IGX

Gorbachev wrote:
The idea that there is some massive conspiracy trying to hold humanity back in an artificial stone age is another scare tactic to get people off the notion that action is realistic.

I'm almost embarrassed to be responding to someone who thinks there's an elite behind climate change who want to become a "new Royalty". Seriously. That's just laughable. I suspect my emotions on this are similar to those brave enough to argue that tobacco might be hazardous to health, back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Against the vested interests and those who didn't want to see the evidence anyway.

I didn't find any evidence of a conspiracy, Gorby. Except for Maurice Strong.

Message from Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations (1997 - 2007):

"If the world succeeds in making a transition to truly sustainable development, all of us will owe no small debt of gratitude to Maurice Strong, whose prescience and dynamic presence on the International stage have played a key role in convincing governments and grassroots alike to embrace the principle - if not yet the practice - of adopting a new, long-term, custodial approach to the global environment.

http://www.mauricestrong.net/

You know who Maurice Strong is, don't you? Billionaire from the Energy Industry. Organizer of various Environmentalist rallies. Eugenicist. Would be Genocidal maniac.



Vested Interests? Here are your vested interests, Gorby.... they all LIKE this Climate Change bullshit.

Here's everyone's favorite bank, Goldman Sachs....

Population growth and economic development are resulting in increasing pressure on the environment and climate. We are approaching a tipping point at which the issue’s importance to business performance and investors will escalate. The equity market is only just beginning to reflect the magnitude of change that lies ahead.

http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinkin ... oming.html

Technologies exist to achieve the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions required to limit the risks of temperature rises to manageable levels, but their adoption must accelerate in coming years. Operating performances and investment strategies of large swathes of established industries must be changed dramatically. Creating the incentives to do so is likely to require a rapid
escalation in the penalties for carbon emissions – whether through direct costs or incentives for investments in alternative technologies. Our analysis implies that a value of US$60/t placed on all direct carbon emissions would result in ~20% of the cash flow of carbon intensive industries moving from less- to more- carbon efficient companies. The secondary effects of higher input

Excerpted from "GS Sustain"

Winds of Change

"Goldman Sachs really pushed the envelope with [its] policy framework," says Jon Sohn, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute. "They are sending a message that valuing the environment can go hand in hand with wealth creation."

In particular, Goldman Sachs chose to focus its efforts on the renewable energy sector in 2006, where it thinks profits may just be blowing in the wind. Due to strong demand and opportunity, it exceeded its original pledge to invest $1 billion in alternative energy by 50 percent. In June 2005 the investment bank acquired Horizon Wind Energy (formerly Zilkha Renewable Energy), and then acted as a joint book runner on the syndication of $263 million in project financing for the company in April 2006. Horizon says it will put the money to work constructing turbines capable of producing enough electricity (4,000 megawatts) for 1.2 million homes.

In addition to betting on wind, Goldman Sachs kicked in support for companies in the solar, biodiesel and ethanol businesses. The investment bank made a private equity investment in SunEdison LLC, a Baltimore-based company in the solar photovoltaic systems business, and arranged $217 million in debt financing for Northeast Biofuels. Reflecting its appetite for innovation, Goldman also purchased a minority stake in Iogen Corporation, which is attempting to pioneer the conversion of agriculture materials like straw, corn stalks, and switchgrass into ethanol.

http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2007/01/30 ... oing-green


Any of you think we're going to get honest debate on Climate Change with Goldman Sach's bucks are on the line?



US Climate Action Partnership - wants Federal legislation.

Reads like a "who's who" of Fortune 500 Companies.

"In our view, the climate change challenge will create more economic opportunities than risks for the U.S. economy."

...especially if we get enough Rent Seeking.

http://www.us-cap.org/about-us/about-our-members/

You say that "Vested Interests" are resisting change. Sounds like they're driving it.

If you distrust them for one purpose do you trust them for the other?

dead man walking wrote:

Turdacious wrote: Without subsidy and with current technology-- very little energy from wind or solar can be converted to energy at competitive prices.

same is true for nuclear. coal and oil prices don't reflect full cost (externalities). the market is distorted.

also utility "postage stamp" pricing (as opposed to real-time pricing) works against solar, especially in congested markets. peak electricity prices are often well above the price of solar, which generates during peak hours.

Nuclear is pretty affordable, especially in countries that have to import other fuel sources. The biggest problem is disposal-- an externality that is not effectively priced into the market.

Externalities are very difficult to price into a dynamic market. Many times efforts to curb negative effects have the effect of punishing good behavior.

dead man walking wrote:

Gene wrote:
Do the externalities of wind and solar include loss of arable land to install the fucking things, damage to the environment from manufacturing solar cells and windmills, opportunity costs from raking off money from productive activity to subsidize Politically Correct Energy, opportunity costs when the wind don't blow and the sun sets and people need energy? That last one is pretty big - people might have something to do when the power goes out.

loss of arable land--please don't make a fool of yourself.

You're not going to grow "biomass" on non-arable land are you?

dead man walking wrote:as for other externalities, figure them in if you want, for coal, oil, solar. fine.

and power 24 hours a day, of course. no-one proposes a grid served entirely by intermittent sources. that's another silly argument.

That's true, DMW. We can burn candles after dark, right?

Seriously though.... exclude Coal Fired plants and Nuclear and what have you got? Dams? There aren't anywhere near enough dams in the US or in most places.

What else? Do we give GE billions for their Gas Turbine plants? There isn't any where near enough Thermoelectric potential in the US or most anywhere else.

dead man walking wrote:responding to your prejudice disguised as thought is a waste of time. i am done.

I didn't call you a Birkenstock wearing, Volvo Driving, Office Working Hippy with smooth hands who thinks that paying Carbon Indulgences "offsets" justifies their annual vacations to the Rainforests and Rustic areas, did I? I didn't call you names. Who is being "prejudiced" here?

Come on, DMW. Say it. You're going to accuse me of listening to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, pouring my used motor oil into the storm drain and driving an SUV.

Don't listen to Talk radio, Beck and Limbaugh. I hate them. I drive an econo box, don't do long distance vacations, work in the Energy Conservation business and spend a lot of time with this kind of shit. I am not an expert.

So.. come, let us reason together.

Fossil fuels are running out. Even if they're not running out there is only so much you can put on the market.

People around the world want a better life. We in the west need to pave the way for them.

Time to quit thinking like 17th century farmers.

Thorium cycle breeder reactors, possibly nuclear fusion, Ocean Temperature Gradient power and using synthetic fuels for IC motors.....

http://www.aloha.com/~craven/esd.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor (Thorium is five times more common than uranium, hundreds of times more common than U-235).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol_fuel

there are 2 choices--sun and other

today we use mostly use fossil sun plus nuke

we need to move to current sun plus . . . what?

ive never ruled out nuke

if you add true costs to oil what is the price per gallon? by true costs i mean all the military cost required to ensure our supply?

the costs of oil are ruining us

no i don't have a solution but if we keep putting the wrong price in our logic we'll keep fucking up

dead man walking wrote:if you add true costs to oil what is the price per gallon? by true costs i mean all the military cost required to ensure our supply?

My point exactly-- we have plenty of recoverable reserves to sustain ourselves at current consumption rates for quite some time (and by the time they start running low, solar and wind may be cost effective)-- you're just randomly adding externalities and arbitrarily assigning costs.

Turdacious wrote:we have plenty of recoverable reserves to sustain ourselves at current consumption rates for quite some time (and by the time they start running low, solar and wind may be cost effective)-- you're just randomly adding externalities and arbitrarily assigning costs.

Party On, Dude

dead man walking wrote:there are 2 choices--sun and other

today we use mostly use fossil sun plus nuke

we need to move to current sun plus . . . what?

ive never ruled out nuke

if you add true costs to oil what is the price per gallon? by true costs i mean all the military cost required to ensure our supply?

the costs of oil are ruining us

no i don't have a solution but if we keep putting the wrong price in our logic we'll keep fucking up

I actually agree that in the long term Petroleum is a shitty source of energy. That oil should be conserved for lubricants and feed stocks for plastics and other "petrochemicals". People should be burning atoms not carbon.

I think some of the Green's "solutions" have been based on some really faulty assumptions. One of the worst is the idea that cheap energy leads to "despoilment" of the planet. Yes it can be true, it is not necessarily true.

Cheap energy can lead to more efficient use of recyclable materials. Glass is the best example. Glass is almost 100 percent recyclable. Only hitch is that making glass is very energy intensive. If we transported items in bulk, reused glass containers and grew food locally everyone would benefit. You need cheap energy to recycle glass, steel, aluminium and other items. Make electricity very cheap and a lot of possibilities open up. None of them require heavy handed Government, just a few helpful pushes, a little lee way here and there.

Cheap energy can make substitutes for scarce items more attractive. Ceramics instead of metals. Composites instead of metals. Design them to be easy to recycle.

I wish to hell that the Greens would push for cheap energy but force more recycling and substitutes so we would need to mine less. We could conserve more arable land and living space for living things. I wish that they would push people to exchange ideas and patterns of electrons. New designs that you'd implement locally, and not "use and consume" that requires manufacturing and transportation. For example, instead of buying a new car every ten years I take my existing car to the Dealer, get it a newer and better drive train and consumer electronics and then go about my business. I'd have a "new" car in every respect but with far less "stuff" involved. Someone would take the old drive train, over haul it with a few new gadgets and firmware, and sell it to the next customer.

There is a lot of creativity out there. It's tough to make creativity work when energy becomes very expensive.

Turdacious wrote:

dead man walking wrote:if you add true costs to oil what is the price per gallon? by true costs i mean all the military cost required to ensure our supply?

My point exactly-- we have plenty of recoverable reserves to sustain ourselves at current consumption rates for quite some time (and by the time they start running low, solar and wind may be cost effective)-- you're just randomly adding externalities and arbitrarily assigning costs.

Who's "We' Turd? All 330 million of us or 7,000,000,000 of us?

Oil is fungible. Once you can wipe your ass with Dollar bills Oil companies will sell oil in Euros, Renminbi or Yen. Fucking forget "plenty of time". God bless the first person who tries to prevent "exporting America's oil". They won't even find the body.

Turdacious wrote:

dead man walking wrote:if you add true costs to oil what is the price per gallon? by true costs i mean all the military cost required to ensure our supply?

. . . you're just randomly adding externalities and arbitrarily assigning costs.

no.

i am merely mentioning some externalities and saying we should rationally determine externalities and assign their costs

we'll never get the costs perfect, but if we charged fossil fuels etc for a reasonable approximation of the costs they add to our lives, what would the actual price to the consumer be of different forms of delivered energy?

of course, for all of the obvious reasons, this will never happen.

dead man walking wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

dead man walking wrote:if you add true costs to oil what is the price per gallon? by true costs i mean all the military cost required to ensure our supply?

. . . you're just randomly adding externalities and arbitrarily assigning costs.

no.

i am merely mentioning some externalities and saying we should rationally determine externalities and assign their costs.

Except you aren't. You are making a direct correlation between military expenditures and energy-- based on the unproven assumption that there is one (most contracts for oil in Iraq have gone to non-US companies FWIW).

If you want to add externalities, stick with ones with a direct correlation to energy use.

if there hadn't been oil under the sand, we wouldn't have gone in.

dead man walking wrote:if there hadn't been oil under the sand, we wouldn't have gone in.

Tell us about the oil in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, Panama, Grenada and Somalia.

bringing up old and irrelevant wars like korea and vietnam doesn't change the fact that we've spent trillion(s) of military dollars recently in the mideast over oil.

Turdacious wrote:Tell us about the oil in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, Panama, Grenada and Somalia.

Let's be fair to our reputation.The USA is a country that got the civil war thing largely out of our system, and we love a good low level bullying as long as it's well off the coasts...we dig it and we're good at it. We don't always do it for oil, but you can be damn sure if there is money to be made extracting resources or proving a point in a pivotal region, we are down to party.