Comments on: The United States is the World's True Energy Superpower

By: Cooler Heads Digest 25 September 2009 | GlobalWarming.org

Cooler Heads Digest 25 September 2009 | GlobalWarming.org — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:01:47 +0000

[...] The United States Is the World’s True Energy Superpower Donald Hertzmark, MasterResource.org, 18 September, 2009 [...]

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:08:16 +0000

Oh-but other than that, very informative and and good work!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:07:27 +0000

“the country is a significant producer in every important primary energy source, including oil (#3), gas (#2), coal (#2), wind (#1), nuclear (#1), ethanol (#1), renewable electricity (all sources – #4).”

I have to object to ethanol being called “important”. And I also have to object to touting ethanol as an example of:

“The moral of the story is that markets only make news when they crash. Governments make news all the time.”

Quite frankly, ethanol is in fact an example of the government in the news…when the news is good. The bad about ethanol is often absent though. And make no mistake, our “success” in ethanol has nothing to do with markets.

By: Marlo Lewis

Marlo Lewis — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:14:50 +0000

Great post, Don. Very much in the Julian Simon tradition — you take a dogma embraced by every eco-activist, “concerned” scientist, and “progressive” politician, compare it to facts available on government Web sites, and voila — the myth crumbles. Very nice.

By: John Droz

John Droz — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:10:18 +0000

Don:

There is absolutely no argument that the US needs a sensible energy policy — which would be based on sound science, rather than political favoritism.

Right now lobbyists are running the show, and until that gets fixed I see little hope for genuine solutions. Instead there will be trillions spent on such high-cost low-benefit gestures like wind energy.

By: Donald Hertzmark

Donald Hertzmark — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:45:12 +0000

John,
As you correctly observe, the measures of wind and solar are the implicit metrics of progress according to many in the energy policy world. My purpose in putting all of this information on the table is to show that there is no reason to be stampeded into unwise energy policies and technology support. We already have enough of those, hence our leading positions in ethanol and wind. We do not need to push the envelope further in those directions.

At the same time, unless the government commits in a major way to some particular approach – nuclear, coal gasification, wind, whatever – it appears that such efforts are not even visible in the world of policymakers, even if they are quite significant in the real world of energy production and use. The US shale gas bonanza is not even mentioned in the IEA forecasts, even those relating to LNG trade. Even more striking, the potential for shale resources outside the US is not considered in any gas scenarios. That is the work of normal markets and not of interest to the policy community. In the case of Mexico’s decline in oil output mismanagement and policy errors are taken as indicia of geological catastrophe. We could call such willful ignorance of the impacts of incentives, for good and for ill, the Twinkie defense.

By: John Droz

John Droz — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:22:33 +0000

There seems to be an unsupported assumption here — i.e. that “How far behind the curve the United States is on energy” is correlated to the US efforts in areas like wind and solar energy.

No such relationship exists.

It’s something like saying that the US’s global position regarding food production is related to how many Twinkies we make.

By: Matthew Sinclair

Matthew Sinclair — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:01:02 +0000

The US is falling behind. On the key environmentalist priority, for other people, of being poor and rare. All that diverse energy production is a bit of a waste if you guys have the temerity to produce children and high living standards.