A party is going on, and everyone is drinking milk and eating cookies? Some observers note that there are crumbs and milk all over the floor, and demands that everyone stop eating cookies and that they drink water instead of milk.
Doesn't make sense does it? To some it does, but really think about it, does it solve the actual problem of dirt on the floor? No. That's about how I take the announcement that we must "live green" and use alternative energy.
Now, for the simple sake of argument, lets suppose for a second that Al Gore and his followers are right, that global warming is man made, how do we solve it? The policy makers and MSM propose ethanol, hydrogen, and energy efficiency.? Essentially, drink water instead and spill less of it.? But it doesn't actually solve the problem, CO2 in the air. Infact, it doesn't matter what we do if others in the world don't follow suit.? So, to solve that, they stack the card house even higher by saying the US should impose sanctions and trade barriers with countries that do not comply. And these people think Ron Paul is an isolationist! Incase anyone's been paying attention, the US is not the only market in the game anymore. Europe is gaining dominance and starting to rival us in size and demand, and China is on the verge of becoming the world's largest market by virtue of new found wealth and population. With that in mind, those policies would just diminish anything we do as the goods go to other markets.
With all of that bad news, there is a large amount of good news? You have to search for it, as the MSM hasn't reported much on it, but the internet has. Once again, the internet is lightyears ahead of traditional media, surprise surprise. You see, several smart people have developed ways to capture CO2 straight out of the air. The added bonus is we could realistically scale it up to the point were we can clean out all of the polution produced by the world. The bi-product of this?? Raw CO2, ready for industrial use. And, coincidently, we've found a need for this plentiful gas and "harmful" gas. New oil drilling methods that inject CO2 into oil deposits repressurize these cavities to enable further oil retrieval. This would reopen just about every single matured or "depleting" US oil field, and by the DoE's own estimates, could make us "oil independent", in conjunction with opening Alaskan and offshore reserves of course, for an estimated 40 years.
Go off the beaten path, and real answers appear. So, with all of this good news, why is the MSM and politicians so doom and gloom? Perhaps it's the large amounts of money that have been poured into Ethanol since the 70's, which according to some chemists is even more harmful than oil. Perhaps it's the large amounts of lobbists already vested in alternative energy. Perhaps policy makers don't want to look stupid. Perhaps it's all of the above? But regardless of the reason, real solutions exist, and it wasn't government that found it, it was the free-market. Real surpise there.
©2007 BJSchaefer, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Sunday, December 9, 2007
Last modified: Sunday, December 9, 2007
The views expressed in this article are those of BJSchaefer only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. BJSchaefer is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
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Reader Comments:
Posted By: Fritz
Date: 2007-12-09 19:26:18
Oh, but then the trees would die without their necessary gas, and the world would have to endure another Gore propagandumentary. The real answer is a carbon tax on every human.
Posted By: Scott from Oregon
Date: 2007-12-10 13:35:01
Here is a website where actually scientist use science to discuss the issue, instead of a bunch of rhetoric and defamatory insinuations...
Posted By: BJSchaefer
Date: 2007-12-10 19:29:52
Scott,
Like I said, I wasn't interested in debating the merits of Global Warming in this article, just the mass accepted proposals that they have for it. But yes, I know that site very well and have read most of what is there. Unfortunately, it leaves out a large part of the scientific community and exibits as much propagandic bias as any other global warming "information" site, so it's up to the educated person to rely on several sources to attempt to weed out the bias and find the real information.
Posted By: phoobaar
Date: 2007-12-12 09:40:08
I no longer bother debating the scientific claims of anthropogenic global warming. I've recognized it for what it is: a political movement, with religious overtones. As such, I immediately steer all AGW discussion away from the "science" (or lack thereof), and towards the real issue we should all be discussing -- why politicized science is dangerous: http://michaelcrichton.com/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.html
Posted By: Wilson
Date: 2007-12-13 17:22:40
Great analogy, well told. I agree with what you say about the radical greens, but don't we need the government to help force this carbon capture techonology? The market tends to respond, but only pretty late in the game, not the best plan when it comes to massive climate fluctuations, wouldn't you say?
Posted By: BJSchaefer
Date: 2007-12-14 14:42:20
Well Wilson, that is one theory. However, thus far, government hasn't even been talking about carbon capture, it's been the free-market that's been trying to get this out. Government is trying to get us to "stop drinking milk" while the free market is trying to figure out how to let us "have our cake and eat it too". As far as everything the government has been doing, they are all the wrong programs. Ethanol polutes more than gas, but if you listen to the government, this is the way to go. Evidently, so are carbon taxes, to limit how much normal people can pollute while letting rich people do what they want. No, government has been the one that's been late in the game, and worse, focusing valuable and limited resources in technologies that won't actually solve the problem. It is the free market that's bringing us CNG (compressed natural gas) plugin hybrids (by far the best engine combination for fuel-economy, range, and eco-impact), yet not a single politician I've talked to has heard of it. CNG will get you 100 miles for $3, and that is without hybrid capability. No, on actually solving the issues, government has done more harm than good. They've been great at making us aware, and by doing that generating the demand for these products for the market to respond to, and that is perfectly fine and reasonable. Now if they would stop wasting billions of dollars on all the wrong technology.
Posted By: BJSchaefer
Date: 2007-12-14 15:09:08
Now, what is the role for government in carbon collection? I think this is the one area were government might have a legitimate role, as one of the proper roles of government is dealing with polution as it pertains to property rights. Just as I believe roads are a vital and legitimate function of government, so do I see carbon collection being added to our infrastructure as a role for them to play. This is simply because of matters of scale and viability. The reasonable funding for carbon collection would be either taxes on fuels themselves, or on fuel usage. That would mean either calculating a median pollution expectation on each fuel and average it out per unit, or on cars and power-plants based on efficiency. A combination approach would even be viable as it would provide the best blended approach. The problem is getting our representitives out of their current mindset of "alt-energy", because the market is much more able to deal with this perspective of energy, and get them to focus on their proper roles, dealing with the pollution via carbon collection. This wouldn't be an easy task as there are no lobbists for this, yet there are hundreds of alt-energy lobbists. So, in short, it's less of needing the government to "force" this technology, as much as it needs to actually refocus on it's proper roles. The main reason besides dealing with pollution that I see government as being the major player here is because of the negative economic profits that carbon collection has. It's the non-economic profits we're after here, and therefore the government, the only entitiy that can operate at a loss indefinently, is the only entity capable of delivering it on a large scale that we would need to cope with world-wide pollution. Unlike popular belief on the left, alternative energy answers are being heavily persued by the market players in attempts to capture market share and drive profits. That may sound "greedy" to the average lefty, but the reality is that it means they are trying to find energy sources and combinations that are affordable by the lowest common denominator they can reach. That's good for us, not bad.