“Too many moving parts in a corrosive environment, requiring too much routine maintenance of large moving components. This is wildly unrealistic, fails the KISS Principle!” ( – Ed Thiel)
“[Stephen] Salter invented the ‘duck’ [system that converts into electricity some of the natural energy contained in waves] in 1974, wave energy has been just round the corner ever since. Tell me when and if it ever happens.” ( – Chris Wagstaffe)
A recent exchange on social media about the prospects of marine (aka tidal or wave) electricity brought some reality into energy magical thinking, the belief that what is technologically possible is a “green” solution to thermal power generation. Either now or about to be ….
An Optimistic Take
Russ Bates, founder of NXTGEN Clean Energy, excitedly announced: “Another step towards a sustainable future and another blow to #fossilfuels!”…
“It is shocking that legislators would contemplate advancing policy that would increase taxes, drive up prices for American families, harm workers and those on fixed incomes, and punish energy use. Yet this is precisely what a carbon tariff does.” (Free Market Letter, below)
Government intervention expands and expands from its own shortcomings. And in the service of “global climate change,” where deep-ecology alarmism prevails and economics is demoted, regulation is open-ended and increasingly strident.
Open international trade has been the gold standard for hundreds of years in theory and in practice. Adam Smith noted how the international division of labor produces the most goods and services for the greatest number, increasing the Wealth of Nations. His logic remains today.
Pricing carbon dioxide (CO2) is the weapon of the anti-industrial, anti-energy “Progressives.”…
“But messages [against] … Lynne [Kiesling] … just serve to marginalize you. …. I’d encourage you to divert your efforts to re-establishing the reputation you have had, because your existing approach has tarnished and is tarnishing it.” (Michael Giberson, below)
“Lynne and Mike’s modus operandi is tweak, tweak and continue down the road of climate alarmism – forced energy transformation – centrally planned electricity.”
Keep your eye on the ball. In recent days, I have noted the irony of the “Queen of Power Markets” Lynne Kiesling presiding over a Public Choice conference where her central planning electricity model (Independent System Operators/Regional Transmission Organizations) is not teed up for some serious Public Choice application. That’s the situation going into the conference, judging from the scheduled panels and talks.
Such was my Friday post, “Public Choice and Electricity: Kiesling Ducks Again (Plano, Tx.…