I don't believe in global warming. My argument is pretty simple. I haven't heard anything that points out otherwise. I haven't actively searched, either.
Simple argument is thus: quantifiable inputs to global warming follow an exponential growth curve, not a linear growth curve. I think I'm getting my wording right here. The point is best illustrated by a finance joke.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet walk into a bar. The average net worth in the bar goes to $30 billion.
Not much of a joke, but it illustrates the Pareto principle pretty good. Let me add another couple of lines.
In one corner, a man is losing his entire net worth gambling on a horse race. By the end of the race, the man will have lost $500,000 dollars of his net worth and he will be homeless. The average net worth in the room will be completely unaffected.
In another corner, a woman has won the lottery. She just won $5 million dollars. The average net worth in the room will be completely unaffected.
Now. Let's go re-examine that story. It well illustrates the power of exponential growth curves to destroy averages. That doesn't mean those lives weren't affected in the gain and loss. It just means the average is unaffected.
Now, lets apply the idea to pollution. Of all the polluters in the world, 20% of the polluters produce 80% of the pollution. It's the same concept as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Let me give you an example.
A household is told to reduce their pollution by turning the AC up 5 degrees in summer. That will "solve" global warming. Compare then a TV studio and audience. That building uses energy at a greater rate. Given common electricity usage rates, that TV studio probably has monthly electrical bill of $3,000. The house has a monthly electrical bill of $100. I'm guessing on both of those. So one studio is the equivalent of 30 houses.
The other part of the equation is the house has a higher use rate than that TV studio. The TV studio probably runs about 10 hours a day at high capacity. Lets say 70% occupation. The rest of the day, it runs closer to 10% occupation. It is either empty, or has very few people. The house is a study in contrasts. It runs at 0% occupation for 8 hours, and 60% occupation for the other 16 hours of the day.
Which building is better capable of reducing electrical usage? The TV studio. The changes in that single building would easily dwarf the changes to 30 houses.
Now, the second part of this is in the implementation allowance. Or should I call it the "put your money where your mouth is" tax? The people most likely to declare the need for changes regarding global warming are, by a high percentage, unwilling to make meaningful prolonged change. Despite everything, that person wants to continue their lifestyle while you cramp yours.
Let's look at this another way. How many large metropolitan areas have city ordinances against windmills and solar panels? Why? Because solar panels are reflective and remove the picture postcard view of the city. It narrows down to the "not in my back yard" problem. So people want you to change, but won't change themselves. If you are that adamant about something, you'd do it first.
I think I've covered that section pretty well. Next...
The next part is one that drives me up the wall. It really does. It's the lack of a failure state in global warming. The lack of a failure state is invalid in most events. There is a failure state built into all weather forecasting models. That's why you get a percentage of a chance of rain. That's why forecasts longer than five days are negatively correlated.
In global warming, there is no failure state. If the weather gets colder, it's global warming. If the weather gets hotter, it's global warming. If the weather stays the same, it's global warming.
There is no condition where the global warming crowd is ever wrong. Except when they are.
Anyone remember acid rain?
I remember acid rain. It was the rain the was going to fall and burn our faces off. I was a kid, and had assumptions about what acid did. Mostly the horrible, horrible kinds of acid that destroyed things badly. You can still see such idea propagated to movies. And when you hear it, it causes you to stop.
Because there never was any acid rain.
But the people who declared there was going to be acid rain suddenly changed their position when it didn't happen. Amazing how that happens. And it was like they never preached to the choir about acid rain. It just quickly disappeared. And then suddenly global warming is here. And then global cooling. And then global weirding.
Yeah. There is no failure state. There is no point where these scientists sit back and declare "yup, I'm wrong". Everything has a failure state. Everything.
The third part of all of this is the lobbyists. Yes, the lobbyists come into play. But not the science ones. No, these are the lobbyists from the power company. Why would the power company have lobbyists? Simple: remember that 80/20 rule discussed earlier? Who's the 20% doing 80% of the damage? The power company. Who's the 20% that is likely to suffer the most from individuals generating their own power? The power company. The power company builds its business model off of monopoly. It's not designed to compete. It's designed for winner take all, and loser becomes illegal.
There was a point when that was required. But I think we're beyond that point. There will probably still be the need for a public utility company. But that company needs to have to compete with private individuals in order to become more efficient. There is no need for the power company to innovate due to the nature of their monopoly. And they will protect that monopoly to the best of their ability for as long as they can.
And the thought of individuals living off the public grid is something that does not appeal to them.
So what would it take to generate an off the grid solution? You'd need some sort of solution or a partial solution. And an electrician. The solution would probably be a one box solution. And you need an electrician to safely wire the thing into your house. There's a giant boom for the electricians and a major loss for the electric company.
I wonder what the lifetime loss is of one person leaving the grid? What about 1% of the population? I'm guessing its astronomically huge.
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