Maybe Obama could milk the rich a little more?
“The world must spend an extra US$700-billion a year to curb its addiction to fossil fuels blamed for worsening floods and heat waves and rising sea levels, a study issued by the World Economic Forum (WEF) showed on Monday.” [Financial Post]
Biggles, the problem is that wind and solar power are arguably more polluting than coal or natural gas. Not only do they take up far more land and materials to produce the same amount of power, but their intermittent nature require combustion powered backup to maintain voltage and this constant cycling creates fundamental inefficients. Except in situations with large amounts of hydroelectric power available, it is very easy for additions of wind and solar power to actually consume more resources over their lifetime than the power grid would have without them.
Modern society — the one with clean water and plenty of food — is addicted to energy rather than to fossil fuels. Calling our need for energy an addiction is about the same as claiming humans are addicted to food. Our bodies need energy, our families and homes need energy and our societies need energy.
There are people in the petroleum/carbon fuel industry with a lot at stake there who want to keep doing what they’re doing. Of course they do. But nearly all of them would switch their skills and their investments to more effective energy if it were available.
The “renewables” and “alternatives” may yet make sense some day. In the meantime, the “Economic Forum” clearly does not understand engineering or economics or climate. We can spend $700b — we could spend $7T — on alternative energy and we’d have no measurable effect on climate. None whatsoever.
I saw an editorial today that appalled me. It was about Montana farmers being able to use forestry projects to enter California’s cap-and-trade scheme. That was bad enough but the really ugly part was this: the author is an economics major and a cadet at West Point. Any student of economics should understand that trade in a worthless imaginary commodity is a way of destroying wealth.
The components of wind or solar All have to be ‘dug up.’
It is really a challenge for technology. We have to harness solar energy eventually anyway. Severe weather events are not the issue. Let’s use our brains, not just dig stuff up for ever like cave-men.