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...You are assuming that the petro industry controls our government whereas others contend that the IMF and World Bank have more influence.Everyone has a pony in this race. It will be interesting to see who wins. Whoever wins stands to either make a lot of money (Al Gore and his "green" companies, those seeking a global currency, those trading carbon credits, etc...) or stay in business as usual (coal and petroleum companies, farmers, electrical companies, car manufacturers, etc...).
Quote from: Hootenany on December 18, 2009, 03:33:26 AM...You are assuming that the petro industry controls our government whereas others contend that the IMF and World Bank have more influence.Everyone has a pony in this race. It will be interesting to see who wins. Whoever wins stands to either make a lot of money (Al Gore and his "green" companies, those seeking a global currency, those trading carbon credits, etc...) or stay in business as usual (coal and petroleum companies, farmers, electrical companies, car manufacturers, etc...).Wind turbine companies like Vestas and photovoltaic manufacturers are matched up against giants Exxon and Texaco. Hardly a fair match. The oil companies have huge budgets for controlling government(s). Hell, they have the power to launch a war and take over another government (Iraq, 2003).
Quote from: Boreal on December 21, 2009, 12:48:28 AMQuote from: Hootenany on December 18, 2009, 03:33:26 AM...You are assuming that the petro industry controls our government whereas others contend that the IMF and World Bank have more influence.Everyone has a pony in this race. It will be interesting to see who wins. Whoever wins stands to either make a lot of money (Al Gore and his "green" companies, those seeking a global currency, those trading carbon credits, etc...) or stay in business as usual (coal and petroleum companies, farmers, electrical companies, car manufacturers, etc...).Wind turbine companies like Vestas and photovoltaic manufacturers are matched up against giants Exxon and Texaco. Hardly a fair match. The oil companies have huge budgets for controlling government(s). Hell, they have the power to launch a war and take over another government (Iraq, 2003).Good God. British Petroleum owned a solar panel company for many years, one of the biggest. They got out of it because of the volatility (i.e. OPEC) in oil prices which made capital acquisition through issuing securities impossible. Without significant production (i.e. capital) investment it was impossible to bring costs down. BP went public a few years ago with a major plan to invest heavily in alternative energy. They dropped the idea when they couldn't raise any money.
^A lot of traditional oil companies are starting to market themselves as "energy companies". They want to sell "energy", not just oil. I think they realize peak oil is pretty much unavoidable (as it is with all non-renewable resources) and they need to diversify. They want to provide whatever energy source it is people are willing to pay for and that they can make a profit on. Plain and simple.
"Not correct. BP has been in the Solar power business since the late 70's." MTS, are you saying that BP did not divest itself of its solar panel business a few (maybe two) years ago? I was sure that they sold it and then moved away from their plan to invest big in other alternative energy systems, something they had invested in since the 70's. Did I get this wrong?
So why did you say I was wrong?
The global warming solution proposed by Nathan Myhvold involves running a hose up to the stratosphere with balloons and using that hose to pump out enough sulfur particles to dim the sun's heat just enough to counteract the effects of global warming.
Quote from: tedolph on December 22, 2009, 09:44:59 AMSo why did you say I was wrong? Look at your original post.
Quote from: MyTwoSense on December 22, 2009, 10:07:31 AMQuote from: tedolph on December 22, 2009, 09:44:59 AMSo why did you say I was wrong? Look at your original post. My contention was and is in response to Boreal's post that it is not the evil oil companies that are holding back renewable energy development/deployment it is OPEC with its ability and historical tendency to intermittently drop oil prices thereby scaring away alternative energy investors including the oil companies themselves (e.g. BP). So how am I wrong?
... Boreal's post that it is not the evil oil companies that are holding back renewable energy development/deployment it is OPEC with its ability and historical tendency to intermittently drop oil prices thereby scaring away alternative energy investors including the oil companies themselves (e.g. BP). ...
OK, mea culpa. Went to the website. BP has not divested its solar power business. Don't know where I got that idea from. Although I could swear that I read an article not too long ago in which the new CEO said he was going to divest all the alternative energy portfolio. MTS, this crow tastes pretty good!
I did not find it to be interesting or complete. There is not enough metering equipment in the seas to assess temperatures at 3000 foot depths (another budget cut by the Cheney-bush oil men). He cannot reliably claim that he has a contrary explanation of why the 1990s were so damn hot.
But the effects are not confined to the Northern Hemisphere. Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronised way across the globe, abruptly flipping the world’s climate from a ‘warm mode’ to a ‘cold mode’ and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles. 'They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather,’ he said yesterday, ‘and their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st Centuries. 'We have such a change now and can therefore expect 20 or 30 years of cooler temperatures.’
William Gray, emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, said that while he believed there had been some background rise caused by greenhouse gases, the computer models used by advocates of man-made warming had hugely exaggerated their effect.According to Prof Gray, these distort the way the atmosphere works. ‘Most of the rise in temperature from the Seventies to the Nineties was natural,’ he said. ‘Very little was down to CO2 – in my view, as little as five to ten per cent.’
In the United States, cars and trucks wipe out millions of birds each year, while 100 million to 1 billion birds collide with windows. According to the 2001 National Wind Coordinating Committee study, “Avian Collisions with Wind Turbines: A Summary of Existing Studies and Comparisons to Other Sources of Avian Collision Mortality in the United States," these non-wind mortalities compare with 2.19 bird deaths per turbine per year. That's a long way from the sum mortality caused by the other sources.
I believe that a shift in our energy policy is needed (as I explained on Twitter), but the sudden shift that some desire just cannot happen. Thousands upon thousands of people rely on jobs derived from the coal industry, and you can't simply say, "that's it, we are done with coal. Good luck on your future ventures." People who make those statements have never traveled through the coalfields of WV or KY, or to anywhere less urban and less connected to popular media, and see how the real world actually operates.
Yeah, coal is bad, so let's remove it. It pollutes. But replace it with what?
A bigger issue for environmentalists is this; why would the coal industry give any serious consideration to ideas put forth by a group whose stated goal is to shut down your industry? If environmentalists want their ideas to be heard by those in the coal industry they need to tone down the rhetoric and work toward realistic solutions that are good for both parties.
No, the stated goal of the environmentalists are (1) habitat protection, (2) reduction of smog and particulate pollution, and (3) and 80% to 100% reduction in greenhouse gas production from fossil fuels.
‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent. 'They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer. The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.’
