[Editor note: This post from February 19th is reprinted and expanded upon given the Obama Administration’s release of $2 billion this week for electric car components built in the U.S]
The wisdom of the ages applies to energy. The smartest-guys-in-the-room approach to energy transformation by DOE secretary Stephen Chu, based on a false premise of the unsustainability of hydrocarbon energy, should note such history. The silver bullets that he is looking for have a long, failed history for good reason.
Take for example the electric car, a perennially bad idea for receiving taxpayer subsidies. Below, produced verbatim, is an eye-witness account of a conversation between the father of electricity and the father of the automobile that took place some 113 years ago.
This conversation, dated as August 1896 by the eyewitness Samuel Insull (1859–1938), himself considered the father of the modern electricity industry, is recounted in his autobiography, The Memoirs of Samuel Insull (full cite at end):
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“He asked me no end of details,” to use Mr.…
Continue ReadingThere is that old saying–when you dig yourself into a hole, stop digging! Joe Romm at the influential climate blog Climate Progress continues to dig deeper in his spat with Roger Pielke, Jr., who is seen by Left and Right as a straight-shooter in the polarized climate debate.
This is an instance where bad behavior by Romm is backfiring on him and his sponsor, the Center for American Progress (CAP).
Pielke’s post, “Please Read Climate Progress” (July 31) begins:
… Continue ReadingIt’d sure be nice if people who disagree could debate policy questions based on the merits of the issue. Of course, this is not reality. I have been amused to see Joe Romm … find himself unable to respond to the policy arguments that I make, and thus find himself having to instead engage in ever more shrill and personal attacks on me.
[Editor note: For more background and the likely consequences of EPA’s endangerment finding, see Marlo Lewis, “CO2 Regulation under the Clean Air Act: Economic Train Wreck, Constitutional Crisis, Legislative Thuggery“]
In their recent draft of an endangerment-finding technical support document (TSD), scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conclude that carbon dioxide emissions are a public health hazard and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Federal law requires that regulations be based on scientific information that is “accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased”; the most recent available; and collected by the “best available methods.” The EPA’s TSD on carbon emissions violates all of these requirements.
Staff researcher Dr. Alan Carlin, given just a few days to review the draft TSD, took EPA to the woodshed because the report offered little more than a bibliography of out-of-date reports and research rather than a rigorous scientific inquiry into the subject.…
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