One day we may wake up to find that it was a turning point in the quest/battle for clean, renewable, planetary energy use. Germany is planning to scrap nuke use altogether, with positive repercussions elsewhere. In the market system, it's always been a question of true price discovery, a game that's been crooked from the outset because the resource controllers and refinery processors have had their thumbs on the scales.
"A recent analysis conducted by Carbon Brief investigated no less than 900 published papers, all of which cast doubts on climate change, or even speak against it. After concluding this investigation, they found that 9 out of 10 of the most prolific ones had some sort of connection with Exxon Mobil. You can find a link to these papers at the Global Warming Policy Foundation.More on true price discovery of energy, or "energy return on investment" [EROI] here. How does society price in the costs of "circulatory/respiratory, central nervous system, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, urogenital, and ‘other’ types of defects" in children born under the shadow of mountain top removal into a ton of coal? Or the costs of "elevated rates of mortality, lung cancer, and chronic heart, lung and kidney disease in coal producing communities."
The results showed that out of the 938 papers cited, 186 of them were written by only ten men, and foremost among them was Dr Sherwood B Idso, who personally authored 67 of them. Idso is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, an ExxonMobil funded think tank. The second most prolific was Dr Patrick J Michaels, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who receives roughly 40% of his funding from the oil industry.
This goes in parallel with the ‘work’ of the Koch industries; even though you probably haven’t heard of them, Koch industries is the second largest privately held company in the US, and in the past 50 years, they have invested more than 50.000.000 dollars in spreading doubts about climate change, according to Greenpeace."
Read more: http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate-change-papers-exxon-mobil/#ixzz1QP3WPAJm
Indeed, there appears to be some evidence that the value of solar power far exceeds its actual costs "thanks to its ability to reduce peak demand on the transmission and distribution system, hedge against fuel price increases, and enhance grid and environmental security."
Where the costs of nuclear, coal, fossil fuel, natural gas, etc. are being wildly underestimated while the beneficial value of, e.g., solar is being shortchanged we do not have an efficient market. Necessary information is being squelched and distorted to prevent the emergence of a truly efficient market via proper price discovery.
As the facts emerge, we are seeing some inroads against the propaganda machine, though.
How many Cassandras is it going to take to get us to wake up to the facts? Will a mass sea life extinction event be our canary in the coal mine? (Welcome home, mate! Thanks for the pix.)
Progress—let's call it—is taking place, however slowly. Hell, even the royal Saudi oil barons are thinking ahead—to the tune of $100 billion. Maybe they recognize we're running out of their principal asset—oil. And we all know that the only thing they have more of than oil is sunlight. Or maybe sand.
Who would've thought to rent out the otherwise unusable sunny rooftop of your massive factory or big box store to become an efficient energy producer?
So, yeah, some solutions are emerging. Still, we must hold the paid deniers, the propagandists, the shills in the media and politics who are doing the 'dirty' business of trying to keep the scales—market, justice, moral, information—imbalanced, to account. It's the individuals I'm talking about here, not the corporations—with one exception.
J'accuse:
- Sammy Wilson, Environment Minister, Northern Ireland
- Vaclav Klaus, President, Czech Republic
- Steve Milloy, Columnist, FoxNews
- Pat Michaels, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
- Christopher Monckton, Former Adviser to Margaret Thatcher
- Sarah Palin, Celebrity, Former R-Governor, Alaska
- James Inhofe, Senator, R-Oklahoma
- Melanie Phillips, Columnist, Daily Mail
- Christopher Booker, Columnist Daily Telegraph
- David Bellamy, TV Presenter
- Glenn Beck, Radio Talk Show Host, FoxNews
- Steve Doocy, Anchor, FoxNews
- Michael Steele (now Reince Preibus), Chair, Republican National Committee
- George Will, Columnist, Washington Post
- Blaine Leutkemeyer, Representative, R-Missouri
- U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- Phelim MacAleer, Film Director & Producer
- Stephen Moore, Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
- Fred Barnes, Co-Founder, Weekly Standard
- Roy Spencer, Former NASA Scientist
- John Shimkus, Representative, R-Illinois
- John Coleman, Founder The Weather Channel
- David Koch
- Charles Koch
- Jim DeMint, Senator, R-South Carolina
- Sherwood B. Idso, President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
- Rick Santorum, Presidential Candidate, R-FMFL
- Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio Host
[UPDATED to fix links. Again to add FMFL and Solar Cost link.]
