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brenthutch

Green new deal equals magical thinking

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46 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

Remember the context of the original post: The GND is an example of magical thinking. 

And yet you refuse to put money on it.  So be it.

"I will bet $500, to the charity of your choosing, if solar power overtakes coal for energy production"

OK.  You are on.  $500 that within 10 years, renewables (not just solar) has more generation installed than coal in the US.

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(edited)
On 7/14/2019 at 3:29 PM, turtlespeed said:

 

Why do you find pleasure in setbacks that hinder advancement?

Because he's got money invested in fossil fuels would be my g

 

On 7/15/2019 at 6:01 AM, brenthutch said:

I’m glad you said “until the scales are evened out”.  I can assure you, as soon as renewables contribute more in taxes than they receive in subsidies I will end my jihad on things green.

Fine. Support building the infrastructure to level the playing field then and quit bitching about subsidies for one but not the other in the meantime. 

 

You continue to compare the results of an industry that's had over 200 years to develop to one that's had 20. Coal is cheap (sort of not really) because all of the economy has been built around it. I know you understand economies of scale. In another 200 years do you really think we'll still be using coal and oil as our main energy supply?

Edited by yoink

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19 minutes ago, yoink said:

 

... Coal is cheap (sort of not really) because all of the economy has been built around it... 

Coal seems cheap because the entire cost is generally ignored.

 

If the real cost was calculated and charged to the energy companies, the cost would be astronomical.

Environmental damage (both in the acquisition and consumption), health effects (miners, production employees, people who just happen to live near coal burning plants), effects on wildlife (from habitat destruction to mercury ending up in the oceans and contaminating fish). 

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1 hour ago, brenthutch said:

A sober assessment would take into consideration BENEFITS as well as costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Case_for_Fossil_Fuels

There is a strong moral case to be made for not foregoing fossil fuels. That does not change the fact that their use is changing the Earth's climate. You keep bouncing around from claiming there is no global warming, to claiming global warming is good, and sometimes claiming it's just too expensive for you to be bothered with. You and your inconsistencies are just plain tiresome.

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1 hour ago, brenthutch said:

A sober assessment would take into consideration BENEFITS as well as costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Case_for_Fossil_Fuels

Every benefit is temporary because the fuel itself will run out.

If your objective is to make as much money as possible while it does that then don’t spend on anything else and just keep hiking the price as the commodity gets scarcer. Fuck everyone when I’m dead. They’ll figure it out. 

But if you have ANY concern for people down the line you have to use the boom time to cover the cost of what’s going to happen when fossil fuels either run out or become non-profitable to extract.

Would you prefer starting the investigation of an entirely new form of energy from scratch rather than backing renewables? How about them there ‘dilithium’ crystals. I’m sure we can make those work.

SOMETHING has to replace fossil fuels at some point. If you can’t agree with that then you’re living in a world where cause / effect has different rules than the ones I’m used to.

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(edited)

I’m getting whiplash from “save the planet” to “we are going to run out of fossil fuels in the next two centuries”

SOMETHING replaced animal dung then SOMETHING, replaced wood, then SOMETHING replaced coal, then SOMETHING replaced oil.  At every turn, the invisible hand of market guided the transition, without New World Order central planning.

At some point in the distant future, fossil fuels will slowly become less abundant. At that time their prices will rise and other energy sources will become comparatively more economical, then they will they be replaced.  No need for central planning or a government takeover of the economy.

Edited by brenthutch
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17 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

No need for central planning or a government takeover of the economy.

No need to do anything at all that will inconvenience you, or me for that matter. We will both be long dead before the effects of rising sea levels and other factors are known. There is no need for wisdom. None. It's just a good idea to act wisely. So people are starting to do so. Governments are best when they are by the people for the people. So they will act in ways that the people want. Which means they will promote less carbon intensive energy sources, because the people are asking them to. Even if there is a cost to the transition. Waiting for pure market forces would be foolish. Think of it just like saving your money. It's not as much fun as spending it, but in the long term it is wise. It's not just about subsidized Teslas for rich internet yuppies.

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41 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

I’m getting whiplash from “save the planet” to “we are going to run out of fossil fuels in the next two centuries”

 

What confuses you?

Quote

SOMETHING replaced animal dung then SOMETHING, replaced wood, then SOMETHING replaced coal, then SOMETHING replaced oil.  At every turn, the invisible hand of market guided the transition, without New World Order central planning.

Replacement of CFC's could not be handled by the magic Invisible Hand of the market.  It required New World Order central planning.  And it worked.

Quote

At some point in the distant future, fossil fuels will slowly become less abundant. At that time their prices will rise and other energy sources will become comparatively more economical, then they will they be replaced. 

A shooter in a mass shooting situation will eventually run out of bullets.  A free market solution would be to just let him run out of ammunition; the magic Invisible Hand of the market will eventually put an end to the deaths.  However, our New World Order central planning thinking sometimes convinces us that he should be stopped before then.  

Do you disagree with the New World Order approach there?  Would you prefer a more free-market approach to ending mass shootings?

Likewise with illegal immigration.  The magic Invisible Hand of the Market will eventually apportion wages appropriately to citizens and illegal immigrants alike.  Or you could use a New World Order approach and pass all sorts of laws to try to control the labor market by restricting immigration, legal or and illegal alike.  Perhaps you could build a wall.  

Do you disagree with the New World Order approach there?  Would you prefer a more free-market approach to dealing with illegal immigration?

 

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13 hours ago, brenthutch said:

Make that five years, and a charity of someone’s choosing will be $500 richer.

That said, the whole “wanna make a bet” thing is a bit juvenile I was surprised that DJL brought it up.

 

Well, I know you are but what am I?

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(edited)
9 hours ago, brenthutch said:

At every turn, the invisible hand of market guided the transition, without New World Order central planning.

I'm in agreement on this on the grounds that peak oil and fossil fuel depletion is not relevent to our market even for the next 50 years (but probably closer to 100 years).  We've gotten better and better at finding new things to burn, it won't be a quick process so I think the alarm is disingenuous when compared to the need to switch out simply because of environmental reasons.

Edited by DJL

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9 hours ago, brenthutch said:

SOMETHING replaced animal dung then SOMETHING, replaced wood, then SOMETHING replaced coal, then SOMETHING replaced oil.  At every turn, the invisible hand of market guided the transition, without New World Order central planning.

Well, as systems became more sophisticated, eventually people couldn't take their horse carts into cities. And at each of those transitions, there were people who resented and muttered about these newfangled things when what they were used to (or had invested in, or made their living from) worked just fine. 

Wendy P.

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8 hours ago, billvon said:

 

A shooter in a mass shooting situation will eventually run out of bullets.  A free market solution would be to just let him run out of ammunition; the magic Invisible Hand of the market will eventually put an end to the deaths.  However, our New World Order central planning thinking sometimes convinces us that he should be stopped before then.  

Do you disagree with the New World Order approach there?  Would you prefer a more free-market approach to ending mass shootings?

 

 

Face palm

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7 minutes ago, ryoder said:

Trump’s Rollback of Auto Pollution Rules Shows Signs of Disarray:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/climate/trump-auto-emissions-rollback-disarray.html

This is over the top: Trumpty is furious because his efforts to allow more pollution are being opposed by the very companies he is supposedly helping! 

 
I have to copy and paste before the paywall blocks the site so I figured I'd just post it.
 
 
CLIMATE|Trump’s Rollback of Auto Pollution Rules Shows Signs of Disarray

Trump’s Rollback of Auto Pollution Rules Shows Signs of Disarray

 
The Trump administration’s proposal would significantly weaken former President Barack Obama’s auto-emissions standards.
The Trump administration’s proposal would significantly weaken former President Barack Obama’s auto-emissions standards.CreditCreditJustin Sullivan/Getty Images
  • Aug. 20, 2019
  •  

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.

WASHINGTON — The White House, blindsided by a pact between California and four automakers to oppose President Trump’s auto emissions rollbacks, has mounted an effort to prevent any more from joining the other side.

Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and General Motors were all summoned by a senior Trump adviser to a White House meeting last month where he pressed them to stand by the president’s own initiative, according to four people familiar with the talks.

But even as the White House was working to do this, it was losing ground. Yet another company, Mercedes-Benz, is preparing to join the California agreement, according to two people familiar with the German company’s plans.

Mr. Trump, described by three people as “enraged” by California’s deal, has also demanded that his staffers step up the pace to complete his plan. His proposal, however, is directly at odds with the wishes of many automakers, which fear that the aggressive rollbacks will spark a legal battle between California and the federal government that could split the United States car market.

The administration’s efforts to weaken the Obama-era pollution rules could be rendered irrelevant if too many automakers join California in opposition before the Trump plan can be put into effect. That could imperil one of Mr. Trump’s most far-reaching rollbacks of climate-change policies.

In addition to Mercedes-Benz, a sixth prominent automaker — one of the three summoned last month to the White House — intends to disregard the Trump proposal and stick to the current, stricter federal emissions standards for at least the next four years, according to executives at the company.

Together, the six manufacturers who so far plan not to adhere to the new Trump rules account for more than 40 percent of all cars sold in the United States.

“You get to a point where, if enough companies are with California, then what the Trump administration is doing is moot,” said Alan Krupnick, an economist with Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan energy and environment research organization.

A senior administration official said the California pact was an effort to force Americans to buy expensive vehicles that they don’t want or need. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he called the pact top-down policymaking with California trying to impose its standard on 49 other states.

The Trump administration’s proposal would significantly weaken the 2012 vehicle pollution standards put in place by President Barack Obama, which remain the single largest policy enacted by the United States to reduce planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions. The Obama-era rules require automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, cutting carbon dioxide pollution by about six billion tons over the lifetime of all the cars affected by the regulations, about the same amount the United States produces in a year.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps the sun’s heat and is a major contributor to climate change.

Mr. Trump has billed his plan, which would freeze the standards at about 37 miles per gallon, as a deregulatory win for automakers that will keep down car prices for American consumers. Mr. Trump’s plan would also revoke the legal authority of California and other states to impose their own emissions standards.

In an extraordinary move, automakers have balked at Mr. Trump’s proposal, mainly because California and 13 other states plan to continue enforcing their current, stricter rules, and to sue the Trump administration. That could lead to a nightmare situation for automakers: Years of regulatory uncertainty and a United States auto market that effectively split in two.

Last week, California officials said that they expected more automakers to join their pact, which commits carmakers to build vehicles to a standard nearly as strict as the Obama-era rules that the president would like to weaken. “Many companies have told us — more than one or two — that they would sign up the agreement as soon as they felt free to do so,” said Mary Nichols, the top clean air official in California.

Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board in 2018.
Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board in 2018.CreditDavid Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Officials from Mercedes-Benz declined to comment.

Executives from the three auto companies summoned to the White House declined to comment publicly on their interactions with the Trump administration. But at a recent media event, Mike Manley, Fiat Chrysler’s chief executive, said of the California pact: “We are absolutely going to have a look at it and see what it means.”

In the Trump administration, three senior political officials working on the rollback, a complex legal and scientific process, have all left the administration recently. A senior career official with years of experience on vehicle pollution policy was transferred to another office.

That means the process is now being helmed by Francis Brooke, a 29-year-old White House aide with limited experience in climate change policy before moving over from Vice President Mike Pence’s office last year. Given the lack of experienced senior staffers, people working on the plan say it is unlikely to be completed before October.

At the same time, staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department, which are writing the rule, say they are struggling to assemble a coherent technical and scientific analysis required by law to implement a rule change of this scope.

Several analyses by academics and consumer advocates have questioned administration’s claim of benefits to the public. An Aug. 7 report by Consumer Reports concluded that Mr. Trump’s proposed rollback would cost consumers $460 billion between vehicle model years 2021 and 2035, an average of $3,300 more per vehicle, in car prices and gasoline purchases. It also found the rollback would increase the nation’s oil consumption by 320 billion gallons.

A career staff member at the E.P.A., speaking on condition of anonymity, said the numbers, the public comments and the analysis were at odds with what the White House wanted to do.

The White House official called the staff departures “irrelevant” and said that the rule was near completion. While acknowledging that a major change such as this takes times, the official said that people who were opposed to the rule, including some in the automotive industry, were starting to worry that the Trump plan was going to succeed.

Policy experts point out that Mr. Trump’s quest to undo his predecessor’s signature climate-change regulation despite opposition from the very industry being regulated is extraordinarily unusual. For automakers, they say, it makes more sense to try to remain globally competitive by building more sophisticated vehicles as the world market moves toward more efficient cars.

“I don’t think there is any precedent for a major industry to say, ‘We are prepared to have a stronger regulation,’ and to have the White House say, ‘No, we know better,’” said William K. Reilly, who headed the E.P.A. in the first George Bush administration.

For some companies, Mr. Trump’s regulations are already moot. An E.P.A. assessment of the 2017 Honda CR-V, the best-selling S.U.V. in the country that year, showed the car is set to meet 2022 Obama-era targets five years ahead of schedule. Honda is one of the four automakers to have signed on to the California pact, along with Ford, Volkswagen and BMW.

Late last month, in the days immediately after deal between California and the four automakers was announced, White House discussions ranged widely about how to respond.

At one White House meeting, Mr. Trump went so far as to propose scrapping his own rollback plan and keeping the Obama regulations, while still revoking California’s legal authority to set its own standards, according to the three people familiar with the meeting. The president framed it as a way to retaliate against both California and the four automakers in California’s camp, those people said.

Neal E. Boudette contributed reporting from Detroit.

For more news on climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.

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4 hours ago, brenthutch said:

Face palm

Sorry if that bakes your noodle a bit.  You do have a tendency to support government solutions to problems that you think are serious, but call such solutions "socialism" and "New World Order" when it's something you oppose.

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19 hours ago, billvon said:

Sorry if that bakes your noodle a bit.  You do have a tendency to support government solutions to problems that you think are serious, but call such solutions "socialism" and "New World Order" when it's something you oppose.

No, I have been pretty consistent in my opposition to governmental market distortions.

Edited by brenthutch

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23 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

No, I have been pretty consistent in my opposition to governmental market distortions.

We would laissez faire our way out of being a global market contender if our government didn't work on our behalf.

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1 minute ago, brenthutch said:

I would be ok with them if they were part of a broader strategy to diversify our supply chain and protect our intellectual property.  As implemented by the third grader in chief, no.

So it sounds like you'll go with what works and my agreement is that with environmental subsidies and regulations it needs to be paired with a long term plan that we follow through with and has measurable results.  We've been able to do that in the past with the work we've done as a country to clean up our waterways, reduce acid rain, reduce issues with the Ozone layer, remove DDT from agricultural run-off just to name a few.  Next up, our national and global effort to reduce the CO2 emissions that we've PROVEN has a direct correlation with global temperatures increasing at a rate beyond that of natural cycles and threatens our long term national economic viability.  If GND isn't what you like then you'd better find something to get behind or else it'll be what you'll have to live with.

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22 minutes ago, DJL said:

 Next up, our national and global effort to reduce the CO2 emissions that we've PROVEN has a direct correlation with global temperatures increasing at a rate beyond that of natural cycles and threatens our long term national economic viability.  

The PROVEN direct correlation is that global temperatures drive CO2, not the other way around. (As Al Gore’s chart showed us in An Inconvenient Truth)

Natural cycles have given us ice ages, ice free poles and CO2 levels ten times higher than than they are today.

Elevated CO2 has resulted in record food production, shrinking deserts, a greener planet and no change in floods, droughts, hurricanes and wildfires.

Insane policies like the GND threaten our long term national economic viability, not CO2.

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