Politicians should never make technical decisions

It has been very popular for many intellectuals to adopt the view of Malthus that the planet’s resources are limited and that there are way to many people on the planet.  A good portion of the environmental movement is also based on these same views.  Unfortunately most of these “intellectuals” and “do gooders” are not knowledgeable in the science and engineering that relate to energy production and development. What we do know is that the generation and control of large amounts of cheap energy is critical to maintaining a high standard of living.  We also know that when the need for large families is eliminated that the people will have fewer children.

The solution therefore is to raise the standard of living which then results in fewer children being born.  How many people the planet will support is unknown for it depends on the technology we have and how much energy we can control.  If we assume that the politicians want the citizens to lead happy and productive lives (which is not certain) then we know the only way that can be done is through having cheap and abundant energy available.  This is the opposite of the current directions of those in positions of power mostly because they do not have the education, intelligence or the vision to see the real solutions.  Most of them operate on a zero sum game where it’s all about the distribution of the pie not the making the pie bigger.

What we do know is that if zealots are left unchecked and the environmentalists are zealots then they will destroy civilization.  For example, the banning of the incandescent light bulb in the United States starting with 100 watt incandescent lamps in January of 2012.  The replacement lamps for now appear to be mostly compact florescent lamps (CFL) which produce more light per watt of electricity. LED lamps are the same with slightly different numbers. This is being done for only one reason and that is to use less energy.  But is what is being said about less energy a true fact, well let’s find out.

A 100 watt incandescent lamp will produce when turned on 90 watts of heat and 10 watts of light. A 100 watt CFL replacement lamp will produce when turned on 50 watts of heat and 50 watts of light.  These numbers are not the actual numbers but they are reasonable estimates used for discussion purposes.  So we can say that for every five incandescent lamps we only need one CFL lamp.   So lets say we have 10 incandescent lamps and we replace them with 2 CFL’s that reduces the electric load from 1,000 watts (10 x 100) to 200 watts (2 X 100) and we save money.

Maybe, maybe not those 10 100 watt lamps that we replaced were helping to heat your home in the winter.  When they were replaced by the 2 100 watt CFL’s we removed 800 watts of heat which is where all the energy that the incandescent lamps used went.  They are hot to touch remember.  The difference between the two types 800 watts will need to be made up for by the furnace in the winter so depending on the rate one pays for power you could be spending more for the heating then you were saving from the electricity.

In general the addition cost of heating in the North could be higher then the savings if air conditioning is not used. And in some cases the higher cost of the lamps even with the offsetting longer life and with air could make this a bad investment.  In the south with little heating the CFL’s would save money especially with the reduced air conditioning load.  The point to this is that the savings will not be as advertised. And if it isn’t did it really make sense to shift 100% of lighting manufacturing to China along with all the jobs.

In Summary

National policy should be determined through independent private sector research and development, and outside the political system to include funding.

If Governmental is involved it should be used only to recommend general policy and never to actually provide any services.

Business should be responsible for all goods and services

Costs should be allocated as closely to the user as is practical