Robert Samuelson has a great piece on President Obama’s counterproductive bias against domestic oil and gas production in favor of unrealistic “green” jobs: In 2007, wind and solar generated less than 1 percent of U.S. electricity. Even a tenfold expansion will leave their contribution small. By contrast, oil and natural gas now provide two-thirds of [...]
In The New York Times, John Tierney has an excellent column about why getting rich is the best way to improve the environment: As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, [...]
Tags: earth day, Economics, energy, environment, environmentalism, nuclear
Next Big Future reports on a joint Chinese-South African project to advance pebble bed reactor technology. Pebble bed reactors are an advanced type of nuclear reactor design that promises to be significantly safer than conventional designs, for more details see here. One of the reasons I’ve said that the future may well belong to the [...]
Tags: China, Economics, energy, future, International Relations, nuclear
The Washington Post has an article on how high oil prices are “stumping” the experts. The massive rise in oil prices to $130+/barrel does represent an unprecedented rise in oil costs. However, it shouldn’t be a surprise. The world is facing a “perfect storm” of factors: China and the rest of Asia are still growing, [...]
Jerry Pournelle has a suggestion for how we can make this country energy independent: As to whether American ingenuity can use that technology to help win us energy independence, I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in [...]
Tags: Economics, energy, environment, nuclear
Mike Huckabee says that he wants us to stop consuming energy within a decade. Damn straight it’s time we had a candidate willing to stand up against the laws of thermodynamics! In all seriousness, even if Huckabee meant that we should switch to all renewable sources within a decade, it’s still a silly argument. Even [...]
Jim Geraghty of NRO’s Campaign Spot blog notes a survey that show that global warming is a major political issue in New Hampshire. While much of the global warming issue is alarmist hype, that hype has sunk in. However, even for global warming skeptics the necessity for a smarter energy policy is clear. We can’t [...]
Tags: 2008, energy, environment, global warming, nuclear energy, policy, Politics