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.
remember the ozone hole in the 80’s...it closed up before they banned ozone>> i was at nasa and had plasma scatterings of the ionosphere..
even if we accepted the hypothesis that man is the sole or even main cause of all of the “warming”, the next obvious truth is man cannot fix squat...all pie in the sky in a world that seems about to be burned by itself...
totally out of control gangstamint, we will be lucky if obamma mamba jamma lenin khomeini doesn’t declare all whites racist, and tries to confiscate homes...
Which explains why he's so fond of windmills.
By the way:
“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.””
Sounds too much like a very strict religion. I’ve already got one which doesn’t deny obvious facts and observations.
Blood-letting deniers. It’s time to stop denying. Trepanning deniers, too. Stop it.
Like all scammers, he most probably refused to define "ever recorded."
Until after the fact, when he/she/it would parse the wording of the original bet.
The Global warming alarmist, as far as I know have ever satisfied the legal requirements of the Federal Manual of civil procedure rigorously, as it pertains to both warming or CO2 status, and as required to be validated by expert and impartial actual scientists.
Bill Nye, The Bullshit Guy.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
I agree with the insane asylum suggestion.
The choice of who should be committed, however is solidly arguable.
Starting with the fundamentals.
A rational and accepted definition of "science" acceptable by non-dogmatic actual scientists.
Clear definitions of "climate" and "weather," again determined by demonstrated actual scientists.
A full discussion of all the severe weather extremes throughout actual recorded history worldwide, without the use of easily manipulated 'proxies."
I’m doing some genealogy and back when James Town was being colonized one year 400 people died because of a drought, I’m not much of a historian, so I don’t know what kind of fossil fuels they were burning in their vehicles back then. Maybe all that dried corn caused a lot of flatulence.
Well, he was a kiddie program “science” guy.......I guess that proves the science guy has settled the issue.
I’ve never met an electrical engineer who recommends solar PV as an economical alternative to carbon based fuel systems in electrical power generation.
This doesn’t even bring up the issue of the dirty power generated by PV.
It does provide employment and high demand for good Protection and Apparatus Engineers in the power industry.
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