Author Archives: Bruce Nielson

On Utah’s Victory and Post Facto Justifications

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I hate sports.

But just for the sake of family bonding, I took my son over to my parent’s house to watch the BYU vs. Utah game. My daughters came too, though they did not watch the game, but instead played with “Grammie’s toys.”

What an excellently played game. Utah did well, but not as well as I was expecting. BYU did far better than I expected. Really, BYU lost in my opinion due to three factors: 1) the idiots ran the ball on a 4th down when they should have kicked a field goal, 2) there was that bad call that got called as a fumble when it wasn’t, 3) they missed their final field goal.

Especially #3, of course, because the other two can’t be directly tied to the loss in a straightforward cause and effect manner.

Also note that my justifications above are the rational equivalent to saying: “Utah only won because they scored more points as per the rules of the game.” Sort of takes the justification wind out of my sails. Though somehow it makes me feel like I have a moral victory – though now I’m going to have to wonder if I just proved moral victories don’t actually exist.

After it was all done, and the Utah’s walked away with their victory, my oldest daughter came in and asked “Who was playing?” My son and I told her it was BYU and Utah. She then asked, “Who won?” We told her Utah did.

“Oh! I was voting for Utah!” she exclaimed.

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An Explanation of Emissions Trading

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In my last post, I suggested that it might be possible to create a ‘no cost’ (or ‘low cost’ anyway) solution to CO2 Growth. In this post I will start to explain the principles behind my own conservative proposal for how to curb CO2 growth without hurting the economy.

My idea on this dates back to, of all things, a conversation I once had with my extreme libertarian friend. This is that friend I mentioned before that believed that the freeway system hurt the economy because it put the trains out of business and didn’t let a natural market solution grow. Being an extreme libertarian, he naturally believed that the market was all good. If you just let the market alone it would, in his view, always find an optimal solution through the famous invisible hand of the market.

To prove his point to me, he started to explain to me how emission trading worked. Now mind you, this is a real thing that really has been tried out successfully by local governments for various types of pollution. He used the example of air pollution. This is how he described it.

Bruce, the market solves all problems. It can even solve air pollution. The only good thing to ever come out of the EPA was emissions trading. It’s brilliant because it’s a market solution to pollution. What they did was they sold emission rights to companies. This created a market for pollution rights. They could then sell to each other or to anyone. The Sierra Club got together and pooled their money and actually bought up pollution rights from companies. Because the pollutions rights now had a market value companies wanted to sell them if they could, so it was good for everyone. See, Bruce, the market really can solve all ills.

This really was very close to what he actually told me. I was, I admit, intrigued.

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CO2 Emissions – Risk Mitigation and Contingency Planning

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So, for example, let’s pass legislation that says X, Y and Z happen in case temperatures go up 5 degrees C globally in five years or even 10. The key is, “what are X, Y and Z?” I hope you address that in your next post. — Geoff

This comment from Geoff above reminded me that I wrote a post on Risk Mitigation and Contingency Planning and it never posted. (It “missed it’s schedule” whatever that means.)

As I’ve mentioned before, I do not buy into the idea that CO2 growth and AGW are one and the same. I treat each as a seperate issue and therefore propose different solutions for each. For CO2 growth, I take a risk mitigation approach. For AGW I take a contingency planning approach. This post explains what I mean: Continue reading →

Book Review: Forbidden Sea

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My sister, Sheila A. Nielson, recently published her first YA Fantasy book: Forbidden Sea. (See also her book blog found here.) I wanted to bring it to the attention of the Mormon Blog audience. I think it would have a strong appeal to all religious people.

It’s the story of young teen named Adrianne Keynnman of Windwaithe Island and her many life struggles. When she was young, Adrianne lost her father to a horse riding accident and since then her family has struggled to just survive. Her comfortable life disappeared before her eyes and now she and her family are so poor they can’t even afford to pay to feed their beloved dog.

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Understanding the Economic Impact of Mitigating CO2 Emissions

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It’s time to finish up my thoughts on CO2 emissions. In previous posts, I discussed why I felt taking risk mitigation actions on our CO2 growth made rational sense and why I’m concerned about those that simply assume there is no risk at all without evidence.

However, I think the strongest of the conservative counter arguments has always been fear that we break the economy through what essentially amounts to an overwhelming energy tax. So let’s talk about how economics works and see if we can address this concern.

Let’s start with this quote as a typical of AGW Skeptics:

Few people have any problem with anthropogenic global warming being treated as a tentative theory worthy of further investigation.

Many do, however, have a problem with the idea that a tentative theory that is completely devoid of critical evidence should be used as a justification for permanently dampening the economic prospects of mankind.

Here we meet the claim that current CO2 curbing proposals will permanently the economy for the rest of forever. 

I look at this argument I want to scream? Isn’t this guy supposed to be a conservative? Why such an incredible lack of faith in the markets?

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