Gingrich on cap and trade
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@danamal said:
As for the Clinton administration, they made headway on international agreements, but never really put anything into action.Actually telling "the world" to stick Kyoto where the rising sun don't shine was a good move.
WSS
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This is good reading.
The Department of Energy is at the center of U.S. efforts to end our dependence on foreign oil, roll back climate change and create new jobs. Fareed Zakaria sat down last week with the department's new head, Nobel physicist Steven Chu, at NEWSWEEK's Energy Independence 2020 Forum Luncheon to talk about smart grids, solar panels and more. Excerpts:
Zakaria: Skeptics say there's still conflicting evidence on global warming.
Chu: I urge everyone to do this: Google the 2007 IPCC report. The 100-year trend is unmistakable. The first thing to emphasize is don't get excited about one or two years. It's just like you should not get excited that one very bad hurricane is evidence there's global warming.
Can we really prevent global warming? Or should we be thinking more about adaptation? Building coastal fortifications may be cheaper than halting the release of CO2.
Right now, the climate scientists feel that if all humans shut off carbon emissions today, it will still glide up by about 1 degree centigrade. In the business-as-usual scenarios, Nicholas Stern says there's a 50 percent chance we may go to 5 degrees centigrade. We know what the Earth was like 5 or 6 degrees centigrade colder. That was called the Ice Ages. Imagine a world 5 degrees warmer. The desert lines would be dramatically changed. The West is projected to be in drought conditions. And certain tipping points might be triggered. We can adapt to 1 or 2 degrees. More than that, there is no adaptation strategy.
What do you mean by tipping points?
There's lots of carbon in vegetation that has grown and died in the northern tundras of Russia, Canada. Normally what happens when a tree falls and dies is the microbes come and gobble it up and they recycle in terms of carbon dioxide, methane. But in the frozen tundra, those microbes are asleep. So the big fear is that once the tundra thaws, those microbes wake up, they digest all that carbon. It goes up in the atmosphere. At that point, no matter what humans do, it's out of our control. This is the realization in the last decade that has caused many of us to get very, very concerned. Adaptation at 1 or 2 degrees will be painful, it will cause a lot of hurt and pain, but adaptation at 5 or 6 degrees—I'm terribly frightened that that's catastrophic.
Aren't we in pretty bad trouble no matter what we do? We're not going to be able to stop burning fossil fuels for quite a while.
We're in the great ship Titanic, the Earth is, and it's going to take a half century to really turn the ship. But that doesn't mean we can't start doing it today, and we must. It's possible that the United States can greatly reduce its use of energy in our buildings, which consume 40 percent of our energy, and our personal vehicles.
You're basically talking about insulating buildings and using more fuel-efficient cars?
Well, not only insulating buildings—we haven't taken full advantage of the technologies that exist today. They haven't been integrated into making smarter buildings that can be 60, 80 percent more energy-efficient than existing buildings. But in addition to that, if you were going to ask me, do we have what is needed today to reduce our carbon emissions by 80, 90 percent and still enjoy the standard of living we enjoy, the answer is no. We need better technologies. But I'm pretty confident that we can figure this out. Necessity is the mother of a lot of inventions.
Most electricity is generated from coal. How do we get off coal?
We can have renewables. We have nuclear power. During the nighttime when there's less demand for electricity, we'll be plugging our cars into these and charging them up so that that nuclear power can be used in a much better way. Storage technology will be incredibly useful and needed as transient renewables become a larger portion of our energy budget.
But they're all more expensive than coal?
That is true. Wind is so far the most competitive. The cost of electricity generation by wind has gone down by almost a factor of 10 in the last two decades. It will continue to go down. What you should talk about is what is the real cost of the energy?
There's wind, solar, geothermal. Which technology will get us out of the fossil-fuel trap?
Ultimately, it's going to be some form of solar energy. But as to which technology 20 years and 30 years from now will be the dominant one, I don't know. On that time scale, we have to work on carbon capture and storage. Nuclear energy I think has to be part of the portfolio in this century. And then going back to the other thing: efficiency. We now make refrigerators that are four times more energy-efficient than the refrigerators of 1975—for half the inflation-adjusted cost. The energy we save with these refrigerators is more than all of the wind and solar photovoltaic energy we produce in the United States today. Just refrigerators.
Even if the private sector can produce all this alternative energy, you need to get it to the people who need it. How do we rebuild the grid and make it smarter?
What we have today is like what we had in the highway system in 1950. States were responsible for the roads. If you wanted to drive across the country, you would have to wind your way through essentially local roads. And so what President Eisenhower said is that for the sake of national security, we need a national highway system. And today we have one of the best highway systems in the world. [Today] we have local power companies that are regional. No one is really thinking about transmitting energy over 1,000 miles, because that goes out of their domain. So that's why you hear a lot of talk about the need for a much smarter grid system. Ideally, I would think you'd want the private sector to do that, and you adjust the conditions to encourage the private sector to think about a national system.
Do you feel like the political struggle is your biggest challenge?
I don't actually think in those terms. Our dependency on foreign oil, our national security, our economic prosperity, and the climate-change issues—these aren't ultimately political questions. This is a way into the 21st century, a way to regain our technological leadership, regain our high- quality manufacturing leadership that we have lost, all of these things, as well as helping save the world.
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Interesting, but you miss the point, Heck.
It's about taxing current technology because the new
super green tech isn't there yet.
Americans have always embraced new technology.
It's leftist crisis politics and power to tax everything that is
driving the frantic hate coal etc, before alternatives are in existence
on a society-practical scale.
Tax that.
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Good idea. Obviously you have a firm grasp of what we're talking about.
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Obviously, you don't, if you want cap and trade.
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It'd be nice to hear an interview without the softballs......
Wouldn't it Heck? Really?
WSS
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I thought it was a good interview, drawing out his expert opinion on a variety of energy issues. They don't all need to be needlessly confrontational. That's not what Zakaria does.
What questions would you like to have asked, should we ban leisure travel? Doesn't Al Gore have a big house? You want to make your single point about China and India one more time?
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Gas prices and venture capital money invested in green technology. Hmm.
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Zakaria and Obama both have Skull faces and come from Muslim backgrounds. Don't trust either one.
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mz. said:
Cal, stuff like this must be the "intelligent discourse" you're craving....Yep. mz the pussy is so intelligent (in his mind). He belongs to the menses society.
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I thought it was a good interview, drawing out his expert opinion on a variety of energy issues. They don't all need to be needlessly confrontational. That's not what Zakaria does.
What questions would you like to have asked, should we ban leisure travel? Doesn't Al Gore have a big house? You want to make your single point about China and India one more time?
I thought it was a good interview, drawing out his expert opinion on a variety of energy issues. They don't all need to be needlessly confrontational. That's not what Zakaria does.
What questions would you like to have asked, should we ban leisure travel? Doesn't Al Gore have a big house? You want to make your single point about China and India one more time?
Oh no Heck.
I like to hear you beat the same drum over and over and over.
Then huff and puff that I'm wrong though I'm not.
Fact is banning leisure travel would do a lot for the environment.
But
It would be extemely inconvenient annd bad for the economy in many ways.
So we must assume global warming is not enough of a threat to bother with it.
Tell me which part is wrong Heck.
WSS
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Are you serious? You're not doing self-parody here?
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Heck translation:
"I'm just a liberal hack with no answer. When I do have an answer, I don't like it,
so I just smart off about eh... something."
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Heck translation:
"I'm just a liberal hack with no answer. When I do have an answer, I don't like it,
so I just smart off about eh... something."
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@danamal said:
Cal isnt capable of reasonable conversation.He cant even believe the shit he writes and he does it to try and be funny and piss off the "liberals" but it just makes him look ignorant to everyone except T who is on the same short bus with him.
Seems it's been a while since I've heard you contibute beyond attacking someone.
You have a take?
Tell me where I'm wrong.
Should be easy for a reasonable conversationalist such as yourself.
WSS
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There's a lot of great stuff I'd like to add,
but all it gets is -unwarranted- personal attacks.
As in, I tried, very clearly, to avoid confrontations and personal attacks
with mz the pussy. I stopped calling him "mosquitozits" and making him cry.
What happened - he kept right on with the childish quips instead
of trying to engage in serious discussions.
It goes back to some libs being outraged that the rest of us
dare to post legit info in disagreement. Then the source gets attacked.
Then repost it from their CNN, and if they can't attack the source,
they change the subject and attack the person who posted it.
And it goes on and on.
mz the pussy doesn't seem to have anything serious to offer, except to challenge
anything that is American family values, and make personal insults.
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Cal isnt capable of reasonable conversation.
He cant even believe the shit he writes and he does it to try and be funny and piss off the "liberals" but it just makes him look ignorant to everyone except T who is on the same short bus with him. Dan
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That's easy to disprove. See my reasonable discussions with Al about the Mideast.
How do you know, grandpoopoobah, about what I can believe?
The generalization that all I write is crap has no merit.
I am funny once in a while, but I don't do it to po anybody.
If I think it's funny, and it doesn't offend anyone, I'm successful.
I'm more successful if someone else thinks it's funny.
And again, totally unprovoked, Dan insults the learning disabled kids.
And that, Dan, makes YOU look very, very ignorant.
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@danamal said:
I surrender im going to have to take a break from here ,Think i'll read a book or two.The only way you'll fit in, dan, is if you leave for awhile and unread every book you've ever read.
mz. said:
The only way you'll fit in, dan, is if you leave for awhile and unread every book you've ever read.Don't the two of you find it ironic that you spend so many posts just calling anyone who isn't an outspoken Democrat names?
Yes, I understand it happens from the right too but when you constantly bitch about the lack of discussion it seems like you could bring some to the table.
Seriously guys, wouldn't "You're wrong and here's why" be better than sniping?
WSS
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