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Sep 4, 2022Liked by Arnold Kling

The statement: "Neither author seems to have a background in engineering, science, or economics" could be applied to the vast majority of discussions about energy, resources, ecology, sustainability, etc. with our regulators and political class from the head of the department of energy (Canadian-American lawyer, educator, author, political commentator, and politician serving as the 16th United States secretary of energy since 2021) on down. Can you imagine someone who knows nothing about energy in all its forms making decisions, when she get two different opinions from two different experts who do know about energy? Being a lawyer she will decide that the one with the better presentation or the results she wants is scientifically the better choice, but of the many really brilliant scientists I have known, some of the best and brightest, can explain better in the language of science than the language of bureaucrats. Makes me think of a management technical question where, as a very young man, I filled three blackboards with differential equations proving a high priced expert with 40 years experience was wrong on a specific issue. The management had forgot their math language and supported the "expert", which lost the company $17million on that decision.

It strikes me in my old age as funny now when I hear stupidity coming out of the mouths of our "leaders" and "rulers". I used to get upset at statements that violated the laws of thermodynamics as great "environmental experts" and regulators would say nonsense.

Having done my thesis in hard sciences - thermodynamic areas and work in STEM areas for half a century the amount of nonsense spewed by so called "experts" like our political and bureaucratic class is astounding. Our regulators do the same thing as the tobacco companies did in hiring "scientists" that give them the answers they want to questions that may or may not be relevant. If the scientist gives results they don't want, it gets buried and he is no longer the PI on future contracts.

Any so-called "environmentalist" that doesn't support a revenue neutral carbon tax at the well/mine head or import terminal, has some hidden agenda or doesn't understand global warming. As some who has taught graduate level environmental engineering, most of the people claiming environmental knowledge working for activist organizations or the regulators just know buzz words, like sales people in highly technical area, but don't really understand.

Note: "energy" and "human creativity" are the only "resources" that are limiting humanity. Atoms don't go away but become diluted and energy can always recover them allowing energy to produce all other factors we call "resources", including food. (exception being nuclear energy where we get a measurable mass change in one atom into energy instead of a trivial amount of mass/energy in a chemical bond in a fossil fuel). There are only political limits on energy supply and distribution. With the exponential increase in scientific knowledge, the limits on human creativity have become purely social limits created by our vetocracy, where every activists and politician/bureaucrats opinion has veto power (a tragedy of the anti-commons problem).

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Yes, the China energy story really helps to explain a lot of what's happening in the world in terms of economics and geopolitics. It goes under-remarked on. Industrial production requires a lot of tradeoffs, bargaining, and conflict. Just importing stuff that has already been made for you someplace else eliminates a lot of those issues in the short run, but creates many more potential issues in the long run.

I disagree with the thesis of the authors that environmental policy is the largest driver of this dynamic. It's one driver, but the bigger one is 20th century labor policy. At the end of the day, there are a squintillion ways to get around the mostly silly and paperwork-based environmental regulations in the west. But getting around the labor regulations and the larger institutional-legal edifice that makes cost of living so high is impossible. Energy flows to the region in which it will be used most profitably. That region is east Asia, and its most productive country is China.

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I thought the Constable and Lieberman article was pretty good, though, like you, I'm not familiar with the authors and don't know if some of their statements can be trusted. One place where I think they are off base is that they imply that China's increasing energy use is compensating for the decreasing energy usage in Western countries as a sort of end-run around environmental rules. I'm sure there's a little bit to that, but their increasing energy usage is mostly going to their own population, to bring them out of great poverty. They say that China's electricity use is 70% higher than that of the U.S., but they have almost three times our population, so they are still considerably poorer than we are, and their energy usage and wealth should be increasing faster than ours.

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The advance of civilization is completely correlated with energy consumption per capita. And the authors are correct- the western world has started an energy starvation diet that appears to have no endpoint. At present trends, the western world is going to be increasingly impoverished while the countries growing their consumption of energy are increasingly wealthy.

We should have been building nuclear power plants for the last 45 years if we really were going to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, but we haven't been doing that- we have been slowly closing the ones we did have, and not replacing them.

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founding

Re: "I think that the defender of affirmative action has to argue that everyone who is admitted is equally qualified, but without affirmative action the qualified minority would not have been admitted. But nobody makes that argument, because nobody believes it."

Those who defend Harvard admissions policy don't invoke "affirmative action." Instead, they make the following two arguments:

1) "Diversity" improves the social education, workplace readiness, and campus experience of all matriculants (grads). "Diversity" in admissions at highly selective universities is de facto equivalent to very substantial "affirmative action" in admissions.

However, Peter Arcidiacono provides systematic evidence that real-existing "diversity" on campus yields "academic mismatch," which induces (a) racial self-sorting among fields of study, which differ in academic difficulty, and (b) attendant social segregation.

Thomas Sowell liked to say that a black student who majors in grievance studies at UC-Berkeley might have majored in chemistry at a regional UC campus, absent affirmative action throughout UC.

2) Admissions by traditional academic criteria -- standardized tests of aptitude and subject matter (SAT/ACT), and high-school GPA weighted by difficulty of courses -- have "disparate impact" on historically disadvantaged minority groups.

Critics counter-argue that a norm of equal impact in admissions is de facto equivalent to demographic group quotas.

Affirmative action is so yesterday. The new rhetorics in university admissions are diversity, disparate impact, and holistic evaluation of candidates.

The vague "holistic" criterion is conveniently versatile. On the one hand, it can give relatively weak students a leg up. On the hand, it favors sophisticated families who know how to work the work the admissions system years in advance.

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On Social Security and Medicare:

While a means test might make perfect sense in a just world, the problem is this- the political support for both programs depends almost entirely on its universal nature. People won't be so willing to give up 16% of their wages if there is a decent chance they won't get anything out of the programs on retirement. The program is already progressive to some extent since the payout and retention rates do depend on overall past income and retirement income since SS benefits are partially taxable.

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Do you agree with everything Veronique de Rugy and Blake Flayton say? Of course not; that goes without saying. And does it not go without saying with respect to Amy Wax?

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The anti-renewable energy article is quite good, better than most stuff from most scientists on the same subject. Great conclusion:

"if reducing carbon emissions is a requirement, as we believe it is, then reason shows that fossil fuels are the necessary bridge to a nuclear-based, low-carbon future."

[Disclaimers. a) I worked at EPRI in nuclear energy & support it, and b) my son is getting his PhD. in nuclear physics - and Slovakia already gets a high % of its energy from Russian style nukes]

They critique low quality renewables well: "there is a large quantity of energy in the sunshine and in the wind blowing around the globe. But that energy is of very low quality and not available to do much useful work. ...There is a reason why no creatures make a living by extracting energy from the wind—the quality level is just too low—and there is a reason that the organisms that manage to build lives from solar energy, plants, are relatively simple and, generally speaking, stationary.

... transforming sunlight and wind into grid electricity requires turbines and photovoltaic panels, themselves complex and expensive states of matter, as well as any number of ingenious and expensive grid kludges such as batteries to render it useable. That makes renewable energy intrinsically expensive. The sunshine and wind might be free, but not the extraction, conversion, and stable delivery to market."

Extraction & conversion for stable delivery to market is what makes sunlight / wind so expensive. This truth is far too little emphasized or articulated, even by critics of renewables or other energy experts.

One significant early objection: " History shows conclusively that energy efficiency improvements precipitate increases in consumption and are, therefore, extremely unlikely to be causing the sweeping cross-national reductions in Western energy demand." I'm sure that the internet and virtual entertainment enjoyment & service provision has made GDP/ happiness more energy efficient. Such questionable generalizations make the ones I don't question less convincing.

Comparing the climate alarmist predicted problems with the anti-Green critic's predicted problems make it look like the climate alarmists are far more wrong for the near term, and likely mid-term.

>> John Constable is the author of Europe’s Green Experiment: A costly failure in unilateral climate policy & Debra Lieberman is an author and Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami.

They don't mention the recent good news that China has cleared a Thorium molten salt reactor to begin experimental operation - the kind that cannot produce weapons grade Uranium (and thus has no direct military bomb side benefits, nor defense contractor supporters), but is more complicated.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-salt-reactor-cleared-for-start-up

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founding

The authors of the energy starvation piece seem to have forgotten the impact of comparative advantage and the resulting specialzation. Their strawman argument against efficiency as a cause leaves out the possibility of efficciency gains from increased trade and specialization. That type of efficiency gain could cause energy use in one region to decline and enerygy use in another sector to increase with both regions becoming better off.

In addition they seem to think that the cost of "joules' produced from "exhaustable resources" are currently forecast and discounted correctly when comparing them to the cost of soar and wind today. Perhaps they are. But, surely some uncertainty about the cost forecast and the discount rate makes the possibility of fossil fules dominating in the future also uncertain.

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Amy Wax had a fine interview, with good expressions of the problem, along with the honesty to know her timid changes to the University system would fail to change it.

What to do? Legally take away tax-exempt status from educational institutions which discriminate against Republicans, or against legal free speech, as well as no Fed loans, no Fed research.

What can people do? Vote Republican. Tell & show Dem friends that the Democrats are imposing the censors against free speech, and destroying academia. Like Bill Barr's non-enthusiasm for Trump - Trump is the lesser evil when compared to any progressive Dem (which all are.)

When Reps gain power - define "diversity" in law to include meaning diverse political opinions. On abortion, on immigration, on affirmative action, on meritocracy; on political parties. Support false advertising lawsuits against colleges which claimed the students would be exposed to diverse viewpoints when there are less than 20% Republican professors.

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Where there is smoke there is fire, but I'd like to hear from Jewish students who sincerely dissent from the policies of the Israeli government wrt Palestine if they experience "anti-Semitism."

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Constable Lieberman: energy starvation? I think the vast and world-GDP increasing surge in Chinese production is mainly the result of cheaper communications and transport and internal Chinese reforms. Relaxing trade restrictions helped, but was not decisive and energy product and energy use policies negligible.

The are onto the reason that taxes on net CO2 emissions in an one country need to be complimented with border taxes on imports from countries that do not also have similar net CO2 emissions policies.

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I think the justification for age-based benefits like SS and Medicare is that people do not ("irrationally"?) save enough although age of death uncertainty does add to the problem. Taxing consumption, say with a VAT (but not income with a capped wage tax -- a forgivable error in the 1930's, but not now), is a nudge to better collective behavior. The same consideration would suggest more generous 401K type tax incentives for saving, over and above the general arguments for taxing consumption over taxing income.

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