The “Green New Deal” And The Left’s Grand Plans

Thoughts from Neo.

Yes, it could well be that the purpose of this ridiculous proposal is to start with something so far out there that whatever awful thing Pelosi actually pushes almost looks reasonable in comparison.

[Update a few minutes later]

The New Gods:

It must be said at the outset that climate change is real and observable, and the consensus that human activity contributes to that change (though to what degree has not yet firmly been established) is all but unassailable. But for a certain set of activists, there is only one acceptable response to the challenge: privation. The technological innovations attributable to market forces—innovations that have led to the dramatic reduction of American carbon emissions—are dismissed, not because their contributions are not observable, but because they undermine the notion that a simpler, monastic life is the only real source of collective absolution.

Critics of the activist class’s evolving policy prescriptions are attacked as “deniers.” Those who predict catastrophic, near civilization-ending disasters resulting from unchecked climate change are deemed “prophets.” Oracles forecast “the end of the world” within our lifetimes absent the adoption of their preferred paradigm. And any critical reflections on this new eschatology, the portents of which have often proved irreparably flawed, is dismissed with fervent passion.

A faith requires its pieties, and the so-called “Green New Deal” amounts to a sacrament. To true believers, its implausibility and impracticality is not a mark against it. Just the opposite; it is an expression of zeal, an acknowledgment of the righteousness and urgency of the cause it seeks to address. Its efficacy is measured in the number willing to genuflect before it.

I remain an agnostic (in fact, in this case, an atheist).

[Update Sunday morning]

This is Sandy’s war:

War is the most ancient avenue of glory, but it isn’t for everyone: Many of our progressive friends believe that American military might is a force for evil in the world, and that the military itself is malevolent, backward, and hateful. But there are war substitutes and war analogues to be had. My friend and colleague Jonah Goldberg is the poet laureate of “meow” — the Moral Equivalent of War — and its baleful effects on our political thinking and discourse.

…Meow has many cynical political uses: If every political opponent is the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler, if every political initiative tantamount to D-Day, then there is much that can be excused in the way of underhandedness, rhetorical excess, demagoguery, and the like. As Goldberg reminds us, war and war alone has been the great champion of socialism, because it provides an emergency pretext for the authoritarian project of reorganizing an organic society in accordance with the necessarily synthetic model decocted from ideology, bias, bigotry, eccentricity, and the self-interest, always unavoidable, of the planners empowered with drawing up the blueprints of this or that brave new world or utopia.

And, hence, the Green New Deal: Our war, requiring a “new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II.” Under whose command? That of Field Marshal Sandy, of course.

About the details of the Green New Deal, such as they are, there is not really much to say. On Friday, I spoke with one of the world’s leading authorities on North American building practices and asked him about the plan to “retrofit” these structures in the service of a “net-zero energy” agenda. Neither “scathing” nor “derisive” quite captures his response. He has been involved in a number of net-zero retrofits and understands how complex and expensive they are — and how they can destroy a building when done poorly. Ask a farmer, an aerospace engineer, the manager of an electric utility, or a truck-driver about these highfalutin’ schemes and sentiments and you will get another superfluous proof of Robert Conquest’s maxim — “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best” — and Williamson’s First Law: “Everything is simple if you don’t know a f*****g thing about it.”

RTWT.

[Update a few minutes later]

AOC: The perfect graduate of today’s biased colleges.

18 thoughts on “The “Green New Deal” And The Left’s Grand Plans”

  1. I agree with one commenter in that we need to start referring to renewables as weather dependant energy sources. Let’s play the name game too.

    1. And instead of calling it The Green New Deal, we should call it the Green Leap Forward. I’m sure Chairman Mao would approve of the damage it would cause and the resulting body count in the millions.

  2. “Yes, it could well be that the purpose of this ridiculous proposal is to start with something so far out there that whatever awful thing Pelosi actually pushes almost looks reasonable in comparison.”

    Wouldn’t that be the Overton Window in action?

  3. We are recovering from the Little Ice age.
    We in an Ice Age. And have been in an Ice Age for millions of years. And due to geological reasons, and we will remain in the Ice Age for millions of years in the future, unless we become a devastating civilization, so as to have enough capability to overcome the geological limitations.

    And in this Ice Age, there are periods of time called glacial periods (and also called ice ages) anf shorter periods of time called interglacial periods. And we are in the last stages of our interglacial period. And last interglacial periods appear to have become much warmer as compared to our present condition we find ourselves in the early part of 21ist Century.

    –I remain an agnostic (in fact, in this case, an atheist).–

    I think the faith is evil and has no redeeming aspects, it’s a false faith which harms it believers in many ways, with remarkable ability to create stupidity. And obviously it is pseudo science. And related to other pseudo of Marxism which has massive harm to the human race and the environment.

    1. This whole business of an “average” global temperature totally ignores glacial and inter-glacial periods much less natural variability in temperature fluctuations. They claim to believe the climate changes but at the same time believe that in a normal state, the climate is unchanging. Of course this isn’t exactly true. Many believe in natural variation but just don’t think variation can happen right now.

      Is there anyone who could say with any certainty what the natural variation in temperature should be?

      Faith though, its human. Everyone has faith in something. Magical thinking is hardwired into us. It is something to be aware of but it is also what makes us human.

  4. “devastating civilization” was suppose to be “spacefaring civilization”.
    Though maybe spacefaring could actually be devastating as it will obviously result in an increase in human capabilities.

    Anyways, we are presently in a cold world, and would be a better world, if warmer. But if a colder world is required, a solar shade would be cheap way to get a colder world.
    Or the danger of warmer world doesn’t exist, but if spacefaring, one can easily cool Earth. And even if not spacefaring, it easy to cool Earth.
    What is not easy, would be warming Earth.
    And do this, seems that it would require that we are spacefaring civilization.

        1. More:
          “A fourth approach replaces the thin film reflecting mirrors with space dust. Cf. . Here’s another proposal of this type that uses a captured asteroid to bind the dust to the Lagrange point: ”
          https://www.quora.com/Is-a-space-sunshade-a-feasible-solution-to-global-warming

          I would do it this, but space rocks delivered to L-1.
          Upon delivery, one gets paid.
          Limit size of rock delivered to say 20 meter diameter or less, and pay higher price per ton for rocks smaller than 20 meter in diameter. So say twice as much per ton if 10 meter in diameter or smaller.
          After some rocks have been delivered, determine if you want to allow larger rocks to be delivered.
          So delivering the small rocks, is somewhere in the order of couple billion dollars (a small fraction of a trillion dolars). And you use rocks delivered, to establish best method to make shade. And you will generally want a lot mass in L1 which might not used to make the shade. It may be used for gravity effect, or other uses, such radiation shielding or whatever.
          Main element is creating market for space rocks which are delivered. And they could delivered for other projects other than making solar shade, such as for use of making space power satellites, or many other smaller project uses.

  5. From the New Yorker article linked from the Neo blog: “On the specific matter of banning fossil fuels, Julian NoiseCat, of the climate group 350.org, …”

    Julian NoiseCat? Then there’s Kyrsten Sinema, and the obnoxiously ever present Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The players on the Left today seem to be adopting the NPR model of having hosts with made-up sounding names ( Anirban Basu, anyone?).

    Too weird for words…

  6. The reaction to the Green New Deal was so bad that now the usual suspects are conducting a gaslighting campaign, claiming that what everyone has seen is actually a fake document concocted by the Right.

  7. I told you guys as much. It is a way to tilt the playing field so that radical proposals can gain more traction.

    I have seen much the same thing happen here in Europe. The so called “green energy revolution” is a major cause for our current deep economic recession here. Major investments were made into wind and solar at a time the costs were 3-5x what they are today or more. The electric power users and taxpayers have been paying it for two decades. After the wind mills and solar panels major investments into the grid had to be made to redistribute the power in ways it was not designed to and major investments had to made to cover peaking power requirements. These included natural gas power plants which cannot operate at their optimum because they are constantly being spooled up and down. You build a latest generation natural gas power plant with GE turbines which are theoretically 60% efficient at baseload capacity. But you have to constantly spool them up and down because they are only there to cover renewable shortfalls and then they become like 30% efficient. Which renders the investment moot. Then you need to pay the natural gas power plant on top of that, typically done by the government, so it won’t shut down because its generated electricity’s profits are not enough to cover maintenance costs. Don’t do it and you get blackouts. In other cases dams had to reversible pumps installed and large expensive HVDC systems were strewn between countries to average the power output in the grid. It is a boondoggle.

    But it sure sounds nice and our farmers love it. They get paid for the windmills simply being there. So the politicians love it too. Especially because they get kickbacks. The power companies have monopolies and just pass the costs to the consumer so why should they care? In fact they can even profit with all the government credits given to build these generation facilities.

    It is part of the reason why we really need Nord Stream 2 and South Stream in Europe and they were going to be built regardless of what the USA says. It is either that or we enter a deep depression instead of a recession. There is no other way to mask the side effects of the renewables. Add to that dwindling North Sea natural gas reserves. The Netherlands are going to stop producing natural gas over the next decade for example. The residents there just don’t want gas field injection to continue there, which is required to extract the remaining gas, because of earthquakes. No, their concerns are not stupid when a large part of their country is below sea level.
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/gas-field-earthquakes-put-netherlands-biggest-firms-on-extraction-notice

    So you can tell Trump and his friends that his idea that he can somehow cancel Nord Stream 2 is pointless. With regards to the idea that the USA could cover the deficit with their own LNG. That is moronic. The USA simply has neither the liquefaction facilities nor the ships to do that. It would take decades to construct those. It would still be more expensive than Russian natural gas.

    No, the only solutions are coal, which people don’t want because of air pollution, and nuclear, which people do not want because of mass hysteria. Natural gas though, is cheap, and the Russians will deliver it right at our backyard.

    Also people who say the Nord Stream 2 project makes no economic sense should look at a map and see where the gas fields and customers have. Then still tell me it doesn’t make economic sense. Most of the old Soviet Union gas reserves are near depleted and most gas now comes from the Yamal megaproject fields.

    Heck, even the USA is buying LNG from Russia (seriously), because it is cheaper. The Russians have lower costs in liquefaction, because guess what, Yamal is in the Arctic Circle. While the USA does its liquefaction in the Gulf of Mexico.

    So yes, some European countries will still buy US LNG, or Qatari LNG, but those will mostly be countries in Western or South Europe. Not Central, North, or East Europe.

    With regards to the USA you guys need to replace your nuclear to at least remain at 25% generation capacity I think. That will ensure your consumer energy prices will remain low. I also would neither ban coal nor expect too much from natural gas. The natural gas market is really volatile. Especially in the way it is done in the USA. All that needs to happen is for the loan rates to rise or the oil price to crash and a lot of operations will shutter down.

    1. All that needs to happen is for the loan rates to rise or the oil price to crash and a lot of operations will shutter down.

      We have already had a lot of shakeouts but the industry is surprisingly resistant.

  8. Nice to see NRO catching up to where then comentariat was a decade ago. When it comes to the dehumanization to excuse violence and persecution, well we noticed that back before San Jose and we haven’t forgot NRO’s participation.

    Williamson’s First Law: “Everything is simple if you don’t know a f*****g thing about it.”

    This is only true for people unconcerned with how things work. For the rest of us, things only become simple after we know about it. Although, people like to portray something as simple, knowing that people don’t know much about it, while they know it is much more complicated. Salesmanship? Fraud? Dishonesty? Time/Space limitations?

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