The authors use the quote from J. Edmond, 2007

“Fundamental changes in the world’s expanding energy system are required to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Incremental improvements in technology will help, but will not by themselves lead to stabilization”

(authors comment) Not a lot of ambiguity there. Is Edmonds alone? He’s not.”

Yes, there is ambiguity.

Now the author of ‘Fast, Clean and Cheap’ read the whole Edmond paper and I’m still looking for it. But writing what he wrote doesn’t mean Edmond thinks that breakthrough technology will occur if we spend more money on it. Edmond may think that breakthrough technology will have nothing to do with the ‘Fundamental change in the world’s expanding energy system.’ Edmond may think that we need carbon taxes to make the fundamental change in energy system, we don’t know, the quote is inadequate.

The other example is when the author of ‘Fast, Clean and Cheap’ uses the example of public investment in wind energy of 1.3 billion in Denmark and now Danish companies get that money back every year. That’s probably true, but that doesn’t mean if they spent 13 billion they would be getting that back every year. The spending on research payback is incremental, the first billion does more than the last billion. Maybe it’s the last billion is where the breakthrough occurs and we should spend on research as much as possible to get to the last billion. I think we should spend 30 billion a year on renewable energy research, but it’s not enough to be our central plan on global warming.

To me, ‘Fast, Clean and Cheap’ was not convincing. Every researcher says we need to spend more money on research.

Bud, I don’t think a lot of people realize or want to face up to the fact that to reduce CO2 emissions our standard of living is going to have to take a BIG nose dive.

In any case with peek oil and extreme weather already upon us we are heading for more like a depression, with much civil unrest.

While these things will contribute to CO2 reduction, I think that we have probably past the West Antarctica Ice Sheet tipping point.

We, however, have to try to curtail CO2 in any case as it will just keep on getting worse.

Joe,

It is a good thing that you only delete comments that make gross misstatement of the facts or the positions that YOU have taken. Were such a policy to extend to the positions of other people you would have to delete almost every post you have written about Michael and I (and Roger Pielke).

M.S. “Romm wants his readers to believe that regulation, regulation, and regulation are more important than investment.” Not true. I believe private investment is far more important than public investment. Stimulating it does require some regulations, but many other strategies, including some similar to deregulation are needed, too.

I usually delete posts that make several gross misstatement of the facts or of positions I have very clear stated, such as the M.S. quote above or the one about CSP that the previous writer debunked.

I have particularly been deleting this nonsense because you wrote: “Romm insists that major government investments weren’t required for past innovations.”

That is the exact opposite of the truth. And believe me, I noticed your clever use of the word “innovations” and not “breakthroughs” — they are NOT the same thing, as I have explained to my readers. Please show me where I ever said “major government investments weren’t required for past innovations.”

So that’s why I deleted the comment. I told my readers weeks ago I would do that. The TOU clearly allow it. It affects under 1% of all comments.