Interesting Weather Record Set Today

[Chief Grey Bear]

I see you're dealing with this on an emotional level rather than being realistic. So I probably should just let it go.

Yeah you are right. You have really opened my eyes. Especially with your last sentence.

[Tim Smith]

If the market won't do it, it's not going to happen. Spending our grandchilderns money trying to force it down our throats serves no purpose at all. Worse than that, really.

The current govt does want to mandate what kind of energy we use. They are on record as saying that, many times.

But as I said before, I agree with investing in future technologies. I strongly disagree with trying to force it with subsidies and monstorous loan supports.

I'll be in the cheering section when we become energy independent and don't have to import any oil from outside of America. Nothing I'd rather see than most of the mideast on the bread lines. But I'm realistic enough to know you can't replace it with rhetoric.

I don't want to buy Middle Eastern oil, but it doesn't help anyone to leave those countries impoverished. Aside from the humanitarian issues, it's the poor and desperate who are most easily radicalized.

The notion that the profit motive will somehow solve this problem runs contrary to almost every conservation issue that we've ever solved. The profit motive's job it to create profit, nothing more. At the moment, the profit to find and drill carbon based energy is colossal and there is little motivation in the free market (if you look at it from the perspective of financial investments) to do anything else. I would greatly prefer that the market decisions be made for the general good, but they are not.

Pollution is something industry fixes because someone forces them to do it. There's no profit in doing the right thing unless someone is calling you to task. Just as we created the infrastructure for the auto industry to succeed, we can create the infrastructure for new energy sources to succeed, beginning with research and extending to incentives.

And why should oil and coal compete equally with alternative energies for incentive? Carbon based energy sources are the ones causing the problem. They playing field is already tilted in their favor. That's the point of the incentives. If the oil companies want to work on alternative energy (actually work and not put up window dressing) that's great. But the whole point of incentives is to move past this form of energy use.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I don't want to buy Middle Eastern oil, but it doesn't help anyone to leave those countries impoverished. Aside from the humanitarian issues, it's the poor and desperate who are most easily radicalized.

That is true, but if we sacrifice our own country to lift theirs then why do we need to change?

I suppose I'm a skeptic because I don't know that I've seen the government successful at many things, including governing.

We have to feel secure about our future before we can accept a lot of change. Solar is a great example, pour billions into manufacturing and then realize to late that private industry follows a market, not manufacture ahead of it.

We see the same thing now in a battery company that got 100's of billions of our money, and now finds themselves in trouble, but claim they will recover because they still have 100 million, again our money, to redirect their manufacturing. The government has shown to be a poor judge of how to get the people to not only cooperate, but to afford their misguided lead.

The only time the government is generally successful is in tax breaks for specific achievements.

If we're going to get where we can produce energy cleanly we will have to get there in steps. Electric cars that few can afford is a folly, Ethanol using food and huge amounts of water to produce is another folly.

We have ways to make a big impact, but they're ignored because big government isn't interested and they drive congress. We could easily be producing solar and heating energy on rooftops, but the bulk of the $$$ would fall to small independent contractors and if the government really helped individuals financially the profit margin would have to be thin.

[Tim Smith]

That is true, but if we sacrifice our own country to lift theirs then why do we need to change?

I suppose I'm a skeptic because I don't know that I've seen the government successful at many things, including governing.

Clearly, incremental steps are warranted (including more R and D) and the free market has to be able to make profits with whatever new energy sources we have in the future...we agree there.

But to reject a government role for an environmental issue ignores a long history of environmental success. A fishing forum should be deeply aware of some of those successes.

The Clean Water Act saved rivers from being open sewers and made them available for fishing all over the country. That never would have happened unless government stood up and said you MUST avoid harm to our rivers. Most of the businesses that were doing the polluting never would have cooperated to allow that to happen (and still wouldn't) unless they were forced to do so.

Your call for cooperation is more or less a non issue. Marketeers aren't interested in cooperation that doesn't generate profit. If your central point is correct (and I believe it is) that the markets will decide what energy sources we use there is no internal mechanism in the markets to guide us toward less harmful energy sources. As long as shareholders are getting their profits, they simply won't care. They never have...

...until penalties are applied or incentives are available.

Good government sets limits on the reach of the market. The energy market's right to swing their fist should stop at the end of my children's nose.

[Justin Spencer]

If the human population growth curve is a j-shaped curve, as it appears to be, we have probably outgrown our carrying capacity. This kind of curve is followed by a drastic die off, in which case the lack of people will lead to the problem fixing itself over thousands of years. Won't be fun when the curve takes a tumble, but I'm afraid that may be the only fix since it seems to be too inconvenient or not profitable enough to try and fix on our own.

[Haris122]

Yes, I view it realistically. Unless you have a way to magically grow sugar cane outside of it's zone. Maybe switch grass holds some promise. Personally, I love that stuff. Awesome pheasant cover. But that's going to have major drawbacks, too. If farmers switch a lot of their lands over to that, grains like corn and soy beans are going to be heavily impacted, driving up the prices for us and probably causing even more hardship and starvation in 3rd world countries. It's not like there are vast new lands to plant it on. Most everything in our developed nation that is good for crop production is already being used for that.

Valid point Jeb. When it takes enough corn to produce one gallon of ethanol as it does to feed a person for a couple months with same amount of corn, the whole thing just doesn't fly well. And neither do many cases of biodiesel or sugar cane waste derived ethanol, when they cause the destruction of tropical forest/mangroves/all that other good stuff that would probably help the situation more by remaining as it is, than any ill thought out biofuel strategy.

The thing about things like switchgrass that seems more promising (if the big obstacle of breaking down the shoots or whatever efficiently, to extract ethanol can be overcome) seems to be that people took more time, to think out the possible consequences better, rather than just sell it as if it's the best thing in environmentally friendly fuel production ever. It can grow on land not suitable for most food crops, and there's more hope to grow it in a way that doesn't mean the thoughtless destruction of diverse habitat. Some livestock can even be fed with it. Problem does remain, is marginal land ever really set up, to allow for economical harvest of large enough quantities?

Biofuels as they are right now, probably won't be one of the main ways to deal with this. But, the more time there is to tinker with alternatives, the more well though out the solutions are going to be, so might as well put some money into it. After all, oil is getting subsidies too, and as far as I'm aware, they haven't been coming up with any more efficient gasoline, or more economical infrastructure (as soon as a refinery goes down for whatever reason, the price shoots up by a couple tens of cents each time, which begs the question, if the price surges up quickly, yet when the refinery is fixed it goes back down at a snail's pace, what have they done with that subsidy money, other than add it to the profit pile when they should've been fixing/maintaining things with it)?

[Wayne SW/MO]

The Clean Water Act saved rivers from being open sewers and made them available for fishing all over the country.

Very true, but it was applying across the board limitations, and I might add long after it should have stepped in, same with DDT, but it is hard to reward much credit given the lag time.

Across the board incentives would go a long way, but the present atmosphere, like many in the past, is to give money to a chosen few which results in very little results.

Ethanol is a good example of an idea that can only work under certain conditions. If we see this trend continue into another Dust Bowl era drought, the water and the use of corn is going to rapidly become very unpopular.

The government, if they could wake up, should helping people directly to get a better bang for the buck and more citizen involvement. Individual solar generation and heating, underground air ducting are all viable and modern technology can make them even more widespread and useful. We don't however see anything being done that actually makes the average citizen believe he will benefit. Drop his electrical bill by putting solar on his roof and allow him to buy $1.50 a gallon NG for his truck and you'll not only get his attention, he'll ask for more.

I think that's a better idea than a hybrid car burning $3.50 a gallon gas or an all electric that actually uses a fuel that is just as polluting as gas is once the process is totaled.

[Tim Smith]

The government, if they could wake up, should helping people directly to get a better bang for the buck and more citizen involvement. Individual solar generation and heating, underground air ducting are all viable and modern technology can make them even more widespread and useful. We don't however see anything being done that actually makes the average citizen believe he will benefit. Drop his electrical bill by putting solar on his roof and allow him to buy $1.50 a gallon NG for his truck and you'll not only get his attention, he'll ask for more.

This part I think makes good sense.

There is a law (which I believe I understand correctly) which forces the utility companies to buy back solar generated power from individual homes. The solar companies sell the units for a discount and then recoup their costs selling the extra energy. That works in Colorado because we have 300 days of sun a year.

[Jerry Rapp]

headed to page 13. Good, I guess. Lots of interesting thoughts, but I just ask we use common sense. You can't spend more than what you take in for anything and expect to last.

[jeb]

I don't want to buy Middle Eastern oil, but it doesn't help anyone to leave those countries impoverished. Aside from the humanitarian issues, it's the poor and desperate who are most easily radicalized.

Jeez. It was a figure of speech. Lighten up.

The notion that the profit motive will somehow solve this problem runs contrary to almost every conservation issue that we've ever solved. The profit motive's job it to create profit, nothing more. At the moment, the profit to find and drill carbon based energy is colossal and there is little motivation in the free market (if you look at it from the perspective of financial investments) to do anything else. I would greatly prefer that the market decisions be made for the general good, but they are not.

Pollution is something industry fixes because someone forces them to do it. There's no profit in doing the right thing unless someone is calling you to task. Just as we created the infrastructure for the auto industry to succeed, we can create the infrastructure for new energy sources to succeed, beginning with research and extending to incentives.

That's different though. We did have problems with pollution that needed addressing. That's not really the case anymore. Emissions from cars, power plants, etc are far, far better now. And even if you believe the drive toward a "cleaner" source of power is driven by pollution concerns, we won't know if that actually is true of the alternative until we get a viable one to analyse. And no matter what we do, the China's of the world are NOT going to follow suit. So jobs like making wind energy parts will continue to go there where they will be net horribly more polluting. The current regulations we have are a big contributer to jobs leaving now. Making life even harder for businesses here is certainly not going to make that any better.

And why should oil and coal compete equally with alternative energies for incentive? Carbon based energy sources are the ones causing the problem. They playing field is already tilted in their favor. That's the point of the incentives. If the oil companies want to work on alternative energy (actually work and not put up window dressing) that's great. But the whole point of incentives is to move past this form of energy use.

I don't agree. That used to be the concern when we thought our oil supplies were dwindling fast. But I'm not really sure what the push is anymore since we have plenty of oil and coal and they are so much less polluting these days. Are they perfect? Heck no! Do we need abundant electricity and energy? Heck yes! Is there anything that even comes close to replacing them (besides Nukes, which all the greenies seem to hate)? Heck no! The emporer simply has no clothes. Yet. Maybe he will someday, but it ain't right now.

So there's no reason to give them incentives. We just don't NEED them, IMO. If they want to replace the current sources, they should do it on their own. And it becomes an entitlement program. Like with ethanol. Now that everyone is seeing the huge downsides to our current ethanol production scheme, many are calling for the subsidies to be stripped. But nobody can get it done. So it remains tax payer funded.

I do agree with funding some research, though. I agree it would be nice to be leaders in alternative fuel technology, even if the lions share of any jobs go overseas.