Category: Environmental Wackos

Yet Another Inconvenient Truth

In Al Gore’s propagandamentary An Inconvenient Truth he uses the receding snow coverage of Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro as a sign that man-made global warming is real, and no scientist can deny it.

Now it looks like real science has determined that Kilimanjaro’s snows are not some barometer of global warming:

Kilimanjaro’s icy top, which provided the title for an iconic short story by Ernest Hemingway, has been waning for more than a century, according to Philip Mote of the University of Washington in the United States and Georg Kaser of the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Most of the retreat occurred before 1953, nearly two decades before any conclusive evidence of atmospheric warming was available, they wrote.

“It is certainly possible that the icecap has come and gone many times over hundreds of thousands of years,” Mote, a climatologist, said in a statement.

The fact of the matter remains that climatology is not a predictive science — we just don’t know enough about the complex and unpredictable nature of an entire planetary atmosphere to say with any certainty what forces have exactly what effects. Computer modeling is based on our assumptions about the Earth’s climate, which may or may not be accurate.

Is there evidence of anthropogenic global warming? Certainly there is evidence, but evidence isn’t enough to make a conclusive case. We’re in a period of increased solar warming which can have effects on global temperatures. We don’t fully understand how the planet’s magnetic field effects temperature. There are a whole host of unanswered questions which defy the easy answers given to us by global warming advocates. Reducing our output of carbon dioxide is a good thing in itself, but justifying it through fear-mongering and alarmism only cheapens the efforts of real scientists.

Gore was wrong about Kilimanjaro, and he is wrong about many other things in his film — and yet we’re being told over and over that Mr. Gore is some sage truth-teller who is warning us about a crisis that will destroy our entire civilization — and if you believe that, I’ve got a snowy peak in Africa to sell you…

The Kyoto Scam

The Guardian has an interesting exposé on how the Kyoto Protocol is being used in furtherance of numerous “carbon trading” scams:

The CDM is one of two global markets which have been set up in the wake of the Kyoto climate summit in 1997. Both finally started work in January 2005. Although both were launched with the claim that they would reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, evidence collected by the Guardian suggests that thus far, both markets have earned fortunes for speculators and for some of the companies which produce most greenhouse gases and yet, through a combination of teething troubles and multiple forms of malpractice and possibly fraud, they have delivered little or no benefit for the environment.

While the CDM is run under the umbrella of the UN, the second market is overseen by the European commission. Before launching, it churned through a mass of figures and produced a maximum number of tonnes of carbon dioxide which could be produced by each nation in the scheme; each nation then handed its big corporations and organisations a set number of permits – EU allocations – defining the number of tonnes of carbon dioxide they could produce between January 2005 and December 2007. But they got their sums wrong.

It’s hard to say such fraud is a surprise — the Kyoto Protocols themselves are a scam, as Kyoto-crazy Europe has been failing to meet their Kyoto targets while the United States has been reducing carbon emissions without Kyoto and at a time of robust economic growth. Developing nations like China and Brazil — who are rapidly set to becoming the world’s leading polluters, are exempt from Kyoto’s restrictions.

Carbon markets might work in theory — but any market without transparency and accountability is likely to fail. The current carbon-trading system is rife with fraudsters and a general lack of accountability. Having it be run by unaccountable organization like the UN is only inviting the same gross financial mismanagement that turned the Oil-for-Food Program into the largest financial scandal in human history. Unless there are clear standards in accounting and enforcement mechanisms that ensure those standards are upheld, such scams will continue to proliferate.

The problem is that none of the actors have much incentive to reform the system. Investors are making a killing off these carbon-trading schemes. Politicians get to pretend that they’re doing something about climate change. The UN gets to look proactive and gets their typical cut of the action. Third-world countries get the money that comes from burning old refrigerators and pretending to plant tries. Everybody makes out, except that nothing actually happens other than money changing hands.

If global warming was such a dire threat, this sort of thing would be a global outrage. Yet it’s barely a blip on the radar — and that’s because when it comes right down to it, what counts isn’t actually doing something, it’s pretending to do something — and these carbon-trading “clean development” programs are an excellent way of pretending to do something about climate change without all the hassle of actually doing anything at all.

Gas Beats Booze

…at least if you’re a Mexican agave farmer.

Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.

The switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25 percent and 35 percent less agave this year to turn the land over to corn.

Biofuels aren’t a bad concept — but making them out of food stocks is an extremely dumb idea. For one, we don’t have nearly enough agricultural capacity to grow enough corn to meet demand for biofuels. Secondly, it’s driving up the price of corn, which happens to be an important staple crop in the developing world. The only reason why corn-based ethanol is so popular is because Midwestern farmers are making a killing off of it. While that’s very good news for farmers, it’s not so good for the rest of us. Already Mexicans are dealing with dramatically increasing prices for corn tortillas, which is a critical part of the diet of many of Mexico’s poor. While we’re not seeing the same effect in the US quite yet, it’s a very real concern.

Fortunately, there is a solution in the form of cellulosic ethanol, which uses agricultural waste products instead of viable food crops. The problem is that it requires an extra step in processing to break down the cellulose in the plant walls of the biomatter being processed.

Biofuels are likely to be an important supplement to petroleum, but it’s important for policymakers to balance the competing factors of food and energy production — it’s just not smart to burn food for fuel, and unless the proper balance is struck, we may have cheaper gas, but higher food costs — which ends up hurting more people than it helps.

UPDATE: Even worse, German beer prices are going up due to the biofuels boom… which is an absolute tragedy — and another example of how government subsidies only screw up the market’s natural resource allocations.

Bravely Slaying Non-Existent Dragons

BusinessWeek reports on the recently-passed House bill which bans so-called “price gouging” by oil companies:

The legislation would penalize individuals or companies for taking “unfair advantage” or charging “unconscionably excessive” prices for gasoline and other fuels.

Opponents said the language was too vague and that the Federal Trade Commission, which would enforce the law, has not clearly defined price gouging.

“I don’t know what `unconscionably excessive’ means,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.

The bill’s chief sponsor, Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, said he had no doubt the FTC would be able to determine price gouging once the agency had a law to uphold.

The measure would establish the first federal law against energy price gouging. The FTC now can investigate price manipulation under antitrust laws. Currently, 29 states have price gouging statutes; enforcement varies widely.

A Congress which has been passing budget-busting spending bills and stuffing every piece of legislation with more pork than a Carolina barbecue is the last arbiter of what defines “unconscionably excessive” pricing for anything.

The New York Times has an excellent piece on why such “price gouging” is less about greedy oil companies and more about years of bad policy:

The Federal Trade Commission has been skeptical about accusations of price-gouging on gasoline prices. In 2004, the agency studied price changes in gasoline from 1991 through late 2003. It concluded that about 85 percent of the price variability — both up and down — reflected changes in crude oil prices.

To be sure, this year is different. Crude oil prices are actually a bit lower right now, at the onset of the summer driving season, than they were at this time last year. But gasoline prices are slightly higher than they were a year ago.

The Energy Information Administration is predicting that crude oil prices will average about $66 a barrel this summer, versus $70 last summer. But it predicts that gasoline will average about $2.95 a gallon this summer, up from an average of $2.84 last summer.

INDUSTRY executives say the anomaly reflects a temporary drop-off in refinery activity, partly because of scheduled maintenance and partly because of unscheduled interruptions. On top of that come ethanol prices, which have soared, because refiners now blend a small percentage of ethanol into standard gasoline.

The broader issue is that refinery capacity has not kept up with American demand for gasoline. Oil companies, caught with vast amounts of excess refining capacity in the early 1980s, systematically reduced capacity during the long lean years when energy prices and profit margins were the pity of Wall Street.

There are three main reasons why gas prices are so high right now, none of them having anything to do with oil company greed. The first is that there are so many regional gasoline blends required by state laws that supply issues are complicated. The GAO found:

The increasing numbers of special gasoline blends have made it more complicated and costly to supply gasoline, elevating the risk of localized supply disruptions. Producing special gasoline blends can require changes at refineries, making it more complicated and costly to produce gasoline. Special blends also add to the number of fuels shipped through pipelines, reducing the efficiency of the pipelines and raising costs. In addition,
because the tanks at the fuel terminals were often built before the proliferation of blends, they are often too large and too few to efficiently handle the increased number and smaller size batches of special gasoline blends and, as a result, total storage capacity has fallen. Further, in some cases, the proliferation of blends has reduced the supply options available to some retailers, making them more susceptible to supply disruptions.

These special requirements cause major problems with inefficiencies which raise the cost of gasoline for everyone — including states which don’t mandate their own special gasoline blends.

Secondly, there is the high cost of ethanol which is frequently added to even normal gasoline. This is causing major disruptions in the price of corn, which increases not only the costs of corn-based ethanol, but also meat, dairy, and other products which rely on corn-based animal feeds. Using corn for fuel is a horrendously bad idea — unless you’re a corn farmer who can make a windfall on the increased price of corn. For the rest of us, it increases the cost of both our food and our fuel as the cost of corn-based ethanol continues to rise.

Finally, there’s the big issue: this nation simply doesn’t have enough refining capacity. Building a new refinery is an expensive proposition, and if biofuels really are the wave of the future, it makes little sense to make the decades-long investment of a new conventional refinery when the industry has shifted towards alternative energy production. For an oil company to build a new refinery, they have to navigate a sea of bureaucratic red tape, find a location that won’t attract protesters, and then actually be able to recoup their investment. That simply isn’t a viable strategy these days — nobody wants an oil refinery next door, and oil companies can’t pour billions into a new refinery that produces a blend of gasoline that may not be legal in 10 years.

These problems aren’t going to go away. We need more refining capacity, we need fewer fuel requirements, and we need a more realistic policy towards the usage of biofuels. However, Congress seems more interested in grandstanding over “price gouging” than in actually fixing the problems that plague our nation’s oil supplies. As long as Congress has their priorities dangerously out of whack, it’s likely that gas prices will continue to rise, and the only ones doing the gouging will be Congress and the special interests that control them.

A Growing, Greener Economy

The Washington Post notes that US carbon emissions dropped 1.3% last year as the economy grew by 3.3%.

European carbon emissions continued to rise, despite Europe embracing the Kyoto Protocols.

This is an example of why efforts like Kyoto are ultimately counter-productive. The problem isn’t in the developed world, where technological advances allow for greater efficiency over time, but in the developing world where the voracious appetite for electricity and fuel is causing rapid expansion of inefficient power plants and millions of new vehicles to be put on the roads. The Kyoto Protocol does nothing to stop that, but penalizes the growth of the developing world, which in turn reduces the capital available for developing more efficient technologies.

The US is in fact a leader in environmental technologies — but we need to do more. That means seriously developing a 21st Century power grid featuring clean nuclear technologies, cleaner coal, and less dependence on Middle Eastern oil. All of that requires doing things that environmentalist groups hate — developing nuclear plants, engaging in more domestic oil drilling, and increasing our coal production. We have viable and rational options for more energy independence, but if the goal is to rely on wind, solar, or other unreliable technologies, we won’t be able to pull it off. Wind and solar are excellent ways of supplementing our power grid, but they’re not (yet) viable over large scales.

Michael Chrichton had it right — the environmentalist movement operates from religious rather than scientific principles — which is why it’s important that policymakers stop encouraging the indulgences of carbon credits and the ritual shunning of nuclear power and concentrate on what works. That may not be what the environmentalist movement wants, but we all need a cleaner environment and a more efficient economy, and to get there we need to balance the needs of both.

Not The Brightest Bulbs

The American Thinker has a great piece on why Congress’ attempt to ban incandescent lightbulbs is a dim-bulb idea:

Energy conservation lobbyists conveniently overlook the obvious fact that household lightbulbs are primarily used at night-exactly opposite the time of day in which utilities experience peak load demands for daytime heating, air conditioning and commercial lighting. Peak load shedding is what is most necessary for taking coal fired power plants out of commission.

Reducing nighttime lightbulb consumption of kwhs will do almost nothing to shave peak demand. Moreover, with non-peak kwhs reduced at night, utilities will now have fewer revenues on which to earn a return on their invested capital. Utilities must build up their physical plant to meet the peaks, and the capital to finance that equipment has to be paid for 24 hours a day. Thus, utilities will have to raise rates on the remainder of the kwhs we use for everything else, from washing machines to hair dryers to computers.

Household power used by lightbulbs is actually dwarfed these days by major appliances and high tech consumer electronics- such as wide screen TVs, computers and video games along with internet servers, the biggest energy hogs besides cars and trucks.

This is yet another example of how environmentalist hysteria is overwhelming common sense. Such measures as “carbon credits” and mandating the use of compact fluorescent bulbs are examples of environmental policymaking that benefit the noblesse obligé of the wealthy environmentalist while penalizing the rest of the the country.

If Congress were serious about truly reducing America’s carbon footprint they’d be investing heavily in safe nuclear technologies which can actually meet our energy needs without belching more and more pollutants into the atmosphere. Instead, what we’re getting are policies designed to placate environmentalist interest groups that will make the cost of electricity prohibitively expensive without actually making things better.

What we have in our environmental policy is an example of a decision-making process run by activist groups pursuing an agenda rather than policymakers making rational decisions about which policies will produce the best results — an endemic problem in Washington. Environmentalist groups don’t care about the costs of electricity because they have a neo-Luddite streak that is perfectly content with reducing the standard of living for millions of Americans. Their singular focus is on “saving the planet” (making themselves feel important in the process) rather than what the practical consequences of their crusade really are.

We deserve better than this. A sane energy policy isn’t about token concessions and half-assed public policy. It’s about assessing our needs and working on better ways of meeting them — and mandating the use of Chinese-made, mercury filled CFLs is not at all a sound policy.

The Inconvenient Truth About Carbon Offsets

The Economist look at Al Gore’s claim that he’s effectively “carbon neutral” and determines that it’s all a sham:

Most carbon offsets seem to work on one of a few principles: they plant trees, invest in renewable energy sources, or pay someone in a developing country to use some less-polluting technology, like a CFL.

It turns out that a lot of websites have already devoted quite a lot of space to discussing why these plans don’t work particularly well. Calculating one’s carbon output, and the carbon savings from various offsets, is very tricky and may be manipulated by unscrupulous offset firms. Trees take quite a long time to get to the stage where they are actually absorbing all that carbon—and tend to die shortly thereafter, releasing all that carbon back into the atmosphere, there to wreak havoc. By legitimating carbon usage, offset companies may actually be increasing it.

But surprisingly few make what, to me, seems like a more basic point: energy is a tradable market good. It is not as if there is some fixed demand for energy, so that by using less carbon-emitting energy, you actually decrease the amount of carbon emitted.

Gore’s not even close to “carbon-neutral.” It’s not physically possible to consume as much as he does and plant enough trees to make a difference. It’s all a way of deflecting the very well warranted charges of hypocrisy being leveled against him.

Here’s an example of someone who is living in an environmentally responsible manner:

The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude. Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this “eco-friendly” dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize. A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem.

Whose house is being referred to? None other than President Bush’s Crawford, TX ranch, which was designed to fit into the native ecosystem and use as little resources as possible.

Gore, the environmentalist crusader is less personally responsible in terms of ecological impact than the man that environmentalists hate with the fire of a thousand suns. That ought to give Mr. Gore some pause.

Ultimately, if someone wants to take the position of demanding that everyone cut down, they’d better not do it from their palatial estates and their private jets. If being environmentally conscious means anything, it has to start from those who are are touting it.

Environmentalism For The 21st Century

The New York Times has a fascinating piece on environmentalist pioneer Stewart Brand who is advocating a fusion of environmentalism and high-technology to mitigate the effects of climate change and other environmental woes:

Stewart Brand has become a heretic to environmentalism, a movement he helped found, but he doesn’t plan to be isolated for long. He expects that environmentalists will soon share his affection for nuclear power. They’ll lose their fear of population growth and start appreciating sprawling megacities. They’ll stop worrying about “frankenfoods” and embrace genetic engineering.

He predicts that all this will happen in the next decade, which sounds rather improbable — or at least it would if anyone else had made the prediction. But when it comes to anticipating the zeitgeist, never underestimate Stewart Brand.

…He is now promoting environmental heresies, as he called them in Technology Review. He sees genetic engineering as a tool for environmental protection: crops designed to grow on less land with less pesticide; new microbes that protect ecosystems against invasive species, produce new fuels and maybe sequester carbon.

…He’s also looking for green nuclear engineers, and says he feels guilty that he and his fellow environmentalists created so much fear of nuclear power. Alternative energy and conservation are fine steps to reduce carbon emissions, he says, but now nuclear power is a proven technology working on a scale to make a serious difference.

I think that Brand’s environmentalism is far more sustainable than the “Learjets for me, but not for you” hypocrisy of people like Al Gore. Realistically, the idea that everyone can be “carbon neutral” is a fallacy. For one, not everyone can afford to buy “carbon credits” and even if they could, those “carbon credits” are hardly based on any scientific exchange.

What Brand proposes to embrace a version of environmentalism that’s truly progressive — using advanced technology like nuclear power to create a more environmentally friendly economy. We need power, and while efficiency continues to increase, we can’t escape the laws of physics. Electric or hydrogen-powered cars don’t help the environment if the power they need comes from the same CO2-belching coal plants that we use today. With nuclear waste, the end products are contained. Spent fuel recycling is a proven technology — the French have done it for years. The Chinese are investing heavily in nuclear research, including putting hundreds of megawatts of new nuclear plants online in the next few years.

If we want to reduce our CO2 emissions, we can’t do it buy buying indulgences, we have to get serious about fixing the problem. Nuclear energy is the only viable solution we have. We can supplement our nuclear production with wind, solar, and other technologies, but none of those can replace the energy-generating power of nuclear energy. As Brand explains:

“There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective,” he says. “Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don’t know where it is and you don’t know what it’s doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody’s atmosphere.”

Ultimately, Brand’s view is the one that will win out. If we’re serious about climate change, things like Kyoto are meaningless efforts designed to reward bureaucracies over encouraging the sort of innovation that will truly fix the problem. Technologies like nuclear energy, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology have the potential to erase decades worth of environmental damage — provided that the primitivist impulses of many in the environmentalist movement don’t continue to blind the majority to the promise of new technologies.

The solution to climate change may be under construction in someone’s garage right now. Human history teaches us that demanding that people make drastic cutbacks in their lifestyle is a loser — human innovation is what keeps human society advancing in the face of adversity. We need an environmentalist movement that is all about fostering innovating, encouraging new technologies, and not becoming a secular religion that demands that the eco-sinners repent with carbon credits while the high priests of the environmentalist movement wear lecture us from their mega-mansions and private jets.

Brand’s form of environmentalism may be the minority now, but Brand has the right idea — and the future belongs to innovators, not eco-Puritans. The path to a better life requires us to embrace the sometimes-frightening world of technological change. Trying to set back the clock won’t work, but embracing the innovations of the future can ensure that we live more ecologically-sound lives without sacrificing our quality of life.

Buying Indulgences For The 21st Century

Glenn Reynolds notes an interesting piece on how the ultra-rich claim to “offset” their CO2 emissions. Reynolds makes the very apt comparison to buying papal indulgences before the Reformation — it’s an attempt by the wealthy to buy their way out of their own stated social responsibilities, and as the article makes clear, it ends up being a cop-out.

It’s typical hypocrisy — the very rich can afford to buy “carbon credits” while those of us for whom money is an object cannot afford to do the same. For all the talk about how the left abhors social stratification and pitting the haves and against the have-nots, that is precisely what this sort of thing does. It allows Al Gore to emit tons of pollutants directly into the upper atmosphere while preaching his Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Gaia message to the masses, then buy his way to a clean eco-conscience afterwards. Meanwhile, the rest of us are told that we have to make dramatic sacrifices to “save the planet.”

It starts at the top. No more “eco-tourism” for the rich. No more private jets to the Super Bowl. No more jet-setting across the country for high-priced speaking engagements. Either this is a crisis that will destroy all of mankind if it isn’t fixed now or it’s just another way for the world aristocracy to purge themselves of a false sense of noblesse oblige. If it’s the former, then the private jet-set are spoiled beyond belief for acting in such an ecologically injurious manner — if it isn’t then they’re peddlers of snake oil and fear.

In any event, the idea that planting a few trees in Botswana or building a windmill in Hyderabad will offset thousands of tons of CO2 production a year is a farce — and one that should be exposed as such.