Monthly Archives: November 2012

First 15 years of renewables subsidies small fraction of first 15 years of fossil/nuclear subsidies

  By Cyrus | November 28, 2012 - 12:43 pm | Energy Policy & Economics
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An excellent report released in September 2011 by private equity firm DBL Investors sheds new light on the history of federal subsidies for various energy sources and technologies.  One unique finding was particularly instructive in today’s debate about renewable energy tax credits and other investments in renewables: The below graph shows investment in various technologies as a percentage of the federal budget in the first 15 years of subsidies for each technology, allowing for a comparison of subsidies for renewables in the first 15 years of renewable subsidies with subsidies for other energy sources in the first 15 years of those … Continue reading this post →

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How to Live Without Irony (the perils of hipsterdom)

  By Cyrus | November 28, 2012 - 10:17 am | People Not Like Us
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  How to Live Without Irony By CHRISTY WAMPOLE (from the Opionon Pages of the New York Times, originally posted here)  Leif Parsons If irony is the ethos of our age — and it is — then the hipster is our archetype of ironic living. The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several … Continue reading this post →

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Iowa scientists: Drought a sign of climate change

  By Cyrus | November 20, 2012 - 12:48 pm | Energy Policy & Economics
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Note: As I’ve outlined in an essay you can find here, the huge and mounting costs of climate change and global warming are external costs that would be included in the market for oil & gas if those markets were actually functioning correctly.  This is a great example of unpriced consequences of fossil fuels and why it’s factually wrong to say things like “coal is cheaper than wind” because the market price for coal power electricity isn’t reflecting the true cost, an example of market failure. Posted on November 20, 2012 at 6:41 am by Associated Press in Climate Change, global warming DES MOINES, Iowa … Continue reading this post →

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Obama’s Opportunity – possibilities and pitfalls of the next 2 months

  By Cyrus | November 9, 2012 - 12:04 pm | 2012 Election, Taxes & Tax Policy
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Within hours of Obama’s reelection on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) interpreted the Obama win and Democratic victory in the Senate by declaring that the election is not a mandate for Obama’s policies and that Obama’s job now is to propose something that will pass the GOP controlled House. The next day, House Speaker John Boehner (R) declared, in conciliatory tones, that the high-income tax increases on which Obama ran and was reelected was a non-starter. Meanwhile, the “fiscal cliff” looms around the corner.  On January 1, 2013, the U.S. economy will be jolted by the convergence of the expiration … Continue reading this post →

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512 Paths to the White House (Interactive Tool)

  By Cyrus | November 6, 2012 - 10:49 am | 2012 Election
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The NYTimes has an incredible interactive tool that graphically shows the paths to victory as you enter election results into the tool.  To start with, Obama has 431 paths to victory while Romney has 76 paths.  But as you select the winner/loser in each election, you see the remaining paths dwindle until a winner is certain. I’ll be using this live while watching election results.  I had put my own post together along these sames lines here, though it did not benefit from this high-graphics, interactive approach that the NYTimes has put together. Very cool!  

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