The text here has been slightly adapted in the process.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

I noted this exchange between Migeru and ATinNM about whether energy is a good (a "noun" / extensive) or a service (a "verb" / intensive)

To go back to AT's original question, I would say an extensive thermodynamical variable is a good, and an intensive variable is a service.

Examples of goods: (Thermodynamic Free) Energy, (neg)-Entropy, Space/Size, (amount of) Matter, electrical charge/current, magnetic moment (i.e., strength of a magnet).

Examples of services: Temperature, Pressure, surface/linear Tension, electrical Voltage, magnetic Field.

Hah.

Why? First, because even the most aggressive players in the climate change enthusiasts versus skeptics arguments lose sight of the fact that the IPCC reports are CONSENSUS reports, which means that they reflect the lowest common denominator understanding of the threat. There is plenty of data to suggest that things are a lot worse than the IPCC reports conclude.

Couple that with the fact that the IPCC reports say things like "get CO2 emissions to zero globally by 2020 or it's over" and "CO2 emissions must be substantially negative globally by 2050", while our politicians are arguing about plans to reduce somewhat the emissions by 2050, and one can only conclude that we are not actually going to do what is required.

Then, the second point is that I have been reading about Ptolemy and his maps, and how he collected thousands of reasonably accurate geographic points and defined a mathematical map projection, and could thus generate a pretty good map of the world. And then, the world just sort of forgot about it for a thousand years. The info was there, of course, held by the Muslims, and eventually recovered, but for a thousand years it was just forgotten as we descended into the dark ages under the leadership of our great Popes.

And it sure looks to me like we are headed that way now. Who's going to say that what we have now can't be forgotten? Sure, we have roads and cars, but they had Roman roads and chariot technology and managed to forget about that. (And I bet more people know how a chariot works than how a car works!) It is certainly within the realm of possibility that everything modern that we are familiar with today could be forgotten a hundred years from now.

I mean, we have "conservatives" whose only goal is to fight other conservatives, we have climate change and overpopulation and monoculture and impending avian flu, we have leaders who take extremely short term views on all topics. And virtually every politician has religion running of his or her ears.

Frankly, it seems to me that if somebody is going to be working on a new economics, they should concentrate on an economics that describes how things will work when we move into The Dark Ages, Version II.

There are an increasing number of people who are making the finite planet argument. This was unheard of just five years ago.

The site tends to look at everything through a political lens which makes it hard to have good discussions of social policy. Hence all the "why now?" remarks.

The range of ideas is quite limited. People latch on to one of the popular themes of the day and do little thinking of their own. Thinking is hard, repeating easier.

Having said that, repeating is useful, it helps people solidify their own thoughts and creates momentum.

While it is useful to keep repeating the same basic themes, since there are still many not yet well informed, I think it is time to take the next step.

What I think this is, is to recast arguments in terms of goals and ethics. The standard framing up to now has been in terms of process: will this tax, finance or investment program lead to economic growth?

This needs to be replaced with: if we had, say, unlimited, almost free power what would we want to do with it? Do we want to increase the material wealth of the world even more? Do we want to continue the imbalance of wealth? Do we want to mitigate the differences? Do we want to allow the new resources to be used to further increase population? Or do we want to do something entirely different?

Societies which were able to meet their basic needs with little effort (such as the South Sea islands before the white man) didn't work too hard. If you had all you needed (not wanted) with modest effort what would you do with your time?

What I'm saying is that it is time to start talking about where we want to end up, not just how to get there.


Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

re: What are utility produced externalities by wind generated electricity? What is are utility customer externalities by wind generated electricity?

One externality in any case --unit consumption and production-- presumably is cost avoidance, or benefit, of foregone fossil fueled output in terms of operating expenses, emissions, and waste. Another, arguably, is "spillover" in the first instance by creation of wind generators and transmission networks which make possible purchase of perishable, surplus electricity by remote customers.

What the article does not explain is change, if any, in retail prices per unit distributed to utility customers in the utility's local service area or customers buying the remote utility's "premium" output. What methods, if any, do EU regulators employ to assure utility customers benefit by wholesale trading in the rates paid per unit?

Storm Moving on Spain's Windmills to Slam Power Price | Bloomberg | 5 Feb 2009

Wind has become a bigger factor in Germany and Spain because they both subsidize rates for the renewable energy and give producers preference to sell in wholesale markets. Utilities that acquire power, from Essen-based RWE AG in Germany to Union Fenosa SA in Madrid, must buy any available wind and solar power before tapping fossil-fuel plants....

CIMD SA, a Madrid-based broker, offered yesterday to buy power for working days next week at no more than 37 euros a megawatt-hour, one of its brokers said. That's 11 percent below this week's average price. A megawatt-hour supplies about 1,500 Spanish homes for 60 minutes....

Wind power in Spain is a relatively high-margin business. Generators get paid a premium for wind energy, money on top of the fixed price set by the wholesale "pool" market that's paid to all kinds of plants -- from coal and oil to gas or nuclear.

The premium is as much as twice the rate of conventional power traded on the pool exchange.

High winds slash Spanish energy prices | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Spain finished the year with 16,740 MW of installed wind capacity, second only to the United States and Germany.