What Embarrassingly Transparent Anguish...
Chris Nelder's embarrassingly transparent anguish is based on two false presumptions:
(1) The world is running short of energy resources
(2) The world is warming alarmingly due to man-made CO2 emissions
If neither of these propositions turns out to be true, the whole enviro-driven house-of-cards collapses. We could then stop having all the pointless marginal arguments about subsidies here and boondoggles there. And the democratic nations of the world could finally get on with the real job facing the 21st Century: improving the prosperity and wellbeing of human societies everywhere and, yes, protecting much more effectively the environment for all mankind.
To suggest that the world is running short of energy resources is simply ludicrous. In the short term, coal and gas, and in the long term nuclear fission fuel, is all in plentiful enough supply to see us through several centuries. And that is assuming there are no other new technology breakthroughs in the next 100 years, such as nuclear fusion.
So Nelder and his fellow travelers badly need the second presumption to be true - otherwise the whole gravy train comes to a grinding halt.
For 30 years or more the enviros have been playing the CO2 game very skilfully. But in recent years they have been slowly losing traction as the public has finally come to realise that it is all just a scam cooked up by financial interest groups. Anyone with half a scientific training can see through it. Just look at the published temperature record of the last 150 years: the earth's mean temperature is going up at the rate of 0.4degC per hundred years. Yes, really, that is all that is happening. But of course none of the enviros will face up to real data because they have a mission to achieve. It is all just a bad case of the Emperor's New Clothes...
Fortunately the political system is now finally showing signs of responding to the concerns of ordinary voters. Hence Romney's stance. The same political process is slowly but surely under way in Europe as people over here also ask why their electricity bills are skyrocketing. We have worked out the absurdities of wholly uneconomic wind farms that produce derisory amounts of electricity at huge installed cost, and solar panels that have proved to be less-than-useless in northern latitudes. And we have looked out of the window and simply observed an ever-changing natural climate - up and down, as of old.
Hooray for the democratic process.
