Posted on 04/25/2016 4:05:32 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Thirty-five dollars: As I write, that’s the price for a barrel of oil. We’re extracting like crazy and burning like there’s no tomorrow, for real, pumping carbon dioxide into the air we all share. Meanwhile, very few pumps are turning a profit.
Ten thousand dollars: that’s what I would have offered a climate change denier pundit, who prefers to be called a climate change “doubter.” I was ready to pay Marc Morano $10,000 if 2016 turns out not to be one of the 10 hottest years ever recorded. He didn’t take the bet, because 2016 will indeed be among the hottest. Like most climate change deniers, he’s coming to terms with our situation. He has kids, after all.
As a young engineer, I used to work in the oil patch (as it’s called). I used to wash my coveralls in the “greaser” machines at laundromats. And through the circle of life, I was back in Midland, Texas, a month ago, in March. The price of a barrel of oil was $36. At that level, no one in the Midland oil patch was making any money. So, very few were working. There were fleets of trucks parked, no drivers showing up for work. From the highway, I could see a forest of idle drilling rigs, and countless rigs lying horizontal, impotent. They’re hanging on, waiting for the next boom in an oil price cycle.
I was in Fort McMurray, Alberta, last summer. There, crude oil is synthesized from the ubiquitous subsurface tar sands. It takes scalping the topsoil (destroying the ancient forest) and 30 percent of the tar’s energy to drive the chemical process that turns black “asphaltene” into useable yellow oil. So, at 45 bucks a barrel (the price back then; it’s even lower now), the place was deserted.
Should we keep our heads in the sand — or in the borehole? Or, should we get to work?
If we were to take this situation seriously, we could supply all of the United States’s energy needs renewably, without trying to build new nuclear plants. (Technical issues completely aside, people just don’t want them around.) We could have wind turbines and solar energy systems all over the U.S. We have tremendous energy supplies available in Midwestern and Eastern seaboard wind. The sun shines like crazy all over the continent. We could do this.
And, all the jobs would be here in the United States. The same people who assemble and transport oil-drilling rigs can transport and erect wind turbines, mirrors and panels. The electrical workers, who run power lines, can be in that business on a huge new scale. By the way, Texas (of all oil-rich places) gets 10 percent of its electricity from the wind. It’s just the start of things. We could change the world — if we got to work. We’d completely electrify our ground transportation. We’d develop plant-based jet fuel or liquid hydrogen turbines for our airplanes. We can git ’er done, if we just get going.
I also hear people worry that the U.S. will fall behind economically if we clean up our energy supply. But what about this very real possibility: What if most or even all of the other 191 countries who signed on at the COP21 conference go renewable? What if they decide to enforce a multilateral, 191-against-1 carbon tax? And what if they put a high, but reasonable, price on any goods exported from the U.S. based on the U.S.’s carbon emissions? Things like Boeing airplanes and even Tesla cars would become hard to sell overseas. What if our delay in transforming our economy to a renewable one comes back to bite us in the greasy coverall?
When faced with these economic musings, climate change deniers (or extreme doubters) either attack the messengers or throw up their un-callused hands and say, “Well, it would cost too much to do anything about global climate change.” When did we become a can’t-do nation? Actually, it will cost way too much to not do anything about it, to not go renewable right away. Quit your bitching. We can get this done, if we just get going.
That’s $1.89 inflation corrected, right about where it is now.
I remember being astounded on one occasion coasting into the gasoline station on fumes...and spending $17.00 to fill the tank. That was more than I had ever spent on fuel.
Go stuff yourself, Nye.
Haven’t seen that guy in a long time.
Man he looks wasted...AIDS?
The SCIENCE IS IN and NASA and NOAA have manipulated the data .
Science never lies because it needs to be duplicated and proven ,.. but scientists do lie.
www.breitbart.com/london/2014/06/23/global-warming-fabricat...
" Scientists at two of the world’s leading climate centres – NASA and NOAA – have been caught out manipulating temperature data
to overstate the extent of the 20th century “global warming”.
The evidence of their tinkering can clearly be seen at Real Science,
where blogger Steven Goddard has posted a series of graphs which show “climate change” before and after the adjustments." Graphs can be found at the Real Science site which demonstrate fact from NASA / NOAA fiction.
If I’m not mistaken, he’s a mechanical engineer, not electrical.
BSME Cornell 77
He probably hung out with Olbermann
I believe that you are right .
Opps ! My bad (and inaccurate)!
I deny there is climate. I'm even suspicious about the existence of weather.
I can remember leaving NYC with $50 in my pocket, driving to Indiana, stopping a couple of times to eat along the way, and arriving with cash to spare.
Olbermann got there in 75 so there’s some overlap.
Global Warming Hoax Deniers should be rounded up and shot. Well, okay, maybe just put in the insane asylum.
Bull! Wind farms cost more than they produce. Sunspots play with heat generation.
I am a DENIER and proud of it. Nobody cares about the horrible destruction of once gorgeous nature and sweeping scenery by horrendous wind farms which are actually wild bird mortuaries. Take a good look at the FACTS!
Trees and other plants BREATHE Carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.
We breathe oxygen and produce carbon dioxide.
Works for me.
I could almost pull that off today.
700 miles at 35 mpg, 1.89/gal = $38
The two meals would have to be from the dollar menu though.
I’ll start believing in global warming when they start showing more than failed computer models, data that has been tampered with, funding tied to the “research” and actually start using the scientific method.
I will debate Nye anywhere, anytime.
Hope he loves glorious, humiliating, devastating defeat.
I’d take that bet ,, but Nye would fabricate whatever numbers it would take for him to win...
I deny that it’s time to stop denying.
AGW due to CO2 is a falsified theory, its time for science to move on.
As for "renewable" and "alternative" and "clean" energy sources...any that one day live up to the hype and become abundant energy for the masses will soon be condemned for whatever impact they do have on the environment, which will be exaggerated and embellished. All energy sources have some draw back that they can complain and exaggerate about after all.
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