Michigan legislative action thread
Posted on 05/24/2014 9:33:19 AM PDT by Impala64ssa
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts we can’t stop the impact of rising seas and flooded cities, and demands radical cuts to carbon emissions or Doomsday will be worse. The loudest climate alarmists demand energy options that produce zero carbon, and show it by supporting the continued river of tax dollars washing toward promises of producing lots of our power from pleasant breezes and rays of sunshine: wind and solar.
It would be easier to take this all more seriously if they’d propose realistic solutions. Skeptics of the Doomsday scenarios are constantly beat about the head regarding the overwhelming “scientific consensus” regarding the implications of climate change.
Yet where is the overwhelming statement of scientific consensus in favor of pouring all these tax subsidies into options that really work, such as low carbon natural gas and zero carbon nuclear?
If the emergency is as dire as advertised, climate scientists should be united in loudly denouncing the wind welfare lobby for wasting so much of the rescue money.
A report from the Brookings Institution demonstrates that wind doesn’t always blow, and often blows most when needed least. Windmills run at just 25 percent capacity (versus 90+ percent for coal, gas and nuclear.) The story is more sad for solar: 15 percent. Factoring this in, wind power is 50 percent more expensive than coal or natural gas.
Tens of billions of dollars (or more) have already flooded down this rathole, and the wind lobby wants more, calling for a continuation of the recently cancelled federal wind power subsidy. This would chew up another $60 billion over ten years.
Low carbon natural gas provides the cheapest and most readily available electricity source there is. But instead of demanding it receive the corporate welfare, climate alarmists instead attack the hydraulic fracking technology that makes natural gas so attractive.
Well, is the world on fire or not?
Brookings supports a carbon tax, but is very critical of the wind subsidies. The report says nuclear energy is a more costly alternative than coal and natural gas, but is vastly cheaper than wind.
Leaving aside low carbon - yet not zero carbon - natural gas, if climate-saving corporate welfare really must be used to produce power without any carbon emissions at all, then nuclear is the place to spend it. Excluding the safety scofflaws of the former Soviet Empire, nuclear power has an excellent safety record: Nobody died from Fukushima, compared to 65 American coal miners killed just since 2001.
A new nuclear plant in Georgia is expected to cost its owner something north of $14 billion (let’s round up crazy to $20 billion.) When operational, just this plant will crank out power equal to ten percent of the total electricity produced by every single wind farm in America last year.
With the objective of cooling the climate, $60 billion from the 2009 federal “Stimulus” Bill went to subsidize green energy, public transit, energy efficiency and the like. Now the wind welfare lobby wants another $60 billion to save its own dubious corporate welfare.
That $120 billion could provide a ten percent subsidy to build 60 nuclear plants like the one in Georgia. Those sixty plants would create six times more electricity than every wind farm currently in operation.
If climate scientists believe the planet is in peril, then they owe it to their cause to denounce climate alarmists who burn our cash on bogus solutions. Otherwise, the advice they’re giving us is this: “The town is ablaze right now, but please waste billions of dollars and hours building wind-powered fire trucks.”
Pardon the skepticism.
We just need harvest the shredded poultry downstream to better utilize the full economic benefits.
And the main reason it's more costly is because Obama appointed an anti-nuclear activist to sabotage the NRC.
Our nation's aircraft carriers and submarines run 20 years at a time on nuclear fuel that could fit under the desk you're sitting at right now. The fact that our nation seems determined to kill off this zero-emissions abundant source of power which it invented is a scandal.
Same reasons for existing dangers of nuclear power. The idiots force us to rely on old technology with their constant screeching instead of allowing the building of new state of the art plants.
here is the real scandal:
1st qtr, 2014 U.S. economic growth was at .01% indicating that the economic goal of “Sustainable Development/Agenda 21” as adopted by the U.S. has largely been met.This also fulfills the machevellian wish of Maurice Strong, UN Chairman of UNCED aka The Rio Earth Summit where in 1992 he articulated the veiled intentions of the “Plan for the 21st Century- Sustainable Development/Agenda 21” by saying this in regard to our “unsustainable” high consumption of natural resources which is, according to them destroying the Earth; “...isen’t it our responsibility to bring about the collapse of the industrialized countries?” Now, to become truly as “Sustainable” as Bangladesh is, more vital work is quickly needed to further collapse and “Degrow” the economy. This will be accomplished by more draconian restrictions on business and energy use which will be mandated by arbitrary regulations spawned by the bogus hype to save the planet from the dread effects of antropogenic Global Warming aka Climate Change aka Climate Disruption.
Power seeking Luddites!
Where are the Mega Fauna?
April 21, 2014
I, like many people, am perplexed by the raging debate over Global Warming, re-labeled as Climate Change since no discernible warming has been documented for the past 17 years. Whether the Earth is warming, cooling, or staying the same there are those who blame it all on increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide, CO2. Their solution is to emit less carbon dioxide from organic combustion reactions, be they gasoline engines, wood-burning stoves, coal burning in commercial power plants, or a plethora of additional activities. The method to reduce carbon emissions is to tax the offending activities.
As recently as last week the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) floated the idea of vacuuming atmospheric CO2 from the air and sequestering it underground. Regardless of the technological hurdles such an operation would pose, I find the underlying rationale to be flawed. First some ballpark numbers:
Atmospheric CO2 is now reportedly flirting with or has crossed the magic 400 ppm (ww) threshold. That means that, roughly, there are now 755 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere, up from approximately 708 billion tons 30 years ago, a 6.6% increase. That I personally do not believe this increase to be anywhere near a crisis, or the result of Humanity’s activities is beside the point.
Have you ever wondered why there are no mega fauna on this planet anymore? Where are the really big animals? First, there were the dinosaurs, and lastly such things as Wooly Mammoths, Mastodons, or giant tree sloths, among others. Is it not possible that the demise of the mega fauna is at least partially due to biomass (translation: bio available carbon) being sequestered over eons, as petroleum oil, coal seams, or peat bogs?
It is a fact inherent in the carbon cycle as taught in elementary school that every form of life, including us, started as atmospheric carbon dioxide. That carbon is the most basic of stones out of which life is built. If carbon were in fact sequestered by natural processes, as it apparently has been, then eventually the biomass of this planet would become so thin as to be unable to support enormous or even large animals.
This line of reasoning leads to a surprising conclusion. If a fundamentally new source of energy were discovered, that did not rely on any type of combustion, and was plentiful and cheap then burning hydrocarbons would be relegated to a niche status like making fuel for classic automobiles. In that event, the environmentally responsible action would be to dig up all the coal and oil and burn it anyway thus increasing the biomass available to all life on Earth. For that reason, I consider an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to be a healthy thing for life on this planet.
New state of the art nuclear technology uses far less fuel to produce the same amount of energy and produces far less waste which makes them inherently safer.
Thanks cripplecreek.
Government has ruined science and it will ruin civilization soon and drive humans back into the caves once again. Always has, always will.
“wind powered fire trucks”
These are just as feasible as solar powered Boeing 747s.
Only, will these fire trucks be schooner rigged or brigantine rigged, and how efficiently can they tack against the wind in order to reach a fire?
Same reasons for existing dangers of nuclear power. The idiots force us to rely on old technology with their constant screeching instead of allowing the building of new state of the art plants.And the main reason it's more costly is because Obama appointed an anti-nuclear activist to sabotage the NRC.Our nation's aircraft carriers and submarines run 20 years at a time on nuclear fuel that could fit under the desk you're sitting at right now. The fact that our nation seems determined to kill off this zero-emissions abundant source of power which it invented is a scandal.
5 posted on May 24, 2014 at 1:01:06 PM EDT by mvpel
My favorite proof of the cynical hypocrisy of the AGW hoaxers is their absolute silence regarding the combustion of coal outside the US. If the “problem” is global, the solution cannot be accomplished solely within the US.But of course, absolute rejection of nuclear is an equally valid indicator that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is an excuse, not a motivation, for their opposition to US electric power production.
Maurice Strong, UN Chairman of UNCED aka The Rio Earth Summit
And here I’ve been asking, where the heck is that fat freak hiding these days?? Still in China is my guess.
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