Holy Cow! Mark Udall Supports Nuclear Power

In a stunning about face, Mark Udall finally faced reality when he said in response to the State of the Union:

"I believe we've got to take another look at nuclear power because of the carbon footprint it doesn't have," said Udall. "But we do it taking into account the challenges that nuclear power presents, cost-wise and environmentally."

Mark Udall has lied to the public before, and he is very likely lying again. His Sierra Club masters don't support nuclear power, and he hasn't in the past. Note the caveat:

"But we do it taking into account the challenges that nuclear power presents, cost-wise and environmentally."

At no point has Mark Udall suggested that the public should take the costs of other forms of renewable energy into account. It didn't ever matter if the lifetime wind or solar power production costs are several times as much as coal. Damn the costs!

He was willing to try to stuff a 20% renewable mandate by 2020 down the throat of the nation. He specifically excluded nuclear power from the allowable sources of renewable power.

These are words from Mark Udall. He has lied to the public before. We need to see deeds.

Environmentalists Envision Bitter and Costly Medicine

In a Washington Post piece titled Climate Is a Risky Issue for Democrats that liberal paper warned the Democrat Presidential candidates that they might be going too far in their promises to reduce Greenhouse gases:

The strong medicine Edwards and his fellow candidates are selling -- an 80 percent cut in greenhouse gases from 1990s levels by 2050 -- tracks with a plan espoused by scientists. But it is a plan that will require a wholesale transformation of the nation's economy and society...

According to energy expert Tracy Terry's analysis of a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, under the scenario of an 80 percent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels, by 2015 Americans could be paying 30 percent more for natural gas in their homes and even more for electricity. At the same time, the cost of coal could quadruple and crude oil prices could rise by an additional $24 a barrel.

The Washington Post acknowledges that the cost to Democrats (are you reading this, Mark Udall?) could be very high.

Democrats' boldness, however, could carry a political price. The eventual GOP presidential nominee is almost certain to attack Democrats over the huge costs associated with limiting emissions. "They will come at this hard," said John Podesta, who heads the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and sees an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases as necessary.

While the Post doesn't mention it, there have been moves in the past from the environmentalists to claim that beef production contributes to global warming. Anyone who has chased a cow on horseback can testify to the amount of methane it produces. An 80% reduction in methane would likely translate to a 90% reduction in beef production. A family that is used to eating beef three times a week will come to see it as an unaffordable luxury that graces a table three times a year, at best.

The Post did not overstate the situation when it observed that the environmentalists were going to try to transform the economy and society. Will anyone like that society? Where will the pleasures be?

A Nobel Prize "Co-Winner" Speaks Out

Best Destiny has an excellent essay on John R Christy, and we suggest readers who are not mind numbed by environmentalist propaganda read it. Of course, Mark Udall, who many think believes he is a high priest of environmentalism and thus is entitled to his own facts will want to skip both the Best Destiny and the Christy WSJ article, "My Nobel Moment." Christy writes:

I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time...

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"

We recently wrote about the high relative costs of wind power, but Rossputin put our essay to shame when he published an item which illuminates the costs of ethanol. We are spending $128 Billion to avoid importing 2.3 billion in oil.

Christy notes:

My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."

The Real Cost of Wind Farms

Today, the Denver Post published an editorial celebrating the wind and solar power initiatives in Colorado. In the process, they appear to have let the cat out of the bag on the costs of these enterprises.

This author left a simple math comment at the bottom of that editorial questioning the Post's math. The Post claimed that it cost $166 thousand per megawatt to build a wind power plant in Weld County. The author misplaced a decimal, meaning that the cost was actually $1.6 million.

Worse, the wind only blows about 30% of the time, meaning that they built a 90 megawatt (less simple and more accurate math) equivalent power plant for $500 million. That works out to $5.5 million per megawatt in construction costs.

A conventional coal plant, again according the the Denver Post, costs $250,000 per megawatt to build. That is less than 1/20th of the price of this wind farm.

Consider that the Colorado legislature has just mandated that by 2020 20% of utility power must come from "renewables." How many $500 million plants that only intermittently produce power will it take to meet that goal? Many more than Colorado can afford.

Mark Udall tried and failed to impose that same goal on the whole nation this summer. He was voted down. At some point, taxpayers and ratepayers will start doing the math and realize that Mark Udall and his band of merry environmentalist extremists are much like Hillary Clinton, but with less honesty. At least she admits that she has more ideas than the country can afford.

A Fine Time To Legislate Against Both Colorado's and America's Interests

From today's business headlines:

Mindful of a warning from the Federal Reserve Wednesday about inflation, the market nervously watched the price of oil, which passed $96 a barrel overnight for the first time before dipping on profit-taking. The Fed, which cut interest rates a quarter point, said in a statement that inflation remained a concern, and oil’s ascent to another record raised the possibility not only that the Fed might stop cutting rates, but that it might even consider raising them if inflation accelerates.

From The-Man-Who-Would-Be-Senator's website:

Udall worked with Rep. John Salazar (D-Manassa) on a provision requiring all leases for the federal lands on top of the Roan Plateau to include a "no surface occupancy" stipulation. Lands could still be leased, but the minerals could be accessed only from other locations.

Excellent.

So, Mr. Udall, at what price-per-barrel would you think it might be justified for Americans to search for their own energy resources, rather than rely on the rest of the world? $100? $120? $150?

And tell me, Mr. Udall, in a state so heavily dependent on the agricultural economy, a sector heavily dependent on energy supplies, how do you justify continuing to prevent your own state from tapping some of its own natural resources?

Yeah, yeah . . . Roan is about natural gas, and I'm talking about crude oil--energy is energy. Crude oil not used to fuel homes and electricity (because its been replaced by natural gas) is crude oil available for transportation.

But, more importantly, is Mark Udall going to continue to represent out-of-state environmental interests, or at what point is he going to try to represent Colorado's interests?

Carbon Sequestration-An Expensive Boondoggle

Mark Udall has introduced a very expensive bill directing the Secretary of Energy to conduct research on the long term "burial" of carbon dioxide. The cost of the bill, $420 million a year over four years suggests that even after the research is done, using the technology would be both expensive and dangerous. Insurance companies want no part of this project, so the cost of the bill is under stated.

If the amount being considered for this research were reasonable, which it is not, this might be an appropriate use of federal funds and research facilities like Los Alamos.

We can't help but note that nature already provides a natural mechanism for long term sequestration of carbon. It is called "trees." Of course, they only store carbon while they are alive. Of late, there hasn't been a lot of interest from either Mark Udall or the environmental community in keeping our forests either alive or healthy.

One wonders how many nuclear power plants could be sited and started for the same $1.7 billion that Udall wants to spend on this boondoggle. The last we heard, nuclear power plants put out no CO2. Does Udall consider nuclear power a solution? Not at all.

Not long ago, Udall was hyping his bill to thin forests around Colorado mountain towns. The piker could only allocate $22 million a year for that project. It is becoming more and more clear that Mark Udall's priorities are driven by Washington based lobbies and not the needs of Colorado.