Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Progressivism, Regulation, Socialism | Tags: A Green Authoritarian Society, Costly Climate Policy, Cronyism and Corruption
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has written a blistering criticism of climate activists’ efforts to impose a green authoritarian society over the rest of the world. They overshot and missed the curve. The introduction reads:
The rescue of the planet gets cancelled. The climate advisory council to the government played high stakes poker. And lost. They failed at tricking their way past democracy.
A new study claims Britain’s climate change initiatives are both “staggeringly costly and excessive.” Britain’s £85 billion bill for climate policies is coming under attack. The Daily Mail has performed the valuable service of exposing the corruption that is rampant among British environmentalists; specifically, global warming alarmists.
The Mail on Sunday today reveals the extraordinary web of political and financial interests creating dozens of eco-millionaires from green levies on household energy bills.
A three-month investigation shows that some of the most outspoken campaigners who demand that consumers pay the colossal price of shifting to renewable energy are also getting rich from their efforts.
Here at home, the media are claiming that the 113th Congress is on track to be “the least productive” on record — as if that is a bad thing. But the Wall street Journal suggests that if gridlock lasts, Congress can still save a bundle by just not acting to extend the 20-year-old wind energy subsidy which provides a taxpayer gift to wind companies of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour. Congress can accomplish something for taxpayers by doing nothing. Congress is also considering cutting back on the subsidies for corn ethanol. About time.
Greenpeace has tried to get some attention with a video showing a sad, bedraggled Santa telling the kids that Christmas will be cancelled this year because there isn’t enough snow and ice at the North Pole. Unfortunately, there is plenty of ice and snow and it’s growing. It melts in the summer and grows in the winter. And what melting there is in the Antarctic is because of volcanoes under the ice, not climate.
It is no secret that President Obama’s green energy ventures have not gone well. But the media has largely ignored the extent of the failure. The problem is widespread. The media notices a bankruptcy, but garner attention only when it happens and it is not linked to past failures. Governments cannot pick winners and losers. It has cost taxpayers billions, and the numbers of failures, the cronyism and the corruption are not getting attention.
I wrote just below about the collapse of China’s green energy economy. Nations worldwide put a lot of hope into wind turbines and solar arrays, but the technologies are beset by the same problems that they have always had. The wind is intermittent. It does not blow at the right speed all the time, and when the wind does not blow, the turbines require backup, 24/7, from a conventional power plant. Solar arrays depend on the sun shining. Solar energy is diffuse. The sun sinks beneath the horizon at night, and does not power anything on cloudy or rainy days, and also requires 24/7 backup from a conventional power plant. The energy produced is not competitive with the energy from a conventional power plant, it is far more expensive.
Well, cronyism, corruption, help your political friends to get rich, make lots of millionaires. Sooner or later it all comes tumbling down. And it is tumbling down all over the world.
ADDENDUM: I said that Congress is considering cutting back on the subsidies for corn ethanol, which was really a misstatement. They are considering cutting back on the amount of corn ethanol put into gasoline. The subsidies were ended some time ago. The EPA wants 15% ethanol, which is damaging to older cars, and all kinds of smaller engines like leaf blowers lawnmowers, boats — and corn ethanol is not an environmental improvement over plain old gasoline, but just another wrong turn.
The rescue of the planet gets cancelled. The climate advisory council to the government played high stakes poker. And lost. They failed at tricking their way past democracy.” – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2013/11/30/europe-climate-policy-blows-engine-huge-failure-scientists-failed-tricking-their-way-past-democracy-mood-of-resignation/#sthash.ioPEqtCC.dpufThe rescue of the planet gets cancelled. The climate advisory council to the government played high stakes poker. And lost. They failed at tricking their way past democracy.” – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2013/11/30/europe-climate-policy-blows-engine-huge-failure-scientists-failed-tricking-their-way-past-democracy-mood-of-resignation/#sthash.ioPEqtCC.dpufThe rescue of the planet gets cancelled. The climate advisory council to the government played high stakes poker. And lost. They failed at tricking their way past democracy.” – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2013/11/30/europe-climate-policy-blows-engine-huge-failure-scientists-failed-tricking-their-way-past-democracy-mood-of-resignation/#sthash.ioPEqtCC.dpuf
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American Elephants 
Really? Congress let tax credits for subsidies lapse at the end of 2011. What some members are proposing now is to roll back the Renewable Fuels Standard, which effectively mandates 10% ethanol blended into gasoline (on average) over the whole country.
Comment by Subsidy Eye December 16, 2013 @ 11:34 pmYou posted the same response twice, Subsidy, so I deleted one. You and I get our information from different sources. I simply took the comment on corn ethanol from a hasty look at a source, and phrased it badly. Just back from the emergency room, and I’m a little fuzzy yet. I have no idea what the Navy’s going on about. Satellite pictures of the Arctic are pretty clear. No, I have no use for information from climate models. There is simply too much unknown, and climate models use too much guesswork. We don’t have much understanding of the action of clouds in climate, although it is clear that it is large and important, for example. We will just have to agree to disagree.
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Comment by The Elephant's Child December 17, 2013 @ 12:01 amGee, thanks for deleting the second one (which I prefaced with the justification: “Reposting with repaired formatting”), which took me several minutes to fix. The one that is left — the original one — doesn’t properly close off my quote from your text. I would not have had to post twice if there were an “edit” feature for comments.
Sorry to hear that you were in the emergency room. I hope nothing too serious. But I had no way of knowing, of course.
So, you are criticizing me for being precise in my wording about the cord-ethanol subsidy? Interesting. In my world that’s pretty important. I still see plenty of blogs and letters to the editor railing against the federal tax credit for ethanol. I wonder sometimes if they are written by industry sock puppets, because such letters of course enable the industry to then claim that its critics don’t know what they are talking about.
I guess if even the U.S. Navy is not a reliable source, then nobody is.
And I don’t know what pictures you are looking at. I’m looking at the National Snow & Ice Data Center (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/). You are always pointing out that short-term variations are not indicative of long-term trends. Well, the long-term trend remains downwards:
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Comment by Subsidy Eye December 17, 2013 @ 12:16 amhttp://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/12/new-paper-finds-arctic-sea-ice-is.html
http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/16/global-warming-satellite-data-shows-arctic-sea-ice-coverage-up-50-percent/
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Comment by The Elephant's Child December 17, 2013 @ 9:48 pm