Energy Lies—XI

"Renewable Energy Mandates Raise Electricity Rates"

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 ~ A common trope among defenders of fossil energy is that mandating renewable energy punishes ratepayers by forcing utilities to pass on increased generation costs.

But there's no truth to the charge:

Upon examining electricity rate data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration spanning the decade from 2000-2010, a Center for American Progress analysis found zero statistically-significant difference in how renewable electricity standards affect changes in rates.

Leadership is Action

Kicking It

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 ~ Teddy Roosevelt:

In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

Better to make a decision that has a poor result than to make no decision at all. Observing, thinking, planning are all important, but no leader can make things change without taking action.

Acid Redux

Oceans in Trouble

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 ~ The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is increasing and the ocean is becoming more acidic. It may be an "experiment" that the Earth has run before, but it's not the same this time.

The world’s oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period.

Boulder, Braver

Stillness

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 ~ To succeed, entrepreneurs need balance between observing, thinking and acting. It isn't easy.

The father of my wife's youngest son died unexpectedly, and too young, so we've been in Boulder, Colorado the last couple of days making arrangements. Today was tough, especially going through his apartment, his things, his papers.

Later, I went outside our hotel and watched the full moon rise huge and orange. I was joined, abruptly, by this rabbit:

Where's It Wednesday—LXXIII

Where in Seattle is this?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to last week's puzzle, after the jump.

Periodic Tables

Many Elements in Common

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 ~ The periodic table is a useful way to organize the natural elements based on their chemical and physical properties. While all such tables have the same logical organization, their actual display can be quite imaginative.

For example:

Here's a video showing the periodic table as a piece of furniture, with embedded samples:

Bootstrapping

A Necessity for You or for your Business?

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 ~ Initially, most of us learn to ride a bicycle with training wheels. Most of us can’t wait to get the training wheels off, and many take them off too soon. Sure, we all want to look like the cool kids, whipping along apace like we were born with the 27-speed as an extension of ourselves. Greg Lemond and other top riders capture our attention and admiration, but who saw Greg Lemond learning the basics of riding through trial and error on his bike? We know of him only as the consummate expert; his ascension to the top tier of competition was mostly unseen and unknown.

If we ride, we all aspire to be Greg Lemond, or some other world-class cyclist who makes the exhausting hill climb and the later leisurely triumph down the Champs-Élysées look easy, even effortless.

Learning to build a startup is much like learning to ride a bicycle; you need to start with the training wheels.

Who Cares About Carbon?

Merely the Living, Really

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 ~ Climate change deniers cannot dispute the evidence that carbon concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing.

Instead, they argue that it doesn't matter because it's happened before. Indeed it has, and that history should give us all pause.

Geologist Bryan Lovell explains:

Irreconcilable Differences?

Two-Party Dysfunction

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 ~ Why can't they get along anyway? They seem so much alike... Disgusting.

Gas Price Blame

Whose Fault Are High Gas Prices?

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 ~ Gas prices always go up in spring (why?) and this year they are rising faster and farther than ever before. Especially since it's an election year, the GOP wants to blame Obama.

Crowd-Sourced Investment

Frenzy, then Funk

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 ~ There's some plans afoot to allow crowd-sourced funding of entrepreneurs, something like a Kickstarter for startups. Instead of helping non-profit causes and getting something of nominal value in return, these ideas would allow very small investments by hundreds or thousands of people in high-risk, for-profit fledgling businesses.

It's a bad idea.

Where's It Wednesday—LXXII

Where in Seattle is this?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to last week's puzzle, after the jump.

Climate Change Probability

A Very Easy Test Question

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 ~ If only all problems in life were so easy to solve.

Feeding Banks

Whale Appetites

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 ~ The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet, and it feeds almost exclusively on one of the smallest—krill or plankton, tiny shrimp-like creatures called euphausiids. Each may eat up to 4 tons a day. Their ability to eat enough depends in part on two things: lots of krill in the ocean, and dense concentrations of them that make the feeding process practical in time and energy expended.

Lately, I've been pondering the similarities of blue whales and large banks.

Energy Lies—X

"Drilling More Will Keep Gas Prices Low"

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 ~ Consumption of gasoline in the US has been falling for years:

As a consequence, US oil refineries have increased exports:

No surprise here. As US domestic demand falls, prices would normally drop unless supply also decreased. Were supply to increase, prices would drop even more. Instead, supply is being diverted, and prices are going up.

The market for oil and refined products is global. With demand surging in developing economies, and the price there higher, a global commodity like gasoline is sent into the global market, not kept in the US to lower prices.

So think about that the next time you hear some politician, or API apologist pointing fingers about higher gas prices. It isn't evil environmentalists or intransigent bureaucrats, it's economics, stupid.

One Dollar, One Vote

Getting What They Pay For

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 ~ Where can you reliably get a return on investment of 22,000%? Not even Wall Street insiders can profit like that consistently, but corporations can.


They just "invest" in politicians.

Gerardia

Believer Fever

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“What we’ve learned is that the
public probably doesn’t
understand or appreciate us
as much as we’d like them to.”

 ~ Jack Gerard is the head of the American Petroleum Institute (API), the lobbying group and voluble mouthpiece for Big Oil. He is never at a loss for words, and is relentlessly consistent with a message of how oil is simply wonderful, how lucky we all are to have an oil industry, and how unfairly put upon his industry is.

According to Gerard, the industry is also precariously perched; the slightest diminution in subsidies or the merest restriction in their freedom to operate would spell utter doom for oil production, jobs, government tax revenues, and indeed, the entire American economy. To hear him tell it, Big Oil is just one tax hike, subsidy reduction, delayed permit or tightened regulation away from catastrophe.

Slippery as oil, and completely untrue.

Energy Lies—IX

"Obama's Anti-American Energy Policy"

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 ~ Sure, it's bombastic in the ugly style of modern political campaigns, but to accuse the American President of being "outrageously anti-American" is tantamount to an accusation of treason. Newt Gingrich should be mortified for his intemperance, but, as his past amply shows, he is beyond shame.

So what has President Obama on energy policy done to provoke the vituperative Georgian so? Two things: not rushing approval of Keystone XL, and being too keen on electrifying our transportation sector.

Gingrich is not just disrespectful and obnoxious, he's also both wrong on the facts and, surprisingly for a self-styled historian, wrong on the nature of what is American.

Where's It Wednesday—LXXI

Where in Seattle is this?

What? Who shrunk the Space Needle and put it... where?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to last week's puzzle, after the jump.

Rose-Tinted Libertarianism

A Philosophy, or an Excuse?

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 ~ The endless election drags on, and the chorus of government haters is in full throat. They say government is too big, too inefficient, too undemocratic even. How much better it would be to have minimal government!

An astonishing number of people scarf up government-provided benefits in the particular even as they carp about excessive government handouts in the abstract. Bare-bones government is appealing until one realizes that government fills a vital role to ensuring our safety and a modicum of social well-being. Without it we have anarchy, not utopia.

It seems that many who spout about libertarianism are more aligned with the one-time British seaman's selfish "I'm all right, Jack" I've got mine and I'm coming out ahead, so screw all of you and stop taxing me already. It's a peculiar form of moral relativism that's inherently amoral. It's OK for me; it's not OK for you. Why? Because that's the way it is (now.)

Libertarianism doesn't work. It never has.