Central Minnesota gets awful cold relying on green energy!!

I stand by everything I wrote. I acknowledge the economic benefits oil/gas have delivered. I acknowledge the comforts they have delivered. But it's time to move on.

I know a man who worked as a therapist for the oil industry.
Yep, that's right. A therapist.
He started out as an engineer but became a go-to guy for his colleagues who expressed remorse about lying about pollution and the ugly byproducts of drilling and mining and refining oil. If you worked for the industry in a position of decision-making you know exactly what I'm talking about. People in the oil industry learn to lie just like people in the tobacco industry lied. You learn how to justify what you do. This therapist told me about some people in the oil industry who struggled dealing with the filthy health-threatening contamination routinely released into the environment by their industry. He shifted from being an engineer to being a fulltime therapist. All he did was provide therapy to oil executives who started doubting the value of their profession.

Have you talked to the liars who downplayed the BP debacle in the gulf? Have you talked to tar sands mining executives? How about pipeline executives who had to deal with citizens whose community was devastated by a massive explosion? How about the anglers who witnessed the near-complete destruction of a river in Michigan, because of oil? Have you ever examined the pollution discharge permit of a large refinery? Check it out. The amount of dangerous chemicals released into our air and the environment is astonishing. We can do better than oil. Originally Posted by agrarian

So, out of curiosity,

1. Do you believe BP got off easy with the $61.6 billion it spent on the gulf oil spill?

2. Do you believe we should criminally prosecute oil company executives and the companies themselves for lying about global warming?

3. Do you believe the majority of the free cash flows of oil companies should go to victims of global warming, something like what we did to the tobacco companies?

4. Do you believe the world should spend $50 trillion to go to 100% renewable generation by mid century? Do you think money is better spent on that than humanity's other needs, like eliminating starvation, providing medical care, etc?

5. Does your moniker "Agrarian" indicate that you're happy for us to go back to an agrarian society, live off the land and abandon tractors, trucks and airplanes for horses, plows and buggies? Are you willing to do that?

6. If the USA goes back to an agrarian society do you think it will mean diddly squat to the countries like China and India that will be emitting the majority of carbon going forward?

I stand by everything I wrote. I acknowledge the economic benefits oil/gas have delivered. I acknowledge the comforts they have delivered. But it's time to move on.

I know a man who worked as a therapist for the oil industry.
Yep, that's right. A therapist.
He started out as an engineer but became a go-to guy for his colleagues who expressed remorse about lying about pollution and the ugly byproducts of drilling and mining and refining oil. If you worked for the industry in a position of decision-making you know exactly what I'm talking about. People in the oil industry learn to lie just like people in the tobacco industry lied. You learn how to justify what you do. This therapist told me about some people in the oil industry who struggled dealing with the filthy health-threatening contamination routinely released into the environment by their industry. He shifted from being an engineer to being a fulltime therapist. All he did was provide therapy to oil executives who started doubting the value of their profession.

Have you talked to the liars who downplayed the BP debacle in the gulf? Have you talked to tar sands mining executives? How about pipeline executives who had to deal with citizens whose community was devastated by a massive explosion? How about the anglers who witnessed the near-complete destruction of a river in Michigan, because of oil? Have you ever examined the pollution discharge permit of a large refinery? Check it out. The amount of dangerous chemicals released into our air and the environment is astonishing. We can do better than oil. Originally Posted by agrarian

So you can't find any links huh.
Yeah, I know people too. A guy who survived the deepwater horizon event lives close to me. I knew top executives in the company who were control of literally billion dollar "green energy" projects that were career enders because the numbers didn't work out.

First off, my post was about the specifics of what happened in Minnesota. You lnow, the thing you said you don't know the specifics off.
I didn't say anything about green energy. It had nothing to do with electric power. The OP had an article blaming the interruption of gas was because wind farms and solar panels with snow on them. There was plenty of electrical power. They were using space heaters for heat.
The sane among you? Don't the sane among check anything before you claim it as fact?
Liz Cheney and trump said no airplanes. Here is a link about your "getting rid of airplanes",

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ampht...te-air-travel/

I don't know the specifics of what was going on in Minnesota. But you've almost got to have natural gas fired generators to serve as backup for solar and wind. You can't store electricity like you can store natural gas. So when there's no wind or no sun you're nuked.

Given that, and also assuming you're going to keep things around like diesel trucks to reach the hinterlands, the Green New Deal is a fantasy. The sane among us realized that when AOC et al started talking about getting rid of airplanes. Originally Posted by Tiny

1. Do you believe BP got off easy with the $61.6 billion it spent on the gulf oil spill? YES

2. Do you believe we should criminally prosecute oil company executives and the companies themselves for lying about global warming? YES

3. Do you believe the majority of the free cash flows of oil companies should go to victims of global warming, something like what we did to the tobacco companies? KINDA MURKY, THIS STATEMENT

4. Do you believe the world should spend $50 trillion to go to 100% renewable generation by mid century? Do you think money is better spent on that than humanity's other needs, like eliminating starvation, providing medical care, etc? THE TRANSITION SHOULD BE ORDERLY, ACKNOWLEDGING THE NEED FOR INVESTORS TO BE FOREWARNED AND RECEIVING THEIR MONEY ON INVESTMENT. IT IS CRITICAL TO CEASE INVESTMENT IN FOSSIL FUELS, OTHER THAN MAINTAINING FOR THE NEAR-TERM. BACK OFF FROM FOSSIL FUELS IN A SMART WAY, NOT HAPHAZARDLY.

5. Does your moniker "Agrarian" indicate that you're happy for us to go back to an agrarian society, live off the land and abandon tractors, trucks and airplanes for horses, plows and buggies? Are you willing to do that? DOES YOUR MONIKOR INDICATE YOUR ARE SMALL? DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THE WORD AGRARIAN?

6. If the USA goes back to an agrarian society do you think it will mean diddly squat to the countries like China and India that will be emitting the majority of carbon going forward?
I REFER TO THE SECOND PART OF MY ANSWER TO # 5.

By the way, the figure cited as the investment by BP to alleviate problems caused by the oil spill -$61.6 billion- is disputable. The bigger thing to understand is that some of the damage is relatively permanent. Unlike hypoxia...

First off, my post was about the specifics of what happened in Minnesota. You lnow, the thing you said you don't know the specifics off.
I didn't say anything about green energy. It had nothing to do with electric power. The OP had an article blaming the interruption of gas was because wind farms and solar panels with snow on them. There was plenty of electrical power. They were using space heaters for heat.
The sane among you? Don't the sane among check anything before you claim it as fact?
Liz Cheney and trump said no airplanes. Here is a link about your "getting rid of airplanes",

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ampht...te-air-travel/

Originally Posted by Munchmasterman

Correct, I don't know the specifics of what happened in Minnesota. Yes, compressors often stop working in very cold weather, and that affects deliveries of natural gas. Maybe that's what happened.

I guess I wasn't really responding to your post, as much as trying to make a different point, sorry about that. Beautiful blue text attracts me like a moth to a flame.

And that point was you have to have gas fired generators available when solar and wind can't supply enough power. Gas fired power plants can't exist in a world with zero carbon emissions.

I did some looking and you've got a good argument about the airplane thing. The reference to air travel first came from the FAQ on Ocasio Cortez's web site about the Green New Deal. I'm posting a link and she and her staff proposed to "Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle."

https://assets.documentcloud.org/doc...w-Deal-FAQ.pdf

Republican and libertarian pundits took this and ran with it. Ocasio Cortez took it down from her web site. She didn't back all the way off. In response she says "no one is proposing to eliminate all planes, cars, cows, oil, gas and the military."

But how do you get to zero emissions without eliminating planes? That's a rhetorical question, you don't.

Presidential candidates Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris are co-sponsors of the Green New Deal and Elizabeth Warren heartily approves of it.

DOES YOUR MONIKOR INDICATE YOUR ARE SMALL?

No, I'm huge. My moniker refers to the size of my penis.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THE WORD AGRARIAN?

Sorry, I should have said "non-mechanized agrarian society." Like the Mennonites and the Amish, although their horses and cows do fart and thus emit carbon.

You kind of dodged my fourth question. You probably haven't given enough thought to the costs of getting what you want.

4. Do you believe the world should spend $50 trillion to go to 100% renewable generation by mid century? Do you think money is better spent on that than humanity's other needs, like eliminating starvation, providing medical care, etc?

100% by mid-century might be a tad ambitious, but we should have doubled where we're at today by then.
We are making progress toward cleaner renewables being our dominant source. I want that progress to continue. Trump's promise to make coal big again is foolhardy, and illustrate a perfect example of political glad-handing. Trump is trying to interfere with energy progress, mirroring the approach expressed by some on this board that fossil fuels should be used until they can't be used anymore. I think that's foolish. The figure $50 trillion as a cost to transform the energy sector is unsubstantiated, and is a scare tactic. And -- My vision for American agriculture is quite nuanced, and is based on land management and crop production that minimizes inputs, including fossil fuels. I don't have a bone to pick with the Amish philosophy or other agrarian methods that avoid polluting mechanization, but there are better approaches that utilize more modern applications. If you pay attention to the movements in farming you can read the tea leaves.

4. Do you believe the world should spend $50 trillion to go to 100% renewable generation by mid century? Do you think money is better spent on that than humanity's other needs, like eliminating starvation, providing medical care, etc?

100% by mid-century might be a tad ambitious, but we should have doubled where we're at today by then.
We are making progress toward cleaner renewables being our dominant source. I want that progress to continue. Trump's promise to make coal big again is foolhardy, and illustrate a perfect example of political glad-handing. Trump is trying to interfere with energy progress, mirroring the approach expressed by some on this board that fossil fuels should be used until they can't be used anymore. I think that's foolish. The figure $50 trillion as a cost to transform the energy sector is unsubstantiated, and is a scare tactic. And -- My vision for American agriculture is quite nuanced, and is based on land management and crop production that minimizes inputs, including fossil fuels. I don't have a bone to pick with the Amish philosophy or other agrarian methods that avoid polluting mechanization, but there are better approaches that utilize more modern applications. If you pay attention to the movements in farming you can read the tea leaves. Originally Posted by agrarian

you do realize that you are getting your ass kicked

4. Do you believe the world should spend $50 trillion to go to 100% renewable generation by mid century? Do you think money is better spent on that than humanity's other needs, like eliminating starvation, providing medical care, etc?

100% by mid-century might be a tad ambitious, but we should have doubled where we're at today by then.
We are making progress toward cleaner renewables being our dominant source. I want that progress to continue. Trump's promise to make coal big again is foolhardy, and illustrate a perfect example of political glad-handing. Trump is trying to interfere with energy progress, mirroring the approach expressed by some on this board that fossil fuels should be used until they can't be used anymore. I think that's foolish. The figure $50 trillion as a cost to transform the energy sector is unsubstantiated, and is a scare tactic. And -- My vision for American agriculture is quite nuanced, and is based on land management and crop production that minimizes inputs, including fossil fuels. I don't have a bone to pick with the Amish philosophy or other agrarian methods that avoid polluting mechanization, but there are better approaches that utilize more modern applications. If you pay attention to the movements in farming you can read the tea leaves. Originally Posted by agrarian

$50 trillion is not a bad estimate to get to zero emissions by mid century. The International Energy Agency came up with something like that.

We actually partly agree, and your ideas may not be ridiculous. It's hard to say though because I don't know what "tad ambitious" or "we should have doubled where we're at today" mean.

And I don't know whether you believe fallacies, such as,

The best way to reduce carbon emissions is through mandates, not a carbon tax (preferably one that would be used to reduce the budget deficit or income taxes)

Everything will be hunky dory with a zero carbon economy. Somehow we'll continue to be able to have electricity on cloudy, windless days and airplanes will keep flying and trucks will keep delivering goods to rural areas. We'll still have petroleum based products like plastics, and products that require coal or hydrocarbons in the manufacturing process, like steel and cement.

We need to stop generating electricity from natural gas, even though it's the primary reason carbon emissions in the USA are down significantly over the last 15 years.

If we go to zero carbon emissions, then China and India and Africa and Russia and the Middle East and the rest of the world will too. Everyone is going to join hands and sing kum ba yah. Please note that already China emits a lot more carbon than the USA.

Again, you may not have given sufficient thought to the practicalities, the costs and the trade-offs to get to where you want to go.

A conversation such as this can go on and on.
I am certain of this: No one on this board is deeply involved in the decision-making that will guide our energy future. That means nobody on this board is an influential expert in matters such as this. We all speculate and regurgitate data. We read or relate trends we see in reports and white papers. Some people here can look at their employment experience to bolster their knowledge and expertise. In my employment I lobbied and persuaded large state associations and retirement funds about how to invest their money. Often that involved the energy sector. In a sometimes measurable way this work did, in fact, cause some changes. We were able to move the needle. But the bigger picture was beyond our reach, for sure. I realize that. I happen to hope that the powers that be are leading us toward a clean energy future. I want the momentum of private sector and governmental influence to continue to support clean energy. It appears the trajectory of progress reflects that. No matter what you write on this board, the use and spread of renewable is expanding, slowly, steadily. You can bad-mouth electric cars all you want, but they're happening. You can compare us to China, and no doubt China has a lousy record on CO2 emissions. This is where we need global cooperation. That needs to developed, massaged.

No matter what you write on this board, the use and spread of renewable is expanding, slowly, steadily. You can bad-mouth electric cars all you want, but they're happening. Originally Posted by agrarian

You don't understand people on the other side of the issue. Nobody is going to argue with use of renewables or electric cars expanding slowly and steadily. As their cost comes down they should and will. What many of us don't like are government mandates. This smacks of a command economy. You have arrogant politicians and bureaucrats who don't know the difference between their heads and their asses telling people what they have to do and putting them in jail if they don't. Based on your comments in this thread, you'd even extend that to putting them in jail if they say something you don't like, for example, an Exxon executive or scientist who says global warming may not be real.

If people on your side of the issue would propose a carbon tax that wasn't extreme and the proceeds would be used to reduce our other taxes, you might just get a better reception than you think.

You can compare us to China, and no doubt China has a lousy record on CO2 emissions. This is where we need global cooperation. That needs to developed, massaged. Originally Posted by agrarian

Good luck with that. The Chinese are going to do what the Chinese want to do. The Chinese government has slowed construction of coal fired plants but is still currently adding more gigawatts of coal power capacity than the entire coal power fleet of the USA. And it's not just China you've got to worry about, it's the entire developing world.

Why are the boys on the right so frightened of advancements in technology or stewardship of the planet?

We as a nation are smarter and more innovative than that.

I wonder how many of these fellaz still smoke... Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

You make it sound like we are against advancement...that's BS we are practical people who understand that this "green energy" has to rely on other sources of energy to prop it up so that it can be use a novelty to make people "feel good" about themselves.
Some form of "green energy" will eventually be used as a self sustaining source...but it ain't now!
You sure are good at patronizing people who are realist...and not a bunch of bloviating ignoramuses. That fire coming from you cave...is that you brain storming in there??
Carry on!!

DOES YOUR MONIKOR INDICATE YOUR ARE SMALL?

No, I'm huge. My moniker refers to the size of my penis.
Originally Posted by Tiny

Then I guess my moniker should be John C. Holmes

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