Welcome to The Other National Debt -- The Cost of Regulation
- Definitions for the day-
Dunning Kruger Effect – Confidence from ignorance of fact.
Climatologists – Meteorologists who can’t predict the weather.
- Thought for the day -
CO2 from termites is 2.5 times mankind’s input.
- Quote of the day -
In Britain since 2004 the cost of household energy has risen seven times faster than household incomes 12 mil are already in fuel poverty unable to pay for winter time heating because of government imposed co2 standards and renewable energy requirements. EPA’s rules are poised to do the same thing here in America. - Paul Driessen
The Energy Debate and the War of Emotions
Advocates of the shale gas boom in the United States and the corresponding oil sands surge in Canada point to the thousands of potential jobs and benefits to national energy security possible through the abundance of natural resources. Critics, for their part, say that conventional resources like oil and gas are relics of a bygone era, noting it's time to embrace new, less threatening forms of energy like solar, wind and wave power. Central to either side of the debate, however, is the power of appeal. It's not so much the information that's integral to the conversation but the level of emotional appeal that's driving the national debate.
How to Ensure U.S. Wind Power Succeeds without Subsidies
In an editorial today, the Washington Post called on lawmakers to put innovation at the centre of federal policies supporting wind power, in the latest endorsement of the findings in "Beyond Boom and Bust," a report by leading energy experts at the Breakthrough Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the World Resources Institute….."More clean energy is good," the Post said. "Achieving it with crude policy is not." As we wrote in our report, temporary subsidies without smart and dynamic incentives for innovation induce a cycle of boom-and-bust in emerging clean energy markets. The PTC, which will lapse at the end of the year, provides a blunt 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour tax credit without any policy criteria for cost reductions or technological innovation.
Jonah Goldberg: Adieu, Green Revolution
Saturday, 02 June 2012 18:11 Jonah Goldberg, New York Post
It looks like the “green revolution” has entered the long slide into “What was all that about?” In January, the Spanish government removed lavish subsidies for its renewable-energy industry, and the industry all but imploded. You could say it was never a renewable-energy industry at all, but a government-subsidy industry: The government gave the makers of inefficient windmills and solar panels piles of cash that consumers never would.“They destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium [on subsidies],” European Wind Energy Association CEO Christian Kjaer told Bloomberg News. The Spanish example shows how the whole green-energy “revolution” was really an ideologically driven boondoggle from the start.
EU Announces Natural Gas will be Eligible for Renewable Energy Subsidies
It is fairly common knowledge that the oil and gas industry holds massive power in world politics, and a recent revelation has illustrated this power quite obviously. Members of the European Union approved an energy policy called Horizon 2020 which pledged €80 billion to the research and innovation of renewable energy between 2014 and 2020, and is due to start taking effect at the beginning of July this year.
At this point enters a brilliant display of the power that fossil fuel lobbies have over governments. After more than 18 months of intense lobbying by the European gas industry, the EU has acknowledged natural gas as a green alternative to coal and nuclear, and therefore worthy of the €80 billion of funds earmarked specifically for development of innovative renewable energy sources.
Letting the Precautionary Principle Genie out of the GM/Nuclear Bottle
Posted by Ben Pile on May 29, 2012
Yesterday, I tried to explain why pro-GM environmentalists had misconceived the perspectives of their anti-GM colleagues as simply ‘scientific illiteracy’. In particular, I was amazed that Keith Kloor had turned a central tenet of environmentalism — the precautionary principle — into a central tenet of climate scepticism. Said Kloor, in his discussion of the principle:
“We also aren’t 100 percent certain when global warming is going to arrive with a vengeance, much less do we know the particulars of numerous climate impacts. Should we wait for 100 percent certainty before proceeding with efforts to reduce greenhouse gases? Somehow, I’m guessing Suzuki would say no. As would many other scientists.”That is of course the problem with the precautionary principle. In… erm… principle: it works both ways. But in practice, the application of the precautionary principle works in favour of the environmentalist’s preoccupations. It doesn’t subject the precautionary principle to the precautionary principle, but to whatever intervention is already being made — i.e. the emissions of substances into the natural environment — and says that there is no need of scientific understanding to begin to regulate that intervention. And as I pointed out yesterday, it is a fundamental of global environmental politics and treaties, such as the Rio Declaration and the UNFCCC process. It was first used in the formulation of the Montreal Protocol to limit emissions of CFCs:
EPA official admits Obama regs will kill coal industry
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe plans to highlight a little-known speech by an EPA regional administrator who admitted on video that the Obama administration’s air regulations will kill the coal industry. “Lisa Jackson has put forth a very powerful message to the country. Just two days ago, the decision on greenhouse gas performance standard and saying basically gas plants are the performance standard which means if you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem. That was a huge decision,” Region 1 EPA Administrator Curtis “Curt” Spalding says, in footage filmed at Yale University.
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