2. Years ago a power company built a natural gas generating station south of Dallas. Built it and let it sit mostly unused during the days of $13/MM CF natural gas. It is almost like this rule was created for Suez Energy ...
3. Excepting nuclear, there are few alternatives for baseline energy for the grid. Coal is probably the best over the long haul - and I don't mean the next two years of Obama trying to get elected a third term or paying off cronies.
Re: Obama third term.
I used to think that no one would actually try that. When some were saying this about Clinton, I knew it wasn’t a possibility.
With this guy? Yeah, it’s a distinct possibility. A manufactured crisis, an orchestrated crash of the economy and the utility grid, martial law - well within the possibilities of what he could and would do.
And I can just see the sheeperal excusing it and blaming conservatives.
Neither Taxing Nor Rationing CO2 Survives Cost Vs. Benefit Analysis
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=329610775933844
The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds [clouds of course aren’t gas, but high level ones do act to trap heat from escaping, while low-lying cumulus clouds tend to reflect sunlight and thereby help cool the planet -etl]. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.
In simple terms the bulk of Earth’s greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth’s greenhouse effect — perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth’s total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, ‘Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,’ Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).
The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other ‘minor greenhouse gases.’ As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/