Priorities: State Department might delay decision on Keystone XL until after 2012 election

Its profit people they don’t like.

BobMbx on May 10, 2013 at 5:22 PM

Edited for accuracy.

Especially people who aren’t living like medieval peasants. While the “environmentalists” live like medieval lords. Except with all the neat tech toys. (You know, the ones their dreamed-of pre-industrial Eden could never support.)

I used to be merely annoyed with these would-be genocidal, Gaia-worshiping, neo-Luddite lunatics. Now, I genuinely loathe them.

clear ether

eon

eon on May 10, 2013 at 9:24 PM

I deeply care about the environment like a “Gaia-worshipping neo-Luddite lunatic.” And despite the denials of some on the economic right, they really don’t take the environment seriously. Still, the opposition to the Keystone pipeline is so logically twisted to the point of insanity. The presumption seems to be that if we don’t build the pipeline, then magic unicorns will descend from the heavens and provide for all our energy needs. I know that the environmentalists response would be that I’m a right-wing lunatic. Meanwhile, I seem to be kicked out of that club because of my stance on abortion. I don’t know what to do or think. I feel guilty that I’m not spending as much time attacking the environmental movement for this Keystone insanity as do defending abortion here. I am not even sure what is a good forum to engage “environmentalists”.

thuja on May 10, 2013 at 10:18 PM

“Deeply caring” about the environment is one thing. Constantly throwing roadblocks up to economic development and reduced dependence on energy from unfriendly foreign sources is something else entirely.

A fast way to tell if you’re a true neo-Luddite or not is to ask yourself the following questions;

1. Am I for or against nuclear power?

If the first things that come to your mind are “Three Mile Island”, “Chernobyl”, and “Japan”, you may have a problem. The first was overhyped by Jane Fonda (mainly to hype a movie) and the media (to frighten people into not opposing Jimmy Carter’s ban, that was already in the works before TMI even happened). Chernobyl was an example of bad design plus worse construction and incompetent operation. As for Japan, the reactors there survived an earthquake and tsunami with minimal damage; they were shut down mainly due to a propaganda campaign by anti-nuclear “activists”.

If “carbon-neutral” energy is the prime desideratum, nuclear (fission or, now, fusion) is the only cost-effective alternative to hydroelectric (including tidal power). Holy Wind and Holy Sun just won’t cut it, now or ever. (See Ohm’s Law and “scalability”; disregarding chronic unreliability, neither one overcomes line-loss well, and what works on a small scale doesn’t work on a big one.) As for safely running nuclear reactors, ask the U.S. Navy how to do it; they’ve done it at sea, in submarines, for sixty years. (Please note that Carter flunked out of the Nuclear Propulsion School; his only command was a diesel boat.)

(BTW, subs are by far the most dangerous duty in the Navy, other than their powerplants. The loss of Thresher in 1963 and Scorpion in 1968 were due to a steam-transfer system failure and a torpedo malfunction, respectively, neither one related to the powerplant. In Thresher‘s case, the automatic SCRAM of the pile worked perfectly; unfortunately, the rest of the system failed catastrophically. As for Scorpion, its reactor survived a torpedo explosion in the boat’s own torpedo room without rupturing; it was “just” the rest of the boat that didn’t. For an example of what can happen even on a non-nuclear boat, look up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Chopper_%28SS-342%29

Or as one New London grad who switched to Naval Aviation once put it, “What goes up, always comes down. What goes down, does not necessarily always come up“.)

2. Do you still believe in the Paul Ehrlich “Population Bomb” theory?

Ehrlich’s book is still taken as gospel by a multitude of environmentalists who constantly dream of “taking extreme measures” to reduce the human population of Earth. (John Holdren and James Hansen, to name just two.) Most involve reducing us to a pre-Bronze Age technology level, and accepting that about 90% of the human race will die from starvation and cold. (Except for the “best and brightest” in their castles, of course.)

The trouble is, all tracking of world birth rates is trending downward. The “replacement level” at which population remains static is 2.3 births per couple. Exactly no country on Earth is anywhere near this, according to the Worldwatch Institute, WHO, US AID, and several other groups. Most developed countries are at 1.3; the Third World is at about 1.6. The PRC is at 1.2, and dropping.

There may be 7 billion people on Earth today. In 50 years, there will be about half that at best. “At best” defined as “barring another world war or five or more major regional wars”. We’d have hit 7 billion in the mid-1970s, except that World War Two reduced the viable (reproducing) populations of Europe, Russia, and China. Die-offs of adults produce lower birthrates; so do generations that do not “replace themselves”.

If you accept these two sets of “inconvenient truths facts” about environmentalist delusions, you’re not a “Gaia-worshipping neo-Luddite fanatic”. You’re just an adult.

cheers

eon

eon on May 11, 2013 at 7:54 AM