In Chicago, Bill Clinton calls for national grid to boost renewable energy (repost from Midwest Energy News)

  By Cyrus | December 14, 2012 - 12:47 am | Energy Policy & Economics
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In Chicago, Bill Clinton calls for national grid to boost renewable energy | Midwest Energy News. CHICAGO — Former President Bill Clinton invoked the ancient Sumerians, campaign stops at wind-blown Texas border towns, the looming budgetary fiscal cliff and an eclectic assortment of other concepts while proselytizing for more investments in the grid and clean energy, during his speech at the Wind on the Wires gala in Chicago Wednesday night. Veering between big picture philosophical conclusions and wonkish descents into policy details and proposals, Clinton made the case that renewable energy is symbolic of a struggle central to human nature: “a constant … Continue reading this post →

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The World Energy Report’s scariest findings – Salon.com

  By Cyrus | December 2, 2012 - 12:32 pm | Energy Policy & Economics
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Editor’s Note: Buried deep in this Salon.com article is this very disturbing point:  Even if governments take vigorous steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded, the continuing increase in fossil fuel consumption will result in “a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C.” This should stop everyone in their tracks. Most scientists believe that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius is about all the planet can accommodate without unimaginably catastrophic consequences: sea-level increases that will wipe out many coastal cities, persistent droughts that will destroy farmland on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their … Continue reading this post →

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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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Make Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan Work

  By Cyrus | October 31, 2012 - 11:11 am | 2012 Election, Taxes & Tax Policy
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Check out this excellent tool that lets you try to make Romney’s tax plan work by selecting the cuts and deductions you would need to add up to pay for Romney’s tax cuts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/31/interactive-make-mitt-romneys-tax-plan-add-up/

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Current economic recovery faster than most post-financial crisis recessions

  By Cyrus | October 28, 2012 - 1:04 pm | 2012 Election, Economics 101
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Critics of President Obama claim that the current economic recovery is far slower than other post-recession recoveries and blame Obama’s policies for what they say could be more rapid growth.  Putting aside for a moment the fact that much of Obama’s policies are laying in a heap of blocked policies in the Republican House and record number of filibusters by Republicans in the Senate, the fact is that post-financial crisis recessions are very different than normal economic recessions, and the current economic recovery is outperforming historic recoveries after recessions caused by financial crises. In a January 2008 article written 1 … Continue reading this post →

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