CLAIMS OF DRAMATIC MELTING OF ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET UNFOUNDED
From "Comptes Rendus Geosciences"
Antarctica ice sheet mass balance
By: Frederique Remy and Massimo Frezzotti
Abstract
The mass balance of the Antarctica ice sheet is one of the sources of uncertainty about the sea-level rise. However it is not easy to determine the mass balance due to a lack of knowledge of the physical processes affecting both the ice dynamics and the polar climate. Other limitations are the long time lag between a perturbation and its effect, but also the lack of reliable data, the size of the continent and finally the huge range of variability involved. This article examines the results given by three different ways of estimating mass balance, first by measuring the difference between mass input and output, second by monitoring the changing geometry of the continent and third by modelling both the dynamic and climatic evolution of the continent. The concluding synthesis suggests that the East Antarctica ice sheet is more or less in balance, except for a slight signature of Holocene warming, which is still active at the current time. On the contrary, the West Antarctica ice sheet seems to be more sensitive to current warming.
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5. Synthesis and conclusion
Observations of the Antarctica ice sheet suggest that the East Antarctica ice sheet is nowadays more or less in balance, while the West Antarctica ice sheet exhibits some changes likely to be related to climate change and is in negative balance. For the East Antarctica ice sheet, the component survey method indicates a slight positive imbalance of 22 +/- 23km^3 yr^-1 (0.065 mm^-1eq. s.l.), while survey by altimetry gives an upper limit of twice this value and the coffee-can technique indicates steady-state conditions in the surveyed sector of East Antarctica. The model finds a slight negative imbalance for this part due to the actual response of the warming of the Holocene, as the signature of this signal was indeed observed with altimetry analysis. For the western part, the component survey suggests a negative imbalance of 48 +/- 14 km^3 yr^-1 (+0.14mm yr^-1 eq. s.l.) and the altimetry survey a negative imbalance of 59 +/- 60 km^3 yr^-1 (+0.18 mm yr^-1 eq. s.l.), which may be explained by the retreat of ice shelves. These observations, namely a slight increase of the east part and a significant decrease of the western part, have been recently confirmed by the analysis of 2.5 yr of Grace [32].
Modelling of the Antarctica ice sheet [21] suggests that the current response of the Antarctica ice sheet is dominated by the background trend due to the retreat of the grounding line, leading to a sea-level rise of 0.4 mm yr^-1 over the short-time scale (100 yr). This component is again found to be dominant during the following centuries, depending on the climate scenario. Later, the precipitation increase will counterbalance this residual signal, leading to a thickening of the ice sheet and thus a decrease in sea level. Taking into account the low and middle scenarios leads to a decrease in sea level over the next millennium, while the high scenario inverses the trend in 500 years due to the grounding-line retreat. It should be noted that the time when the trend is reversed not only depends on the climatic scenario, but also on the ice shelves modelling, basal melting rate beneath ice shelves being the most critical factor to be estimated.
However, these determinist models do not take into account the stochastic fluctuations of the forcing given the inertia of the ice sheet. For instance, taking random fluctuations of snow accumulation rate into account alone yields a probability of a present-day induced sea level rise of between 0.5 and 1 mm yr^-1 over a 30-year time scale at 10%~10% [40].
Both observations and modelling are still not reliable enough. Let us point out some limitations and problems that should be carefully considered.
The more critical factor is probably the surface mass balance, which varies from location to location due to interaction between precipitation and wind driven by slope along wind direction [9] and [11]. One of the major unexpected discoveries regarding cryosphere/atmosphere interaction was indeed made in the remotest part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet with the discovery of the megadunes [6] and [9]. Major gaps in our knowledge of the temporal and spatial variability processes and of the exact relation between climate change and precipitation change prevent us from producing a reliable estimate of current surface mass balance and from predicting its future trend.
From the point of view of ice sheet dynamics, observations of the Antarctic Ice Sheet over the last decade have identified recent unexpected changes, which are much more dynamic than previously thought. Thus our idea of a slowly evolving Antarctic ice sheet is radically changing [22]. However, the models lack some of the physical processes that may explain these unexpected changes. For instance, a limitation on predicting the future with respect to actual measurements and knowledge lies in the effect of ice-shelf retreat on upslope glaciers. It may be argued either that ice-shelf retreat has little effect on glaciers or that the breaking up of the ice-shelf will accelerate. Considerable improvements are also needed, in particular for characterizing fast moving outlet glaciers. The first results with ICEsat on the glaciers of the Ross embayment suggest that we can hope a very good precision with a very fine space resolution [46]. Lastly, due to numerical limitations, small-scale features such as fast glaciers are poorly taken into account, so that ice sheet modelling underestimates rates of changes [2].
The ICEsat satellite, launched in 2003, will enable measuring of ice sheet mass balance, but on a small temporal scale, which is insufficient for inferring long-term trends. Grace, launched in 2002, will give access to change in ice mass. By combining this data with the ERS and Envisat series, uncertainty with respect to ice sheet mass balance will be reduced.
In the future, the launch of several satellites dedicated to the study of the ice sheet may further our understanding of the physical processes acting on ice sheet and of its actual state. Unhappily due to a launch failure, the Cryosat satellite, devoted for the survey of polar regions, is postponed. Carisma mission, a P-band radar designed to sound the ice sheet, will provide us with exact ice thickness and volume, and will detect internal ice layering, which will be of great help for ice-sheet modelling.
Saving what from whom?
By Thomas Sowell
When conservationists talk about "saving" this and "protecting" that, a logical question might be: Saving it from whom? Protecting it from whom? And why should the government force what you want on someone else who obviously wants something different, or there would not be an issue in the first place? After all, the Constitution says that all citizens are entitled to the "equal protection of the laws."
Such questions almost never get asked. Nor do evidence or logic play much of a role in most conservation issues. Instead, we hear rhapsodies about "open space," sneers at "urban sprawl" and self-congratulatory phrases like "smart growth." In short, rhetoric has long since replaced reasons on this as on so many other issues.
The latest conservation crusade has been announced in the San Francisco Bay area -- putting an additional one million acres aside as "open space." According to an official of the Peninsula Open Space Trust, the next couple of decades represent "the last chance" to "save" these million acres. The fashionable phrase is: "Once it's paved, it can't be saved."
Just to introduce a few facts into all these rhetorical flourishes, there are four and a half million acres of land in the San Francisco Bay Area. Less than one-sixth of this land has been developed. So we are not talking saving the last few patches of greenery from being paved over. More than a million acres are already legally off-limits to development while less than three-quarters of a million acres are actually developed.
What then is the urgency about making another million acres of land legally off-limits to building anything? Because otherwise, more people will move into the area over time and, since they don't want to live outdoors, they will want to have housing. That bothers the conservationists, who prefer trees to houses. If they can't cut these other people off at the pass by making it illegal to build anything on an additional million acres, they can at least force those people to live in the kinds of housing that conservationists want to restrict them to, rather than the kinds of housing that these people prefer for themselves. That's called "smart growth." What is smart about it is another question.
An international study of 26 urban areas with "severely unaffordable" housing found 23 of those 26 subject to strong "smart growth" policies. What is "smart" about causing skyrocketing housing prices by making it illegal to build anything on vast amounts of land? It is smart if you already own a home and the astronomical costs of buying or renting are going to have to be paid by other people who move into the area. It may be especially smart if restrictions on building cause the value of the home you already own to go up by leaps and bounds.
The San Francisco Bay area already has housing prices about three times the national average. The heavy burden that this places on people is reflected in the fact that two-thirds of the purchases of homes last year were financed with risky "interest-only" loans. That means that the mortgage payments for the first few years do not reduce the amount owed by one cent. Moreover, since these are usually adjustable-rate mortgages, the payments can shoot up as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates.
The connection between severe restrictions on building and skyrocketing housing prices can be seen from evidence around the country and around the world, wherever people have succumbed to rhetoric about "smart growth" and sneers at "urban sprawl." Severe restrictions on building began in the Bay Area back in the 1970s. At the beginning of that decade, housing in this area was as affordable as in other parts of the country. A median income family in the Bay Area could pay off the mortgage on a median-priced house in just 13 years, using just one-fourth of their income. A decade later, it took 40 percent of their income to pay off the mortgage in 30 years. Today it requires 50 percent. Very "smart."
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The effects of aerosols
A scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science and his colleagues caused a storm in the atmospheric community when they suggested a few years back that tiny airborne particles, known as aerosols, may be one of the main culprits causing climate change - having, on a local scale, an even greater impact than the greenhouse gases effect. Attempts to understand how these particles influence clouds have generated many uncertainties. A new paper by Dr. Ilan Koren of the Weizmann Institute Environmental Studies and Energy Research Department and Dr. Yoram Kauffman of the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, USA,* published in Science Express online, weaves together two opposing effects of atmospheric aerosols to provide a comprehensive picture of how they may be affecting our climate.
Cloud formation is dependent upon the presence of small amounts of aerosols such as sea salt and desert dust. These tiny particles serve as the seeds around which water vapor in the air condenses, forming tiny water droplets that rise as they release heat. As the small droplets rise, they collide and merge with larger droplets. When the droplets reach a critical size, gravity takes over, causing them to fall from the cloud in the form of rain.
One of the controversies surrounding the extent of aerosol impact on climate change is the duality of their influence. On the one hand, Koren and his colleagues previously found evidence to suggest that the extra seeds planted in the atmosphere by the emission of man-made aerosols (pollution, forest fires, and fuel combustion) lead to more, but smaller-sized, water droplets. The formation of larger water droplets by the collision process is less efficient and, therefore, rainfall is suppressed. The smaller droplets are lifted higher up into the atmosphere, creating larger and taller clouds that will persist longer. Not only does this alter the whole water cycle, but the increased cloud cover reflects more of the sun's radiation back into space, creating a local cooling effect on Earth.
But to complicate matters, Koren, in another study, showed that certain types of aerosols - those containing black carbon - can also decrease cloud cover, ultimately leading to a warming effect. This occurs as black carbon absorbs part of the sun's radiation, warming the surrounding atmosphere and reducing the difference in temperature between the Earth's surface and the upper atmosphere. This combination prevents atmospheric instability - the condition needed to form clouds and rain. A stable atmosphere means fewer clouds; fewer clouds mean less reflection of sunlight; less reflection of sunlight and absorption of radiation lead to warming.
Policy makers have argued that, in the bottom line, the warming effect of the greenhouse gases and the (mainly cooling) aerosol effect may balance each other out so that the net global climate change will be small. Koren argues that it is the local climate change that is problematic: Clouds may persist without releasing their rain over regions where they would normally precipitate, such as rainforests, and move to precipitate over regions where rain is not needed, such as oceans. Or the effect could lead to the warming up of cold and the cooling down of hot regions. These additional effects to the already problematic warming by greenhouse gases could have disastrous repercussions in the long run.
Also controversial is the question of how such tiny localized particles affect weather systems thousands of kilometers away from their sources. There is no doubt that aerosols do play a role, but the skeptics believe it is negligible compared to meteorological key players such as temperature, pressure, the amount of water vapor in the air, and wind strength.
What Koren needed was a way to separate meteorological from aerosol influences - something which was lacking in his previous studies. Together with Kauffman, he used a network of ground sensors (AERONET) to measure the effect of aerosol concentration on cloud cover. Radiation absorption is less affected by meteorology, so if the skeptics are right and meteorology is the main influence, then the correlation between aerosol absorption and cloud cover should have been seen in only a few circumstances. But this was not the case. They observed the duality effect on clouds: As total aerosols increase, cloud cover increases; and as radiation absorption by aerosols increases, cloud cover decreases - for all locations, for all seasons. Backed up with a mathematical analysis, it becomes harder to deny that it is, in fact, aerosols that have the major influence.
"We hope that this study has finally provided closure," says Koren. "Hopefully policy makers will start to tackle the issue of climate change from a different perspective, taking into account not only the global impact of aerosols and greenhouse gases, but local effects too."
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A Waste of Energy: Yucca Mountain hangs in nuclear limbo
"As you can see, Yucca Mountain isn't really a mountain," says our guide as we near the end of an hour-long bus ride, about 100 miles north from Las Vegas. "Those of you who know geology will recognize it's only a ridge." The Department of Energy gives monthly tours these days, anxious to prove--after almost 25 years--it still intends to open its Nuclear Waste Repository at Yucca Mountain someday. The trip, however, feels like an expedition into hostile territory. The whole state of Nevada is on the warpath over the project.
"See those buildings off on the left there," says our guide as we pass through the sagebrush. "They're brothels. As you may know, prostitution is legal in certain Nevada counties. The state has no trouble supplying them with water, but for almost a year they wouldn't give us any. We used port-o-potties for quite a long time." As it turns out, though, the brothels have their upside. Anticipating a surge in business from the construction project, they are among the few locals supporting the project.
Right now the Yucca Mountain Repository consists of one five-mile long tunnel dug into the side of the mountain/ridge. In 1994, a locomotive-like device with a 25-foot drill face started burrowing about 185 feet a day. After a mile into the mountain it turned left for three miles, then left again, re-emerging only five feet from its target. A video at the visitors' gallery shows the whirling snout breaking through the cliff face like a diver returning to the surface, as staff members in hardhats stood and cheered. That was 1997. Nothing much has happened since.
The whole project is now tied down in environmental impact statements. The Environmental Protection Agency set a standard that radiation from the site should not exceed 15 millirems a year (about one chest x-ray) for 10,000 years. Environmentalists screamed that wasn't enough. They wanted a million years. A federal court, of course, agreed. So the EPA set a standard of 350 millirems for the next million years (about two-thirds of what people in Denver get from natural sources) and environmentalists are screaming that isn't good enough either. Nobody has suggested how these standards are to be monitored.
Naturally, in trying to make such preposterous forecasts, somebody winged some numbers somewhere and that's what made it into the papers. Now the press and politicians are playing "the government lied to us."
So the bad news is that it's going to be a long, long time--if ever--before Yucca Mountain is completed. If a license is issued, there are seven more years of construction ahead, then another round of federal permits. Meanwhile, Entergy, the country's second-leading operator of nuclear plants, has collected a multimillion-dollar settlement against DOE for failing to take the spent fuel off its hands by 1998, as promised by the Energy Policy Act of 1982. Others will surely follow.
The good news is that all this probably doesn't make much difference. Nuclear power is about to undergo a resurgence in this country--with or without Yucca Mountain. In the first place, the whole idea that there is such a thing as "nuclear waste" is a bit of a misconception. More than 98% of the material in a spent nuclear fuel rod is being recycled in other parts of the world. About 97% of spent fuel is uranium: 2% is fissionable U-235 isotope, the fuel that powers the reactor and the other 95% is good old U-238, the same non-fissionable isotope that comes out of the ground. It can't be used for bombs. Sure, it has a half-life of four billion years (that's why environmentalists think they have to sit and watch it for a million years) but this is the same stuff that's in granite.
No, the isotope everybody really worries about is plutonium-239, which is formed when small amounts of U-238 absorb neutrons during the three-year cycle. It makes up 1% of spent fuel. Separating it and putting it back in a reactor as "mixed oxide fuel" (uranium plus plutonium) is no problem.
Unfortunately, back in 1976, Jimmy Carter decided that if we extracted the plutonium, somebody might run off with it and make a bomb. Therefore he cancelled fuel recycling. That created the problem of "nuclear waste." France recycles all its fuel rods and has never had any plutonium stolen. As for the remaining 2% of the fuel rod--the highly radioactive transuranic elements and fission byproducts--it is all stored in a single room in Le Havre.
The real waste problem in this country is the 10 million tons of carbon dioxide we throw into the atmosphere every day from coal-fired electric boilers. That constitutes almost 15% of the world's carbon dioxide garbage, which environmentalists warn us is causing global warming. It's ironic that these same people are also opposing the only technology that could conceivably replace those coal plants.
No, it's more than ironic--it's dishonest. In "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore lifts the "seven-wedge" approach to global warming from Robert Socolow, director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton. Mr. Socolow's main "wedges" are efficiency, conservation, fuel switching, renewables, carbon sequestration, reforestation--and "nuclear fission." Mr. Gore conveniently leaves nuclear out.
Even as Yucca submerges slowly beneath a raft of environmental impact statements, alternatives are emerging. Some utilities are using "dry cask storage," simple upright concrete containers surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. "Dry storage is safe on the order of 50 to 100 years," says Allison Macfarlane, co-editor of "Uncertainty Underground," an anthology on the Yucca situation. "Geological repositories are the ultimate solution but there's no need to rush into one right now." The 221-member Goshute Tribe has signed a $1 million contract to accept nuclear material on its reservation in Utah. A group of Wyoming businessmen want to do the same thing at Owl Creek.
As half a dozen utilities prepare to submit applications for new reactors to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, perhaps the best role for DOE's effort will be to serve as a distraction. While environmentalists continue their war dance around Yucca Mountain, a revived nuclear industry will be solving their global warming problem for them.
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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
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Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Monday, July 24, 2006
Have You Hugged a Hummer Today?
Hybrid vehicles' overall energy costs exceed those of comparable non-hybrids
Ford Motor Company did itself a huge favor recently by backing away from its pledge to bump-up its hybrid production ten-fold in four years. But, as it turns out, the company might have done the planet a whale of a favor too. Just last fall, CEO Bill Ford was valiantly promising in a mega-million dollar ad campaign that the company would never, ever turn away from its hybrid pledge because these vehicles were central to the company's reputation as an "innovator and environmental steward."
Never mind that at the time Ford was losing $2,000 to $3,000 for every hybrid it sold because consumers won't pay the entire $6,000 extra that it costs to produce a hybrid over its gas-powered counterpart. Never mind also that in the real world -- outside of the Environmental Protection Agency's tax-payer funded testing sites -- hybrids don't deliver anywhere close to the gas mileage that the agency attributes to them, as auto-writer Richard Burr reported in the Weekly Standard.
Bill Ford had given his word on hybrids and you could take that to the bank (ruptcy court). But hybrids have received such a thrashing in the market lately that even Ford was forced to take-off his green eye-shades and read the red-ink on the wall. According to Art Spinella, the uber-auto analyst and President of CNW Marketing Research, hybrid sales every month this year have been down compared to the same time last year. Even sales of the Toyota Prius - the darling of the greens - have dropped significantly. The only segment besides taxis where hybrids are still holding steady - taxpayers will be happy to note -- is the car fleets maintained by the government.
What's particularly interesting is that individual consumers are defying all expectations and turning their backs on hybrids at a time when gas prices are soaring. (The average U.S. retail price of gas spiked to a record high of $3.01 last September following hurricane Katrina, and just last week it hit its second highest price ever at nearly $3.00.) Nor is the reason all that mysterious. Spinella's customer satisfaction surveys show that 62 percent of hybrid owners are dissatisfied with the fuel-economy performance of their cars given what they have paid for them. This means that when gas prices go up, these people don't rush out to buy more hybrids. "They buy a Chevy Aveo," says Spinella. "It delivers the same fuel economy as a Prius, but at half the price."
Consumer interest might revive if the cost of hybrids goes down substantially - or the cost of fuel goes up and stays up for a long period of time, Spinella believes. Until then, however, the hybrid market is unlikely to come out of the deep freeze, a reality that even Ford had to finally acknowledge. But despite all these drawbacks, hybrids are at least better for the environment than say... a Hummer, right? Nope.
Spinella spent two years on the most comprehensive study to date - dubbed "Dust to Dust" -- collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a car from the initial conception to scrappage. He even included in the study such minutia as plant-to-dealer fuel costs of each vehicle, employee driving distances, and electricity usage per pound of material. All this data was then boiled down to an "energy cost per mile" figure for each car. Comparing this data, the study concludes that overall hybrids cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles. But even more surprising, smaller hybrids' energy costs are greater than many large, non-hybrid SUVs.
For instance, the dust-to-dust energy cost of the bunny-sized Honda Civic hybrid is $3.238 per mile. This is quite a bit more than the $1.949 per mile that the elephantine Hummer costs. The energy cots of SUVs such as the Tahoe, Escalade, and Navigator are similarly far less than the Civic hybrid. As for Ford cars, a Ford Escape hybrid costs $3.2 per mile - about a third more than the regular Escape. But on the whole, ironically enough, the dust-to-dust costs of many of the Ford non-hybrids - Fusion, Milan, Zephyr - are not only lower than comparable Japanese hybrids - Prius, Accord -- but also non-hybrids - Seville, Civic.
Spinella's finding that a Hummer on the whole consumes less energy than a hybrid than even some smaller hybrids and non-hybrids has infuriated environmentalists. And on its face it does seem implausible that a gas-guzzling monster like a Hummer that employs several times more raw material than a little Prius' could be so much less energy-intensive. But by and large the dust-to-dust energy costs in Spinella's study correlate with the fanciness of the car - not its size or fuel economy -- with the Rolls Royces and Bentleys consuming gobs of energy and Mazda 3s, Saturns and Taurus consuming relatively minuscule amounts.
As for Hummers, Spinella explains, the life of these cars averaged across various models is over 300,000 miles. By contrast, Prius' life - according to Toyota's own numbers - is 100,000 miles. Furthermore, Hummer is a far less sophisticated vehicle. Its engine obviously does not have an electric and gas component as a hybrid's does so it takes much less time and energy to manufacture. What's more, its main raw ingredient is low-cost steel, not the exotic light-weights that are exceedingly difficult to make - and dispose. But the biggest reason why a Hummer's energy use is so low is that it shares many components with other vehicles and therefore its design and development energy costs are spread across many cars.
It is not possible to do this with a specialty product like hybrid. All in all, Spinella insists, the energy costs of disposing a Hummer are 60 percent less than an average hybrid's and its design and development costs are 80 percent less.
One of the most perverse things about U.S. consumers buying hybrids is that while this might reduce air pollution in their own cities, they increase pollution - and energy consumption -- in Japan and other Asian countries where these cars are predominantly manufactured. "In effect, they are exporting pollution and energy consumption," Spinella says.
But while the environment has dodged Ford's hybrid foray, Toyota has shown no planetary concerns. It is going full throttle ahead with its plan of putting one million hybrids on the road by the end of the decade. Nor is there much hope that it will back-off in the near future given that it has already sunk $2 billion just in hybrid-related research and development, Spinella points out. Ironically Ford and some of the other car makers' exit from the hybrid segment means that Toyota will be able to consolidate its domination in it even more. Thus the only hope of prodding Toyota to get out of the hybrid business would be if its customers jumped off the Prius bandwagon and embraced non-hybrids - even Hummers -- instead. Now here's a catchy slogan for the next Save the Earth campaign: Have you hugged a Hummer today?
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What an Electric Vehicle Costs
Post lifted from David Friedman
In an earlier post I mentioned the controversy over GM's EV1 sparked by a new film, with some people arguing that the all electric vehicle was a viable design scrapped by GM for vague but sinister reasons. In my view, the best evidence against that comes not from GM's experience-the facts about the EV1's performance are disputed and it's hard for an outsider to distinguish between startup costs and production costs in order to figure out what a commercial version of the car would have cost-but from the behavior of other auto firms. If a commercially viable electric car could have been produced, it is hard to see why some auto firm wouldn't have produced it-and none did.
We now have a little more evidence. Tesla Motors, a Bay Area startup, has announced that they will be bringing a fully electric vehicle to market in about a year. The relevant facts:
1. Range: 250 miles per charge.
2. Recharge time: 3 1/2 hours with a 240 volt/70 ampere source, longer with ordinary house current.
3. Configuration: Sports car.
4. Price: $85,000-$100,000.
5. Operating cost: 2.6 cents/mile if electricity is 13 cents/kwh.
If gas costs $3/gallon, the per mile cost for a vehicle averaging 25 mpg is 12 cents, so the electric vehicle saves less than ten cents per mile. If we assume a 100,000 mile lifetime, that's less than ten thousand dollars, which doesn't make up for much of the cost difference between the electric car and a conventional vehicle.
The range is sufficient for many people's needs, although not all. But a sports car does not have to carry many passengers or much luggage, leaving more space for batteries. That suggests that a sedan would either be much heavier and more expensive or have a substantially shorter range.
So the evidence suggests that the electric car is not yet viable as a mass market vehicle, although it may be competitive in the expensive sports car niche.
Readers interested in the EV1 controversy may want to revisit the thread I linked to earlier, with particular attention to the posts by Phil Karn, who joined the discussion after my original post. Phil-known to some of us as a party in an important encryption lawsuit-actually owned an EV1, and so was able to provide some first hand evidence from his own experience. He also has an interesting web page on the subject.
BUSH ADMIN CUTS POLLUTION
The Bush administration's new program to cut harmful pollutants from utilities through a cap-and-trade system will do nearly as much to clean the nation's air as the Clinton administration's effort to make aging power plants install pollution controls when they modernize or expand, a report by an independent scientific panel has concluded. The report from the National Academy of Sciences, released yesterday, represents the latest effort to assess how best to reduce air pollution estimated to cause as many as 24,000 premature deaths each year. The panel concluded that an earlier Bush plan would have allowed pollution to increase over a dozen years, but it found that the administration's more recent Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) -- which targets emissions from power plants in 22 states and the District of Columbia -- would help clean the air over the next two decades.
The CAIR approach aims to reduce nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions by 70 percent by 2025 at the latest, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, through a system that would allow utilities to sell and buy pollution credits as long as industry emissions as a whole stayed below a pre-set cap. The Clinton administration had focused on cutting emissions under the 1970 Clean Air Act through a program called New Source Review (NSR), now discarded, which required aging plants to install new, cleaner technology every time they upgraded facilities.
The Bush administration initially proposed changes to New Source Review that would have allowed power companies to modify their plants by as much as 20 percent of their value without installing new controls, a policy the scientific panel said "would be expected to cause an increase" in both sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide that would have been "possibly substantial." That plan has largely been struck down by the courts, however, so the scientific panel instead looked at the cap-and-trade rule the administration adopted this spring.
The academy committee's chairman, Charles F. Stevens, a molecular neurobiology professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., said that while the rule would help reduce pollution, "you can't conclude" it would be as uniformly effective as Clinton's approach, because some communities might face serious pollution from aging power plants that chose to buy credits rather than install advanced emission controls. The report also noted that "because of a lack of data and the limitations of current [computer] models," the panel had difficulty predicting the impact of the program on emissions, public health and energy efficiency.
Using an assumption that federal officials would have been able to force 7.5 percent of aging power plants to clean up their operations each year if they had continued with Clinton's approach, Stevens added, NSR would have done as much to clean the air as the cap-and-trade system.
William L. Wehrum, EPA's acting assistant administrator for air and radiation, said that was an "implausible" assumption and added that NSR would only have achieved the same result as the Bush administration's strategy if 98 percent of all power plants complied over the next 20 years. "Any reasonable projection of what NSR is going to accomplish won't come close to what CAIR is going to accomplish," Wehrum said in an interview. The Bush plan "gets significant reductions across the power sector but places greater emphasis on controlling the biggest emitters, which are the places we care about most." Scott Segal, a utilities lobbyist, concurred that the report proved "cap-and-trade programs are really what reduce emissions."
But John Walke, who directs the clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, said the study shows the administration has not adopted sufficiently aggressive curbs on pollution. "This report shows that strong Clean Air Act enforcement with a robust cap-and-trade program will better protect the public from power plant pollution than the Bush administration's path of nonenforcement and weak pollution trading that drags out twenty years," Walke said, adding the administration was offering a "reckless misinterpretation" of the report's conclusions
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Gas escaping from ocean floor may drive global warming
Gas escaping from the ocean floor may provide some answers to understanding historical global warming cycles and provide information on current climate changes, according to a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The findings are reported in the July 20 on-line version of the scientific journal, Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Remarkable and unexpected support for this idea occurred when divers and scientists from UC Santa Barbara observed and videotaped a massive blowout of methane from the ocean floor. It happened in an area of gas and oil seepage coming out of small volcanoes in the ocean floor of the Santa Barbara channel -- called Shane Seep -- near an area known as the Coal Oil Point seep field. The blowout sounded like a freight train, according to the divers.
Atmospheric methane is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere, according to the study's authors, all from UC Santa Barbara. "Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now," said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB's Marine Science Institute. "Ours is the first set of numbers associated with a seep blowout." Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.
Aside from underwater measurements, a nearby meteorological station measured the methane "cloud" that emerged as being approximately 5,000 cubic feet, or equal to the volume of the entire first floor of a two-bedroom house. The research team also had a small plane in place, flown by the California Department of Conservation, shooting video of the event from the air.
Leifer explained that when this type of blowout event occurs, virtually all the gas from the seeps escapes into the atmosphere, unlike the emission of small bubbles from the ocean floor, which partially, or mostly, dissolve in the ocean water. Transporting this methane to the atmosphere affects climate, according to the researchers. The methane blowout that the UCSB team witnessed reached the sea surface 60 feet above in just seven seconds. This was clear because the divers injected green food dye into the rising bubble plume.
Co-author Bruce Luyendyk, professor of marine geophysics and geological sciences, explained that, to understand the significance of this event (which occurred in 2002), the UCSB research team turned to a numerical, bubble-propagation model. With the model, they estimated methane loss to the ocean during the upward travel of the bubble plume. The results showed that for this shallow seep, loss would have been approximately one percent. Virtually all the methane, 99 percent of it, was transported to the atmosphere from this shallow seep during the blowout. Next, the scientists used the model to estimate methane loss for a similar size blowout at much greater depth, 250 meters. Again, the model results showed that almost all the methane would be transported up to the atmosphere.
Over geologic time scales, global climate has cycled between warmer, interglacial periods and cooler, glacial periods. Many aspects of the forces underlying these dramatic changes remain unknown. Looking at past changes is highly relevant to understanding future climate changes, particularly given the large increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere due to historically recent human activities such as burning fossil fuels.
One hypothesis, called the "Clathrate Gun" hypothesis, developed by James Kennett, professor of geological sciences at UCSB, proposes that past shifts from glacial to interglacial periods were caused by a massive decomposition of the marine methane hydrate deposits.
Methane hydrate is a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure, called a clathrate hydrate. According to Kennett's hypothesis, climatic destabilization would cause a sharp increase in atmospheric methane -- thereby initiating a feedback cycle of abrupt atmospheric warming. This process may threaten the current climate, according to the researchers. Warmer ocean temperatures from current global climate change is likely to release methane currently trapped in vast hydrate deposits on the continental shelves. However, consumption of methane by microbes in the deep sea prevents methane gas released from hydrates from reaching the ocean surface and affecting the atmosphere.
Bubbles provide a highly efficient mechanism for transporting methane and have been observed rising from many different hydrate deposits around the world. If these bubbles escape singly, most or all of their methane would dissolve into the deep-sea and never reach the atmosphere. If instead, they escape in a dense bubble plume, or in catastrophic blowout plumes, such as the one studied by UCSB researchers, then much of the methane could reach the atmosphere. Blowout seepage could explain how methane from hydrates could reach the atmosphere, abruptly triggering global warming. Thus, these first-ever quantitative measurements of a seep blowout and the results from the numerical model demonstrate a mechanism by which methane released from hydrates can reach the atmosphere. Studies of seabed seep features suggest such events are common in the area of the Coal Oil Point seep field and very likely occur elsewhere.
The authors explain that these results show that an important piece of the global climate puzzle may be explained by understanding bubble-plume processes during blowout events. The next important step is to measure the frequency and magnitude of these events. The UCSB seep group is working toward this goal through the development of a long-term, seep observatory in active seep areas.
Source
The heat is on the scientists
During the past week's heat wave--it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday--I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not? If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous? What exactly are the dangers? Is global warming as dangerous as, say, global cooling would be? Are we better off with an Earth that is getting hotter or, what with the modern realities of heating homes and offices, and the world energy crisis, and the need to conserve, does global heating have, in fact, some potential side benefits, and can those benefits be broadened and deepened? Also, if global warning is real, what must--must--the inhabitants of the Earth do to meet its challenges? And then what should they do to meet them?
You would think the world's greatest scientists could do this, in good faith and with complete honesty and a rigorous desire to discover the truth. And yet they can't. Because science too, like other great institutions, is poisoned by politics. Scientists have ideologies. They are politicized. All too many of them could be expected to enter this work not as seekers for truth but agents for a point of view who are eager to use whatever data can be agreed upon to buttress their point of view. And so, in the end, every report from every group of scientists is treated as a political document. And no one knows what to believe. So no consensus on what to do can emerge.
If global warming is real, and if it is new, and if it is caused not by nature and her cycles but man and his rapacity, and if it in fact endangers mankind, scientists will probably one day blame The People for doing nothing. But I think The People will have a greater claim to blame the scientists, for refusing to be honest, for operating in cliques and holding to ideologies. For failing to be trustworthy.
Source
***************************************
Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
*****************************************
Hybrid vehicles' overall energy costs exceed those of comparable non-hybrids
Ford Motor Company did itself a huge favor recently by backing away from its pledge to bump-up its hybrid production ten-fold in four years. But, as it turns out, the company might have done the planet a whale of a favor too. Just last fall, CEO Bill Ford was valiantly promising in a mega-million dollar ad campaign that the company would never, ever turn away from its hybrid pledge because these vehicles were central to the company's reputation as an "innovator and environmental steward."
Never mind that at the time Ford was losing $2,000 to $3,000 for every hybrid it sold because consumers won't pay the entire $6,000 extra that it costs to produce a hybrid over its gas-powered counterpart. Never mind also that in the real world -- outside of the Environmental Protection Agency's tax-payer funded testing sites -- hybrids don't deliver anywhere close to the gas mileage that the agency attributes to them, as auto-writer Richard Burr reported in the Weekly Standard.
Bill Ford had given his word on hybrids and you could take that to the bank (ruptcy court). But hybrids have received such a thrashing in the market lately that even Ford was forced to take-off his green eye-shades and read the red-ink on the wall. According to Art Spinella, the uber-auto analyst and President of CNW Marketing Research, hybrid sales every month this year have been down compared to the same time last year. Even sales of the Toyota Prius - the darling of the greens - have dropped significantly. The only segment besides taxis where hybrids are still holding steady - taxpayers will be happy to note -- is the car fleets maintained by the government.
What's particularly interesting is that individual consumers are defying all expectations and turning their backs on hybrids at a time when gas prices are soaring. (The average U.S. retail price of gas spiked to a record high of $3.01 last September following hurricane Katrina, and just last week it hit its second highest price ever at nearly $3.00.) Nor is the reason all that mysterious. Spinella's customer satisfaction surveys show that 62 percent of hybrid owners are dissatisfied with the fuel-economy performance of their cars given what they have paid for them. This means that when gas prices go up, these people don't rush out to buy more hybrids. "They buy a Chevy Aveo," says Spinella. "It delivers the same fuel economy as a Prius, but at half the price."
Consumer interest might revive if the cost of hybrids goes down substantially - or the cost of fuel goes up and stays up for a long period of time, Spinella believes. Until then, however, the hybrid market is unlikely to come out of the deep freeze, a reality that even Ford had to finally acknowledge. But despite all these drawbacks, hybrids are at least better for the environment than say... a Hummer, right? Nope.
Spinella spent two years on the most comprehensive study to date - dubbed "Dust to Dust" -- collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a car from the initial conception to scrappage. He even included in the study such minutia as plant-to-dealer fuel costs of each vehicle, employee driving distances, and electricity usage per pound of material. All this data was then boiled down to an "energy cost per mile" figure for each car. Comparing this data, the study concludes that overall hybrids cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles. But even more surprising, smaller hybrids' energy costs are greater than many large, non-hybrid SUVs.
For instance, the dust-to-dust energy cost of the bunny-sized Honda Civic hybrid is $3.238 per mile. This is quite a bit more than the $1.949 per mile that the elephantine Hummer costs. The energy cots of SUVs such as the Tahoe, Escalade, and Navigator are similarly far less than the Civic hybrid. As for Ford cars, a Ford Escape hybrid costs $3.2 per mile - about a third more than the regular Escape. But on the whole, ironically enough, the dust-to-dust costs of many of the Ford non-hybrids - Fusion, Milan, Zephyr - are not only lower than comparable Japanese hybrids - Prius, Accord -- but also non-hybrids - Seville, Civic.
Spinella's finding that a Hummer on the whole consumes less energy than a hybrid than even some smaller hybrids and non-hybrids has infuriated environmentalists. And on its face it does seem implausible that a gas-guzzling monster like a Hummer that employs several times more raw material than a little Prius' could be so much less energy-intensive. But by and large the dust-to-dust energy costs in Spinella's study correlate with the fanciness of the car - not its size or fuel economy -- with the Rolls Royces and Bentleys consuming gobs of energy and Mazda 3s, Saturns and Taurus consuming relatively minuscule amounts.
As for Hummers, Spinella explains, the life of these cars averaged across various models is over 300,000 miles. By contrast, Prius' life - according to Toyota's own numbers - is 100,000 miles. Furthermore, Hummer is a far less sophisticated vehicle. Its engine obviously does not have an electric and gas component as a hybrid's does so it takes much less time and energy to manufacture. What's more, its main raw ingredient is low-cost steel, not the exotic light-weights that are exceedingly difficult to make - and dispose. But the biggest reason why a Hummer's energy use is so low is that it shares many components with other vehicles and therefore its design and development energy costs are spread across many cars.
It is not possible to do this with a specialty product like hybrid. All in all, Spinella insists, the energy costs of disposing a Hummer are 60 percent less than an average hybrid's and its design and development costs are 80 percent less.
One of the most perverse things about U.S. consumers buying hybrids is that while this might reduce air pollution in their own cities, they increase pollution - and energy consumption -- in Japan and other Asian countries where these cars are predominantly manufactured. "In effect, they are exporting pollution and energy consumption," Spinella says.
But while the environment has dodged Ford's hybrid foray, Toyota has shown no planetary concerns. It is going full throttle ahead with its plan of putting one million hybrids on the road by the end of the decade. Nor is there much hope that it will back-off in the near future given that it has already sunk $2 billion just in hybrid-related research and development, Spinella points out. Ironically Ford and some of the other car makers' exit from the hybrid segment means that Toyota will be able to consolidate its domination in it even more. Thus the only hope of prodding Toyota to get out of the hybrid business would be if its customers jumped off the Prius bandwagon and embraced non-hybrids - even Hummers -- instead. Now here's a catchy slogan for the next Save the Earth campaign: Have you hugged a Hummer today?
Source
What an Electric Vehicle Costs
Post lifted from David Friedman
In an earlier post I mentioned the controversy over GM's EV1 sparked by a new film, with some people arguing that the all electric vehicle was a viable design scrapped by GM for vague but sinister reasons. In my view, the best evidence against that comes not from GM's experience-the facts about the EV1's performance are disputed and it's hard for an outsider to distinguish between startup costs and production costs in order to figure out what a commercial version of the car would have cost-but from the behavior of other auto firms. If a commercially viable electric car could have been produced, it is hard to see why some auto firm wouldn't have produced it-and none did.
We now have a little more evidence. Tesla Motors, a Bay Area startup, has announced that they will be bringing a fully electric vehicle to market in about a year. The relevant facts:
1. Range: 250 miles per charge.
2. Recharge time: 3 1/2 hours with a 240 volt/70 ampere source, longer with ordinary house current.
3. Configuration: Sports car.
4. Price: $85,000-$100,000.
5. Operating cost: 2.6 cents/mile if electricity is 13 cents/kwh.
If gas costs $3/gallon, the per mile cost for a vehicle averaging 25 mpg is 12 cents, so the electric vehicle saves less than ten cents per mile. If we assume a 100,000 mile lifetime, that's less than ten thousand dollars, which doesn't make up for much of the cost difference between the electric car and a conventional vehicle.
The range is sufficient for many people's needs, although not all. But a sports car does not have to carry many passengers or much luggage, leaving more space for batteries. That suggests that a sedan would either be much heavier and more expensive or have a substantially shorter range.
So the evidence suggests that the electric car is not yet viable as a mass market vehicle, although it may be competitive in the expensive sports car niche.
Readers interested in the EV1 controversy may want to revisit the thread I linked to earlier, with particular attention to the posts by Phil Karn, who joined the discussion after my original post. Phil-known to some of us as a party in an important encryption lawsuit-actually owned an EV1, and so was able to provide some first hand evidence from his own experience. He also has an interesting web page on the subject.
BUSH ADMIN CUTS POLLUTION
The Bush administration's new program to cut harmful pollutants from utilities through a cap-and-trade system will do nearly as much to clean the nation's air as the Clinton administration's effort to make aging power plants install pollution controls when they modernize or expand, a report by an independent scientific panel has concluded. The report from the National Academy of Sciences, released yesterday, represents the latest effort to assess how best to reduce air pollution estimated to cause as many as 24,000 premature deaths each year. The panel concluded that an earlier Bush plan would have allowed pollution to increase over a dozen years, but it found that the administration's more recent Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) -- which targets emissions from power plants in 22 states and the District of Columbia -- would help clean the air over the next two decades.
The CAIR approach aims to reduce nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions by 70 percent by 2025 at the latest, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, through a system that would allow utilities to sell and buy pollution credits as long as industry emissions as a whole stayed below a pre-set cap. The Clinton administration had focused on cutting emissions under the 1970 Clean Air Act through a program called New Source Review (NSR), now discarded, which required aging plants to install new, cleaner technology every time they upgraded facilities.
The Bush administration initially proposed changes to New Source Review that would have allowed power companies to modify their plants by as much as 20 percent of their value without installing new controls, a policy the scientific panel said "would be expected to cause an increase" in both sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide that would have been "possibly substantial." That plan has largely been struck down by the courts, however, so the scientific panel instead looked at the cap-and-trade rule the administration adopted this spring.
The academy committee's chairman, Charles F. Stevens, a molecular neurobiology professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., said that while the rule would help reduce pollution, "you can't conclude" it would be as uniformly effective as Clinton's approach, because some communities might face serious pollution from aging power plants that chose to buy credits rather than install advanced emission controls. The report also noted that "because of a lack of data and the limitations of current [computer] models," the panel had difficulty predicting the impact of the program on emissions, public health and energy efficiency.
Using an assumption that federal officials would have been able to force 7.5 percent of aging power plants to clean up their operations each year if they had continued with Clinton's approach, Stevens added, NSR would have done as much to clean the air as the cap-and-trade system.
William L. Wehrum, EPA's acting assistant administrator for air and radiation, said that was an "implausible" assumption and added that NSR would only have achieved the same result as the Bush administration's strategy if 98 percent of all power plants complied over the next 20 years. "Any reasonable projection of what NSR is going to accomplish won't come close to what CAIR is going to accomplish," Wehrum said in an interview. The Bush plan "gets significant reductions across the power sector but places greater emphasis on controlling the biggest emitters, which are the places we care about most." Scott Segal, a utilities lobbyist, concurred that the report proved "cap-and-trade programs are really what reduce emissions."
But John Walke, who directs the clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, said the study shows the administration has not adopted sufficiently aggressive curbs on pollution. "This report shows that strong Clean Air Act enforcement with a robust cap-and-trade program will better protect the public from power plant pollution than the Bush administration's path of nonenforcement and weak pollution trading that drags out twenty years," Walke said, adding the administration was offering a "reckless misinterpretation" of the report's conclusions
Source
Gas escaping from ocean floor may drive global warming
Gas escaping from the ocean floor may provide some answers to understanding historical global warming cycles and provide information on current climate changes, according to a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The findings are reported in the July 20 on-line version of the scientific journal, Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Remarkable and unexpected support for this idea occurred when divers and scientists from UC Santa Barbara observed and videotaped a massive blowout of methane from the ocean floor. It happened in an area of gas and oil seepage coming out of small volcanoes in the ocean floor of the Santa Barbara channel -- called Shane Seep -- near an area known as the Coal Oil Point seep field. The blowout sounded like a freight train, according to the divers.
Atmospheric methane is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere, according to the study's authors, all from UC Santa Barbara. "Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now," said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB's Marine Science Institute. "Ours is the first set of numbers associated with a seep blowout." Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.
Aside from underwater measurements, a nearby meteorological station measured the methane "cloud" that emerged as being approximately 5,000 cubic feet, or equal to the volume of the entire first floor of a two-bedroom house. The research team also had a small plane in place, flown by the California Department of Conservation, shooting video of the event from the air.
Leifer explained that when this type of blowout event occurs, virtually all the gas from the seeps escapes into the atmosphere, unlike the emission of small bubbles from the ocean floor, which partially, or mostly, dissolve in the ocean water. Transporting this methane to the atmosphere affects climate, according to the researchers. The methane blowout that the UCSB team witnessed reached the sea surface 60 feet above in just seven seconds. This was clear because the divers injected green food dye into the rising bubble plume.
Co-author Bruce Luyendyk, professor of marine geophysics and geological sciences, explained that, to understand the significance of this event (which occurred in 2002), the UCSB research team turned to a numerical, bubble-propagation model. With the model, they estimated methane loss to the ocean during the upward travel of the bubble plume. The results showed that for this shallow seep, loss would have been approximately one percent. Virtually all the methane, 99 percent of it, was transported to the atmosphere from this shallow seep during the blowout. Next, the scientists used the model to estimate methane loss for a similar size blowout at much greater depth, 250 meters. Again, the model results showed that almost all the methane would be transported up to the atmosphere.
Over geologic time scales, global climate has cycled between warmer, interglacial periods and cooler, glacial periods. Many aspects of the forces underlying these dramatic changes remain unknown. Looking at past changes is highly relevant to understanding future climate changes, particularly given the large increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere due to historically recent human activities such as burning fossil fuels.
One hypothesis, called the "Clathrate Gun" hypothesis, developed by James Kennett, professor of geological sciences at UCSB, proposes that past shifts from glacial to interglacial periods were caused by a massive decomposition of the marine methane hydrate deposits.
Methane hydrate is a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure, called a clathrate hydrate. According to Kennett's hypothesis, climatic destabilization would cause a sharp increase in atmospheric methane -- thereby initiating a feedback cycle of abrupt atmospheric warming. This process may threaten the current climate, according to the researchers. Warmer ocean temperatures from current global climate change is likely to release methane currently trapped in vast hydrate deposits on the continental shelves. However, consumption of methane by microbes in the deep sea prevents methane gas released from hydrates from reaching the ocean surface and affecting the atmosphere.
Bubbles provide a highly efficient mechanism for transporting methane and have been observed rising from many different hydrate deposits around the world. If these bubbles escape singly, most or all of their methane would dissolve into the deep-sea and never reach the atmosphere. If instead, they escape in a dense bubble plume, or in catastrophic blowout plumes, such as the one studied by UCSB researchers, then much of the methane could reach the atmosphere. Blowout seepage could explain how methane from hydrates could reach the atmosphere, abruptly triggering global warming. Thus, these first-ever quantitative measurements of a seep blowout and the results from the numerical model demonstrate a mechanism by which methane released from hydrates can reach the atmosphere. Studies of seabed seep features suggest such events are common in the area of the Coal Oil Point seep field and very likely occur elsewhere.
The authors explain that these results show that an important piece of the global climate puzzle may be explained by understanding bubble-plume processes during blowout events. The next important step is to measure the frequency and magnitude of these events. The UCSB seep group is working toward this goal through the development of a long-term, seep observatory in active seep areas.
Source
The heat is on the scientists
During the past week's heat wave--it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday--I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not? If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous? What exactly are the dangers? Is global warming as dangerous as, say, global cooling would be? Are we better off with an Earth that is getting hotter or, what with the modern realities of heating homes and offices, and the world energy crisis, and the need to conserve, does global heating have, in fact, some potential side benefits, and can those benefits be broadened and deepened? Also, if global warning is real, what must--must--the inhabitants of the Earth do to meet its challenges? And then what should they do to meet them?
You would think the world's greatest scientists could do this, in good faith and with complete honesty and a rigorous desire to discover the truth. And yet they can't. Because science too, like other great institutions, is poisoned by politics. Scientists have ideologies. They are politicized. All too many of them could be expected to enter this work not as seekers for truth but agents for a point of view who are eager to use whatever data can be agreed upon to buttress their point of view. And so, in the end, every report from every group of scientists is treated as a political document. And no one knows what to believe. So no consensus on what to do can emerge.
If global warming is real, and if it is new, and if it is caused not by nature and her cycles but man and his rapacity, and if it in fact endangers mankind, scientists will probably one day blame The People for doing nothing. But I think The People will have a greater claim to blame the scientists, for refusing to be honest, for operating in cliques and holding to ideologies. For failing to be trustworthy.
Source
***************************************
Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
*****************************************
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Senate's top climate skeptic turns up heat on media
Sen. James Inhofe -- who calls human-induced climate change "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind" -- is using his chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to spank journalists who fail to give equal time to global-warming skeptics. The Oklahoma Republican has used interviews and press releases to question the objectivity of reporters who cover climate issues. Two recent targets are former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and Associated Press science reporter Seth Borenstein. Inhofe called Brokaw "a pawn of the Democratic Party" for keeping skeptics out of his recent Discovery Channel documentary. And Inhofe challenged Borenstein's article that asked more than 100 scientists for their views on former Vice President Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," for not including Gore's critics.
A 71-year old former insurance executive, Inhofe has never been shy about confronting climate scientists, environmentalists, Hollywood producers and fellow senators. But in setting his sights on the press, Inhofe appears to be incorporating a strategy hatched by the committee's new communications director, Marc Morano.
As a reporter for the conservative Cybercast News Service from 2001 until earlier this year, Morano peppered his climate reporting with skeptics' views that have surfaced as themes in Inhofe's recent press attacks. Earlier this year, for example, Morano wrote about NASA scientist James Hansen's contributions to the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.). Inhofe's press release questions why Brokaw failed to mention the political ties of Hansen and other scientists interviewed for the Discovery report.
During the 2004 United Nations conference in Buenos Aires, Morano wrote how environmental activists chastised him for asking skeptical questions about science during a session on global warming's effects on inhabitants of the Arctic Circle. Inhofe's release challenging the Associated Press included a demand for a list of the skeptics who the news service contacted to review Gore's film.
Morano, who worked as a producer in the mid-90s for radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, was also among the first reporters to write about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign scrutinizing Kerry's Vietnam War record. And earlier this year, Morano penned an article questioning the Purple Heart medals of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a leading critic of Bush's Iraq policy.
In an interview, Morano said Inhofe's latest statements target journalists because they have focused so heavily on the effects of global warming when the science is still open for debate. "The media has essentially white-washed the whole issue," Morano said. "There has been a love fest in the media on this." Morano insisted the press does not give a fair shake to skeptics, particularly news organizations with reporters who he says have a financial stake in the issue. For example, he questioned The New York Times' coverage of climate since one of its science reporter, Andrew Revkin, has written a book on the effects of global warming on the North Pole. Sales of Revkin's book, Morano argued, would be enhanced by his paper's coverage of climate. "We're not just shooting arrows," Morano said.
Intimidation factor?
Inhofe's critics question the propriety of the efforts of the committee's chairman and communications director and wonder if it will have any effect on press coverage and public understanding of climate change. Some journalism professors say Inhofe's goal might be to intimidate reporters and editors, particularly in smaller markets that rely on the Associated Press for Washington coverage. This, they say, could damage the public's understanding of the issue at a time when scientific evidence of global warming is growing. "It strikes me that the public relations people for Senator Inhofe are trying to distract the media by attacking the media for fairly reporting what the vast majority of scientists are reporting," said Jim Detjen, director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. "It's a last ditch effort to now attack the journalists," Detjen added. "I really believe it's nonsense."
Dan Fagin, a former Newsday environmental reporter who now teaches journalism at New York University, said he did not think Inhofe's criticism would affect Brokaw or his reputation. But he said the attacks on the Associated Press might convince some small newspapers and radio and television stations against running the wire service's stories on climate issues rather than wrestle with a Senate committee chairman. Fagin also suggested Inhofe might be attacking the press to toss red meat to conservative activists before midterm elections. "It's about ginning up the base," he said. "That kind of character assassination goes a long way on both counts. It's reprehensive, but it's a very effective political strategy."
Detjen likened Inhofe's efforts to other historical events where politicians have taken aim at the media, from President Teddy Roosevelt dubbing investigative reporters "muckrakers" to former President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew's condemnation of the press in the wake of the Watergate break-in. Media criticism has escalated during President Bush's time in the Oval Office amid news reports of several controversial secret domestic surveillance programs.
The Discovery Channel did not return calls for comment on Brokaw's report. The Associated Press, in a prepared statement, said Inhofe wrongly characterized Borenstein's article. The AP contacted more than 100 climate researchers, including skeptics. But it only quoted the scientists who said they had seen the movie or read the book, which turned out to be a far smaller number than those it surveyed. Generally, the AP said scientists were "positive toward Gore's scientific presentation." "The AP story reported facts," said Linda Wagner, director of AP media relations. "It did not take a position in a debate, whether political or scientific, about global warming."
Inhofe endorsed his press office's work and shrugged off a question over whether he was trying to intimidate reporters. "What are you talking about?" Inhofe said. "The media is 100 percent on the other side."
Outflanking Bush
Inhofe's drive to attack climate skeptics comes as the European Union and much of the industrialized world head full bore into implementing the Kyoto Protocol, the only mandatory program in the world aimed at mitigating rising greenhouse gas levels. And Inhofe's views on climate also run to the right flank of President Bush, who in 2001 pulled the United States out of Kyoto but has said he would address the global warming issue through voluntary programs and more funding for research and technological development.
David Sandretti, communications director for the environment committee's ranking member, Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), hesitated to discuss Inhofe's motivations for the press releases. "I'm not going to get into commenting on whether the tactic is appropriate," he said. "Clearly, the chairman's press release does not reflect the ranking member's opinion on the topic nor any of the Democrats on the committee." One of the committee's moderate Republicans, Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), said today he disagrees with Inhofe on the science of global warming, but he expressed support for the chairman's right to say whatever he wants. "It's America," Chafee said in an interview. Asked if Inhofe's moves were a waste of taxpayer money, Chafee replied, "He's elected by the people. If his constituents think it's a waste of taxpayer dollars, they can make a change."
One former Hill Republican aide said Inhofe's latest attacks are nothing new. "Give the guy some credit for integrity is my reaction," the former staffer said. "This is consistent with his position on the issue," the aide continued. "I don't think it's necessary to look for ulterior motive. His motives couldn't be more apparent." Jason Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, said Inhofe's outrage could be a sign that the policy argument is entering a new phase -- one in which environmentalists may also start lashing out if they do not think the developing policy is strong enough. "When you have a debate like this that has been so forcefully engaged for a decade, before it moves to a point of constructive resolution, the last months before that are likely to be marked with peels of anger along the edges," Grumet said. "Maybe this is a sign we're getting close."
Another former Republican Hill aide who disagrees with Inhofe said skeptics have a right to speak out. But the aide added, "There's ways of making your case and there are ways of making your case. I'm not sure attacking the mainstream media is the way to go. "It's counterproductive," the former staffer added. "It's more based on personality and affiliation than it is on the science."
From "Greenwire" of 19th.
Judge Halts Water Project Due to Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
I guess I hardly need to point out that this gives the Greenies a licence to stop anything. One of them has just got to say that he has "sighted" someting rare and that's it! No proof of anything needed
A federal judge temporarily stopped construction on a $320 million irrigation project Thursday, ruling the changes could disturb the habitat of a woodpecker that might or might not be extinct. The first purported sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the area was in 2004, but more than 100 volunteers and researchers who spent weeks last winter trying to find conclusive evidence of its existence came back empty-handed.
Still, U.S. District Judge William R. Wilson said that, for purposes of the lawsuit brought by environmental groups, he had to presume the woodpecker exists in the area. Federal agencies may have violated the Endangered Species Act by not studying the habitat fully, he said. "When an endangered species is allegedly jeopardized, the balance of hardships and public interest tips in favor of the protected species. Here there is evidence," he wrote, that the ivory-billed woodpecker may be jeopardized.
The National Wildlife Federation and the Arkansas Wildlife Federation had sued the Army Corps of Engineers, arguing that the project would kill trees that house the birds and that noise from a pumping station would cause them stress. The last confirmed sighting of the woodpecker in North America was in 1944, and scientists had thought the species was extinct until a kayaker said he saw one in early 2004 near the White River in the big woods of eastern Arkansas. The report caused a sensation in scientific circles and has attracted people from all over the world who hope to see the bird. Ornithologists caught on tape a flicker of what they believed was the bird but announced this year they couldn't prove conclusively that the woodpecker still lives.
The Army Corps of Engineers began building the Grand Prairie Irrigation Project last year, about 14 miles from where the bird was reportedly spotted. Aquifers beneath eastern Arkansas soybean, cotton and rice fields are being depleted, and a federal court in a separate case last year said that the main aquifer used for farming will be depleted by 2015 if water isn't conserved and that the region would suffer significant economic hardship if it ran dry. Workers have already started on a pump station to draw 158 billion gallons from the White River per year. A Justice Department lawyer said this year that a one-month delay would cost the Corps as much as $264,000, and that a six-month wait would cost $3 million.
The judge on Thursday said the Corps and the Interior Department must conduct further studies before proceeding. The agencies must evaluate any ivory-bill nests and forage sites within 2® miles of the construction project. They also must identify and inspect for nesting, roosting and foraging all trees a foot or more across in the areas to be affected by eventual changes in water levels, Wilson said. The Corps had conducted a study showing the project would not significantly harm the woodpecker's habitat, but the environmental groups suing it said the study was too narrow and did not comply with the Endangered Species Act.
Source
A wetlands victory (for now)
At the age of 70, John Rapanos has finally ended his 18-year battle with state and federal environmental regulators, and has come out on the winning end when the US Supreme Court ruled in his favor on June 19, 2006. Much was at stake for Mr. Rapanos, who faced a conviction of 63 months in a federal penitentiary and approximately $13 million dollars in civil and criminal penalties. This 12-year litigation tale begins when Mr. Rapanos decided to start moving some sand. Mr. Rapanos owned 175 acres of land that he wanted to sell to a developer. In order to make the property more marketable, he decided to fill his property with sand so that it would be fit for development. Fifty-four acres of his property constituted "wetlands," described in the majority opinion as "land with sometimes-saturated soil conditions."
A consultant hired by Mr. Rapanos informed him that he did indeed have wetlands property that would be subject to regulation by state and federal enforcement; Mr. Rapanos, a petulant man, threatened the consultant and thereafter refused further inspection from state officials (interestingly, despite the lack of a warrant these state officials nevertheless trespassed on Mr. Rapanos's property after being denied access by him). Because of his uncooperativeness, the state officials contacted the Environmental Protection Agency, which thereafter claimed jurisdiction over his property under the Clean Water Act (CWA), preventing him from filling his wetlands under threat of civil and criminal action. The US Army Corps of Engineers, the governmental body determining which property is subject to the CWA, promptly invoked their authority once Mr. Rapanos refused to seek a permit and proceeded to fill his property with sand.
Writing for the majority on the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia is quick to point out that the costs in obtaining a permit are not slight: "The average applicant for an individual permit spends 788 days and $271,596 in completing the process, and the average applicant for a nationwide permit spends 313 days and $28,915 - not counting costs of mitigation or design changes." Overall, more than $1.7 billion is spent each year by both private and public sectors in efforts to obtain wetlands permits. Mr. Rapanos's stubbornness culminated in a guilty verdict for various CWA violations, and a criminal sentence that the federal district court judge was loath to enforce.
At his sentencing hearing on March 15, 2005, the prosecution implored the court for a sentence of 63 months for Mr. Rapanos. Judge Zatkoff made a lucid comparison to one of the most notorious water pollution disasters in American history: the Exxon-Valdez oil spill that dumped 10.8 million gallons of crude oil in Alaskan waters, killing thousands of animals and crippling the local fishing industry. In that case, the drunken captain that caused the wreck was sentenced to serve 1,000 hours of community service in the course of 5 years - with no prison time or fine. In contrast, Mr. Rapanos's act of filling his land with sand caused no harm to the public in any appreciable sense. Moreover, his act of filling the land with sand was not polluting anything; the sand is meant (and does) "fill" and stick to the land in order to pave the way for development on the property. In light of this, Judge Zatkoff fined Mr. Rapanos $185,000 and sentenced him to 3 years of probation that was treated as time served. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Zatkoff's downward departure from the sentencing guidelines. Judge Zatkoff, who is otherwise known for a strict sentencing policy, nevertheless stood his ground:
I don't know if it's just a coincidence that the case that I just sentenced prior to this case has come into this court, that was the case of Mr. Gonzalez, who was a person selling dope on the streets of the United States. He is an illegal person here. He's a citizen of Cuba, not an American citizen. He has a prior criminal record..
So here we have a person who comes to the United States and commits crimes of selling dope and the government asks me to put him in prison for ten months. And then we have an American citizen who buys land, pays for it with his own money, and he moves some sand from one end to the other and government wants me to give him sixty-three months in prison. Now, if that isn't our system gone crazy, I don't know what is. And I am not going to do it.
Why this fervor to punish a 70 year old man? Appalled at the state's trespass of Mr. Rapanos's property, and the subsequent witch hunt by the Corps, Judge Zatkoff explained that "we have a very disagreeable person who insists on his constitutional rights. And this is the kind of person that the Constitution was passed to protect."
Before the case was heard before the Supreme Court, Mr. Rapanos amassed support from the general public and various special interest groups that sought to curb the Corps's regulation-wielding authority. Indeed, Mr. Rapanos did not just have the support of average American citizens and special interest groups. As Pacific Legal Foundation notes, "Groups representing hundreds of government agencies that provide clean water for tens of millions of Americans are supporting Mr. Rapanos. Supporters include the largest urban water district in the nation, the largest coalition of public water agencies in the nation, and a coalition of water agencies that provide clean water to more than 30 million citizens in six states in the Western United States."
Although triumphant, Mr. Rapanos's victory at the Supreme Court had nothing to do with the state agents' unconstitutional trespass on his property. The issue before the Supreme Court was simply whether the Corps's exercise of jurisdiction was permissible under the Clean Water Act. The 5-4 majority determined that it was not.
The CWA makes it unlawful to discharge any pollutants (including sand) into navigable waters. "Navigable waters" are defined as "the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas." The Corps enjoys expanded jurisdiction over wetlands because the transition from water to solid ground is not abrupt, thus all wetlands adjoining a navigable waterway were subject to the Corps's jurisdiction. Labeling the Corps as "an enlightened despot," Justice Scalia does not mince words about the Corps's hungry desire for regulatory control over every drop of water in America.
The Corps has kept expanding its interpretation of "navigable waters" to include all forms of intrastate waters, including "storm drains, roadside ditches, ripples of sand in the dessert that may contain water once a year, and lands that are covered by floodwaters once every 100 years." At one point, the Corps even applied its authority over an abandoned sand and gravel pit in northern Illinois; the Supreme Court overruled this action as an overreaching of power and found that nothing in the text of CWA authorized the Corps to assert jurisdiction.
This expansion of power came to affect Mr. Rapanos, whose saturated lands were claimed to abut navigable waterways because there were "hydrological connections" between his property and "adjacent tributaries of navigable waters." It was clear to the Supreme Court that whatever "hydrological connections" meant, it impermissibly expanded the CWA's definition of "navigable waters" at the Corps's discretion:
In applying the definition to "ephemeral streams," "wet meadows," storm sewers and culverts, "directional sheet flow during storm events," drain tiles, man-made drainage ditches, and dry arroyos in the middle of the desert, the Corps has stretched the term "waters of the United States" beyond parody.
To the Corps, Mr. Rapanos's land was clearly moist enough, and his disposition indignant enough that they felt a right to drag him through criminal and civil litigation over the course of 12 years. Mr. Rapanos's land was 20 miles away from a waterway; his 54 acres of wetlands (or "sometimes-saturated soil") were nowhere near adjacent to a stream of navigable water.
Thus, after years of battle, Mr. Rapanos has achieved victory against the regulators. But what sort of victory is it? He spent a considerable amount of time and money battling the federal government in defense of his own property. Mr. Rapanos is a new-age entrepreneur. In a regulated state, today's entrepreneur is the man or woman battling bureaucracy with their time, money, and effort that would have been better placed toward functional, capitalist ventures. Real entrepreneurs are supposed to be self-serving, willing to make capital risks on consumer demand. In contrast, today's entrepreneurs are selfless, risking their life savings and the possibility of incarceration in a federal penitentiary in order to give future entrepreneurs more room to maneuver in the stranglehold of regulatory policies.
The Supreme Court took care to state that "the Government's expansive interpretation would result in a significant impingement of the State's traditional and primary power over land and water use." Nevertheless, the majority commented on the fact that the Corps's ever-expanded jurisdiction into wetlands was part of the environmental lobbying efforts attempting to effectuate increased protection for wetlands under the CWA. By stating that "a Comprehensive National Wetlands Protection Act is not before us, and the wisdom of such a statute is beyond our ken," the majority implies that if such an Act were before them, they would dutifully uphold the Act as constitutional.
In one sense, this reflects a pyrrhic victory for society as a whole. As soon as Congress gets the political muster and statutorily enacts protection for all the nation's wetlands, the Supreme Court will most likely uphold the Act as constitutional. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's reverence for establishing precedent always supersedes the Commerce Clause limitation binding Congress against regulating intrastate affairs. As laudable as Mr. Rapanos's victory is, the sobering reality is that there are many more individuals like him who will still be subject to the regulatory authority of the federal government, and will not have his tenacious temperament to fight for their rights in a decade-long battle.
Source
WARMING WELCOMED IN LONDON
A lot like 1911, actually
Britain's inland capital of London may be a far cry from a languorous beach resort but some of its office workers have found something that comes close enough. As temperatures soar to record highs for July, women in bikinis mingled with workers dressed both formally and casually on "City Beach" - a patch of sand imported to the heart of London's grimy East End. "This weather won't last for long so you've got to enjoy it while you can," Carolyn Baker, a 27-year-old data controller said as she sat on a deck chair on her lunch break.
Wearing a short skirt and sleeveless top, Ms Baker was among some 50 workers lounging on deckchairs or sipping drinks below parasols on the stretch of sand dotted with potted palm trees. A small crowd stood around a Brazilian-style bar of bamboo and thatch which pumped out house music and served pina coladas and cold beer. It proved to be a popular alternative to the traditional pub.
The 20-metre by 10-metre beach is just over two kilometres from the River Thames and about 48 kilometres from the nearest English seaside resort. It is surrounded by decrepit warehouses and bohemian shops. Entrepreneur Richard Lee turned this unprepossessing car park into an inland riviera four weeks ago, just in time to catch one of Britain's most intense heatwaves.
On the third day of the scorching weather, the national Meteorological Office website says the mercury has soared to 36.5 degrees Celsius at Wisley in south-east England. The previous July record was only 36 degrees Celsius, set on July 22, 1911 at Epsom, south-west of London.
"I've been really lucky with the weather," Mr Lee said. "It was a big gamble but it's paid off very well." Many of the "City Beach" sunbathers shrugged off warnings from scientists that the heat wave sweeping Europe was a result of the global warming induced by industrial activity. Grant McPherson, 26, had taken a few days off from his job as a physiotherapist and could not believe his luck at the weather. "It's great, I'm out soaking up the rays," he said. He says despite the warm weather few people will probably take a sick day off work. "Most people have already done that for the World Cup," he said.
Source
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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
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Sen. James Inhofe -- who calls human-induced climate change "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind" -- is using his chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to spank journalists who fail to give equal time to global-warming skeptics. The Oklahoma Republican has used interviews and press releases to question the objectivity of reporters who cover climate issues. Two recent targets are former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and Associated Press science reporter Seth Borenstein. Inhofe called Brokaw "a pawn of the Democratic Party" for keeping skeptics out of his recent Discovery Channel documentary. And Inhofe challenged Borenstein's article that asked more than 100 scientists for their views on former Vice President Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," for not including Gore's critics.
A 71-year old former insurance executive, Inhofe has never been shy about confronting climate scientists, environmentalists, Hollywood producers and fellow senators. But in setting his sights on the press, Inhofe appears to be incorporating a strategy hatched by the committee's new communications director, Marc Morano.
As a reporter for the conservative Cybercast News Service from 2001 until earlier this year, Morano peppered his climate reporting with skeptics' views that have surfaced as themes in Inhofe's recent press attacks. Earlier this year, for example, Morano wrote about NASA scientist James Hansen's contributions to the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.). Inhofe's press release questions why Brokaw failed to mention the political ties of Hansen and other scientists interviewed for the Discovery report.
During the 2004 United Nations conference in Buenos Aires, Morano wrote how environmental activists chastised him for asking skeptical questions about science during a session on global warming's effects on inhabitants of the Arctic Circle. Inhofe's release challenging the Associated Press included a demand for a list of the skeptics who the news service contacted to review Gore's film.
Morano, who worked as a producer in the mid-90s for radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, was also among the first reporters to write about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign scrutinizing Kerry's Vietnam War record. And earlier this year, Morano penned an article questioning the Purple Heart medals of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a leading critic of Bush's Iraq policy.
In an interview, Morano said Inhofe's latest statements target journalists because they have focused so heavily on the effects of global warming when the science is still open for debate. "The media has essentially white-washed the whole issue," Morano said. "There has been a love fest in the media on this." Morano insisted the press does not give a fair shake to skeptics, particularly news organizations with reporters who he says have a financial stake in the issue. For example, he questioned The New York Times' coverage of climate since one of its science reporter, Andrew Revkin, has written a book on the effects of global warming on the North Pole. Sales of Revkin's book, Morano argued, would be enhanced by his paper's coverage of climate. "We're not just shooting arrows," Morano said.
Intimidation factor?
Inhofe's critics question the propriety of the efforts of the committee's chairman and communications director and wonder if it will have any effect on press coverage and public understanding of climate change. Some journalism professors say Inhofe's goal might be to intimidate reporters and editors, particularly in smaller markets that rely on the Associated Press for Washington coverage. This, they say, could damage the public's understanding of the issue at a time when scientific evidence of global warming is growing. "It strikes me that the public relations people for Senator Inhofe are trying to distract the media by attacking the media for fairly reporting what the vast majority of scientists are reporting," said Jim Detjen, director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. "It's a last ditch effort to now attack the journalists," Detjen added. "I really believe it's nonsense."
Dan Fagin, a former Newsday environmental reporter who now teaches journalism at New York University, said he did not think Inhofe's criticism would affect Brokaw or his reputation. But he said the attacks on the Associated Press might convince some small newspapers and radio and television stations against running the wire service's stories on climate issues rather than wrestle with a Senate committee chairman. Fagin also suggested Inhofe might be attacking the press to toss red meat to conservative activists before midterm elections. "It's about ginning up the base," he said. "That kind of character assassination goes a long way on both counts. It's reprehensive, but it's a very effective political strategy."
Detjen likened Inhofe's efforts to other historical events where politicians have taken aim at the media, from President Teddy Roosevelt dubbing investigative reporters "muckrakers" to former President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew's condemnation of the press in the wake of the Watergate break-in. Media criticism has escalated during President Bush's time in the Oval Office amid news reports of several controversial secret domestic surveillance programs.
The Discovery Channel did not return calls for comment on Brokaw's report. The Associated Press, in a prepared statement, said Inhofe wrongly characterized Borenstein's article. The AP contacted more than 100 climate researchers, including skeptics. But it only quoted the scientists who said they had seen the movie or read the book, which turned out to be a far smaller number than those it surveyed. Generally, the AP said scientists were "positive toward Gore's scientific presentation." "The AP story reported facts," said Linda Wagner, director of AP media relations. "It did not take a position in a debate, whether political or scientific, about global warming."
Inhofe endorsed his press office's work and shrugged off a question over whether he was trying to intimidate reporters. "What are you talking about?" Inhofe said. "The media is 100 percent on the other side."
Outflanking Bush
Inhofe's drive to attack climate skeptics comes as the European Union and much of the industrialized world head full bore into implementing the Kyoto Protocol, the only mandatory program in the world aimed at mitigating rising greenhouse gas levels. And Inhofe's views on climate also run to the right flank of President Bush, who in 2001 pulled the United States out of Kyoto but has said he would address the global warming issue through voluntary programs and more funding for research and technological development.
David Sandretti, communications director for the environment committee's ranking member, Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), hesitated to discuss Inhofe's motivations for the press releases. "I'm not going to get into commenting on whether the tactic is appropriate," he said. "Clearly, the chairman's press release does not reflect the ranking member's opinion on the topic nor any of the Democrats on the committee." One of the committee's moderate Republicans, Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), said today he disagrees with Inhofe on the science of global warming, but he expressed support for the chairman's right to say whatever he wants. "It's America," Chafee said in an interview. Asked if Inhofe's moves were a waste of taxpayer money, Chafee replied, "He's elected by the people. If his constituents think it's a waste of taxpayer dollars, they can make a change."
One former Hill Republican aide said Inhofe's latest attacks are nothing new. "Give the guy some credit for integrity is my reaction," the former staffer said. "This is consistent with his position on the issue," the aide continued. "I don't think it's necessary to look for ulterior motive. His motives couldn't be more apparent." Jason Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, said Inhofe's outrage could be a sign that the policy argument is entering a new phase -- one in which environmentalists may also start lashing out if they do not think the developing policy is strong enough. "When you have a debate like this that has been so forcefully engaged for a decade, before it moves to a point of constructive resolution, the last months before that are likely to be marked with peels of anger along the edges," Grumet said. "Maybe this is a sign we're getting close."
Another former Republican Hill aide who disagrees with Inhofe said skeptics have a right to speak out. But the aide added, "There's ways of making your case and there are ways of making your case. I'm not sure attacking the mainstream media is the way to go. "It's counterproductive," the former staffer added. "It's more based on personality and affiliation than it is on the science."
From "Greenwire" of 19th.
Judge Halts Water Project Due to Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
I guess I hardly need to point out that this gives the Greenies a licence to stop anything. One of them has just got to say that he has "sighted" someting rare and that's it! No proof of anything needed
A federal judge temporarily stopped construction on a $320 million irrigation project Thursday, ruling the changes could disturb the habitat of a woodpecker that might or might not be extinct. The first purported sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the area was in 2004, but more than 100 volunteers and researchers who spent weeks last winter trying to find conclusive evidence of its existence came back empty-handed.
Still, U.S. District Judge William R. Wilson said that, for purposes of the lawsuit brought by environmental groups, he had to presume the woodpecker exists in the area. Federal agencies may have violated the Endangered Species Act by not studying the habitat fully, he said. "When an endangered species is allegedly jeopardized, the balance of hardships and public interest tips in favor of the protected species. Here there is evidence," he wrote, that the ivory-billed woodpecker may be jeopardized.
The National Wildlife Federation and the Arkansas Wildlife Federation had sued the Army Corps of Engineers, arguing that the project would kill trees that house the birds and that noise from a pumping station would cause them stress. The last confirmed sighting of the woodpecker in North America was in 1944, and scientists had thought the species was extinct until a kayaker said he saw one in early 2004 near the White River in the big woods of eastern Arkansas. The report caused a sensation in scientific circles and has attracted people from all over the world who hope to see the bird. Ornithologists caught on tape a flicker of what they believed was the bird but announced this year they couldn't prove conclusively that the woodpecker still lives.
The Army Corps of Engineers began building the Grand Prairie Irrigation Project last year, about 14 miles from where the bird was reportedly spotted. Aquifers beneath eastern Arkansas soybean, cotton and rice fields are being depleted, and a federal court in a separate case last year said that the main aquifer used for farming will be depleted by 2015 if water isn't conserved and that the region would suffer significant economic hardship if it ran dry. Workers have already started on a pump station to draw 158 billion gallons from the White River per year. A Justice Department lawyer said this year that a one-month delay would cost the Corps as much as $264,000, and that a six-month wait would cost $3 million.
The judge on Thursday said the Corps and the Interior Department must conduct further studies before proceeding. The agencies must evaluate any ivory-bill nests and forage sites within 2® miles of the construction project. They also must identify and inspect for nesting, roosting and foraging all trees a foot or more across in the areas to be affected by eventual changes in water levels, Wilson said. The Corps had conducted a study showing the project would not significantly harm the woodpecker's habitat, but the environmental groups suing it said the study was too narrow and did not comply with the Endangered Species Act.
Source
A wetlands victory (for now)
At the age of 70, John Rapanos has finally ended his 18-year battle with state and federal environmental regulators, and has come out on the winning end when the US Supreme Court ruled in his favor on June 19, 2006. Much was at stake for Mr. Rapanos, who faced a conviction of 63 months in a federal penitentiary and approximately $13 million dollars in civil and criminal penalties. This 12-year litigation tale begins when Mr. Rapanos decided to start moving some sand. Mr. Rapanos owned 175 acres of land that he wanted to sell to a developer. In order to make the property more marketable, he decided to fill his property with sand so that it would be fit for development. Fifty-four acres of his property constituted "wetlands," described in the majority opinion as "land with sometimes-saturated soil conditions."
A consultant hired by Mr. Rapanos informed him that he did indeed have wetlands property that would be subject to regulation by state and federal enforcement; Mr. Rapanos, a petulant man, threatened the consultant and thereafter refused further inspection from state officials (interestingly, despite the lack of a warrant these state officials nevertheless trespassed on Mr. Rapanos's property after being denied access by him). Because of his uncooperativeness, the state officials contacted the Environmental Protection Agency, which thereafter claimed jurisdiction over his property under the Clean Water Act (CWA), preventing him from filling his wetlands under threat of civil and criminal action. The US Army Corps of Engineers, the governmental body determining which property is subject to the CWA, promptly invoked their authority once Mr. Rapanos refused to seek a permit and proceeded to fill his property with sand.
Writing for the majority on the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia is quick to point out that the costs in obtaining a permit are not slight: "The average applicant for an individual permit spends 788 days and $271,596 in completing the process, and the average applicant for a nationwide permit spends 313 days and $28,915 - not counting costs of mitigation or design changes." Overall, more than $1.7 billion is spent each year by both private and public sectors in efforts to obtain wetlands permits. Mr. Rapanos's stubbornness culminated in a guilty verdict for various CWA violations, and a criminal sentence that the federal district court judge was loath to enforce.
At his sentencing hearing on March 15, 2005, the prosecution implored the court for a sentence of 63 months for Mr. Rapanos. Judge Zatkoff made a lucid comparison to one of the most notorious water pollution disasters in American history: the Exxon-Valdez oil spill that dumped 10.8 million gallons of crude oil in Alaskan waters, killing thousands of animals and crippling the local fishing industry. In that case, the drunken captain that caused the wreck was sentenced to serve 1,000 hours of community service in the course of 5 years - with no prison time or fine. In contrast, Mr. Rapanos's act of filling his land with sand caused no harm to the public in any appreciable sense. Moreover, his act of filling the land with sand was not polluting anything; the sand is meant (and does) "fill" and stick to the land in order to pave the way for development on the property. In light of this, Judge Zatkoff fined Mr. Rapanos $185,000 and sentenced him to 3 years of probation that was treated as time served. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Zatkoff's downward departure from the sentencing guidelines. Judge Zatkoff, who is otherwise known for a strict sentencing policy, nevertheless stood his ground:
I don't know if it's just a coincidence that the case that I just sentenced prior to this case has come into this court, that was the case of Mr. Gonzalez, who was a person selling dope on the streets of the United States. He is an illegal person here. He's a citizen of Cuba, not an American citizen. He has a prior criminal record..
So here we have a person who comes to the United States and commits crimes of selling dope and the government asks me to put him in prison for ten months. And then we have an American citizen who buys land, pays for it with his own money, and he moves some sand from one end to the other and government wants me to give him sixty-three months in prison. Now, if that isn't our system gone crazy, I don't know what is. And I am not going to do it.
Why this fervor to punish a 70 year old man? Appalled at the state's trespass of Mr. Rapanos's property, and the subsequent witch hunt by the Corps, Judge Zatkoff explained that "we have a very disagreeable person who insists on his constitutional rights. And this is the kind of person that the Constitution was passed to protect."
Before the case was heard before the Supreme Court, Mr. Rapanos amassed support from the general public and various special interest groups that sought to curb the Corps's regulation-wielding authority. Indeed, Mr. Rapanos did not just have the support of average American citizens and special interest groups. As Pacific Legal Foundation notes, "Groups representing hundreds of government agencies that provide clean water for tens of millions of Americans are supporting Mr. Rapanos. Supporters include the largest urban water district in the nation, the largest coalition of public water agencies in the nation, and a coalition of water agencies that provide clean water to more than 30 million citizens in six states in the Western United States."
Although triumphant, Mr. Rapanos's victory at the Supreme Court had nothing to do with the state agents' unconstitutional trespass on his property. The issue before the Supreme Court was simply whether the Corps's exercise of jurisdiction was permissible under the Clean Water Act. The 5-4 majority determined that it was not.
The CWA makes it unlawful to discharge any pollutants (including sand) into navigable waters. "Navigable waters" are defined as "the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas." The Corps enjoys expanded jurisdiction over wetlands because the transition from water to solid ground is not abrupt, thus all wetlands adjoining a navigable waterway were subject to the Corps's jurisdiction. Labeling the Corps as "an enlightened despot," Justice Scalia does not mince words about the Corps's hungry desire for regulatory control over every drop of water in America.
The Corps has kept expanding its interpretation of "navigable waters" to include all forms of intrastate waters, including "storm drains, roadside ditches, ripples of sand in the dessert that may contain water once a year, and lands that are covered by floodwaters once every 100 years." At one point, the Corps even applied its authority over an abandoned sand and gravel pit in northern Illinois; the Supreme Court overruled this action as an overreaching of power and found that nothing in the text of CWA authorized the Corps to assert jurisdiction.
This expansion of power came to affect Mr. Rapanos, whose saturated lands were claimed to abut navigable waterways because there were "hydrological connections" between his property and "adjacent tributaries of navigable waters." It was clear to the Supreme Court that whatever "hydrological connections" meant, it impermissibly expanded the CWA's definition of "navigable waters" at the Corps's discretion:
In applying the definition to "ephemeral streams," "wet meadows," storm sewers and culverts, "directional sheet flow during storm events," drain tiles, man-made drainage ditches, and dry arroyos in the middle of the desert, the Corps has stretched the term "waters of the United States" beyond parody.
To the Corps, Mr. Rapanos's land was clearly moist enough, and his disposition indignant enough that they felt a right to drag him through criminal and civil litigation over the course of 12 years. Mr. Rapanos's land was 20 miles away from a waterway; his 54 acres of wetlands (or "sometimes-saturated soil") were nowhere near adjacent to a stream of navigable water.
Thus, after years of battle, Mr. Rapanos has achieved victory against the regulators. But what sort of victory is it? He spent a considerable amount of time and money battling the federal government in defense of his own property. Mr. Rapanos is a new-age entrepreneur. In a regulated state, today's entrepreneur is the man or woman battling bureaucracy with their time, money, and effort that would have been better placed toward functional, capitalist ventures. Real entrepreneurs are supposed to be self-serving, willing to make capital risks on consumer demand. In contrast, today's entrepreneurs are selfless, risking their life savings and the possibility of incarceration in a federal penitentiary in order to give future entrepreneurs more room to maneuver in the stranglehold of regulatory policies.
The Supreme Court took care to state that "the Government's expansive interpretation would result in a significant impingement of the State's traditional and primary power over land and water use." Nevertheless, the majority commented on the fact that the Corps's ever-expanded jurisdiction into wetlands was part of the environmental lobbying efforts attempting to effectuate increased protection for wetlands under the CWA. By stating that "a Comprehensive National Wetlands Protection Act is not before us, and the wisdom of such a statute is beyond our ken," the majority implies that if such an Act were before them, they would dutifully uphold the Act as constitutional.
In one sense, this reflects a pyrrhic victory for society as a whole. As soon as Congress gets the political muster and statutorily enacts protection for all the nation's wetlands, the Supreme Court will most likely uphold the Act as constitutional. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's reverence for establishing precedent always supersedes the Commerce Clause limitation binding Congress against regulating intrastate affairs. As laudable as Mr. Rapanos's victory is, the sobering reality is that there are many more individuals like him who will still be subject to the regulatory authority of the federal government, and will not have his tenacious temperament to fight for their rights in a decade-long battle.
Source
WARMING WELCOMED IN LONDON
A lot like 1911, actually
Britain's inland capital of London may be a far cry from a languorous beach resort but some of its office workers have found something that comes close enough. As temperatures soar to record highs for July, women in bikinis mingled with workers dressed both formally and casually on "City Beach" - a patch of sand imported to the heart of London's grimy East End. "This weather won't last for long so you've got to enjoy it while you can," Carolyn Baker, a 27-year-old data controller said as she sat on a deck chair on her lunch break.
Wearing a short skirt and sleeveless top, Ms Baker was among some 50 workers lounging on deckchairs or sipping drinks below parasols on the stretch of sand dotted with potted palm trees. A small crowd stood around a Brazilian-style bar of bamboo and thatch which pumped out house music and served pina coladas and cold beer. It proved to be a popular alternative to the traditional pub.
The 20-metre by 10-metre beach is just over two kilometres from the River Thames and about 48 kilometres from the nearest English seaside resort. It is surrounded by decrepit warehouses and bohemian shops. Entrepreneur Richard Lee turned this unprepossessing car park into an inland riviera four weeks ago, just in time to catch one of Britain's most intense heatwaves.
On the third day of the scorching weather, the national Meteorological Office website says the mercury has soared to 36.5 degrees Celsius at Wisley in south-east England. The previous July record was only 36 degrees Celsius, set on July 22, 1911 at Epsom, south-west of London.
"I've been really lucky with the weather," Mr Lee said. "It was a big gamble but it's paid off very well." Many of the "City Beach" sunbathers shrugged off warnings from scientists that the heat wave sweeping Europe was a result of the global warming induced by industrial activity. Grant McPherson, 26, had taken a few days off from his job as a physiotherapist and could not believe his luck at the weather. "It's great, I'm out soaking up the rays," he said. He says despite the warm weather few people will probably take a sick day off work. "Most people have already done that for the World Cup," he said.
Source
***************************************
Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
*****************************************
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Death to the Environment: If we want to save the environment, we've got to show we don't care about it
A car dealer in Washington, Don Beyer Volvo, is offering a new promotion. If you buy one of their cars, the dealership will give you free tickets to Al Gore's global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Mr. Beyer is a Democrat in good standing, having been lieutenant governor of Virginia and national treasurer of the Dean for America campaign, so he must be down with the global warming program. But giving away movie tickets with the purchase of every climate-destroying luxury automobile (the 2005 Volvo XC90 gets 15 mpg in the city and 20 mpg on the highway) probably isn't, in the long run, the most effective way to save the planet.
Lots of businesses are trying to profit in the name of the environment these days. My personal favorite are hotels that ask guests to reuse dirty towels and sheets. On a recent trip to Las Vegas, I stayed at the Monte Carlo, one of the themed monstrosities on the Strip. In the bathroom was a card asking me to "please join Monte Carlo's effort to conserve water by using your towels more than once." On the nightstand was another card imploring me to "please help protect our environment" by not having the bed linens changed during my stay. I was moved by these pleas, I really was. Except that outside the hotel are two gigantic fountains spewing precious water into the arid, desert air, 24 hours a day. It struck me that the Monte Carlo's concern for the environment might simply be an attempt to save on laundry costs
I'm normally a friend of Gaia, or at least a good acquaintance. I like hiking and being outdoors, so long as there aren't insects. Or mud. And I don't care for the way tall grass makes your skin itch. But even a nature lover like me has limits. When I'm paying $259 a night, I want fresh linens.
And it's not as if the hotels really cared about our Earth Mother. If they did, they'd give a discount rate to customers who put up with damp towels. What's happened is that Big Business has figured out how to use our environmental consciences against us. We greens who love the environment are now the unwitting tools of our planet's destruction. Hotels profit from our willingness to conserve, and car dealerships lure us into luxury SUVs under the pretense of supporting Al Gore.
It's an insidious plot, and the only way to foil it is to kill the environment. If the movie Speed taught me anything, it's that in a hostage situation, game theory dictates that you have to shoot the hostages to prove they aren't valuable. That's how you get the upper hand on the tree-killers or Dennis Hopper or whoever. If we want to save the environment, we've got to show we don't care about it.
It won't be easy, but I have a plan. For starters, when you check into a hotel, call maid service and tell them you want clean sheets every day. Then leave your used towels on the bathroom floor, indicating that you'd like a clean set. Then, take any unused towels and washcloths and put them on the floor, too. Just to show you mean business. It's also probably a good idea to take the extra soaps and lotions. A well-placed 2-ounce bottle of green tea olive oil moisturizing shampoo can wreak havoc on an ecosystem.
When you get home from vacation, go straight to the Internet. First, there's showerbuddy.com, where you can buy a Zoe triple showerhead. In 1992, the federal government passed a law requiring that "all faucet fixtures" have a maximum waterflow of 2.5 gallons per minute. The geniuses at Zoe noticed that the statute said nothing about putting multiple fixtures on the same faucet. Seven and a half gallons per minute sends a heck of a message.
Then there's the WC. Before he was crusading against global warming, Sen. Gore was lowering the flush capacity of American toilets from 3.5 gallons to 1.6 gallons. But the secret is that the toilet-makers manufacture bowls and tanks separately, and for each bowl they make a 1.6 gallon tank for the States and a 3.5 gallon tank for Canada. Our neighbors to the north sell the big-flush tanks on eBay all the time. You don't even need to feel guilty about this little act of defiance, since if the Canadians are doing it, it must be virtuous.
Killing the environment will take time. This big ball of mud is pretty resilient. But if we love our planet--and really, who doesn't? --then we have to show corporate America how little we care about it. Only then will it be safe to be an environmentalist again.
Source
BRITISH GREENIES ATTACK GOOD DINNERS
Distances travelled by aircraft and lorries delivering to supermarkets and restaurants have increased so much that carbon emissions are now at record levels, it was revealed yesterday. A combination of road and air "food miles" generated nearly 18,000 kilotonnes (18 million tonnes) of carbon dioxide in 2004, up 6 per cent on the previous year. The statistics, released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, came after a 15 per cent rise in emissions over the decade to 2002.
Environmental groups have blamed the Government's failure to tackle emissions by the food industry while some experts in climate change have pointed to a lack of will within the retail sector, which is under pressure to provide fresh, exotic produce for the consumer all year round. Jermana Canzi, the senior climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "We believe that the Government needs to do more to meet its climate change target. It has definitely neglected the growth of emissions for the food transport sector."
HGVs clocked up 8,986 million food kilometres (5,583 million miles) on British roads or travelling from overseas in 2004, according to Defra. While air transport accounted for only 0.1 per cent of total food kilometres in 2004, it generated 13 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions from food transport. In the 12 years to 2004, air freight underwent the highest growth rate of all types of food transport, when food kilometres by air nearly trebled.
The food industry was told in April to cut its carbon emissions, when Defra launched its Food Industry Sustainability Strategy. Ministers urged retailers to cut journey lengths and concentrate on the market for locally sourced goods. The Government wants the food and drink industry to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent within four years. Excluding transport, the food and drink sector accounted for 11 per cent of Britain's energy consumption in 2002.
Leading supermarkets insist that they are doing their utmost to reduce their food miles. A spokesman for Sainsbury's said: "We are making significant progress to address this issue. The mileage our lorries make has reduced by 5 per cent in the past year." A spokeswoman for Tesco added: "Over the past couple of years, we have reduced the miles travelled by suppliers to our distribution centres by 23 per cent and reduced fuel usage by 14 per cent. We are also investing in alternatives to road transport such as rail freight. "To ensure availability all year round we do import some fresh produce. Where we do, we use sea rather than air freight wherever possible - less than 3 per cent of our total imports are brought in by air."
"It is early days," a Defra spokeswoman said. "We are continuing to work closely with the food industry to help to decrease the impact that it has on the environment." Ministers admitted in March that Britain is likely to miss its target to cut carbon dioxide emissions by a fifth by 2010, a much more ambitious commitment than the Kyoto Protocol.
Chris Huhne, environment spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "Our own research has revealed that supermarket lorries travel the equivalent of almost four return trips to the Moon every day. This highlights the need for government action to encourage them to use more local suppliers. "Supermarkets are a major part of our communities. With one supermarket for every 10,000 people, the big chains have a duty to provide environmentally friendly alternatives by supporting local producers."
Source
AUSTRALIAN BOOST FOR ETHANOL AS FUEL
Queensland scientists will attempt to create supercharged sugarcane crops designed specifically to fuel our cars. Others are working on a plan to create green fuel from algae grown in farm dams and lagoons across the state. The work is funded by national grants as the Federal Government attempts to improve our research into alternative fuels. Queensland has won the bulk of the $10.5 million announced yesterday under the Renewable Energy Development Initiative Program. CSR Sugar has secured $5 million for its work on "SugarBooster" - a program to develop high yielding sugarcane varieties increasing the amount of fermentable sugar.
Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, who announced the grants yesterday, said the program could dramatically boost Australia's green fuel industry. Bardon company SQC Pty Ltd has received $200,000 to help commercialise the process which could utilise suitable farm dams and irrigation lagoons to grow the algae. Other grants include $258,000 for a solar collector in NSW and $2.3 million for a renewable energy grid connector in the Northern Territory.
Source
Drug-loving Australian Greens
By Andrew Bolt
The irrational cravings the Greens and other Leftists have for easier drugs runs so deep that we must conclude the worst. This month's "drugs, please" came from the Victorian Greens, who promised to scrap all criminal sanctions for drug users and give addicts free heroin. Last month's came from the Democrats' leader in South Australia, Sandra Kanck, who told Parliament that ecstasy (or MDMA) was "not a dangerous drug". In fact, she chirruped, "one of the best things you could probably have done for the people on the Eyre Peninsula who had gone through that trauma (of bushfires) was give them MDMA."
The federal Greens are no better, vowing at the last election to decriminalise drug use and consider free heroin for addicts. And three years ago its (now quietly deleted) policy was to make softer drugs "more freely available" because people need "the opportunity to achieve personal fulfilment" and that "may, for some people at particular times, involve the use of drugs".
I said this hankering for easier-to-get drugs was irrational -- but only if the Left's aim is to cut drug use. You see, make anything more available, and more people will use it. So when Switzerland pioneered "safe" injecting rooms, overdose deaths tripled. And when the Howard Government instead got tough on drugs, deaths dropped.
The sorry conclusion? These "more drugs" policies are clearly drawn up by people so selfish, unimaginative or arrogant that they can't imagine anyone who isn't exactly like they fancy themselves -- rational, and strong enough to take drugs without hurting anyone. I sure don't say they use drugs themselves, mind. But I can introduce them to plenty of junkies who once shared their lethal conceits.
Source
***************************************
Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
*****************************************
A car dealer in Washington, Don Beyer Volvo, is offering a new promotion. If you buy one of their cars, the dealership will give you free tickets to Al Gore's global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Mr. Beyer is a Democrat in good standing, having been lieutenant governor of Virginia and national treasurer of the Dean for America campaign, so he must be down with the global warming program. But giving away movie tickets with the purchase of every climate-destroying luxury automobile (the 2005 Volvo XC90 gets 15 mpg in the city and 20 mpg on the highway) probably isn't, in the long run, the most effective way to save the planet.
Lots of businesses are trying to profit in the name of the environment these days. My personal favorite are hotels that ask guests to reuse dirty towels and sheets. On a recent trip to Las Vegas, I stayed at the Monte Carlo, one of the themed monstrosities on the Strip. In the bathroom was a card asking me to "please join Monte Carlo's effort to conserve water by using your towels more than once." On the nightstand was another card imploring me to "please help protect our environment" by not having the bed linens changed during my stay. I was moved by these pleas, I really was. Except that outside the hotel are two gigantic fountains spewing precious water into the arid, desert air, 24 hours a day. It struck me that the Monte Carlo's concern for the environment might simply be an attempt to save on laundry costs
I'm normally a friend of Gaia, or at least a good acquaintance. I like hiking and being outdoors, so long as there aren't insects. Or mud. And I don't care for the way tall grass makes your skin itch. But even a nature lover like me has limits. When I'm paying $259 a night, I want fresh linens.
And it's not as if the hotels really cared about our Earth Mother. If they did, they'd give a discount rate to customers who put up with damp towels. What's happened is that Big Business has figured out how to use our environmental consciences against us. We greens who love the environment are now the unwitting tools of our planet's destruction. Hotels profit from our willingness to conserve, and car dealerships lure us into luxury SUVs under the pretense of supporting Al Gore.
It's an insidious plot, and the only way to foil it is to kill the environment. If the movie Speed taught me anything, it's that in a hostage situation, game theory dictates that you have to shoot the hostages to prove they aren't valuable. That's how you get the upper hand on the tree-killers or Dennis Hopper or whoever. If we want to save the environment, we've got to show we don't care about it.
It won't be easy, but I have a plan. For starters, when you check into a hotel, call maid service and tell them you want clean sheets every day. Then leave your used towels on the bathroom floor, indicating that you'd like a clean set. Then, take any unused towels and washcloths and put them on the floor, too. Just to show you mean business. It's also probably a good idea to take the extra soaps and lotions. A well-placed 2-ounce bottle of green tea olive oil moisturizing shampoo can wreak havoc on an ecosystem.
When you get home from vacation, go straight to the Internet. First, there's showerbuddy.com, where you can buy a Zoe triple showerhead. In 1992, the federal government passed a law requiring that "all faucet fixtures" have a maximum waterflow of 2.5 gallons per minute. The geniuses at Zoe noticed that the statute said nothing about putting multiple fixtures on the same faucet. Seven and a half gallons per minute sends a heck of a message.
Then there's the WC. Before he was crusading against global warming, Sen. Gore was lowering the flush capacity of American toilets from 3.5 gallons to 1.6 gallons. But the secret is that the toilet-makers manufacture bowls and tanks separately, and for each bowl they make a 1.6 gallon tank for the States and a 3.5 gallon tank for Canada. Our neighbors to the north sell the big-flush tanks on eBay all the time. You don't even need to feel guilty about this little act of defiance, since if the Canadians are doing it, it must be virtuous.
Killing the environment will take time. This big ball of mud is pretty resilient. But if we love our planet--and really, who doesn't? --then we have to show corporate America how little we care about it. Only then will it be safe to be an environmentalist again.
Source
BRITISH GREENIES ATTACK GOOD DINNERS
Distances travelled by aircraft and lorries delivering to supermarkets and restaurants have increased so much that carbon emissions are now at record levels, it was revealed yesterday. A combination of road and air "food miles" generated nearly 18,000 kilotonnes (18 million tonnes) of carbon dioxide in 2004, up 6 per cent on the previous year. The statistics, released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, came after a 15 per cent rise in emissions over the decade to 2002.
Environmental groups have blamed the Government's failure to tackle emissions by the food industry while some experts in climate change have pointed to a lack of will within the retail sector, which is under pressure to provide fresh, exotic produce for the consumer all year round. Jermana Canzi, the senior climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "We believe that the Government needs to do more to meet its climate change target. It has definitely neglected the growth of emissions for the food transport sector."
HGVs clocked up 8,986 million food kilometres (5,583 million miles) on British roads or travelling from overseas in 2004, according to Defra. While air transport accounted for only 0.1 per cent of total food kilometres in 2004, it generated 13 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions from food transport. In the 12 years to 2004, air freight underwent the highest growth rate of all types of food transport, when food kilometres by air nearly trebled.
The food industry was told in April to cut its carbon emissions, when Defra launched its Food Industry Sustainability Strategy. Ministers urged retailers to cut journey lengths and concentrate on the market for locally sourced goods. The Government wants the food and drink industry to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent within four years. Excluding transport, the food and drink sector accounted for 11 per cent of Britain's energy consumption in 2002.
Leading supermarkets insist that they are doing their utmost to reduce their food miles. A spokesman for Sainsbury's said: "We are making significant progress to address this issue. The mileage our lorries make has reduced by 5 per cent in the past year." A spokeswoman for Tesco added: "Over the past couple of years, we have reduced the miles travelled by suppliers to our distribution centres by 23 per cent and reduced fuel usage by 14 per cent. We are also investing in alternatives to road transport such as rail freight. "To ensure availability all year round we do import some fresh produce. Where we do, we use sea rather than air freight wherever possible - less than 3 per cent of our total imports are brought in by air."
"It is early days," a Defra spokeswoman said. "We are continuing to work closely with the food industry to help to decrease the impact that it has on the environment." Ministers admitted in March that Britain is likely to miss its target to cut carbon dioxide emissions by a fifth by 2010, a much more ambitious commitment than the Kyoto Protocol.
Chris Huhne, environment spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "Our own research has revealed that supermarket lorries travel the equivalent of almost four return trips to the Moon every day. This highlights the need for government action to encourage them to use more local suppliers. "Supermarkets are a major part of our communities. With one supermarket for every 10,000 people, the big chains have a duty to provide environmentally friendly alternatives by supporting local producers."
Source
AUSTRALIAN BOOST FOR ETHANOL AS FUEL
Queensland scientists will attempt to create supercharged sugarcane crops designed specifically to fuel our cars. Others are working on a plan to create green fuel from algae grown in farm dams and lagoons across the state. The work is funded by national grants as the Federal Government attempts to improve our research into alternative fuels. Queensland has won the bulk of the $10.5 million announced yesterday under the Renewable Energy Development Initiative Program. CSR Sugar has secured $5 million for its work on "SugarBooster" - a program to develop high yielding sugarcane varieties increasing the amount of fermentable sugar.
Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, who announced the grants yesterday, said the program could dramatically boost Australia's green fuel industry. Bardon company SQC Pty Ltd has received $200,000 to help commercialise the process which could utilise suitable farm dams and irrigation lagoons to grow the algae. Other grants include $258,000 for a solar collector in NSW and $2.3 million for a renewable energy grid connector in the Northern Territory.
Source
Drug-loving Australian Greens
By Andrew Bolt
The irrational cravings the Greens and other Leftists have for easier drugs runs so deep that we must conclude the worst. This month's "drugs, please" came from the Victorian Greens, who promised to scrap all criminal sanctions for drug users and give addicts free heroin. Last month's came from the Democrats' leader in South Australia, Sandra Kanck, who told Parliament that ecstasy (or MDMA) was "not a dangerous drug". In fact, she chirruped, "one of the best things you could probably have done for the people on the Eyre Peninsula who had gone through that trauma (of bushfires) was give them MDMA."
The federal Greens are no better, vowing at the last election to decriminalise drug use and consider free heroin for addicts. And three years ago its (now quietly deleted) policy was to make softer drugs "more freely available" because people need "the opportunity to achieve personal fulfilment" and that "may, for some people at particular times, involve the use of drugs".
I said this hankering for easier-to-get drugs was irrational -- but only if the Left's aim is to cut drug use. You see, make anything more available, and more people will use it. So when Switzerland pioneered "safe" injecting rooms, overdose deaths tripled. And when the Howard Government instead got tough on drugs, deaths dropped.
The sorry conclusion? These "more drugs" policies are clearly drawn up by people so selfish, unimaginative or arrogant that they can't imagine anyone who isn't exactly like they fancy themselves -- rational, and strong enough to take drugs without hurting anyone. I sure don't say they use drugs themselves, mind. But I can introduce them to plenty of junkies who once shared their lethal conceits.
Source
***************************************
Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
*****************************************
Friday, July 21, 2006
Running out of oil?
By Walter E. Williams
"Proven" oil reserves, oil that's economically and technologically recoverable, are estimated to be more than 1.1 trillion barrels. That's enough oil, at current usage rates, to fuel the world's economy for 38 years, according to Leonardo Maugeri, vice president for the Italian energy company ENI. Mr. Maugeri provides a wealth of information about energy in "Two Cheers for Expensive Oil," published by Foreign Affairs (March/April 2006) and reprinted on the same date in Current.
There are an additional 2 trillion barrels of "recoverable" reserves. Mr. Maugeri says these oil reserves will probably meet the "proven" standard in a few years as technological improvement and increased sub-soil knowledge come online. Estimates of recoverable oil don't include the huge deposits of "unconventional" oil such as Canadian tar sands and U.S. shale oil, plus there are vast areas of our planet yet to be fully explored. For decades, alarmists have claimed we're running out of oil. In 1919, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that world oil production would peak in nine years. During the 1970s, the Club of Rome report, "The Limits to Growth," said that, assuming no rise in consumption, all known oil reserves would be entirely consumed in just 31 years.
There are several factors that explain today's high prices. There has been a huge surge in demand for oil as a result of rapid economic growth in China and India, as well as in the United States. Another factor is the under-exploration. Mr. Maugeri says Saudi Arabia has 260 billion barrels of proven reserves, accounting for 25 percent of the world's total, but only one-third of the oil known to lie below its surface. Russia's reserves are three times its proven reserves of 50 billion barrels. While high prices are beginning to stimulate investments in oil exploration, they've lagged for several decades out of fear of oil gluts and low prices. It's going to be 2010 before today's investments yield fruit.
A substantial increase in oil production alone cannot ease today's high prices because of weak refining capacity. Not a single refinery has been built in the United States for 30 years. Improvements to existing refineries failed to keep up with growing demand and tougher environmental regulations. We're the world's only industrialized country with a net deficit in refining capacity that comes to 20 percent of domestic demand. That makes us highly vulnerable to disasters like last year's hurricanes. Exacerbating weak refining capacity are regulations whereby gasoline produced for one state may not be sold in another. There are 18 mandated different types of gasoline sold in the United States.
The long-term outlook for oil is good. There's an increase in oil-drilling technology and exploration. Oil as a source of energy has been in decline. In 1980, oil was 45 percent of energy consumption; today, it's 34 percent, yielding ground to natural gas, coal and nuclear energy. Recently, the House of Representatives passed "The Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2006," which now awaits a Senate vote. Offshore oil exploration has been banned since 1982, despite Department of the Interior estimates that suggest the presence of 19 billion barrels of oil and 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The House of Representatives also passed the "Refinery Permit Process Schedule Act of 2006." Should these measures become law, our energy capacity will be enhanced significantly.
America stands alone in the world as the only nation that has placed a substantial amount of its domestic oil and natural gas potential off-limits. That reflects the awesome control that radical environmentalists have over Congress. With high fuel prices, Americans might be ready to put an end to that control.
Source
Momentum building for offshore energy exploration
It's interesting what $3-a-gallon gasoline will do to Americans' views on energy exploration. In 1990, when President George H.W. Bush issued a presidential directive that prohibited energy exploration off the Atlantic, Pacific and Alaskan coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the environmental movement cheered and few objected. We could afford to be magnanimous. Energy prices were a third of their current level, the prospect of finding more seemed open-ended, and China and India were placing little demand on the world market.
In 1998, with little having changed, President Clinton extended the moratorium on exploration in these areas to 2012. Again, with little objection. Today, the urgency is overwhelming. High energy prices, unstable and/or unfriendly governments in the top oil-producing regions and significant demand from the two most populous countries have Americans taking a second look at those moratoria.
The House of Representatives has made its move with the Deep Ocean Energy Resources, or DOER, Act of 2006. DOER, as currently constructed, wouldn't repeal the current restrictions. But it would give coastal states that want offshore drilling the power to opt out of them.
The legislation makes permanent the ban on energy production within 50 miles of the coastline unless a state legislature votes to end those restrictions and allow drilling. From 50-100 miles, states would have to affirmatively pass legislation to prohibit drilling. Only beyond 100 miles would states would have no authority to stop drilling.
Under the legislation, states that allowed drilling would share in the royalties collected on oil and gas leases in the new areas opened for exploration. Today, with just the western and central Gulf of Mexico open for drilling, the federal government collects between $4 billion and $8 billion annually in such royalties. Obviously, this number would increase if the rest of the America's coastal regions were opened for exploration.
Given that it's been years since estimates were last attempted -- the last oil company lease was abandoned in 1990 -- nobody knows for sure how much energy lies in the areas that the DOER Act would open. But the Department of the Interior, which regulates offshore drilling, suggests that 19 billion barrels of oil and 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be available. Considering we use 7 billion barrels and 23 trillion cubic feet annually, this could be a substantial source of additional supply for decades to come.
And initial estimates often prove considerably low. The Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska, originally projected to produce no more than 9 million barrels, recently sent its 15 billionth barrel south through the Alaska pipeline. The western and central Gulf also already has produced more energy than originally expected.
With all this energy out there, demand at all-time highs and prices remaining high, what has taken so long? The biggest problem has been environmental concerns on the part of Florida lawmakers worried what a spill would do to their tourism industry. But we haven't had a major oil spill from an offshore well since a 1969 accident near Santa Barbara, Calif. Even the National Academy of Sciences says that "improved production technology and safety training of personnel have dramatically reduced both blowouts and daily operational spills."
The danger of such spills has been reduced so much that only 1 percent of the oil in North American waters comes from offshore oil wells -- most comes from natural seepage from the sea floor. And during Katrina and Rita, despite winds that reached 170 miles per hour and lashing waves that took out a quarter of America's domestic energy production, no significant spills were reported.
Opposition from Florida lawmakers appears to be softening. Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican, is part of a group that has reached a compromise to get an offshore bill onto the Senate floor, although Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, has gone no further than to call the proposal "promising." Compared to the House bill, the Senate's approach is narrower, seeking to open one specific energy-rich region in the eastern Gulf. If the Senate passes this measure, the House and Senate would then have to reconcile their respective bills and send the final version to the president. It's hard to predict what would emerge from such a process, but anything that gets the ball rolling towards more domestic energy production would be welcome.
America has a problem: high oil and natural gas prices and competition for scarce resources that figures only to grow more intense. Thankfully, it also has something of a solution -- substantial reserves under its control that could be captured with little risk to the environment. It's time Congress gets serious about bridging the growing gap between supply and demand. And this could be just the way to do that.
Source
Follow The Money: In Washington, Everyone's Got An Agenda
After watching An Inconvenient Truth and sitting through one of Al Gore's PowerPoint presentations, I have just one question remaining: Why is Al Gore pushing Enron's agenda? Before you decide that I'm delusional, check out my new book, The Big Ripoff : How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, and my section called "Green: The Color of Money." The book shows how Enron was a key lobbyist for the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change (the Holy Grail of Gore's Crusade), and how almost every environmentalist policy we are being fed by Washington is really a meal ticket for one big business or another.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have a fellowship with a think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute - yes, that Competitive Enterprise Institute - which takes donations from foundations, corporations, and individuals. My colleagues' motivations come under fire when they oppose some regulation or tax, and many dismiss the arguments of industry-funded groups. The Big Ripoff is about looking at everyone's motivations, so I welcome your scrutiny. But if all industry-funded positions were dismissed--if the media disregarded arguments put forward by anyone connected to a business who stood to profit--than many environmentalist campaigns of the day would also have to get thrown out.
A Carbon Dioxide tax? That's the policy advocated by Duke Energy CEO Paul Anderson, whose company is unusually reliant on coal-fired power plants. Is this altruism for the sake of the planet? Not really: many of Duke's coal plants are in regulated markets where his company has a government-enforced monopoly. If a CO2 tax drives up Anderson's prices, it's not as if anyone can undercut him. Customers pay more, no less coal gets burnt, and Anderson gets good PR.
Ethanol? This is an easy one: Archer Daniels Midland is America's top ethanol producer, and its former chairman Dwayne Andreas was a very generous donor to both parties. Andreas once dropped off an envelope of $100,000 in Richard Nixon's West Wing. He also gave $100,000 to Nixon's opponent Hubert Humphrey. Federal and state policies provide all sorts of subsidies and special tax breaks for ethanol, and now Washington is mandating the use of this corn-based fuel. And, oh yeah, ADM predicts an ethanol shortage now. The potential effect on gas prices is terrifying.
And the Kyoto global warming treaty? Enron pushed it hard. In 1997, Ken Lay met with Clinton and Gore in the White House and boosted the treaty. In 2000, an Enron memo exclaimed that the treaty would be "good for Enron stock!" The company planned to get rich off of brokering a government-created industry in carbon-credit trading. Also, Enron's coal-fired power plants were all in third-world countries unaffected by the treaty. At this point, the environmentalist asks, "well, who cares who gets rich off of a CO2 tax, ethanol, or Kyoto if all those things are good for the planet?" The Big Ripoff has two responses to that:
1) Pointing out who profits from "green" policy is as legitimate as pointing out who would profit from deregulation or tax cuts--a favorite media pastime. Sure, it doesn't amount to an argument against the policy, but it ought to be considered.
2) The Big Ripoff argues that ethanol subsidies, CO2 taxes, and Kyoto--especially as they are exploited by big business--will not improve the environment. In brief: ethanol evaporates more than gasoline, releasing more smog-causing hydrocarbons; also, the energy intensity of producing ethanol, plus the potential damage to soil from single-crop farms, pose environmental threats in themselves. Under Kyoto, Enron would have had more incentive to expand its third-world coal-fired power plant business. The CO2 taxes wouldn't reduce coal use by regulated power companies, who could pass on the cost no sweat.
These three environmental proposals are typical of Washington policy and the exemplify the Ripoff: Politicians push rules that they say are for our own good. But Washington lobbyists raked in $2.28 billion in 2005, with about $2 billion of that coming from business lobbyists--you can bet they don't invest that much for nothing. Because small business and the average American don't have that sort of access, the policies tend to enrich big business while driving up costs for consumers and taxpayers and choking off entrepreneurs.
Source
A pro-nuclear Prime Minister
The media are desperately trying to portray Howard as in conflict with US policy but only they think so. Australia is a major supplier of uranium and PM Howard is keen to use that as the basis for an Australian nuclear industry -- to the horror of the Australian Greens
John Howard has given his strongest sign he wants a domestic uranium enrichment industry, and he agrees that the Bush administration's new global nuclear policy influenced his decision to conduct an inquiry into Australia's policy. The Prime Minister's desire to join the uranium enrichment club risks a conflict with President George W. Bush's global nuclear energy partnership, a radical US initiative to prevent nations moving into enrichment reprocessing. In a historic joint concord before the G8 summit this week, Mr Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to work together "to allow all nations to enjoy the benefits of nuclear energy without pursuing uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing capabilities".
Asked directly in Washington last month what the Bush administration's attitude would be towards an Australian decision to become an enrichment nation, a senior US official replied: "I'm not able to say."
Asked about Mr Bush's GNEP in an interview with The Australian, Mr Howard said: "I'm not suspicious of it. But I'm keen to keep an eye on it and keen to ensure it doesn't damage Australia's position. "The fact that this (GNEP) isbeing developed is a reason why we should look more closely at whether we should process uranium."
In political terms, Mr Bush seeks a new global nuclear bargain. Nuclear supplier nations such as the US, Russia, Britain, France, China and Japan would provide user nations with reactors and nuclear fuel on a "cradle to grave" basis in exchange for a guarantee they would not enter into enrichment, reprocessing and technologies necessary to produce weapons.
Mr Howard left no doubt about his personal preference. "It does seem odd that you wouldn't enrich uranium, doesn't it?" he said. "One of the great historical anomalies of the Australian economy which most Australians could never understand is that we had the best wool in the world and we sent it overseas to be processed and we bought it back at a much higher price. "That always struck people as rather odd. I would be keen to avoid that occurring."
Any Australian decision to enrich uranium creates a potential conflict for the US between its global policy and its alliance obligations. Under GNEP, an Australian enrichment decision would be seen as a bad precedent, but this conclusion would be offset by trust in Australia as a close US ally and responsible nuclear player.
Mr Howard said he had not tested US sentiment on Australia's enrichment option. "I think any administration would accept it," he said. "Certainly, the present one would accept it. I can't imagine a future administration would have a different view. We would be seen as a totally reliable and trustworthy country."
After launching his vision on Monday for Australia to become an energy superpower based on its huge reserves of coal, gas and uranium, Mr Howard said he was working closely with Canada to ensure that the world's two biggest uranium producers were not locked out of the nuclear fuel-cycle. "Each of us has a very direct interest in the nuclear fuel cycle, and there is a body which is still embryonic being put together by the United States and the other nuclear powers which we will have to watch very carefully," Mr Howard said. "We have to watch that it doesn't impact negatively on Australia and Canada. "I am not suggesting there is any malevolence on the part of these other countries, but we will have to watch for any unintended consequences."
Source
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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
*****************************************
By Walter E. Williams
"Proven" oil reserves, oil that's economically and technologically recoverable, are estimated to be more than 1.1 trillion barrels. That's enough oil, at current usage rates, to fuel the world's economy for 38 years, according to Leonardo Maugeri, vice president for the Italian energy company ENI. Mr. Maugeri provides a wealth of information about energy in "Two Cheers for Expensive Oil," published by Foreign Affairs (March/April 2006) and reprinted on the same date in Current.
There are an additional 2 trillion barrels of "recoverable" reserves. Mr. Maugeri says these oil reserves will probably meet the "proven" standard in a few years as technological improvement and increased sub-soil knowledge come online. Estimates of recoverable oil don't include the huge deposits of "unconventional" oil such as Canadian tar sands and U.S. shale oil, plus there are vast areas of our planet yet to be fully explored. For decades, alarmists have claimed we're running out of oil. In 1919, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that world oil production would peak in nine years. During the 1970s, the Club of Rome report, "The Limits to Growth," said that, assuming no rise in consumption, all known oil reserves would be entirely consumed in just 31 years.
There are several factors that explain today's high prices. There has been a huge surge in demand for oil as a result of rapid economic growth in China and India, as well as in the United States. Another factor is the under-exploration. Mr. Maugeri says Saudi Arabia has 260 billion barrels of proven reserves, accounting for 25 percent of the world's total, but only one-third of the oil known to lie below its surface. Russia's reserves are three times its proven reserves of 50 billion barrels. While high prices are beginning to stimulate investments in oil exploration, they've lagged for several decades out of fear of oil gluts and low prices. It's going to be 2010 before today's investments yield fruit.
A substantial increase in oil production alone cannot ease today's high prices because of weak refining capacity. Not a single refinery has been built in the United States for 30 years. Improvements to existing refineries failed to keep up with growing demand and tougher environmental regulations. We're the world's only industrialized country with a net deficit in refining capacity that comes to 20 percent of domestic demand. That makes us highly vulnerable to disasters like last year's hurricanes. Exacerbating weak refining capacity are regulations whereby gasoline produced for one state may not be sold in another. There are 18 mandated different types of gasoline sold in the United States.
The long-term outlook for oil is good. There's an increase in oil-drilling technology and exploration. Oil as a source of energy has been in decline. In 1980, oil was 45 percent of energy consumption; today, it's 34 percent, yielding ground to natural gas, coal and nuclear energy. Recently, the House of Representatives passed "The Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2006," which now awaits a Senate vote. Offshore oil exploration has been banned since 1982, despite Department of the Interior estimates that suggest the presence of 19 billion barrels of oil and 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The House of Representatives also passed the "Refinery Permit Process Schedule Act of 2006." Should these measures become law, our energy capacity will be enhanced significantly.
America stands alone in the world as the only nation that has placed a substantial amount of its domestic oil and natural gas potential off-limits. That reflects the awesome control that radical environmentalists have over Congress. With high fuel prices, Americans might be ready to put an end to that control.
Source
Momentum building for offshore energy exploration
It's interesting what $3-a-gallon gasoline will do to Americans' views on energy exploration. In 1990, when President George H.W. Bush issued a presidential directive that prohibited energy exploration off the Atlantic, Pacific and Alaskan coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the environmental movement cheered and few objected. We could afford to be magnanimous. Energy prices were a third of their current level, the prospect of finding more seemed open-ended, and China and India were placing little demand on the world market.
In 1998, with little having changed, President Clinton extended the moratorium on exploration in these areas to 2012. Again, with little objection. Today, the urgency is overwhelming. High energy prices, unstable and/or unfriendly governments in the top oil-producing regions and significant demand from the two most populous countries have Americans taking a second look at those moratoria.
The House of Representatives has made its move with the Deep Ocean Energy Resources, or DOER, Act of 2006. DOER, as currently constructed, wouldn't repeal the current restrictions. But it would give coastal states that want offshore drilling the power to opt out of them.
The legislation makes permanent the ban on energy production within 50 miles of the coastline unless a state legislature votes to end those restrictions and allow drilling. From 50-100 miles, states would have to affirmatively pass legislation to prohibit drilling. Only beyond 100 miles would states would have no authority to stop drilling.
Under the legislation, states that allowed drilling would share in the royalties collected on oil and gas leases in the new areas opened for exploration. Today, with just the western and central Gulf of Mexico open for drilling, the federal government collects between $4 billion and $8 billion annually in such royalties. Obviously, this number would increase if the rest of the America's coastal regions were opened for exploration.
Given that it's been years since estimates were last attempted -- the last oil company lease was abandoned in 1990 -- nobody knows for sure how much energy lies in the areas that the DOER Act would open. But the Department of the Interior, which regulates offshore drilling, suggests that 19 billion barrels of oil and 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be available. Considering we use 7 billion barrels and 23 trillion cubic feet annually, this could be a substantial source of additional supply for decades to come.
And initial estimates often prove considerably low. The Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska, originally projected to produce no more than 9 million barrels, recently sent its 15 billionth barrel south through the Alaska pipeline. The western and central Gulf also already has produced more energy than originally expected.
With all this energy out there, demand at all-time highs and prices remaining high, what has taken so long? The biggest problem has been environmental concerns on the part of Florida lawmakers worried what a spill would do to their tourism industry. But we haven't had a major oil spill from an offshore well since a 1969 accident near Santa Barbara, Calif. Even the National Academy of Sciences says that "improved production technology and safety training of personnel have dramatically reduced both blowouts and daily operational spills."
The danger of such spills has been reduced so much that only 1 percent of the oil in North American waters comes from offshore oil wells -- most comes from natural seepage from the sea floor. And during Katrina and Rita, despite winds that reached 170 miles per hour and lashing waves that took out a quarter of America's domestic energy production, no significant spills were reported.
Opposition from Florida lawmakers appears to be softening. Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican, is part of a group that has reached a compromise to get an offshore bill onto the Senate floor, although Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, has gone no further than to call the proposal "promising." Compared to the House bill, the Senate's approach is narrower, seeking to open one specific energy-rich region in the eastern Gulf. If the Senate passes this measure, the House and Senate would then have to reconcile their respective bills and send the final version to the president. It's hard to predict what would emerge from such a process, but anything that gets the ball rolling towards more domestic energy production would be welcome.
America has a problem: high oil and natural gas prices and competition for scarce resources that figures only to grow more intense. Thankfully, it also has something of a solution -- substantial reserves under its control that could be captured with little risk to the environment. It's time Congress gets serious about bridging the growing gap between supply and demand. And this could be just the way to do that.
Source
Follow The Money: In Washington, Everyone's Got An Agenda
After watching An Inconvenient Truth and sitting through one of Al Gore's PowerPoint presentations, I have just one question remaining: Why is Al Gore pushing Enron's agenda? Before you decide that I'm delusional, check out my new book, The Big Ripoff : How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, and my section called "Green: The Color of Money." The book shows how Enron was a key lobbyist for the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change (the Holy Grail of Gore's Crusade), and how almost every environmentalist policy we are being fed by Washington is really a meal ticket for one big business or another.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have a fellowship with a think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute - yes, that Competitive Enterprise Institute - which takes donations from foundations, corporations, and individuals. My colleagues' motivations come under fire when they oppose some regulation or tax, and many dismiss the arguments of industry-funded groups. The Big Ripoff is about looking at everyone's motivations, so I welcome your scrutiny. But if all industry-funded positions were dismissed--if the media disregarded arguments put forward by anyone connected to a business who stood to profit--than many environmentalist campaigns of the day would also have to get thrown out.
A Carbon Dioxide tax? That's the policy advocated by Duke Energy CEO Paul Anderson, whose company is unusually reliant on coal-fired power plants. Is this altruism for the sake of the planet? Not really: many of Duke's coal plants are in regulated markets where his company has a government-enforced monopoly. If a CO2 tax drives up Anderson's prices, it's not as if anyone can undercut him. Customers pay more, no less coal gets burnt, and Anderson gets good PR.
Ethanol? This is an easy one: Archer Daniels Midland is America's top ethanol producer, and its former chairman Dwayne Andreas was a very generous donor to both parties. Andreas once dropped off an envelope of $100,000 in Richard Nixon's West Wing. He also gave $100,000 to Nixon's opponent Hubert Humphrey. Federal and state policies provide all sorts of subsidies and special tax breaks for ethanol, and now Washington is mandating the use of this corn-based fuel. And, oh yeah, ADM predicts an ethanol shortage now. The potential effect on gas prices is terrifying.
And the Kyoto global warming treaty? Enron pushed it hard. In 1997, Ken Lay met with Clinton and Gore in the White House and boosted the treaty. In 2000, an Enron memo exclaimed that the treaty would be "good for Enron stock!" The company planned to get rich off of brokering a government-created industry in carbon-credit trading. Also, Enron's coal-fired power plants were all in third-world countries unaffected by the treaty. At this point, the environmentalist asks, "well, who cares who gets rich off of a CO2 tax, ethanol, or Kyoto if all those things are good for the planet?" The Big Ripoff has two responses to that:
1) Pointing out who profits from "green" policy is as legitimate as pointing out who would profit from deregulation or tax cuts--a favorite media pastime. Sure, it doesn't amount to an argument against the policy, but it ought to be considered.
2) The Big Ripoff argues that ethanol subsidies, CO2 taxes, and Kyoto--especially as they are exploited by big business--will not improve the environment. In brief: ethanol evaporates more than gasoline, releasing more smog-causing hydrocarbons; also, the energy intensity of producing ethanol, plus the potential damage to soil from single-crop farms, pose environmental threats in themselves. Under Kyoto, Enron would have had more incentive to expand its third-world coal-fired power plant business. The CO2 taxes wouldn't reduce coal use by regulated power companies, who could pass on the cost no sweat.
These three environmental proposals are typical of Washington policy and the exemplify the Ripoff: Politicians push rules that they say are for our own good. But Washington lobbyists raked in $2.28 billion in 2005, with about $2 billion of that coming from business lobbyists--you can bet they don't invest that much for nothing. Because small business and the average American don't have that sort of access, the policies tend to enrich big business while driving up costs for consumers and taxpayers and choking off entrepreneurs.
Source
A pro-nuclear Prime Minister
The media are desperately trying to portray Howard as in conflict with US policy but only they think so. Australia is a major supplier of uranium and PM Howard is keen to use that as the basis for an Australian nuclear industry -- to the horror of the Australian Greens
John Howard has given his strongest sign he wants a domestic uranium enrichment industry, and he agrees that the Bush administration's new global nuclear policy influenced his decision to conduct an inquiry into Australia's policy. The Prime Minister's desire to join the uranium enrichment club risks a conflict with President George W. Bush's global nuclear energy partnership, a radical US initiative to prevent nations moving into enrichment reprocessing. In a historic joint concord before the G8 summit this week, Mr Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to work together "to allow all nations to enjoy the benefits of nuclear energy without pursuing uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing capabilities".
Asked directly in Washington last month what the Bush administration's attitude would be towards an Australian decision to become an enrichment nation, a senior US official replied: "I'm not able to say."
Asked about Mr Bush's GNEP in an interview with The Australian, Mr Howard said: "I'm not suspicious of it. But I'm keen to keep an eye on it and keen to ensure it doesn't damage Australia's position. "The fact that this (GNEP) isbeing developed is a reason why we should look more closely at whether we should process uranium."
In political terms, Mr Bush seeks a new global nuclear bargain. Nuclear supplier nations such as the US, Russia, Britain, France, China and Japan would provide user nations with reactors and nuclear fuel on a "cradle to grave" basis in exchange for a guarantee they would not enter into enrichment, reprocessing and technologies necessary to produce weapons.
Mr Howard left no doubt about his personal preference. "It does seem odd that you wouldn't enrich uranium, doesn't it?" he said. "One of the great historical anomalies of the Australian economy which most Australians could never understand is that we had the best wool in the world and we sent it overseas to be processed and we bought it back at a much higher price. "That always struck people as rather odd. I would be keen to avoid that occurring."
Any Australian decision to enrich uranium creates a potential conflict for the US between its global policy and its alliance obligations. Under GNEP, an Australian enrichment decision would be seen as a bad precedent, but this conclusion would be offset by trust in Australia as a close US ally and responsible nuclear player.
Mr Howard said he had not tested US sentiment on Australia's enrichment option. "I think any administration would accept it," he said. "Certainly, the present one would accept it. I can't imagine a future administration would have a different view. We would be seen as a totally reliable and trustworthy country."
After launching his vision on Monday for Australia to become an energy superpower based on its huge reserves of coal, gas and uranium, Mr Howard said he was working closely with Canada to ensure that the world's two biggest uranium producers were not locked out of the nuclear fuel-cycle. "Each of us has a very direct interest in the nuclear fuel cycle, and there is a body which is still embryonic being put together by the United States and the other nuclear powers which we will have to watch very carefully," Mr Howard said. "We have to watch that it doesn't impact negatively on Australia and Canada. "I am not suggesting there is any malevolence on the part of these other countries, but we will have to watch for any unintended consequences."
Source
***************************************
Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
*****************************************
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Jim Hansen and his twin
