No Hair Shirt Solutions by Gar Lipow
At one time some religious people punished themselves for their sins by wearing shirts made of hair. My work tends to focus on both technological and political solutions that do not involve self punishments. Hence the term “No hair shirt solutions”.
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Carbon fixated
Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking 0
Posted 3 days, 5 hours ago Carbon Fixated has now a exposed a far greater scandal than "Carbongate." It is time to expose the fraudulent religion that worships Issac Newton, who was even fatter than Al Gore, and his silly assertions about gravity, not to mention the meaningless babble of incantations called calculus. Read More -
Peter Dorman takes on Stavins
Giveway’s in Climate Bill still unfair, inefficient 0
Posted 1 month ago Peter Dorman, a strong cap-and-trade supporter points out why Stavins' defense of giveways is wrong. The key paragraphs:To arrive at his judgment, Stavins lumps together the bulk of the free allocations and says, “about 80 percent of the value of allowances [accrue] to consumers, small business, and public purposes.” Hmmmm. So free handouts to electrical utilities are actually benefits to users? So what gets people to reduce their consumption of electricity in order to meet the carbon caps -- brownouts? (Actually, it’s a non-problem because the caps will be illusory -- more in a moment.) And… Read More
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Serious vehicle to grid advocates don't make magical claims, given realistic V2G potential.
2-way connections between electric cars and grid have amazing potential that needs no exaggeration 1
Posted 1 month ago One of the many tasks of running an electric utility is maintaining operating reserves and spinning reserves to handle seasonal peaks, and occasional generation failures.Between peak demand that only occurs a few times a year, and the occasional shutdown for routine maintenance and response maintenance, utilities have to keep operating reserves -- backup equipment that is only run a few hours or at most a few days per year. This is not only a capital cost, but a maintenance cost and an administrative cost. Such capability may not be run often, but when it is needed, it is really… Read More
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Local fetishists still wrong
We need transmission to solve global warming 15
Posted 1 month ago The new version of Energy Self-Reliant States manages to duplicate the fallacies of their previous reports, and adds new ones. Read More -
Self-published book gained mainstream media attention through deception
Attack on industrial wind puffed with false peer review claims 46
Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago Nina Pierpont is a long-time, self-published advocate of the view that living within a kilometer or two of industrial scale wind farms can cause migraines, sleep deprivation, and other serious symptoms and long term damage. Now she's gained mainstream attention by claiming that her new (self-published) book Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Natural Experiment is peer-reviewed.Note, however, that the imprint publishing this work, K-Selected Books, has a four-person editorial board consisting of Pierpont, her husband Calvin Luther Martin, and two other members. Pierpont's husband is also the book's editor. Her book only can be ordered only from… Read More
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Corporate press release of the century. Not a hoax.
Company denies its robots feed on the dead 2
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago “We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission.” Read More -
ACES and eights: dead planet's hand
American Clean Energy Security Act strengthens U.S. ability to sabotage international climate talks 1
Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy Security Act (ACES) won't cut emissions. It won't serve as a platform we can improve later anymore than the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) served as a foot in the door to improve our democracy when it promoted voter purges and Diebold electronic voting machines. But one last argument is left to supporters: we need to support ACES in order to improve America's negotiating position in Copenhagen. -
ACES is not playing with a full deck.
American Climate Energy Security bill still makes things worse. 1
Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago "The girl's not playing with a full deck, Giles. She has almost no deck. She has a three."
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Faith, Hope and Trick.The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) repeals the recently won authority the EPA has to regulate greenhouse gases, and replaces that authority with a loophole ridden cap-and-trade system. Those loopholes include offsets which legally counterfeit carbon credits with the help of clever consultants. They include weakening regulations on ethanol, which compares to oil in greenhouse gas intensity. They include subsidies for coal. They encourage incinerators. Incinerators can be extremely greenhouse… Read More
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Wind: still enough to save the world 14
Posted 4 months, 4 weeks ago Back in 2008, Christina Archer and Mark Z Jacobson published data showing worldwide commercial wind potential exceeded world energy use by many times. A new peer reviewed study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences now confirms his, and further shows that this potential is not limited to a lucky few. Read More -
The issue is not growth or no growth, but a better world
Growing a better world 5
Posted 5 months ago Questioning growth has been the obsessive focus of many for decades. Questioners make important points. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been, at best, a very rough proxy for wellbeing, often not even that. For this and other reasons many liberals, progressives, and leftists consider a "steady state economy" part of building a good society. For all that critics of growth get right, they focus in the end on the wrong thing, on growth rather than waste. Read More
