Trump, Putin, and the Pipelines to Nowhere

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One of the best 'big-picture' summaries I've yet seen.

https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/trump-p ... .cz0hrrr03
Trump has surrounded himself with more oil industry and oil industry connected people than any president in history (even George W. Bush). You can’t understand what’s going on with Trump unless you understand the oil industry… and you can’t understand the oil industry without understanding climate change.

Re: Trump, Putin, and the Pipelines to Nowhere

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Yes, a very good analysis, and I agree with nearly all of it.

But it all adds up to just another way to say the Trump presidency will be a disaster, in this analysis by prolonging the carbon bubble. And he doesn't offer much in the way of ideas or hope that we can counter that disaster.
"To initiate a war of aggression...is the supreme international crime" - Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson, 1946

Re: Trump, Putin, and the Pipelines to Nowhere

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As if America even had this choice last election - Clinton was very cozy with the coal industry (the worst by far). In her emails she praised Rex Tillerson and was also going to offer him a position. She also said that people who care about climate change should "get a life."

The only person that would help climate change was Bernie Sanders. Sure, he retains some of the misguided beliefs of the anti-science left, but I believe he would have listened to science advisors because he sincerely cares about making a difference... Until the DNC conspired to screw him.

That's the problem, democrats and republicans say different things to the people but in reality they are just competing to be bought out by the same industries. It's like a job interview, where we only choose which puppet gets to represent the corporate owners. It's an illusion of choice.


Energy is one of the very few places where Republicans have the actual science on their side, in theory but not in practice. The science is very clear that nuclear power is the best way to get off fossil fuels, is the cleanest, safest and most sustainable energy we're capable of producing at scale (particularly the 4th gen reactors), and physicists have calculated the world could be off fossil fuels and cut emissions by like 80% by 2035... Democrats oppose it for no plausible reason other than Republicans support it.

But then Republicans get elected and nuclear is immediately forgotten, and they just work with the very same massive fossil fuel industries that the Democrats planned to work with.

Our problems go much deeper than political party. Neither one intends to reduce climate change in a meaningful way. We need a legitimate multi-party system.
"These are hard times, NOT end times!"
- Jon Stewart, Rally to Restore Sanity

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.

Re: Trump, Putin, and the Pipelines to Nowhere

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Mikester wrote:As if America even had this choice last election - Clinton was very cozy with the coal industry (the worst by far). In her emails she praised Rex Tillerson and was also going to offer him a position. She also said that people who care about climate change should "get a life."

The only person that would help climate change was Bernie Sanders. Sure, he retains some of the misguided beliefs of the anti-science left, but I believe he would have listened to science advisors because he sincerely cares about making a difference... Until the DNC conspired to screw him.

That's the problem, democrats and republicans say different things to the people but in reality they are just competing to be bought out by the same industries. It's like a job interview, where we only choose which puppet gets to represent the corporate owners. It's an illusion of choice.


Energy is one of the very few places where Republicans have the actual science on their side, in theory but not in practice. The science is very clear that nuclear power is the best way to get off fossil fuels, is the cleanest, safest and most sustainable energy we're capable of producing at scale (particularly the 4th gen reactors), and physicists have calculated the world could be off fossil fuels and cut emissions by like 80% by 2035... Democrats oppose it for no plausible reason other than Republicans support it.

But then Republicans get elected and nuclear is immediately forgotten, and they just work with the very same massive fossil fuel industries that the Democrats planned to work with.

Our problems go much deeper than political party. Neither one intends to reduce climate change in a meaningful way. We need a legitimate multi-party system.

The Republicans have not forgotten about Nuclear Power in fact they are wanting to increase it. That's in the form of nuclear weapons of course not in generating electricity.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Trump, Putin, and the Pipelines to Nowhere

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Mikester wrote:Energy is one of the very few places where Republicans have the actual science on their side, in theory but not in practice. The science is very clear that nuclear power is the best way to get off fossil fuels, is the cleanest, safest and most sustainable energy we're capable of producing at scale (particularly the 4th gen reactors), and physicists have calculated the world could be off fossil fuels and cut emissions by like 80% by 2035... Democrats oppose it for no plausible reason other than Republicans support it.
I love 99% of your posts, Mikester, but I truly cannot understand why you think that Sanders (or the "left") is anti-science.

By definition, anything that uses non-renewable resources on a human time scale can never be sustainable. Yes, you said "most sustainable" but that doesn't work either. Fourth gen reactors can't be on the table, and certainly cannot be used as a weapon against any group, simply because there is no 4th gen reactor licensed and ready to plant in someone's back yard. One might as well say "Democrats suck because they didn't use Green Lantern powers to defeat Trump."

This environmentalist doesn't oppose nuclear power generation per se - I think we should use nukes on cargo ships and replace bunker fuel. I oppose swapping fossils for nukes because the only nuke designs we have available to plant RIGHT NOW (when we need them) need uranium. We don't have enough engineers or trained techs to make all the reactors we need. Also, we only have enough fuel to supply the energy needs of the first 1 1/2 20 year fuel cycles. After that, all those nukes we squandered our last bits of usable fossil fuels on are 'out of gas' and have to be scrapped. We don't have enough uranium on the planet to keep us in nukes long enough to fix our carbon problem. Maybe there's a place for 4th gen nukes - heaven knows we have enough material sitting around that can be consumed in them. But first, we need a reactor design that works, can be licensed, built, installed, and maintained.

We have enough available wind energy in the middle of the US to supply the entire country - from lights to transportation to industrial heat - about 2 1/2 times over. We have enough solar capability (including solar thermal) to do the same. Geothermal, wave/tidal is also a piece. Heaven knows we've got metric ton of room for efficiency improvements. No fewer than three independent organizations - The Rocky Mountain Institute (Reinventing Fire), The Solutions Project, and Jeremy Rifkin's Third Industrial Revolution - show us that we have all the wind, water, and solar energy, we need (and more than enough storage) to completely transition the world off fossils and nukes (ALL of the non-renewable sources) by 2050 if we want to get started. To do it, we don't need any new laws, no new tech, no R&D hail Marys, and not a single thing from Washington DC. Hell - Germany started on their TIR plan in about 2004 and already they're about 15 years ahead of schedule and approaching 50% renewable energy on their grid. That's almost 50% renewable in 12 years while also taking their nukes off-line. There's some science happening there. ;) (And check Reinventing Fire - the transition can be complete by 2050 using trillions with a T fewer dollars than we already have allocated to simply maintain our current energy infrastructure. We're going to spend it anyway...)

http://www.rmi.org/reinventingfire
http://thesolutionsproject.org/
http://www.thethirdindustrialrevolution.com/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bANPXjN9mOA

ETA...another factor jumped back into my memory. In the 5 or so years it takes to license a 5MW nuclear power plant, we can (and have...) installed more than 5MW of solar PV. In the next 10 years it takes to actually build the nuke plant, we can install another 10 MW of PV and about as much wind. If we need it 'now' in order to help reset our climate, nukes are not an option.

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