"Fortunately, physics, economics and human priorities will eventually put an end to this folly. " Don't be so sure, or at the very least, be exceptionally patient. When one combines mass psychogenic disorder (AKA Mass Formation Psychosis), repudiation of fundamental religious moors, and what Freud termed as "Death Drive" ( or Todestrieb), you have a recipe where only a small number survive. If Eco-Totalitarianism dies before it completes its mission, they'll invent something else. It's human nature...
Don't completely agree with that. LCOE can provide valid comparisons so long as all costs are incorporated. Agree that it is totally inappropriate to use LCOE to compare fossil/nuclear with renewables. In making LCOE calculations, it is easy to cook the books by omitting external costs.
This is why I think it is time for an up-to-date assessment of the impact of government interventions.
I remember Buffet saying that, and it raises a question. Why are there no recent data on the impact of government interventions on energy projects? Is this a taboo subject amongst energy or economic researchers? James Conca recently published a paper for ANS that alluded, in periphery, to these costs:
"However, the cost of increased transmission lines, not included here, are substantial, about 25 percent of the construction costs for wind and solar according to the DOE [ref] thereby adding another $4 billion to the total cost for wind and $3 billion to solar..." Conca, "How to Compare Energy Sources: Apples to Apples." 15 Jun 2023.
The reference cited in the above is dated 2009. Ancient, in many ways. I often wonder why we haven't seen a true economic comparison of energy sources. There is much to be read in Lazard's, but even they acknowledge that LCOE is inadequate for comparing intermittent technologies with each other or with dispatchable technologies such as natural gas.
Don 't underestimate the authoritarian (I mean loving) political and douchebag classes' ability to both scare unquestioning people into acting foolishly and at the same time, placate them with bits of money in the form of subsidies, tax rebates and even checks signed by doddering, old, buffoonish men to keep a lid on the questions. The Democrats running the fear machine hate the poor and the questioners of authority since it's all that stands between them and their complete dominion over citizens all over the planet.
Jun 17, 2023·edited Jun 17, 2023Liked by environMENTAL
Because you are so clear-thinking on the irrational issue with carbon dioxide and a proponent of nuclear energy, have you considered writing a piece on the danger of supporting nuclear for its lack of carbon footprint? It was something point out by Petr Beckmann of "Access to Energy" many years ago. He warned of the hazard of 'skating on that thin mythological ice' for nuclear justification. If sanity returned to the climate argument the rationale for nuclear could evaporate, leaving us without a reason to fight for the the greatest energy liberating means ever invented.
Almost all the current support for nuclear is from people that use 'net-zero-carbon' as their motivation for the transition to nuclear. Few see clearly that government control of the energy games and the research grants are the greatest impediment to wise energy choices. I keep thinking of Elon Musk and his breakthroughs in space access costs. as an example of what the nuclear industry would look like if government was restricted to managing harm and not method. The fact that every new idea must be cleared by bureaucracy, that every change must be approved, that every experiment is controlled stifles invention.
Thanks for the compliment. It's an issue we hadn't considered. Will investigate.
Negative consequences of govt. thumb on scale of energy markets is clear and an excellent point, and the Musk/SpaceX analogy is a good one.
"Managing harm and not method" brings us back to the abuse of The Prevarication Principle. Fear and hyperbole as weapons against nuclear are features, not bugs, of how it is being applied. Your point about stifling innovation is spot on. (Which seems to further entrench the less capable and "dirty" alternatives in the system....Energiewende, anyone?).
Excellent column. I hope this gets a much wider audience. Also, thanks for citing the Copenhagen Consensus, one of the few organizations that's been around for a while that comes up with real solutions to real problems.
We read The Skeptical Environmentalist when we heard Lomborg's story/history around time of its publication. Big fans of the work the Copenhagen Consensus is doing.
I was extremely fortunate to have a brilliant geochemistry/geostats professor (Dr. Dan Hawkins) who, in 1988, tasked us to statistically analyze Carter's Global 2000 report (aka "The Doomsday Report", pub. 1980) and compare the experts' predictions as of 1979 with what had actually transpired over the next ten years. Most of the predictions were flat wrong, and in some cases, egregiously wrong (hello, Dr. Erhlich?). When Dr. Lomborg published The Skeptical Environmentalist, I immediately picked it up and recognized that he and his students performed the same exercise, but on a much broader, more comprehensive scope and scale. I've been a big fan since then. I had the chance to meet and talk to Dr. Lomborg when he gave a lecture at the Univ. of Alaska (Fairbanks). Super affable and energetic fellow.
We are big fans of his relentless focus on cost/benefit and tradeoffs in this space, and the consequences of getting it wrong. We are sure there are plenty of areas where his work is open to criticism and alternative views. But directionally, we find him focused on the thing that matters most.
As our tag line says, "The planet is going to be fine. Worry about the people". Kudos to Bjorn and the CC on that front.
Jun 16, 2023·edited Jun 16, 2023Liked by environMENTAL
Good article. I wonder though how accurate the radiation hazards listed are. Almost all radiation hazards are determined using the no linear thresholds method which is pretty well discredited by radiation hormeses. Regrettably, so much reliable statistic have been compromised by both poor research and activist manipulation.
Your actuary also table misses that the greatest lose of life expectancy results from living in poverty, something all of will suffer from if our access to low cost energy is curtailed by environmental zealots.
My introduction to actuary LOLE (lose of life expectancy) was from a book written by Dr Bernard L Cohen, "The Nuclear Energy Option" (1990). I highly recommend his book and it can be read for free on the net as it is archived there.
The climate hucksters recruit those who have no faith and no belief in a supreme being to be their alarmists. Those less than curious individuals then fill the void in their souls with a cult-like worship of Pachamama, scolding everyone who does not dye their hair, pierce their bodies, and paint their skin with the uniform of rebellion. Amusing at first, they have become tiring psychopaths willing to harm others for their own attention and amusement. Ignore them. In the end they will eat each other.
“ Without a second thought, we take daily risks with far greater empirical odds of being injured or killed than the threats presented from climate change or environmental exposures. In 2021, over 40,000 people, including 715 children age 13 or less, were killed while traveling in cars in the U.S. More than 150,000 children are hurt in car crashes in America each year. But we clutch our pearls over the condition of earth’s climate 80 or 150 years from now. ”
You haven’t met the crazy anti-car activists, have you?
Thank you for a superb essay eM. Keep up the good work! When thinking about the fearmongering regarding the safest form of large-scale power generation, namely nuclear power, greedy capitalists are part of the mix. For several decades, Rod Adams has been curating and publishing the "Smoking Gun" at his Atomic Insights blog. https://atomicinsights.com/smoking-gun/ Rod shows how greedy capitalists practicing franchise protection have typically utilized third parties to disparage nuclear power. For a current example of how Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary PacifiCorp is lobbying to replace non-polluting Diablo Canyon nuclear Power Plant mostly with Wyoming coal-fired generation, please refer to the Californians for Green Nuclear Power's April 5, 2022 Capitol Weekly OpEd, "Closing Diablo Canyon spurs fears over replacement power." https://capitolweekly.net/closing-diablo-canyon-spurs-fears-over-replacement-power
Dr. Nelson, I'm not sure I share your disdain for Mr. Buffet. He is also heavily invested in Bill Gates' TerraPower, and has said publicly that the only reason to invest in wind is to get the tax credits. Full disclosure - I am from Omaha, and am a Berkshire investor (miniscule, but it's reported in my 1040). I can't speak to PacifiCorp's motives, other than profit.
I do very much agree with you that the best way to replace Diablo Canyon is to keep it open. Your essay referenced was very well done, and to the point. As you well know, there have been several informed reports published on the benefits of doing this. My hope is that the right decision-makers read these reports.
Thanks for your comment. Perhaps as a shareholder you can advocate for the transparency that Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE) used to have. Here's an example of transparency that was available as recently as October 6, 2022: https://web.archive.org/web/20221006172521/https://www.brkenergy.com/assets/pdf/sustainability-pacificorp.pdf What's now available at the BHE website regarding sustainability are many "feel good" pictures and vague indications of BHE's plans, such as the collaboration with TerraPower. BTW, the timeline for TerraPower is far too optimistic for a "first of a kind" nuclear power reactor. https://www.terrapower.com/our-work/natriumpower/ A delay of at least 24 months was recently announced as a consequence of the domestic unavailability of the required HALEU fuel.
I agree with your assessment on TerraPower's project, and I am not as familiar with that project as I would like. FOAK technology frequently brings FOAK problems.
Corporate virtue signaling has become the latest fashion from Madison Avenue, and I am afraid we will have to ride that storm until the next "existential crisis" replaces climate. BHE has turned central Iowa into a pincushion of steel towers with plastic blades, rendering the land useless for anything but ag purposes. I wonder what will become of the farmers when the need for irrigation in Iowa becomes greater. It's very tough to operate a center-pivot around a wind tower.
Your suggestion of advocating for better transparency is probably the correct thing for me to do. But, they can shout to the heavens all they want so long as they continue to make money.
Thanks for your observations regarding central Iowa. Recall that multi-billionaire Warren Buffett explained the rationale for solar and wind generation in 2014. It is a reverse Robin Hood scheme.
"For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
"Big Wind's Bogus Subsidies - Giving tax credits to the wind energy industry is a waste of time and money."
By Nancy Pfotenhauer, Contributor |May 12, 2014, at 2:30 p.m US News & World Report
You are too kind, Gene. We're very grateful for the vote of confidence.
Your April 2022 piece is excellent! Your 4 clues non-trivial. We're not utility engineers, but every time we see "imports" on RTO real time gen maps we wonder how much is nat gas or coal hiding under this label. We'd bet 1% of consumers in these states understand this ruse.
"Criteria pollutants were counted from generation within California only, and not from unspecified imports.” This is, in effect, the same game entire Western nations are playing with CO2 emissions they effectively export.
Give CA credit, though. we're pretty sure there are no political prisoners in WY producing the coal-fired power powering polysilicon ingot production. (A member of our team lives fled there a few years ago. We fly fish with him in the summer now and at least we haven't seen them.....will be back and 10 weeks and will be looking!)
Well written, thank you. Back in the day, when radioactive waste was going to destroy the western United States (according to the alarmists of the time), a very wise person, I have no idea who, put down these words.
There are very real threats to civilization that cause death and destruction daily. Sometimes I think in this community we are working so hard to protect future generations against a potential threat that we forget about the real world and its wars, and starvation, and misery. Even in affluent and secure countries there is daily high carnage and needless but very real and continuous smoking/drinking and drug-related sufferings and deaths. We argue, as societies, page after page and year after year about hypothetical future risks and spend billions to avert them while all of these ugly, painful, deadly real things are around us daily and accepted as the cost of doing life’s business.
Since then, I've witnessed time and time again how people try to frighten us with some perceived future boogeyman, all while ignoring the myriad of problems we actually have. Drugs? The border?
Inflation? the economy? I've come to the conclusion that those alarmists not only want to keep us afraid of the future, but take our eye off the ball of fixing the problems because they don't know how!
Thanks again for this essay. It needed to be said.
You're welcome, Barry. Very grateful for the compliment. And especially your conveying the wise words. We're so grateful to have such thoughtful subscribers. We learn from you. It fuels us.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Address "The Chance for Peace" Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 4/16/53 [AUDIO]
We were not familiar with this Eisenhower quote. Including it in response to Barry's comment ties the two together, tells us you recognize a key, recurring thread in our work: the opportunity cost of all this and the consquences on those with the least, here at home and across the world. Two thumbs up! Grateful to you both.
Amen to Gene and Barry. Eisenhower was prescient. Everyone needs to become more familiar with this man's thinking, writing, and his speeches. It is sad to see his warnings given in his 1961 Farewell Address have mostly come to pass. Read this slowly and carefully. Read the handwritten notes he made.....
We read that speech back in December, a couple of weeks after we started environMENTAL.
Prescient. Powerful. Aside from the warning, relevant to our worry about what all this is doing to the world's poorest, one line in the close really sticks out to us:
"We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied".
We can't see how stripping the world of the energy necessary to accomplish that under false pretenses of doom and fear can be justified as a "good".
Thank you for the link for our community here, Kevin. And for being part of it.
If you put the "number of deaths from disasters" on a scale that is relative to total world population it would be shown as an inverse logarithmic curve. The world's population has grown by over 5 billion people in the time that the deaths from natural events have declined by almost 4 million in one year. In reality, the risk of death from natural events has become so small due to the use of energy to improve our living conditions, greatly reducing risk from extreme heat, extreme cold, and even flooding. No one can even calculate the benefits of having lighting at night vs. having no lighting at all. Depriving ourselves of the energy we need to do this will reverse the trend, so the ideas that climate alarmists are advocating will actually become the cause of higher death tolls from natural events, perhaps making their predictions self-fulfilling.
“The Dead God is a god who has taken an avatar or who has fallen to the grund (the so-called chthonic god)… The laws of gravity must be complied with and the logic of the ground must be affirmed; this is the route taken both by humans and by the avatars of the outside. Dead gods come open, to eat and defile, to immerse themselves in mess, entangled both by the immensity of the outside and by earthborn restrictions.… The dead god is not a tired, abolished, or doomed god but a god with a weapon of catastrophic destruction. A plague coming to earth to make of the earth’s restrictive ground a direct passage to openness.” — Cyclonopedia 204
"Fortunately, physics, economics and human priorities will eventually put an end to this folly. " Don't be so sure, or at the very least, be exceptionally patient. When one combines mass psychogenic disorder (AKA Mass Formation Psychosis), repudiation of fundamental religious moors, and what Freud termed as "Death Drive" ( or Todestrieb), you have a recipe where only a small number survive. If Eco-Totalitarianism dies before it completes its mission, they'll invent something else. It's human nature...
I think "eco-statists" is my new favorite description. Perfectly apt.
Don't completely agree with that. LCOE can provide valid comparisons so long as all costs are incorporated. Agree that it is totally inappropriate to use LCOE to compare fossil/nuclear with renewables. In making LCOE calculations, it is easy to cook the books by omitting external costs.
This is why I think it is time for an up-to-date assessment of the impact of government interventions.
I remember Buffet saying that, and it raises a question. Why are there no recent data on the impact of government interventions on energy projects? Is this a taboo subject amongst energy or economic researchers? James Conca recently published a paper for ANS that alluded, in periphery, to these costs:
"However, the cost of increased transmission lines, not included here, are substantial, about 25 percent of the construction costs for wind and solar according to the DOE [ref] thereby adding another $4 billion to the total cost for wind and $3 billion to solar..." Conca, "How to Compare Energy Sources: Apples to Apples." 15 Jun 2023.
The reference cited in the above is dated 2009. Ancient, in many ways. I often wonder why we haven't seen a true economic comparison of energy sources. There is much to be read in Lazard's, but even they acknowledge that LCOE is inadequate for comparing intermittent technologies with each other or with dispatchable technologies such as natural gas.
Good stuff. LCOE is not only inadequate, but a fabrication from whole cloth.
Thanks for the June 15, 2023 James Conca, Ph.D. reference. I hope his excellent analysis is available to non-members of the American Nuclear Society.
Don 't underestimate the authoritarian (I mean loving) political and douchebag classes' ability to both scare unquestioning people into acting foolishly and at the same time, placate them with bits of money in the form of subsidies, tax rebates and even checks signed by doddering, old, buffoonish men to keep a lid on the questions. The Democrats running the fear machine hate the poor and the questioners of authority since it's all that stands between them and their complete dominion over citizens all over the planet.
We never underestimate the faux altruism of Eco-Statists.
We never have.
Because you are so clear-thinking on the irrational issue with carbon dioxide and a proponent of nuclear energy, have you considered writing a piece on the danger of supporting nuclear for its lack of carbon footprint? It was something point out by Petr Beckmann of "Access to Energy" many years ago. He warned of the hazard of 'skating on that thin mythological ice' for nuclear justification. If sanity returned to the climate argument the rationale for nuclear could evaporate, leaving us without a reason to fight for the the greatest energy liberating means ever invented.
Almost all the current support for nuclear is from people that use 'net-zero-carbon' as their motivation for the transition to nuclear. Few see clearly that government control of the energy games and the research grants are the greatest impediment to wise energy choices. I keep thinking of Elon Musk and his breakthroughs in space access costs. as an example of what the nuclear industry would look like if government was restricted to managing harm and not method. The fact that every new idea must be cleared by bureaucracy, that every change must be approved, that every experiment is controlled stifles invention.
Thanks for the compliment. It's an issue we hadn't considered. Will investigate.
Negative consequences of govt. thumb on scale of energy markets is clear and an excellent point, and the Musk/SpaceX analogy is a good one.
"Managing harm and not method" brings us back to the abuse of The Prevarication Principle. Fear and hyperbole as weapons against nuclear are features, not bugs, of how it is being applied. Your point about stifling innovation is spot on. (Which seems to further entrench the less capable and "dirty" alternatives in the system....Energiewende, anyone?).
Perfect! Thank you
Excellent column. I hope this gets a much wider audience. Also, thanks for citing the Copenhagen Consensus, one of the few organizations that's been around for a while that comes up with real solutions to real problems.
Thank you for the compliment!
We read The Skeptical Environmentalist when we heard Lomborg's story/history around time of its publication. Big fans of the work the Copenhagen Consensus is doing.
Thanks for being with us.....
I was extremely fortunate to have a brilliant geochemistry/geostats professor (Dr. Dan Hawkins) who, in 1988, tasked us to statistically analyze Carter's Global 2000 report (aka "The Doomsday Report", pub. 1980) and compare the experts' predictions as of 1979 with what had actually transpired over the next ten years. Most of the predictions were flat wrong, and in some cases, egregiously wrong (hello, Dr. Erhlich?). When Dr. Lomborg published The Skeptical Environmentalist, I immediately picked it up and recognized that he and his students performed the same exercise, but on a much broader, more comprehensive scope and scale. I've been a big fan since then. I had the chance to meet and talk to Dr. Lomborg when he gave a lecture at the Univ. of Alaska (Fairbanks). Super affable and energetic fellow.
We are big fans of his relentless focus on cost/benefit and tradeoffs in this space, and the consequences of getting it wrong. We are sure there are plenty of areas where his work is open to criticism and alternative views. But directionally, we find him focused on the thing that matters most.
As our tag line says, "The planet is going to be fine. Worry about the people". Kudos to Bjorn and the CC on that front.
Fantastic article!!
Grateful for the compliment!
Good article. I wonder though how accurate the radiation hazards listed are. Almost all radiation hazards are determined using the no linear thresholds method which is pretty well discredited by radiation hormeses. Regrettably, so much reliable statistic have been compromised by both poor research and activist manipulation.
Your actuary also table misses that the greatest lose of life expectancy results from living in poverty, something all of will suffer from if our access to low cost energy is curtailed by environmental zealots.
Agreed. We weren't trying to provide an exhaustive list, just one relevant most readers would understand and logically frame the comparison.
Your point is an excellent one, and a repeated theme in our work. It does give us an idea for an article, though....
My introduction to actuary LOLE (lose of life expectancy) was from a book written by Dr Bernard L Cohen, "The Nuclear Energy Option" (1990). I highly recommend his book and it can be read for free on the net as it is archived there.
The climate hucksters recruit those who have no faith and no belief in a supreme being to be their alarmists. Those less than curious individuals then fill the void in their souls with a cult-like worship of Pachamama, scolding everyone who does not dye their hair, pierce their bodies, and paint their skin with the uniform of rebellion. Amusing at first, they have become tiring psychopaths willing to harm others for their own attention and amusement. Ignore them. In the end they will eat each other.
They already are. Witness how they're treating RFK, Jr. for saying the quiet part out loud.
Especially over nuclear. Could be the canary in the coal mine for that.....
“ Without a second thought, we take daily risks with far greater empirical odds of being injured or killed than the threats presented from climate change or environmental exposures. In 2021, over 40,000 people, including 715 children age 13 or less, were killed while traveling in cars in the U.S. More than 150,000 children are hurt in car crashes in America each year. But we clutch our pearls over the condition of earth’s climate 80 or 150 years from now. ”
You haven’t met the crazy anti-car activists, have you?
Have tried to not to. But, have read some of your work noting them!
Thank you for a superb essay eM. Keep up the good work! When thinking about the fearmongering regarding the safest form of large-scale power generation, namely nuclear power, greedy capitalists are part of the mix. For several decades, Rod Adams has been curating and publishing the "Smoking Gun" at his Atomic Insights blog. https://atomicinsights.com/smoking-gun/ Rod shows how greedy capitalists practicing franchise protection have typically utilized third parties to disparage nuclear power. For a current example of how Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary PacifiCorp is lobbying to replace non-polluting Diablo Canyon nuclear Power Plant mostly with Wyoming coal-fired generation, please refer to the Californians for Green Nuclear Power's April 5, 2022 Capitol Weekly OpEd, "Closing Diablo Canyon spurs fears over replacement power." https://capitolweekly.net/closing-diablo-canyon-spurs-fears-over-replacement-power
Dr. Nelson, I'm not sure I share your disdain for Mr. Buffet. He is also heavily invested in Bill Gates' TerraPower, and has said publicly that the only reason to invest in wind is to get the tax credits. Full disclosure - I am from Omaha, and am a Berkshire investor (miniscule, but it's reported in my 1040). I can't speak to PacifiCorp's motives, other than profit.
I do very much agree with you that the best way to replace Diablo Canyon is to keep it open. Your essay referenced was very well done, and to the point. As you well know, there have been several informed reports published on the benefits of doing this. My hope is that the right decision-makers read these reports.
Thanks for your comment. Perhaps as a shareholder you can advocate for the transparency that Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE) used to have. Here's an example of transparency that was available as recently as October 6, 2022: https://web.archive.org/web/20221006172521/https://www.brkenergy.com/assets/pdf/sustainability-pacificorp.pdf What's now available at the BHE website regarding sustainability are many "feel good" pictures and vague indications of BHE's plans, such as the collaboration with TerraPower. BTW, the timeline for TerraPower is far too optimistic for a "first of a kind" nuclear power reactor. https://www.terrapower.com/our-work/natriumpower/ A delay of at least 24 months was recently announced as a consequence of the domestic unavailability of the required HALEU fuel.
I agree with your assessment on TerraPower's project, and I am not as familiar with that project as I would like. FOAK technology frequently brings FOAK problems.
Corporate virtue signaling has become the latest fashion from Madison Avenue, and I am afraid we will have to ride that storm until the next "existential crisis" replaces climate. BHE has turned central Iowa into a pincushion of steel towers with plastic blades, rendering the land useless for anything but ag purposes. I wonder what will become of the farmers when the need for irrigation in Iowa becomes greater. It's very tough to operate a center-pivot around a wind tower.
Your suggestion of advocating for better transparency is probably the correct thing for me to do. But, they can shout to the heavens all they want so long as they continue to make money.
Thanks for your observations regarding central Iowa. Recall that multi-billionaire Warren Buffett explained the rationale for solar and wind generation in 2014. It is a reverse Robin Hood scheme.
"For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
"Big Wind's Bogus Subsidies - Giving tax credits to the wind energy industry is a waste of time and money."
By Nancy Pfotenhauer, Contributor |May 12, 2014, at 2:30 p.m US News & World Report
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nancy-pfotenhauer/2014/05/12/even-warren-buffet-admits-wind-energy-is-a-bad-investment
You are too kind, Gene. We're very grateful for the vote of confidence.
Your April 2022 piece is excellent! Your 4 clues non-trivial. We're not utility engineers, but every time we see "imports" on RTO real time gen maps we wonder how much is nat gas or coal hiding under this label. We'd bet 1% of consumers in these states understand this ruse.
"Criteria pollutants were counted from generation within California only, and not from unspecified imports.” This is, in effect, the same game entire Western nations are playing with CO2 emissions they effectively export.
Give CA credit, though. we're pretty sure there are no political prisoners in WY producing the coal-fired power powering polysilicon ingot production. (A member of our team lives fled there a few years ago. We fly fish with him in the summer now and at least we haven't seen them.....will be back and 10 weeks and will be looking!)
Well written, thank you. Back in the day, when radioactive waste was going to destroy the western United States (according to the alarmists of the time), a very wise person, I have no idea who, put down these words.
There are very real threats to civilization that cause death and destruction daily. Sometimes I think in this community we are working so hard to protect future generations against a potential threat that we forget about the real world and its wars, and starvation, and misery. Even in affluent and secure countries there is daily high carnage and needless but very real and continuous smoking/drinking and drug-related sufferings and deaths. We argue, as societies, page after page and year after year about hypothetical future risks and spend billions to avert them while all of these ugly, painful, deadly real things are around us daily and accepted as the cost of doing life’s business.
Since then, I've witnessed time and time again how people try to frighten us with some perceived future boogeyman, all while ignoring the myriad of problems we actually have. Drugs? The border?
Inflation? the economy? I've come to the conclusion that those alarmists not only want to keep us afraid of the future, but take our eye off the ball of fixing the problems because they don't know how!
Thanks again for this essay. It needed to be said.
You're welcome, Barry. Very grateful for the compliment. And especially your conveying the wise words. We're so grateful to have such thoughtful subscribers. We learn from you. It fuels us.
Excellent quote which mirrors one made in 1953 by President Dwight Eisenhower https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes#War
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Address "The Chance for Peace" Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 4/16/53 [AUDIO]
We were not familiar with this Eisenhower quote. Including it in response to Barry's comment ties the two together, tells us you recognize a key, recurring thread in our work: the opportunity cost of all this and the consquences on those with the least, here at home and across the world. Two thumbs up! Grateful to you both.
You're very kind, thank you.
Yes, I remember that speech. Eisenhower is vastly underrated as a President.
Note to both you and Gene:
We're 6 months old and have 758 subscribers at this writing.
But if our work provokes this type of discourse at environMENTAL we don't care if we ever exceed 1,000.
758,000 subscribers in a vacuous intellectual goo routinely reflected in the comments section wouldn't elicit the same smile you gave us this evening.
Thanks to you both. And to all for such feedback!
Amen to Gene and Barry. Eisenhower was prescient. Everyone needs to become more familiar with this man's thinking, writing, and his speeches. It is sad to see his warnings given in his 1961 Farewell Address have mostly come to pass. Read this slowly and carefully. Read the handwritten notes he made.....
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address
We read that speech back in December, a couple of weeks after we started environMENTAL.
Prescient. Powerful. Aside from the warning, relevant to our worry about what all this is doing to the world's poorest, one line in the close really sticks out to us:
"We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied".
We can't see how stripping the world of the energy necessary to accomplish that under false pretenses of doom and fear can be justified as a "good".
Thank you for the link for our community here, Kevin. And for being part of it.
If you put the "number of deaths from disasters" on a scale that is relative to total world population it would be shown as an inverse logarithmic curve. The world's population has grown by over 5 billion people in the time that the deaths from natural events have declined by almost 4 million in one year. In reality, the risk of death from natural events has become so small due to the use of energy to improve our living conditions, greatly reducing risk from extreme heat, extreme cold, and even flooding. No one can even calculate the benefits of having lighting at night vs. having no lighting at all. Depriving ourselves of the energy we need to do this will reverse the trend, so the ideas that climate alarmists are advocating will actually become the cause of higher death tolls from natural events, perhaps making their predictions self-fulfilling.
Outstanding comment.
A basic question we're coming to in a future piece, sooner or later:
Is it ignorance or is it malevolence?
(hint: it's both. the questions seem to be how much of each, who, and why?)
“The Dead God is a god who has taken an avatar or who has fallen to the grund (the so-called chthonic god)… The laws of gravity must be complied with and the logic of the ground must be affirmed; this is the route taken both by humans and by the avatars of the outside. Dead gods come open, to eat and defile, to immerse themselves in mess, entangled both by the immensity of the outside and by earthborn restrictions.… The dead god is not a tired, abolished, or doomed god but a god with a weapon of catastrophic destruction. A plague coming to earth to make of the earth’s restrictive ground a direct passage to openness.” — Cyclonopedia 204
https://thespouter.substack.com/p/the-church-of-the-dead-god