“The chief victims of the war against fossil fuels are the poorest citizens of the poorest nations. Developing countries need cheap energy.” – Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White. Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, p. 237.
Stephen Moore, nominated last month by the Trump Administration for the Federal Reserve Board, has attracted criticism for his views on energy and climate from the usual sources (Grist, Huff Post, Desmog). In fact, poor and rich Americans and Left and Right politicos should support Moore’s realistic, utilitarian views. Dense mineral energies are for the masses in virtually all aspects of their daily lives.
Moore’s energy/climate views are well stated in his 300-page multidisciplinary primer (coauthored with Kathleen Hartnett White), Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy (Regnery: 2016).…
Continue ReadingThere was shock, surprise, and humor in the media when Trump not only denounced wind “mills” for intermittency, lack of predictable value, property losses, and bird kills but also topped his discussion with
“They say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, okay?”
Is President Trump correct in his five critical points? Even the last one? Or is it possible, as Trevor Noah suggested, turbines might be the only things that don’t cause cancer.
1. Intermittency
Electricity must be consumed the moment it is produced. Storage to allow deviations is prohibitively expensive in all but the rarest of settings. And it has always been this way.
Trump said, “Honey I’d like to watch TV tonight: are the turbines working?” And then his quotation from the Washington Republican fundraiser:
“Is the wind blowing?…
Continue Reading“The Green New Deal is a massive investment program, not an expenditure. The question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what is the cost of inaction, and what will we do with our new shared prosperity created by the investments in the Green New Deal.”
“The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from farting cows or air travel before then.”
It was an embarrassment–and to my knowledge, the most ill-conceived energy proposal in the history of the United States by a major political party since the oil-industry nationalization proposals of the shortage 1970s.
The Green New Deal FAQ was published on the website of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) on February 5, 2019, only to be taken down after an outcry over its proposed elimination of air travel and cow flatulence within ten years (quotation above).…
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