A little reminder of Republican attempts to solve the energy problem

[zbdent]

"Among the wasteful corruptions of the Second Republic, the Carter Energy Department stood out in my mind as a great, malodorous garbage dump. The Carter udget had allocated $17 billion for the Energy Department over the years 1982-86. What for? So that it could subsidize such economic white elephants as a multi-billion-dollar coal-liquefication plant for the Gulf Oil Company, windmills, fluidized bed combusters, solar-power towers, gasohol plants, shale plants, Stirling engines, photovoltaic cells, and countless other experiments in high-cost, unproven energy technologies.

There was nothing wrong with all this experimentation. It's precisely the kind of thing Adam Smith had invented the free market to accomplish. But the federal bureaucracy was neither competent nor called upon to usurp the job.

The sight of lobbyists for oil, natural gas, utility, and equipment manufacturers lining around the block at DOE drove me up a wall. So, too, did the spectacle of the congressional energy committees - and their members' upturned palms."

page 125, David A. Stockman, "The Triumph of Politics" - 1986/1987 (paperback edition)

This is just in the first month or two of the Reagan era. I see how the "free market" really worked to bring these "alternative energy" resources into fruition.

[phantom power]

1. It's been clear for decades...

that Republicans don't understand what actually happens in their beloved pure free-markets.

[spag68]

2. coal to gas

is not such a far fetched idea. I worked as an electrician on the first one in a Pgh. suburb, and when completed it had the ability to make competitive priced methane and this was 1976. As a bonus, it was almost pollution free.

[NNadir]

3. Nothing involving coal is pollution free.

Nothing at all.

Coal is the worst fuel on the planet. It should be banned for all purposes with the possible exception of making steel.

[zbdent]

5. Actually, the Nazis were using this

(reported on the Bill Press show) during World War II . . . I recently posted something which said about how this process was buried in Washington's archives until the mid seventies . . .

[NNadir]

6. It was not buried anywhere.

Fischer-Tropsch chemistry has been widely understood for quite some time. The Nazis were merely the first to industrialize it.

It is still industrial in South Africa and is used by Eastman Chemicals (after a fashion) in Tennessee for acrylate manufacture.

Coal based Fischer-Tropsch chemistry is what environmentalists must fight against. It will probably kill the planet faster than any single thing.

I have no idea whether humanity is likely to survive global climate change in anything but a tiny fraction of what it is now, but to the extent that an infrastructure change is demanded, we must this time make wise choices. We must substitute nuclear energy and renewable energy for all fossil applications.

[NNadir]

4. Good find.

I don't think I could read a book written by David Stockman, but thanks for giving us the most telling part.