constant public fool of himself at least gives some wry entertainment value.
In every failure analysis that I have been involved with in my engineering life we have looked for the breakdown event – the actual single failure the precipitated the ensuing failures. In this case it was the loss of renewably generated electricity. Once you have identified the critical breakdown event you know where to start looking for solutions.
Tim is not even stupid.
I wonder what part of “unreliable” energy supply the author Tim McDonnell doesn’t understand?
Here In the real world, the world where risk exists and no pay check at the end of the month is a possible consequence of getting it wrong, here, we know if something is unreliable we don’t want it.
What we also know is, having even more unreliable to compensate for the already existing unreliables, does not make us feel any better, or more confident.
At this moment here in the UK there is no wind. The energy sector built on wind is standing idle. It has been like this for two days and will continue for a couple more days.
Also today is Winter Solstice so no solar either at 54 deg North Latitude.
The unreliables in our energy generation fleet, are producing less energy than one of the last two remaining coal fired stations now supporting UK electricity power demand, on this bleak day here in winter.
The current energy situation here in the UK reminds people, if you do stupid things, then you can expect uncomfortable outcomes.
Happy Solstice day everyone, North and South.
A Government is not a business or firm.
Promotion of the General Welfare, the US explicit intent, is a job that no private firm alone can accomplish.
Witness the TVA – Tennessee Valley Authority, the Manhattan Program, NASA and Apollo.
The internet was DARPA, also government.
This is why the Squad call their green boondoggle a Green New Deal, a steal from FDR’s successful New Deal after the 1929 crash an Great Depression.
Instead of waiting for the crash of the everything bubble, which the BBB tries to bail out, yet again, put this financial system into bankruptcy reorganization, re-instate Glass-Steagall and go for the biggest deal the world has ever seen – join the Belt and Road Initiative.
This is so far beyond the provincial swamp of D.C. I wonder what Manchin’s view on this is.
Senator Joe Manchin has often praised Glass-Steagall, and clearly said it’s repeal caused the 2008 crash. And Trump actually campaigned in 2016 on Glass-Steagall, and getting along with Russia and China. Sanders and Warren also made a lot of noise about Glass-Steagall, so it is bi-partisan.
All 3 of these get the same press demonization. Curious, isn’t it?
The article by McDonnell is one long string of misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies. They operate under the principle that if you repeat a lie (or string of them) often enough, it becomes the truth. Senator Manchin is a hero for stepping up the way he has, knowing the flak he’d be taking from those supposedly on his side. Manchin for president? Yes. I don’t care what letter comes after his name.
Slow down. Let’s see what Manchin does with regard to the climate change issue. Some claim he is still onboard with climate change legislation, although I imagine Manchin will protect West Virginia coal interests, even if he is, and still onboard with spending an additional $1.8 Trillion, which will certainly add to inflation costs.
So Manchin could still cast votes that would harm the United States.
So, this Tim McDonnel asshole lives without the benefits of gas, oil, coal or nuclear power? Really? All I see is another hypocritical f*ckbag spewing lies. Manchin sees and accepts REALITY. He knows that 98% of Americans do not want any of this leftarded stupidity.
EXCERPT from
“BUILD BACK BETTER” WOULD COST $4.488 TRILLION OVER THE NEXT DECADE, IF PROVISIONS WERE MADE TO LAST 10 YEARS
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/build-back-better-would-cost-3-95-trillion-overt-the-next-decade
Distrust in Government
I am not surprised at the lack of public trust in Washington, DC, and elsewhere. The games of smoke and mirrors played in Washington are off-the-charts outrageous.
Never, ever, has there been such a level of deceit, as Democrats have inflicted on the US People, since January 2021, after using a fraudulent election in 2020 (see Appendix), to achieve a coup d’etat, to relentlessly push for a major increase of:
1) The size and intrusiveness of government, and
2) Democrat command/control over the federal government and the American people.
Eric nailed it in one sentence:
I think the fundamental problem is many of the people promoting these gigantic government schemes have never tried to run their own business. (my emphasis)
I certainly would not like to see any of my many bosses ever anywhere near running a government.
I wonder if Elon Musk will run for President someday – probably not possible as he is South African with multiple passports.
Imagine Zuckerberg as President, not just of Meta Universe, but the USA?
“Although the US … has surrendered its competitive advantage to China on emerging industries like the manufacturing of batteries and solar panels largely because of its unwillingness to sufficiently subsidize domestic production facilities.”
Since the Chinese subsidy consists of building an enormous number of coal fired generating plants and the enslavement of millions of workers, the US might not want to go there.
I’m fascinated by his equating subsidies with “competitive advantage”.
” There is never any problem paying school fees from predictable wage income streams, unless you (gulp) lose your job”
that’s no worry, as long as you have the correct political party’s opinions
check with your local political officer, they’ll be happy to help
and of course if you hear any wrong opinions, don’t hesitate to report and shame!
not everyone deserves a job
There’s a whole lotta bullshit in this post. Firstly it asserts that the US provides a $20B subsidy to fossil providers, but only documents that with a link to a post by a private warmunist think tank that only asserts, again, with zero documentation, that “conservative estimates of subsidies to fossil fuels is $20 B annually.”
You cannot cite a non-sourced assertion as a source, sorry, the author just failed Journalism 101.
In point of fact, there are no subsidies, tax or otherwise, provided by the US government for fossil fuels. The only tax benefits provided to fossil fuel producers in the US are the same tax benefits provided to all other businesses in the US per the Federal tax code, i.e., depreciation, depletion allowance (allowed to all extractive industries), and deductions for capital investments. These same tax benefits are also used by all renewable fuels producers and manufacturers of electric vehicles. The total dollar value is less because the total volume of these industries is but a tiny percent of the overall energy production and consumption expenditures, and in fact proportionally they get far MORE than their “fair share” of such tax benefits due to specialty tax credits and deductions for EVs, solar, and wind.
If you follow the links inside the links of the circular reasoning article that you’ve pointed out, you will also find that some of the Federal subsidies included in that $20B total are research and development subsidies and assistance to poor people to heat their homes in winter.
So do progressives really want to eliminate those subsidy programs? They never answer those questions when they are actually confronted about their subsidy whining.
“Finally, the most important flaw in Manchin’s reasoning is that it propagates a false choice about climate action: Either spend money on climate, or do nothing and save money.”
This is not a false choice. Climate action is 30 years of weather action by definition. If these people think they can change the weather for 30 years by spending money, they need to outline just exactly what they intend to do to accomplish that.
Certainly glad the Senator is hugely concerned about spending “the governments money”. In view of the fact that government has no money which they haven’t first taken from real working people.
“The US currently subsidizes oil and gas production to the tune of about $20 billion per year, which gives those fuels an advantage over renewables that then need tax incentives”
His definition of subsidy for oil and gas production is “The government isn’t charging them as much money as I want”. And renewables don’t just get tax incentives (which aren’t subsidies) they get massive real subsidies – funded by government checks paid from taxpayer dollars.
If renewables actually were economically viable, they would need no government incentives or subsidies, the private sector would be fighting for market share.
Of course Manchin fundamentally misunderstands “climate economics”. It’s difficult to understand utter nonsense.
[Tim McDonnell quote] “Finally, the most important flaw in Manchin’s reasoning is that it propagates a false choice about climate action: Either spend money on climate, or do nothing and save money. In reality, maintaining the status quo—in other words, plowing headlong into climate catastrophe—is by far the costlier option and more damaging to the US economy.”
How does Tim McDonnell (or anyone else) know that doing nothing will lead to “climate catastrophe”? Since people started worrying about “global warming” in the 1980’s, we’ve had 40 years of predictions that never happened: an ice-free Arctic (never happened), flooding of Florida (never happened), Tuvalu sinking into the sea (never happened), extinction of polar bears (there are more now than 40 years ago), Antarctica melting (the ice there is getting thicker). We’ve seen predictions of temperature rise from computer models that are 2 or 3 times what really happened, and predictions of accelerating sea level rise, while the actual sea level rise rate has lumbered along at 2 mm per year for the last century. People who have failed to predict the past can’t be trusted to predict the future.
Basically, we’ve had 40 years of people crying wolf to shut down the energy industry, and the Big Bad Wolf of climate change has turned out to be a puppy, and never ate any lambs. Senator Manchin (and many others) are tired of being told to make huge sacrifices to avoid a “catastrophe” that never happens. Manchin may be singled out because he’s a Democrat, but there are 51 Senators (a majority) against the Green New Deal.
Besides, when “president” Biden shuts down the Keystone XL pipeline but approves a pipeline from Russia to Germany, how does that really reduce global CO2 emissions? All that does is transfer the emissions (and lots of money) from America to Europe, and Hunter gets rich and passes his tithe to the Big Guy.
As for China leading the USA in the manufacture of batteries and solar panels, the Chinese are happy to sell them to us because they control most of the rare-earth metals required to manufacture them. But they don’t use many of the batteries and solar panels they make, and prefer to burn coal to generate power, and emit twice as much CO2 as the USA. According to Xi, solar panels for thee, coal for me. Hypocritical, but smart.
What the Climate Change addicts are ignoring, to their disgrace, is that the Sun is in the midst of a Grand Minimum, possibly the beginning of another little Ice Age.
The current solar minimum is following the history right on schedule. The Sun has lost 1-2% of it emissions. The Grand part was forecast by solar observers before the current minimum started. Their long range forecast is that the Solar minimum will return shortly after the current fades and continue the low insolation for at least another 11-12 years (2030-2040). It is quite likely that the minimum will continue on until ~2050.
So far the Sun’s activity has just prolonged an expected cooler period. If the long minimum occurs we will be faced with many more problems just than ‘climate change’.
Fussing about rather trivial things, such as CO2, will be a waste of time.
The human activity contribution to the atmospheric CO2 level averaged less than one-tenth of one part per million per year from 1960 through 2020. This level of CO2 contribution is too close to net zero to warrant any spending at all let alone a monstrously expensive “Green New Deal.”
Don’t need to wait for “Build Blackouts Better” here in the NW. Local politicians are already going all out electrifying everything, shutting down fossil fueled power generation and notionally planning on shift to intermittents. Power systems planning by politicians-What could go wrong?
Throughout my career of managing a large number of petrochemical operation engineers, it was always amazing to see the comprehension of economics routinely neglected . pounds were more important than costs. Folks did not understand that profit was what was left over after expenses. and failure to make a profit {loss} meant that expenses were to be cut { headcount, training, mtg etc.}. Economics 101/102 has been de-emphized to make room for social improvement curriculem.. STEM is pushed as a diversity opportunity rather than a critical societal support
Sen. Manchin did right thing. Tim McDonnell basically just spouted the Climate Change mantra- “we gotta do something”, and spend trillions to do it. All that would do would just waste a lot of money, like the dog barking up the tree at a squirrel, he can’t frighten it to come down when it knows it’s safe. The CC company just doesn’t understand that we do not have the knowledge or power to control the climate or the sun, much less both.
Sen. Manchin may not entirely understand that the Bill is pure politics, but he made the right decision not to back it.