brenthutch

So now we are discussing the merits of energy policy based on your electric bill?

Let me try 20.87 > 13.34* How's that? * California vs US cents per kWh

https://insideevs.com/news/368497/tesla-model-3-s-x-sales-august-2019/ "Our estimates show that Tesla delivered some 13,150 Model 3 to U.S. buyers in August 2019. That's a wee bit down from the 13,450 Model 3s to U.S. buyers in July 2019. And it's substantially down from the 21,225 delivered in June" Wow, who could have predicted that Tesla sales would tank after the subsidies were reduced? Oh yeah, I did. Just imagine what will happen in 2020, when they are no longer subsidized by the American taxpayer.

Looks a lot like this: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/texas-town-future-renewable-energy-180968410/ And we all know how that turned out, https://www.statesman.com/news/20190223/why-georgetowns-green-energy-gamble-didnt-pay-off

The homeless don't use a lot of electricity

My favorite line, "“While I am an advocate for renewable energy, my motivation is driven by economics, not by warm and fuzzy feelings,” a renewable industry leader emailed me recently to say."

Why do you hate poor people?

And it always will.

Now that I am semi-retired, this is my form of community reinvestment. I am more worried about how you guys(who after all of this time I consider family) will deal with this simple political reality.

Actually, yes and yes. Only fools order and pay for things that aren’t delivered until after they are dead. (At least that is the political reality). If you guys really think otherwise I am throwing my intellectual pearls before swine. Real talk. There will be no green new deal, there will be no carbon tax, there will be no ban on fossil fuels. CO2 will continue to rise for the rest of all our lifetimes. The only climate legislation that will pass will be aspirational wish lists. Any real attempt to reduce our CO2 footprint will be rejected by the voters. It doesn’t matter if AGW is real, it doesn’t matter if AGW is a risk to the future of humanity. The cold hard political reality is that none of your green utopian wet dream will come to fruition. Sorry (not sorry) to be Captain Buzz Kill, but that is just how it is.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-03/electric-car-sales-fall-for-first-time-after-china-cuts-subsidy https://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/NTSB-Tesla-on-Autopilot-when-it-hit-California-14410888.php https://www.pcmag.com/news/370505/labor-day-app-outage-left-some-tesla-drivers-locked-out

"When Beto O’Rourke unveiled a far-reaching $5 trillion plan to zero out emissions by 2050, exactly what the scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have recommended, the Sunrise Movement trashed it as weak sauce that would fail to “give our generation a livable future.”" “Intensity is what drives turnout,” (Tom) Steyer told me. “And climate lends itself to intensity. People are trying to kill your kids! Those are the facts. Why be polite?" https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/03/climate-change-democratic-candidates-2020-227910

When you care more about polar bears and coral reefs, (two things that most people have never seen in real life) than your family, then yes, you have your priorities mixed up, especially when you consider that a doubling of gas prices will not save a single polar bear or coral polyp. BTW there are MORE polar bears now than when Al Gore featured the seal slaughtering carnivores in his award winning fiction An Inconvenient Truth.

This is just the mindless hyperbole I have been railing against. So which is it, a slow moving disaster that won’t noticeably manifest itself for decades/generations or a hair on fire, immediate, existential, catastrophe?

That sound like Katherine Heyhoe, when pushed on why she can't show evidence of anthropogenic attribution to weather events she falls back on highly scientific jargon like "global weirding" " "loading the dice" and "stacking the deck".

That is very Glenn Beck of you. Your CFC analogy falls flat once you peel back a few layers. First, there were readily available replacements for CFCs (CO2 in some cases) Second, the cost (as reported by the NYT) was three billion dollars. Not 13 TRILLION dollars. Big difference

And therein lies the problem. Any politician passing legislation that raise prices for the American consumer in order to transfer wealth to other nations will not survive the next election. Americans vote their pocket book. Everyone wants to "save the planet" in the abstract but when faced with the cost of doing so change their tune. Voters in Australia, Arizona, Colorado and even Washington have all rejected climate policy. The French are rioting in the streets over a four cent gas tax, even the election of Trump was in part a rejection of the climate policies of the Dems. Simply put, large scale climate policy (large enough to do anything) is not compatible with Democracy. That is why...…. "The well-known climate researcher James Hansen, who has been publicly sounding the alarm on global warming since his influential 1988 testimony before the U.S. Congress, summarized the general frustration when he asserted in 2007 that “the democratic process does not work.” In his 2009 book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, James Lovelock, another long-time scientific voice of warning, compares climate change to war, emphasizing that we need to abandon democracy to meet the challenges of climate change head on. To pull the world out of its state of lethargy, “nothing but blood, toil, tears, and sweat” is urgently needed." Now there is a 2020 bumper sticker for ya

"We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own,” the leader of the world’s 1.3 billon Roman Catholics said

Every Democrat running for office. Oh, you said reputable......never mind.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/green-new-deal-preview-texas-town-environmentalism-chuck-devore “Trouble started when politicians’ promise of cheaper renewable energy was mugged by reality.”

So it is no worse than 1935. Thank you for the update.

The temps routinely vary by two degrees (when the 1000+ watts of lightning come on in the late morning). I have not tried white vinegar but I do Use CO2. https://fragtasticreef.com/korallin-c1502-calcium-reactor-package-with-cylinder/ I have never had a problem, but then again my corals don’t read the New York Times, listen to NPR or watch MSNBC so they don’t know they should be dead.

The arc of the man-made global warming debate is long, but it bends towards me being right. Time is, and always has, been on my side. Polar bears? Still here. Peak oil? Nowhere in sight. Ice free artic? Nope. Planet ravaged by hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, and floods? Sorry try again.

I have a coral reef in a 280 gallon + system in my basement and have been maintaining a coral reef tank for nearly three decades. So I might just know a little about them

Yep and I guess we will go the way of the dodo bird in the next decade or so (if AOC, Al Gore, Prince Charles and Greta Thunburg are correct). OTOH, if I’m right, my seventy five year old self will be rubbing your nose in it with more vigor than I am today.