…is about to change to one of resilience and mitigation.
It badly needs to. We can afford a lot of resilience and mitigation if we stop impeding economic growth with insane anti-carbon policies.
22 thoughts on “The Climate Debate”
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1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance
We may finally be entering stage 3 of the reaction to the demolition of the AGW hypothesis by the ongoing “pause”.
if we stop impeding economic growth with insane anti-carbon policies
What anti-carbon policies? On balance U.S. economic policy continues to be strongly pro-carbon.
The new EPA regs, for one. California’s idiotic law, for another.
Most government regulations end up shifting economic activity, they rarely destroy eceonomic activity.
If California were to ban electricity production from coal, it would just shift electricity production
to Gas. It may raise the cost of electricity, but GDP won’t be destroyed.
No, they don’t “destroy” economic activity, you moron. They prevent it.
so you don’t really have an argument, there, you are just quibbling over semantics.
Well, we were able to destroy the nuclear power industry. With sci-fi type doomsday predictions, statements that a melting core would “go all the way through the earth to China [despite China not being on the other side of the earth, and a core having to fall 4,000 miles UP in order to reach the antipode].” and declaring plutonium to be the most toxic substance known to man despite it being less toxic than many of the emissions from coal plants (including radium 226), and much less so than many natural toxins (e.g. botulin toxin). It’s really amazing how we took the safest, cheapest, cleanest, and most abundant source of energy ever developed, and demonized it into its exact opposite! This was one of our greatest triumphs, dn-guy! Please don’t diminish our success by saying that regulations don’t destroy economic activity. Anyone going to the NRC today with anything at all will find himself on a one-way journey to nowhere, all because of our glorious work.
And now all those other people we so despise (everyone) won’t have cheap, clean energy. So they will never prosper, and bother us when we go to upscale stores. It can’t get any better than this.
Nuclear power isn’t very economical, it requires massive subsidies.
If there are no anti-carbon policies, why are all the coal miners here losing their jobs? Did oil drop to $20 a barrel when I wasn’t looking?
Ever hear of “Productivity Growth”.
Coal mining moved from shaft mining to mountaintop removal and
imported coal.
You are probably in Kentucky or WVa, where those mines have lost workforce vs
Montana and the Dakotas where pit mining has expanded.
Um, wrong again. Coal production in the fourth quarter of 2013 was down to about 237 million tons and national industry employment was down to 77,000. During the last year of W Bush’s presidency we mined 18% more coal than we did last year.
The markets for coal are declining.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/coal.cfm
“Coal consumption in the United States remains below the 2010 level through 2040 due to the strong growth in shale gas production and tightening environmental regulations, with the share of coal in total U.S. electricity generation (including electricity generated at plants in the industrial and commercial sectors) declining from 45 percent in 2010 to 35 percent in 2040. In 2010, the United States consumed 20.8 quadrillion Btu of coal, representing 92 percent of total coal use in the OECD Americas region and 46 percent of the OECD total. U.S. coal demand declined to 17.8 quadrillion Btu in 2012 as a result of weak demand for power and displacement of coal-fired generation in response to lower natural gas prices and persistently rising delivered prices for coal. The electric power sector dominates U.S. coal use, accounting for about 90 percent of total U.S. coal consumption throughout the projection.”
Do you have a problem with the market actually working?
How about the anti-carbom policy of dumping money on so-called “green energy” programs (conviently owned by Obama donors) that have failed at a high rate? What about the anti-carbon policy against coal production and consumption? What about the anti-carbon policies of hampering domestic oil and gas production on federal lands and delaying/denying projects like the Keystone pipeline?
Green energy production is rising at an exponential rate, it’s why Rand howls
about Hippies. That zero variable cost of wind/solar is having significant impacts
on the electricity market.
Solar PV makers have had a very tough time against the chinese but total solar
installs have been growing exponentially.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_States#Generation_.28PV_and_CSP.29
Tell me how that growth curve indicates failure?
I never “howl” about anything, you moron.
You should be howling, Rand. That curve shows that solar power is expanding exponentially, and now represents (nationwide) half of the energy output of one nuclear power plant. With further exponential growth, it won’t be long before solar energy represents the output of TWO nuclear power plants! You’ll be howling then, you Koch-lover, you!
Do I hear a Simberg?
Who knows? You’re a delusional, ignorant moron.
“Green Energy” is growing at the expense of GDP, because it’s generally only growing as a result of subsidies and price fixing.
Iowa has the second highest installed capacity of Wind energy in the nation behind Texas, but the subsidies will all run out eventually, and wind manufacturers are already seeing the downturn.
When I visited Nebraska a couple of years ago, I asked the Lieutenant Governor why, with all of the flat land and high winds, Nebraska has no Wind farms? His answer: Nebraska’s utilities are all public, so there are no commercial energy producers to take advantage of or receive subsidies or tax credits for installing wind generation.
“Green energy” may be growing exponentially, but only at the expense of GDP and other energy sources because the market is being actively distorted by governmental policy.
To wit, this recent story about price freezes in Iowa:
The 3/4 Billion Dollar investment doesn’t include wind installations, just “carbon mitigation” and transmission improvements. Note that the company is only going to be able to stave off a price increase because it was able to purchase Nuclear power for a low enough rate to offset that 3/4 Billion Dollars.
How many MORE transmission and substation improvements could have been made if the power company wasn’t spending all of that money on carbon mitigation? Perhaps another Natural gas plant could have been built, thus also lowering the price of electricity. People complain all the time about the age and fragility of our nation’s power grid, but when it comes time to spend money, if most of it needs to go to “carbon mitigation”, there isn’t much left over for infrastructure without significant effects on the public via price hikes.
Consumer price hikes caused by carbon mitigation and “green installations” are pretty much the definition of the destruction of growth of the economy.
Wow. According to DC’s wiki, in the first month of this year (the last for which data is available) solar power provided enough electricity to power 800,000 average US residences. Powering the other 114,000,000 residences is just around the corner because we’ve crossed the 0.7% threshold.
And the reality is that no one aside from a few temporarily insane regions will cut carbon emissions for its own sake.