Let us suppose that human activity is exacerbating the "greenhouse effect" and increasing the amount of surface-temperature warming by some percentage. (I refer to this phenomenon as "AGW," short for anthropogenic global warming). As a result, global average temperatures will continue to rise, the oceans will rise by a few feet, blah, blah, blah. There will be some positive results - longer growing seasons in Canada and Siberia, for example, but overall, the results will be, shall we say, "bad."
Let us also suppose that the biggest contributors to AGW are coal burned in electric power plants and motor fuels burned in cars, trucks, planes, trains, and industrial & farm equipment.
So let's look at the current situation and known trends around the globe today.
We know that developing countries, having collectively more than half of the world's population, are keen to "come into the 21st century," which is to say, they want reliable electric power, air conditioning, computers, cars, reliable mass transit, and so forth.
So they are building electric power plants constantly, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And these power plants will essentially all be powered by the cheapest available fuel: coal. (Much of that coal will come, thankfully, from exotic places like West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania).
And they are making and buying cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, etc., as quickly as they can. All gas or diesel-powered.
We also have the forward-thinking countries like Germany and Japan, both significant users of electric power, who have decided to shun nuclear power to the extent they are able, and replace the lost generating capacity with, mainly, COAL. Oh, the Germans are building windmills and solar arrays with reckless abandon, but they are smart bastards, those Germans are, and they realize that baseload generation must done by burning fossil fuels. (And the Russians are, shall we say, not very dependable in offering natural gas - also a fossil fuel, but not as significant a generator of CO2).
I use Germany and Japan as examples, but the rest of the developed world is also turning away, generally, from Nuclear power and will be building their future electric generating plants to burn carbon, in one form or another.
Parenthetically, I have not mentioned Hydro, but mainly it is true to say that most of the better opportunities for large-scale Hydro have been harnessed already. And some are actually being demolished in favor of fish.
And in the face of these realities, we have a President who is determined to slay Coal, as a fuel for electric power generation in this country, in the name of - what? - combating AGW? Are you kidding me?
We could close down every coal-fired plant in the U.S. tomorrow, and the global impact on CO2 generation would barely be measurable, let alone enough to reverse the trend, or even slow it down.
But of course we are not going to shut down our coal-fired plants. What will happen is that the out-of-control EPA will simply strangle the coal industry to the point where it is no longer economically sane to build another coal-fired plant, thus increasing Americans' electricity bills pointlessly for the next several generations. Thank God for "FRACKING," eh?
Our Beloved President likes to bring up the phenomenon of "Global Warming Deniers" in order to ridicule anyone who disagrees with his stupid energy policies. He is fond of making this point on college campuses, where only a small fraction of the audience has ever actually paid an electricity bill, and where the newly-minted grads are keen to find even more people they can look down their educated-but-ignorant noses at (i.e., "Deniers").
I, for one, fervently believe in AGW. And I also believe that it is pointless to shoot ourselves in the foot, figuratively speaking, in a futile campaign to stop it. And I also believe that Mankind is smart enough to figure out ways of coping with warming, one way or another, after I'm dead and long forgotten. One might note that in the Italian City of Venice, they have constructed sea walls to protect the city when the sea levels are higher than usual. Imagine that. Using technology to cope with Mother Nature. Could we do the same for Manhattan? Boston?
It even creates JOBS, by golly. REAL jobs, not government regulator jobs.
Manifestly, this is a distinction that Our Beloved President cannot fathom.
Let us also suppose that the biggest contributors to AGW are coal burned in electric power plants and motor fuels burned in cars, trucks, planes, trains, and industrial & farm equipment.
So let's look at the current situation and known trends around the globe today.
We know that developing countries, having collectively more than half of the world's population, are keen to "come into the 21st century," which is to say, they want reliable electric power, air conditioning, computers, cars, reliable mass transit, and so forth.
So they are building electric power plants constantly, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And these power plants will essentially all be powered by the cheapest available fuel: coal. (Much of that coal will come, thankfully, from exotic places like West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania).
And they are making and buying cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, etc., as quickly as they can. All gas or diesel-powered.
We also have the forward-thinking countries like Germany and Japan, both significant users of electric power, who have decided to shun nuclear power to the extent they are able, and replace the lost generating capacity with, mainly, COAL. Oh, the Germans are building windmills and solar arrays with reckless abandon, but they are smart bastards, those Germans are, and they realize that baseload generation must done by burning fossil fuels. (And the Russians are, shall we say, not very dependable in offering natural gas - also a fossil fuel, but not as significant a generator of CO2).
I use Germany and Japan as examples, but the rest of the developed world is also turning away, generally, from Nuclear power and will be building their future electric generating plants to burn carbon, in one form or another.
Parenthetically, I have not mentioned Hydro, but mainly it is true to say that most of the better opportunities for large-scale Hydro have been harnessed already. And some are actually being demolished in favor of fish.
And in the face of these realities, we have a President who is determined to slay Coal, as a fuel for electric power generation in this country, in the name of - what? - combating AGW? Are you kidding me?
We could close down every coal-fired plant in the U.S. tomorrow, and the global impact on CO2 generation would barely be measurable, let alone enough to reverse the trend, or even slow it down.
But of course we are not going to shut down our coal-fired plants. What will happen is that the out-of-control EPA will simply strangle the coal industry to the point where it is no longer economically sane to build another coal-fired plant, thus increasing Americans' electricity bills pointlessly for the next several generations. Thank God for "FRACKING," eh?
Our Beloved President likes to bring up the phenomenon of "Global Warming Deniers" in order to ridicule anyone who disagrees with his stupid energy policies. He is fond of making this point on college campuses, where only a small fraction of the audience has ever actually paid an electricity bill, and where the newly-minted grads are keen to find even more people they can look down their educated-but-ignorant noses at (i.e., "Deniers").
I, for one, fervently believe in AGW. And I also believe that it is pointless to shoot ourselves in the foot, figuratively speaking, in a futile campaign to stop it. And I also believe that Mankind is smart enough to figure out ways of coping with warming, one way or another, after I'm dead and long forgotten. One might note that in the Italian City of Venice, they have constructed sea walls to protect the city when the sea levels are higher than usual. Imagine that. Using technology to cope with Mother Nature. Could we do the same for Manhattan? Boston?
It even creates JOBS, by golly. REAL jobs, not government regulator jobs.
Manifestly, this is a distinction that Our Beloved President cannot fathom.
What a fucking dumbass!!!
Could it be because they have developed machinery over the last 
