Reply To: Cap and Trade

[Brian H]

Breakable wrote: Well I will promise to read up on Bastiat if you promise to read up on Karl Marx. There is always different (and extreme) opinions present in each matter of importance. I don’t believe that any extreme opinion can be right, as usually a synthesis is adopted. Anyone knows a purely socialist or purely liberal country?

Thank you notifying me about the source of the infamous “Global Warming”, but I don’t believe it is of any relevance. Most important is to determine if it real, if it is caused by carbon dioxide and if it can cause any problem. It is really interesting when skeptic’s attack those three points out of order. Does it mean attacking the “causing problem” point that they accept it is real? In my opinion this should be left for scientists to determine, and as far as I know there is a 90% consensus on all three (or at least a conspiracy).

Sorry for the huge mistake in grammar, still you got my point nevertheless. Now lets imagine that the nuclear guys cost will be reduced from 1.5¢/kwh to 0.15¢/kwh. Does this change anything if there are no changes in infrastructure? Hopefully the regulators will interfere and fix the consumer price. By 1.3¢ 😉

Concerning your professor, I believe everyone is entitled to an opinion. Some facts would be nice. I have none. Do you? That correlation you mentioned is a very inaccurate. Different countries, different education, different spending. Same country different time-line might be better, but compensation for delay is needed. I am not scientist of course.

Interesting notice about the heath-care. I guess you should get what you pay for.

PS:I don’t agree that Facts are Opinions, would you like a separate thread to discuss that?
PSPS:Sorry for being brief – I have two infants on my hands, and they are not open for debate 😀

There’s no possible way to reduce the nuclear guys’ costs by a factor of 10. That was the marginal cost for production from an existing plant, by the way, without allowance for catastrophic maintenance or replacement. (Which happens about every 30-40 years. I grew up in the community that mans the atomic plant at Chalk River Ontario that just developed (discovered) serious leaks in its vessels and plumbing, and cut the world’s supply of medical radioisotopes in half. The pressure vessel that failed was installed in the ’70s. Recommended replacement time by the supplier was 15 years. The repairs may be completed in 6 months, or the plant may shut down permanently because it’s irreparable. Even little fission plants are subject to very expensive corrosion! It’s all them nasty neutrons.)

I’ve read a fair amount of Marx, btw. He assumed the proletariat could be motivated to work for the state out of sheer love for the corpus socialismus (as ruled and regulated, of course, by his dedicated and enlightened disciples, the vlasti). In practice the Russian workers’ motto, e.g., was, “The state pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.”

Getting back to Cap-and-Trade, the fundamental assumption is that the state owns the rights to produce carbon dioxide (or anything else), and can sell and limit the supply of those rights — globally! Neither is valid, except by force of arms. It’s just another way for the middle and lower classes of the world to fund the AGW gravy train carrying the bureaucrats, academics, green power scammers and exploiters, and speculators.

CO2 is a resource, not a pollutant. Plants love it (greenhouse operators keep their atmospheres at 1000-2000ppm to maximize crop growth and health), and it has no marginal effect on climate (its absorption spectrum capacity is maxed-out already. Even Venus, with 90+ times the atmospheric density, and 100% CO2 atmosphere, has only a tiny fraction more CO2 GH effect than Earth. Earth has experienced ice ages during periods when CO2 levels were 10X those currently present. CO2 is irrelevant.)

It certainly wasn’t responsible for the heating of Pluto, Triton, Mars, etc. that occurred during the ’90s. Or of Earth.