Geez, what’s a Climate Change denyin’, ex-pat Okie s’posed to do? I get up early on a Saturday, can’t sleep — again! — and click onto Drudge and see a link to this: $45 trillion needed to combat warming — SAY HUH??

The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a “energy revolution” that would greatly reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

“Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale,” IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.

A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels.

You get the feeling that the madness will never cease. 45 trillion dollars? Even if the world could, would take on the challenge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50% over that time period and would, could make that level of expenditure, did you see that one statistic, “build some 1,400 nuclear power plants”? The enviro-wackos will never let that happen. The Left bleats about becoming energy independent so that we won’t have to rely on foreign petroleum products, so that there will never again be a war for oil. They demand that the Feds radically up the CAFE requirements for our autos and trucks — regardless of the technologies available and the 3-5 year lead times for the design, engineering and production of a new automotive/truck product. Like $4.50 per gal. and climbing gasoline isn’t making folks abandon their pick-em-up trucks and ginormous SUVs and go out and buy higher mpg vehicles right, friggin’ now!

Out here in good ol’ CA, the I really hate the car nuts would like to see everything be electric. “No pollution that way, dude!” Then you ask them the $45-trillion-dollar question: How shall we generate and distribute the vast quantity of electric power needed to replace all that gasoline being used on a daily basis? More coal-fired power plants? No. “1,400 nuclear power plants”? No way, Jack! Maybe a combination of a little of the first, a little of the second, and a bit o’ drillin’ off the coasts and at Anwar — just to keep it real, function inside reality just a touch? Hell no! Aren’t you listening? We’re killing the planet! The polar bears are going extinct! The weather is our enemy! I’M SCARED OUT OF MY BROWN-STRIPED BVDS!!!!

Of course, our lovable Dems in the Senate tried to shove through a bill that would cut greenhouse gases by not just 50% but by 2/3rds before the sainted 2050 deadline, however Oklahoma’s Senator Jim Inhofe and other Republicans held strong and wouldn’t let this bill as written out onto the floor of the Senate. The authors of the bill had crafted it so that once out of committee there would be scant little debate and few opportunities to amend. As hard as it is to get judicial nominees through committee for a floor vote, sometimes it’s a good thing it’s just as hard to get bad legislation through that process. From what did this killing of the Senate bill save us? Big Lizards has that analysis. [h/t: Cheat Seeking Missiles]

For the innumerate, a trillion is a thousand billion; so $6.7 trillion is the same as $6,700 billion. Divided by 41 years (2009 through 2050) gives us an annual collection of “allowances” (that is, a tax on businesses and on energy sales) of $163.4 billion per year… and even that assumes that the Democrats didn’t lowball their own estimate; if it’s business as usual, their own internal figures probably show twice that big a tax — $326.8 billion per year — which will also certainly be written in such a way that it grows much faster than inflation (every tax seems to do that).

By way of contrast, the estimated expenses of Medicare Part D — the Medicare prescription-drug benefit enacted in 2003 — which has elicited screams of anguish not only from conservatives but even many moderates of both parties — is a mere $36 billion per year. This brand new, carbon-rationing bureaucracy will be more than 4.5 times as large as Medicare Part D, even by the Democrats’ own tendentious estimate. Under the more realistic speculation, it will be nine times as big.

So, gas is at $4.50 for regular at my nearest Chevron and it’s predicted to go up another dime like, real soon, due to yesterday’s meteoric rise for crude. No one on the Left will listen to any reason for allowing our domestic companies to drill domestically, or build refineries (good luck So. Dakota!) or nuclear power plants. No, for them it’s all wind power (but not where “I” can seem ‘em and not if it hurts any birds!) and solar (ditto), and no — “I don’t want you puttin’ up any more of those ugle, cancer-causin’ powerlines anywhere, period!!!!!!!!!. Maybe they think the ghost of Nikola Tesla will appear and serve them up power out of the ether.

Actually, what the enviro-greenie activists want is to rid the Earth of the virulence of “Humanity” — if we would all just go the way of the dinosaur and leave the Earth to itself, all would be fine and good. After all, we aren’t immortal beings, there is no soul, there is no God! There is only the Universe — “We are stardust, we are golden, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

Uh — Just what “garden” is that? Hmmm . . .

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, greenhouse gas emissions

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 8:56 am and is filed under A Future For Mankind?, Global Warming B.S.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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