Thread: Should temps pulled out of a hat be basis for economic polic

Should temperatures pulled out of a hat be the basis for energy and economic policies?

Do you believe in magic … climate numbers?

By Paul Driessen
Saturday, December 11, 2010

Average annual global temperatures have risen a degree or two since the Little Ice Age ended some 150 years ago. Thank goodness. The LIA was not a particularly pleasant time.

Prolonged winters, advancing glaciers, colder summers, more frequent storms and extended cloudiness reduced arable land, shortened growing seasons, rotted grain in wet fields, and brought famine, disease and death. Coming after the prosperous Medieval Warm Period – when farmers grew wine grapes in England and Vikings raised crops and cattle in Greenland – it must have been quite a shock.

The LIA underscored how much better a warmer planet is than a colder one. Moderate warming above today’s norm would likely bring expanded cultivation during longer growing seasons in northern latitudes, fewer people dying from hypothermia during frigid winters, and many other benefits.

What caused the Medieval Warm Period to end, and the Little Ice Age to come and go, is still debated. Even the best scientists don’t fully understand what alignments of solar, cosmic, oceanic, atmospheric and planetary forces control this millennial warm-cool rhythm.

In any event, the initial warming of 1850-1900 was followed by perhaps an additional overall 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius) of warming during the twentieth century. However, it was not a steady rise in temperatures, proportionate to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, as “manmade climate disasterâ€

Mindless green dreams

Green Power generates Red Ink

By Viv Forbes
Saturday, December 11, 2010

It’s time to end the mollycoddling of wind and solar energy toys before this stupidity does irreversible damage to Australia’s electricity supply and costs.

The mindless green dream of producing serious base load power from whimsical breezes and intermittent sunbeams has caused a halt to new low-cost coal power, a boom in expensive gas power, a national debate about nuclear power and no effect at all on global climate.

The frivolous wind and solar generators already installed have caused a surge in electricity prices, a bonanza for Chinese manufacturers and well founded doubts about our future ability to keep the lights on.

Provision of cheap reliable energy is a basic requirement for modern civilisation and is the engine that lifts people from poverty. It is far too important to be left to green dreamers, anti-industrial zealots, vote-seeking politicians, engineering illiterates and guilt-ridden millionaires.

It is already obvious from Denmark, Spain, California and Germany that subsidising green power creates very little power but much red ink in the accounts. It always causes massive burdens for tax payers, electricity consumers and industry. Tax payers and investors will rue the day they allowed politicians to waste their savings on chimeras.

Get rid of all the mandated markets, subsidies and tax breaks for all energy generators, and leave power engineers and business managers to work out how best to supply our future energy needs in a free competitive market.

Subsidised power must collapse under its own dead weight. But every day’s delay increases the eventual cost.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30988

More unsustainable than it is sustainable, Wind industry pleas for subsidy

Hot Air From The Unsustainable Wind-Energy Industry

By J.J. Jackson
Saturday, December 11, 2010

Wind energy; you hear a lot about how great it is. But what is the truth? Well, apparently this source of power which environmental activists tout as the solution to all of our problems is more unsustainable than it is sustainable.

Right now the wind-energy industry is lobbying hard to get subsidies which have sustained it renewed. For all the bluster about how great this alternative source of energy is, apparently it is not very economically feasible and has become yet another government boondoggle along the lines of the whole ethanol industry.

Just perusing the articles of the past couple days we see that those making their living off wind-energy are really concerned about not getting their hands into the precious government cookie jar. At DesmoinesRegister.com, there is an article called “Wind industry pleas for subsidyâ€