It would be nice if someone could inform the Democrats of WA State who have imposed a 20% climate tax on the propane I use to heat the house in winter, and which makes motor fuel 50% more expensive than in the Great Plains. And who have lied about all of it from the get-go, and still do.
And let's talk about wind turbines that they love. A slight problem, one of a few but this is the worst, yet one that the Democrats are too stupid and too arrogant to admit: The machines are lasting for one-third of their advertised life. It's an engineering issue that no one has solved and that I will explain presently. The issue has required bailouts of Siemens (#2 wind turbine producer, #1 market share in the U.S.) by the German gov't. Similar info for the others isn't publicly available but read on and you will see that ALL of them face it.
It's actually simple. Wind fields are mathematically chaotic. The flows are NOT uniform. Think of wind not as the unified force that we think we feel outside because we don't stop to analyze it, but as what it really is: an infinite number of constantly varying smaller forces. This means that the wind pressure that makes the blades turn varies GREATLY on the blades. Different not only the top vs. the bottom of the blades, but along their entire length, and constantly varying on each foot of each blade as the three of them turn.
As a result, the turbines wobble at the hub. The bearings and gearboxes are warranted for 20 years but are failing at 7 years. The issue has been known since the very beginning. Anyone here drive past wind turbines and notice how many of them aren't turning? That's why. Think it's one of those easy, boring things that the engineers in the basement can fix? Think again. They can't fix it, and as a result, today's wind turbines are tomorrow's white elephants. In utility lingo, "stranded costs." We will be paying those bills for decades.
Even when they are "working," wind and solar are the least reliable power sources. Democrats hate facts and ignore critical problems. Why not, when your solution is to just raise taxes? Mr. Teixeira, I love ya to death, but I'm afraid that, alas, your underlying thesis is tragically incorrect. The "progressives" who run the Democratic Party are every bit as hooked on the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis as they have ever been. They continue to lie their asses off at every turn, and to stick us with the bills for their crusade.
No one wants to tell the public about this. It's buried in the financial news, amid much jargon, not mentioned much there either. The intrepid general "news" media, including Fox, are too lazy and stupid (bunch of airheads, really) to even look at it, and the "progressives" won't be caught dead acknowledging the facts because then there'd be one hell of a lot of explaining to do.
I guarantee that I didn't make it up. Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? The search term is wind turbine bearing failure. Again, this is absolutely NOT some typical mechanical glitch, easily solved. Not one bit. Other way around. The only reason why it's not front and center is that the new turbines work for 7 to 10 years, and even longer if they overbuild a wind field so they can leave a lot of them idle.
Bernie Madoff must be having a damn good laugh from the grave. Wind turbines are a mechanical Ponzi scheme. And no, I'm not an ideologue. I don't have a love affair with Exxon. I wish they worked as advertised, but they simply do not.
Had no doubts that you weren't providing accurate facts. Thanks again.
p.s. appreciate also the fact that you can see the flaws in both sides. So do we. We also can see the good ideas on both sides. We're not partisan.....we're empiricists.
I was born and raised in the Midwest. Pragmatism, or to put it differently: "I am in favor of whatever works." By the way, I get in arguments with wingnuts about electric vehicles. They're not quite there yet for the mass market, but watch out for solid state batteries.
They are going to be here, and when they are here, you won't even be able to find a new ICEV. When this happens at acceptable prices (mid-'30s is my prediction), EVs won't need subsidies or adoption requirements. People will demand them.
It will be akin to the replacement of oil lamps by lightbulbs, steam locomotives by diesel electric, cathode ray tubes by LEDs, individual farm machines by combines, sail by steam and diesel, canals by rail ...
All of this stuff is engineering. I was a wind turbine believer until I learned about what I described above. I think the bearing issue really is a show stopper. Can they keep it up with wind turbines? Sure. They can be good "progressives" and ignore the issue, and cause electricity rates to spike. It's what they're doing, and what they will keep doing.
Dirty little open secret: almost all "progressives" are innumerate.
"The reality has begun to sink in for political leaders around the world..." This truth comes about 30 years too late and at a great cost to all working class people of the world. Elected officials should not need 30 years and trillions of tax dollars to face and accept reality. If there was ever an indictment of global "leadership", this is it.
"Rebranding as “we’re just folks who want to bring down your electric bill” is beyond disingenuous." Yes, it is, and that is exactly what Biden and Congressional Democrats did when they passed a bill which spent 3/4 of its appropriations on renewable energy and called it the "Inflation Reduction Act." A Trojan horse with solar panels.
“There’s a big, beautiful world out there of economic and energy policies that can now be considered without the climate movement’s thumb on the scales.
Freedom! Democrats should embrace it.”
Amen, Amen , Amen. When my husband and I graduated from engineering school decades ago we were fierce environmentalists. Donated and had Greenoeace in our wills, bought land and took acres out of corn/ soybeans because of erosion, spent hours upon hours of our free time fighting invasive species and learning about water quality, invested in thousands of dollars in our house getting the very best insulation and kept our house quite cold in winter and warm in the summer. Then sometime in the mid 90s things started to go crazy and by the early 2000s the environmental leaders completely lost their way. The single biggest indicator of that was the screaming of global warming going to destroy all we hold dear yet a complete rejection of the only thing that gave you a realistic way to fight it nuclear energy. If in the early 2000s we had just learned from the issues around nuclear from incidents in Japan, Ukraine and 3 mile we could have been on our way now to a credible reduction in fossil fuels. I have lost faith in all the leadership both political and non political in this area. Total disgust. I want the Democrats to go after environmental issues but this strategy for the past 20-25 years has been a disaster
Exactly. The movement lost me the day they rejected nuclear in any capacity as part of the solution. “No Nuclear” became a religious tenet not to be questioned while the last 30 years have been utterly wasted on “solutions” that barely impacted the problem.
They tried to be too clever in their marketing and forgot what this was about.
It's not climate change, it's about lowering the amount all sorts of harmful pollution. The original scare tactic (in spite of what many will say) was global cooling. Big in the 1970's. Then it was the ozone layer. Then it changed to global warming.
Once they realized the goal seemed to be constantly changing and that harmed the credibility of the movement, "Climate Change" became the label. Who could argue with that. It covered almost all the possibilities and seems like a better long term naming solution.
Then there's the term, "fossil fuels" itself. Another poor choice of labels. That goes all the way back to when oil and other hydrocarbons were thought of as a product of decaying dinosaurs and other prehistoric decaying plant material. During that phase we were told we would be running out of oil (old dinosaurs can't last forever) in twenty years or less and the world would go dark. And cold.
I'm old enough to remember that from my childhood in the later 60's and 70's.
Ds could actually leapfrog Rs by embracing not only small nuclear reactors and large data centers, but a national transmission grid for oil and nukes; embrace AI and big data centers; and most of all get in the forefront of desalinization plants to water these things. Cuz right now, no one is in that position.
But I think that's an impossible U-turn for Ds (It was my Civil War #3)
The Colorado Supreme Court is allowing Boulder County to proceed with its lawsuits against Exxon and Suncor over claims of "nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment and civil conspiracy" extending several decades in the past. If the county prevails in its suit and gets some ka-ching, how soon will every other county in the nation file their own lawsuits? That interval of time would have to be measured with a stopwatch.
Forget other state counties--how about the next POTUS who is climate-lobby-friendly, and their DOJ? Those are parties far more likely to succeed in a suit.
Unfortunately, it's no longer a very far-fetched idea. Heck, it's possible they could just put out an order like this--
Bravo. Very astute observation. It will be a positive for Dems to no longer be held hostage by Climate zealots. Let's hope Western Europe follows the US to sanity, soon.
The current Sec of Energy notes when he studied renewable energy in college at the end of the 1970's, 83% of the world's energy was derived from fossil fuels. Nearly a 1/2 century later, after spending hundreds of trillions of dollars around the globe, 81% of the world's energy still originates from fossil fuels.
Affordable, abundant clean energy will arrive some day, but it would appear, not anytime soon.
I know this is going to make all the magical thinkers here howl with contemptuous derision, but it would be nice if there was even the SLIGHTEST consideration of, you know, boring sciency stuff like what the effect of unlimited CO2 emissions will actually BE. This isn't quite the same question as 'do voters care'.
I mean, I know this is a political site, and political enthusiasts generally believe that opinion polls defeat the laws of physics, but even just one short sentence considering the mainstream scientific position on climate change and the possible/probable economic consequences (I'm not asking for any consideration of non-human life, that would be surreal) would be very helpful if we are even pretending here to be anything other than full-on Republican "fake science/climate hoaxers". This is, in reality, your position, albeit with a slightly more sophisticated gloss and still existent (but declining rapidly into the mist) reluctance to fully embrace the high-octane Fox hyperbole.
People would more willingly trust the "boring sciency stuff" if they hadn't gotten so many false alarms from previous "boring sciency stuff." Look at the endangerment of polar bears: "Using extensive data of polar bears collected by U.S. Geological Survey scientists from 2001 to 2005, a research team including Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Christine Hunter of the University of Alaska determined that climate change in the Arctic is dramatically reducing polar bears’ survival and reproductive rates."
Since then, the population of polar bears increased by 2,000-6,000, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Either institution, or both, might be wrong. But, how can we laymen decide who to believe?
" Citing researchers during a 2009 climate change conference, (Al) Gore said there was a 75% chance that ice in the Arctic could be gone during at least some summer months within five to seven years."
" According to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice in 2023 was approximately 4.23 million square kilometers. "
How can I question the scienciness of a Nobel Laureate like Al Gore? By pointing out that his predictions were wrong.
This illustrates my point about the myopia of political sites about scientific issues perfectly. Why are you waffling to me about the scientific opinions of a politician?
Well, you could bother to look at the overall climatic science, rather than taking one small proxy as your sole metric- which has, as the population of one mammal species, a large set of survival factors, from sea ice retreat to the availability of food in human waste bins.
If you want a boring “sciencey” discussion about climate change, I strongly recommend Cliff Mass’ blog in general and podcast from a few years back. Mass is a professor of atmospheric sciences at UW and an honest scientist as opposed to the climate change fanatics.
You mean, you've found a scientist who says what you want to hear, allowing to disregard all the rest. Again, standard political hackery. If you could explain seriously why Mass is correct and most of the rest are wrong, that would be a meaningful start.
I will, although there's an inherent problem with laymen deciding which scientists to 'believe', as the only grounds on which they can base their opinion is either rhetorical persuasiveness- which is largely scientifically irrelevant- or, as I say, personal political bias.
Still, at least you've referred to an actual scientist, which is more than the Liberal Patriot manages in an entire essay supposedly about a scientific issue. Although, as I say, the Magical Thinking of politics makes it apparently unnecessary.
In general Ruy, I'm a big fan of your Substack, but the tone of this piece is very bad. While I agree that voters don't prioritize climate change, that doesn't make carbon in the atmosphere any less of a problem that ultimately needs to be dealt with.
Fortunately, there is a path that addresses the issue in a way that won't alienate voters, and ironically this is one of the areas where the Biden Administration wa generally on the right path in substance (if not in rhetoric).
The right answer is an abundance, all of the above energy strategy that in the short term pairs continued use of fossil fuels with big investments in greener technologies that will make a broad shift away from them economical. In other words, continue to use fossil fuels (and stop pointless pipelines opposition) with huge investments in nuclear, solar and wind, and battery technology, as well as significant investments in more speculative technologies like carbon sequestration.
Abundance is clearly the right answer here, and we should be celebrating more than dancing on the grave of climate activism. And while that may be in practice what you're calling for, I think the tone of this piece doesn't lead in that direction.
The Biden administration missed the mark on policy by restricting new leases for oil and gas drilling, refusing to lessen the red tape around nuclear, and going all in on wind and solar which are the least reliable and shortest lasting means of generating power and come with their own host of environmental issues when implemented at scale that are perpetually swept under the rug.
I agree with your idea of huge investments in nuclear. Until I see the political leadership pushing this and more importantly doing the hard work of getting all the political non Profit groups pushing this I give zero credibility to abundance. The key issue of the global warming groups and their leaders is that they allowed a completely unrealistic position of setting carbon emission goals without getting their members to understand they had to do this primarily through nuclear energy. Instead they took the easy and lazy way of letting these groups think they did not need nuclear as their cornerstone. This was the heart of their problem which has ended them where they are now. I am not saying it will be easy. It will not be easy it will be tough as ….. but that is the only path of ultimate political success.
That said, while I agree that nuclear energy is an important part of the puzzle because of intermittency issues with solar (and wind), we also shouldn't overstate its important. Solar is already cheaper than nuclear and on a path to get cheaper. And advances in battery power could further reduce some of the need for nuclear.
Biden invested tens of billions of dollars in nuclear compared to hundreds of billions of dollars in other renewable energy. Now I am happy for any money going there but tens of billions is not a serious investment. Just wait. The practical engineering, environmental and other issues are going continue to reveal themselves in all the non nuclear renewable. I am not saying we shouldn’t do them. I am saying they are not a practical way of long term getting us the energy we will need over the next 75-200 years.
I'm not technical enough to be able to substantively discuss whether you're last sentence is correct or not. I will just say that I'm more optimistic than you. The sun, tides, and winds obviously produce enormous energy, and I think over the last hundred years it's been a mistake to bet against technological progress achieving things that just a few years were considered unsolvable problems. So I'm optimistic that the challenges involved in converting this latent energy into usable electricity can be solved.
Anyway, I think we'll have to return to this question in 5-10 years to know. I'll put something in my calendar. :) :)
Fundamental extremism , ignorance and intimidation that so typified the climate movement caused leftist governments around the world that have cost thier economies so much since the early 1990s.
That blighted ignornance on full display on the NYT editorial page contending that higher electricity costs across America is because of insufficient committment to decarbonize Amerian regardless of the real economic consequences.
Transgenderism, open borders, anti-Semitism and climate change are the crosses that the Democratic party will die on.
Affordability is a real issue, but as always leftist governance will only make it worse.
I don't mind at all being concerned about climate change and the effects of fossil fuels.
What I do mind is that progressives don't understand human nature. And human nature abhors rapid change. We didn't evolve to welcome massive and rapid changes. We evolved by keeping things the same.
So the trick is to meet voters where they are, and then give them alternatives that are climate friendly and people friendly, and then let them gradually see that they work for them. Look at the number of people who happily bought Priuses. Don't force your views on people, progressives.
Climate change as a phenomenon- whether you believe it is a cataclysmic right-now emergency, or a slow boil problem to fix - cannot be addressed in any meaningful way. It is a GLOBAL problem. There is no global consensus, nor is there a global body with authority to create policy and the teeth to back it up. Man cannot solve truly global problems without a global totalitarian government (a cure worse than the disease).
So all the (obviously costly) solutions being tried result in competitive advantages for those not participating. Second tier countries become free riders while first tier countries cheat like a 5-fingered poker player.
The countries that pivot from “solving it” to new tech for a warmer world will probably be the winners. Of course any breakthrough technology like fusion (which has shown promise of late) or even new types of fission reactors could make all the money spent on climate change moot.
Personally I think most leaders know this but the cause gives them money to play with and a soapbox. Seems like it is running its course though.
It would be nice if someone could inform the Democrats of WA State who have imposed a 20% climate tax on the propane I use to heat the house in winter, and which makes motor fuel 50% more expensive than in the Great Plains. And who have lied about all of it from the get-go, and still do.
And let's talk about wind turbines that they love. A slight problem, one of a few but this is the worst, yet one that the Democrats are too stupid and too arrogant to admit: The machines are lasting for one-third of their advertised life. It's an engineering issue that no one has solved and that I will explain presently. The issue has required bailouts of Siemens (#2 wind turbine producer, #1 market share in the U.S.) by the German gov't. Similar info for the others isn't publicly available but read on and you will see that ALL of them face it.
It's actually simple. Wind fields are mathematically chaotic. The flows are NOT uniform. Think of wind not as the unified force that we think we feel outside because we don't stop to analyze it, but as what it really is: an infinite number of constantly varying smaller forces. This means that the wind pressure that makes the blades turn varies GREATLY on the blades. Different not only the top vs. the bottom of the blades, but along their entire length, and constantly varying on each foot of each blade as the three of them turn.
As a result, the turbines wobble at the hub. The bearings and gearboxes are warranted for 20 years but are failing at 7 years. The issue has been known since the very beginning. Anyone here drive past wind turbines and notice how many of them aren't turning? That's why. Think it's one of those easy, boring things that the engineers in the basement can fix? Think again. They can't fix it, and as a result, today's wind turbines are tomorrow's white elephants. In utility lingo, "stranded costs." We will be paying those bills for decades.
Even when they are "working," wind and solar are the least reliable power sources. Democrats hate facts and ignore critical problems. Why not, when your solution is to just raise taxes? Mr. Teixeira, I love ya to death, but I'm afraid that, alas, your underlying thesis is tragically incorrect. The "progressives" who run the Democratic Party are every bit as hooked on the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis as they have ever been. They continue to lie their asses off at every turn, and to stick us with the bills for their crusade.
You comment was very informative. Thank you.
No one wants to tell the public about this. It's buried in the financial news, amid much jargon, not mentioned much there either. The intrepid general "news" media, including Fox, are too lazy and stupid (bunch of airheads, really) to even look at it, and the "progressives" won't be caught dead acknowledging the facts because then there'd be one hell of a lot of explaining to do.
I guarantee that I didn't make it up. Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? The search term is wind turbine bearing failure. Again, this is absolutely NOT some typical mechanical glitch, easily solved. Not one bit. Other way around. The only reason why it's not front and center is that the new turbines work for 7 to 10 years, and even longer if they overbuild a wind field so they can leave a lot of them idle.
Bernie Madoff must be having a damn good laugh from the grave. Wind turbines are a mechanical Ponzi scheme. And no, I'm not an ideologue. I don't have a love affair with Exxon. I wish they worked as advertised, but they simply do not.
Had no doubts that you weren't providing accurate facts. Thanks again.
p.s. appreciate also the fact that you can see the flaws in both sides. So do we. We also can see the good ideas on both sides. We're not partisan.....we're empiricists.
I was born and raised in the Midwest. Pragmatism, or to put it differently: "I am in favor of whatever works." By the way, I get in arguments with wingnuts about electric vehicles. They're not quite there yet for the mass market, but watch out for solid state batteries.
They are going to be here, and when they are here, you won't even be able to find a new ICEV. When this happens at acceptable prices (mid-'30s is my prediction), EVs won't need subsidies or adoption requirements. People will demand them.
It will be akin to the replacement of oil lamps by lightbulbs, steam locomotives by diesel electric, cathode ray tubes by LEDs, individual farm machines by combines, sail by steam and diesel, canals by rail ...
All of this stuff is engineering. I was a wind turbine believer until I learned about what I described above. I think the bearing issue really is a show stopper. Can they keep it up with wind turbines? Sure. They can be good "progressives" and ignore the issue, and cause electricity rates to spike. It's what they're doing, and what they will keep doing.
Dirty little open secret: almost all "progressives" are innumerate.
"The reality has begun to sink in for political leaders around the world..." This truth comes about 30 years too late and at a great cost to all working class people of the world. Elected officials should not need 30 years and trillions of tax dollars to face and accept reality. If there was ever an indictment of global "leadership", this is it.
"Rebranding as “we’re just folks who want to bring down your electric bill” is beyond disingenuous." Yes, it is, and that is exactly what Biden and Congressional Democrats did when they passed a bill which spent 3/4 of its appropriations on renewable energy and called it the "Inflation Reduction Act." A Trojan horse with solar panels.
The demise of the climate cult isn't just good news for Democrats; it's good for America.
“There’s a big, beautiful world out there of economic and energy policies that can now be considered without the climate movement’s thumb on the scales.
Freedom! Democrats should embrace it.”
Amen, Amen , Amen. When my husband and I graduated from engineering school decades ago we were fierce environmentalists. Donated and had Greenoeace in our wills, bought land and took acres out of corn/ soybeans because of erosion, spent hours upon hours of our free time fighting invasive species and learning about water quality, invested in thousands of dollars in our house getting the very best insulation and kept our house quite cold in winter and warm in the summer. Then sometime in the mid 90s things started to go crazy and by the early 2000s the environmental leaders completely lost their way. The single biggest indicator of that was the screaming of global warming going to destroy all we hold dear yet a complete rejection of the only thing that gave you a realistic way to fight it nuclear energy. If in the early 2000s we had just learned from the issues around nuclear from incidents in Japan, Ukraine and 3 mile we could have been on our way now to a credible reduction in fossil fuels. I have lost faith in all the leadership both political and non political in this area. Total disgust. I want the Democrats to go after environmental issues but this strategy for the past 20-25 years has been a disaster
Exactly. The movement lost me the day they rejected nuclear in any capacity as part of the solution. “No Nuclear” became a religious tenet not to be questioned while the last 30 years have been utterly wasted on “solutions” that barely impacted the problem.
They tried to be too clever in their marketing and forgot what this was about.
It's not climate change, it's about lowering the amount all sorts of harmful pollution. The original scare tactic (in spite of what many will say) was global cooling. Big in the 1970's. Then it was the ozone layer. Then it changed to global warming.
Once they realized the goal seemed to be constantly changing and that harmed the credibility of the movement, "Climate Change" became the label. Who could argue with that. It covered almost all the possibilities and seems like a better long term naming solution.
Then there's the term, "fossil fuels" itself. Another poor choice of labels. That goes all the way back to when oil and other hydrocarbons were thought of as a product of decaying dinosaurs and other prehistoric decaying plant material. During that phase we were told we would be running out of oil (old dinosaurs can't last forever) in twenty years or less and the world would go dark. And cold.
I'm old enough to remember that from my childhood in the later 60's and 70's.
It isn't just about climate, it is about destroying capitalism.
The name for these people is watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside.
Ds could actually leapfrog Rs by embracing not only small nuclear reactors and large data centers, but a national transmission grid for oil and nukes; embrace AI and big data centers; and most of all get in the forefront of desalinization plants to water these things. Cuz right now, no one is in that position.
But I think that's an impossible U-turn for Ds (It was my Civil War #3)
The Colorado Supreme Court is allowing Boulder County to proceed with its lawsuits against Exxon and Suncor over claims of "nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment and civil conspiracy" extending several decades in the past. If the county prevails in its suit and gets some ka-ching, how soon will every other county in the nation file their own lawsuits? That interval of time would have to be measured with a stopwatch.
Forget other state counties--how about the next POTUS who is climate-lobby-friendly, and their DOJ? Those are parties far more likely to succeed in a suit.
Unfortunately, it's no longer a very far-fetched idea. Heck, it's possible they could just put out an order like this--
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/
--and put Exxon and co. on the list of terrorist groups, citing "civil conspiracy". Then it's not just a lawsuit these companies have to worry about.
Cross your fingers (like I'm crossing mine) that some future POTUS doesn't find such options attractive.
Bravo. Very astute observation. It will be a positive for Dems to no longer be held hostage by Climate zealots. Let's hope Western Europe follows the US to sanity, soon.
The current Sec of Energy notes when he studied renewable energy in college at the end of the 1970's, 83% of the world's energy was derived from fossil fuels. Nearly a 1/2 century later, after spending hundreds of trillions of dollars around the globe, 81% of the world's energy still originates from fossil fuels.
Affordable, abundant clean energy will arrive some day, but it would appear, not anytime soon.
I see absolutely NO EVIDENCE that the Democratic Party has moved away from their climate crusade. NONE.
They are so scared of being outflanked by those even farther to the left that they are doubling down.
That might keep them in the game during primary season but it's going to result in even larger loses in the actual elections season.
I know this is going to make all the magical thinkers here howl with contemptuous derision, but it would be nice if there was even the SLIGHTEST consideration of, you know, boring sciency stuff like what the effect of unlimited CO2 emissions will actually BE. This isn't quite the same question as 'do voters care'.
I mean, I know this is a political site, and political enthusiasts generally believe that opinion polls defeat the laws of physics, but even just one short sentence considering the mainstream scientific position on climate change and the possible/probable economic consequences (I'm not asking for any consideration of non-human life, that would be surreal) would be very helpful if we are even pretending here to be anything other than full-on Republican "fake science/climate hoaxers". This is, in reality, your position, albeit with a slightly more sophisticated gloss and still existent (but declining rapidly into the mist) reluctance to fully embrace the high-octane Fox hyperbole.
People would more willingly trust the "boring sciency stuff" if they hadn't gotten so many false alarms from previous "boring sciency stuff." Look at the endangerment of polar bears: "Using extensive data of polar bears collected by U.S. Geological Survey scientists from 2001 to 2005, a research team including Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Christine Hunter of the University of Alaska determined that climate change in the Arctic is dramatically reducing polar bears’ survival and reproductive rates."
Since then, the population of polar bears increased by 2,000-6,000, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Either institution, or both, might be wrong. But, how can we laymen decide who to believe?
" Citing researchers during a 2009 climate change conference, (Al) Gore said there was a 75% chance that ice in the Arctic could be gone during at least some summer months within five to seven years."
" According to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice in 2023 was approximately 4.23 million square kilometers. "
How can I question the scienciness of a Nobel Laureate like Al Gore? By pointing out that his predictions were wrong.
This illustrates my point about the myopia of political sites about scientific issues perfectly. Why are you waffling to me about the scientific opinions of a politician?
Well, you could bother to look at the overall climatic science, rather than taking one small proxy as your sole metric- which has, as the population of one mammal species, a large set of survival factors, from sea ice retreat to the availability of food in human waste bins.
If you want a boring “sciencey” discussion about climate change, I strongly recommend Cliff Mass’ blog in general and podcast from a few years back. Mass is a professor of atmospheric sciences at UW and an honest scientist as opposed to the climate change fanatics.
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2023/09/new-podcast-my-views-on-global-warming.html
You mean, you've found a scientist who says what you want to hear, allowing to disregard all the rest. Again, standard political hackery. If you could explain seriously why Mass is correct and most of the rest are wrong, that would be a meaningful start.
You can check out Mass and decide for yourself. He makes his own arguments far more persuasively than I can.
I will, although there's an inherent problem with laymen deciding which scientists to 'believe', as the only grounds on which they can base their opinion is either rhetorical persuasiveness- which is largely scientifically irrelevant- or, as I say, personal political bias.
Still, at least you've referred to an actual scientist, which is more than the Liberal Patriot manages in an entire essay supposedly about a scientific issue. Although, as I say, the Magical Thinking of politics makes it apparently unnecessary.
In general Ruy, I'm a big fan of your Substack, but the tone of this piece is very bad. While I agree that voters don't prioritize climate change, that doesn't make carbon in the atmosphere any less of a problem that ultimately needs to be dealt with.
Fortunately, there is a path that addresses the issue in a way that won't alienate voters, and ironically this is one of the areas where the Biden Administration wa generally on the right path in substance (if not in rhetoric).
The right answer is an abundance, all of the above energy strategy that in the short term pairs continued use of fossil fuels with big investments in greener technologies that will make a broad shift away from them economical. In other words, continue to use fossil fuels (and stop pointless pipelines opposition) with huge investments in nuclear, solar and wind, and battery technology, as well as significant investments in more speculative technologies like carbon sequestration.
Abundance is clearly the right answer here, and we should be celebrating more than dancing on the grave of climate activism. And while that may be in practice what you're calling for, I think the tone of this piece doesn't lead in that direction.
The Biden administration missed the mark on policy by restricting new leases for oil and gas drilling, refusing to lessen the red tape around nuclear, and going all in on wind and solar which are the least reliable and shortest lasting means of generating power and come with their own host of environmental issues when implemented at scale that are perpetually swept under the rug.
I agree with your idea of huge investments in nuclear. Until I see the political leadership pushing this and more importantly doing the hard work of getting all the political non Profit groups pushing this I give zero credibility to abundance. The key issue of the global warming groups and their leaders is that they allowed a completely unrealistic position of setting carbon emission goals without getting their members to understand they had to do this primarily through nuclear energy. Instead they took the easy and lazy way of letting these groups think they did not need nuclear as their cornerstone. This was the heart of their problem which has ended them where they are now. I am not saying it will be easy. It will not be easy it will be tough as ….. but that is the only path of ultimate political success.
While I fully agree that they should have done more, the Biden Adminstration was behind nuclear:
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/newly-signed-bill-will-boost-nuclear-reactor-deployment-united-states
That said, while I agree that nuclear energy is an important part of the puzzle because of intermittency issues with solar (and wind), we also shouldn't overstate its important. Solar is already cheaper than nuclear and on a path to get cheaper. And advances in battery power could further reduce some of the need for nuclear.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/nuclear-vs-solar
To be clear, I'm definitely not saying don't invest in nuclear. But we also shouldn't use it as a reason not to continue to investt deeply in solar.
Biden invested tens of billions of dollars in nuclear compared to hundreds of billions of dollars in other renewable energy. Now I am happy for any money going there but tens of billions is not a serious investment. Just wait. The practical engineering, environmental and other issues are going continue to reveal themselves in all the non nuclear renewable. I am not saying we shouldn’t do them. I am saying they are not a practical way of long term getting us the energy we will need over the next 75-200 years.
I'm not technical enough to be able to substantively discuss whether you're last sentence is correct or not. I will just say that I'm more optimistic than you. The sun, tides, and winds obviously produce enormous energy, and I think over the last hundred years it's been a mistake to bet against technological progress achieving things that just a few years were considered unsolvable problems. So I'm optimistic that the challenges involved in converting this latent energy into usable electricity can be solved.
Anyway, I think we'll have to return to this question in 5-10 years to know. I'll put something in my calendar. :) :)
Fundamental extremism , ignorance and intimidation that so typified the climate movement caused leftist governments around the world that have cost thier economies so much since the early 1990s.
That blighted ignornance on full display on the NYT editorial page contending that higher electricity costs across America is because of insufficient committment to decarbonize Amerian regardless of the real economic consequences.
Transgenderism, open borders, anti-Semitism and climate change are the crosses that the Democratic party will die on.
Affordability is a real issue, but as always leftist governance will only make it worse.
I don't mind at all being concerned about climate change and the effects of fossil fuels.
What I do mind is that progressives don't understand human nature. And human nature abhors rapid change. We didn't evolve to welcome massive and rapid changes. We evolved by keeping things the same.
So the trick is to meet voters where they are, and then give them alternatives that are climate friendly and people friendly, and then let them gradually see that they work for them. Look at the number of people who happily bought Priuses. Don't force your views on people, progressives.
Climate change as a phenomenon- whether you believe it is a cataclysmic right-now emergency, or a slow boil problem to fix - cannot be addressed in any meaningful way. It is a GLOBAL problem. There is no global consensus, nor is there a global body with authority to create policy and the teeth to back it up. Man cannot solve truly global problems without a global totalitarian government (a cure worse than the disease).
So all the (obviously costly) solutions being tried result in competitive advantages for those not participating. Second tier countries become free riders while first tier countries cheat like a 5-fingered poker player.
The countries that pivot from “solving it” to new tech for a warmer world will probably be the winners. Of course any breakthrough technology like fusion (which has shown promise of late) or even new types of fission reactors could make all the money spent on climate change moot.
Personally I think most leaders know this but the cause gives them money to play with and a soapbox. Seems like it is running its course though.
Triple thumbs up Ruy!!! You're the best!!!