Posts from — April 2010

Word on the political street is that a 15 cent increase in the federal gasoline tax may well be included in the final draft of a bill being prepared by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and John Kerry (D-MA) to address global warming.   Shell, British Petroleum, and ConocoPhillips – are said to support the tax because it’s a less costly intervention in the transportation fuel market (for them anyway) than alternative interventions that might otherwise find their way into this prospective legislation.  Shell et al. may be right about that, but be that as it may, this would still constitute lousy public policy.  A gasoline tax hike ought to be resisted.

Higher Taxes Will Not Alter Climate Under Anyone’s Math

The proposed gasoline tax increase will have no significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions.  That’s because the demand curve for gasoline is rather inelastic.  Hence, a 15 cent increase in gasoline prices – presuming that the entirety of the tax is passed on to consumers, which may not prove to be the case – would not discourage very much fuel consumption at all. 

While I don’t have any calculations at hand to translate the likely amount of reduced oil consumption into a percentage reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions (although that would be a fine project to undertake if this idea ever finds its way into the bill), the figure is certainly below 1 percent.  How much cooler would the planet be given that emissions decline over the next 50, 100, and 150 years?  That figure would certainly be too small to even measure.

Regardless, the uninternalized “negative externality” associated with the impact of gasoline consumption on the climate is likely to be rather small in monetary terms.  After a review of the pertinent economic literature by economist Ian Parrry, Mr. Parry concluded that a gallon of gasoline likely does about 5 cents worth of damage to the environment via its impact on the global climate, assuming that the conventional narrative about anthropogenic climate change is correct.  Accordingly, a 15 cent increase in the gasoline tax to address climate impacts would likely do more economic harm than good even if you believe the scientific arguments forwarded by the IPCC. [Read more →]

Editor note: In Part I and Part II, Jon Boone set the stage for a final analysis of the Sierra Club’s current position in support of wind power. This conclusion to the series provides a discussion on the science, realities, and the unintended consequences that may be the result of current environmental movement thinking, which it typifies.

 Birkenstock Tales

MBA types who wouldn’t know a bat from a bowtie now run the national Sierra Club. Their interest is in gaining membership and revenue. In a critique aptly entitled, Torquemada in Birkenstocks, Jeff St. Clair said this about Carl Pope: “[He] has never had much of a reputation as an environmental activist. He’s a wheeler-dealer, who keeps the Club’s policies in lockstep with its big funders and political patrons. Where Dave Brower scaled mountains, nearly all of Pope’s climbing has been up organizational ladders.”

Environmental organizations that support wind technology by pretending that the ends justify the means, by falsely assuming that wind can do anything meaningful to alter our existing energy profile, are largely responsible for the depredations unloosed by the wind industry.  Their imprimatur gives the industry a legitimacy it does not deserve. This “legitimacy” welcomes the industry’s trade association to a place at the government table, which then compels politicians to bestow upon the wind lobby political favors, given the political penchant for compromise. [Read more →]

Editor note: In Part I, Jon Boone traced the history of the Sierra Club from its inception in 1892 to today and commented on its evolution as an environmental body. Part II focuses on the realities of today’s wind power initiatives and its influence on Sierra Club beliefs. Part III concludes with a discussion on the science being used to promote its policies and the unintended consequences that may result.

Between the Gush for Wind and the Hard Place of Reality

The physical nature and enormous size of industrial wind projects has caused a lot of blowback. Between Maryland and West Virginia, for example, there is potential for around 2000 wind turbines, each nearly 500-feet tall; they would be placed atop 400 miles of the Allegheny Mountain ridges. About 20 acres of forest must be cut to support each turbine—4-6 acres to accommodate the free flow of the wind per turbine; one or more large staging areas for each wind project; access road construction; and a variety of substations and transmission lines. Cumulatively, about 40,000 acres of woodlands would be transformed into an industrial energy plant far larger than any conventional facility. Most of this montane terrain contains rare habitat and many vulnerable wildlife species.

How can such a looming industrial presence be reconciled with the goals of maintaining choice natural habitat while reducing the impact of human activity? For the Sierra Club, the answer is: The use of siting guidelines and wildlife assessment studies that would restrict limited liability wind companies from placing their huge machinery in the most sensitive places and away from rare and threatened species of plants and animals. If the war on carbon is to be won, and if skyscraper-sized wind turbines are part of the price for winning that war, then accommodation must be made. In the words of one wind developer, “some will have to sacrifice if we’re to have the clean, green energy from the wind” replacing coal and putting a stop to mountaintop removal coal extraction practices.

More than a few Sierra Club members and local chapters have resisted the national organization’s encyclicals on wind precisely because such hulking intrusion seems inimical to environmental common sense. The chair of the Maryland Chapter’s Conservation Committee, one of the nation’s leading naturalists, resigned in large part because of this concern. In response to such dissidents, the Club’s national leadership insists that it, and not its member chapters, be the final arbiter of what wind projects meet its standards: “It is important for the Club to speak with a unified, clear voice in its reaction to wind energy projects. It will not be good for the Club if one chapter is focusing totally on concerns about impacts on birds while the chapter in the next state is urging the public to support wind projects as a crucial element in reversing the impacts of global warming.” The organization enforces its authority under threat of expulsion, as was the case when its executive chairman, Carl Pope, in the wake of another controversy, excommunicated the entire Florida 35,000-memmber chapter for four years.

To “manage the negative environmental impacts of wind,” the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, the American Bird Conservancy, Greenpeace, and the Audubon Society all recommend guidelines that, if followed, provide wind projects with their environmental seal of approval. Even on public lands. And with no evident sense of irony for the Sierra Club—since this is a policy taken from Gifford Pinchot’s playbook. John Muir is likely turning in his grave. [Read more →]

Editor note: In this three part series, Jon Boone traces the history of the Sierra Club from its inception in 1892 to today and comments on its evolution as an environmental body. Given this organization’s prominence in environmental thinking today, this is an important and informative essay on the merits, possible motivations and effects of such movements. Part II will focus on the realities of today’s “Gush for wind” initiatives and its influence on Sierra Club beliefs. Part III concludes with a discussion on the science being used to promote its policies and the unintended consequences that may result.

“A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he’s talking about.”

~ Miguel de Unamuno

In the Beginning

By the dawn of the twentieth century, European sensibilities and burgeoning technologies, filtered through the American experience, had brought a close to the vast North American frontier. A centuries-long march to the beat of seemingly inexhaustible abundance was replaced by a dawning recognition of limitation, of natural resources ravaged and lost. Passenger pigeons, once the most common bird in colonial America with numbers in the billions, had become extinct, along with several other species. Many more were on the edge of extinction. The bodies of millions of native songbirds dangled around fashionable ladies’ millinery. Miners even used birds to assess air quality in coal shafts.

Habitat for much of our native flora and fauna had also been transformed or eliminated. Most of the Eastern hardwood forests had been timbered while millions of acres of wetlands had been built over, such as the sweeping Klamath marshes in Oregon. Industrial development, including incipient factory farming practices, had already altered much of the natural agricultural landscape. Coal, steel and railroads combined to forge giant cities like Chicago out of virtual wilderness in only a few decades. Electricity, refrigeration technology, and the internal combustion engine would soon conspire to bring new settlement in places so environmentally sensitive that most wildlife could not survive the intrusion.

John Muir’s new Sierra Club, founded in 1892 “to make the mountains glad,” was, from its beginning, caught between the growing power and expansive ambitions of the United States and its ongoing paradoxical relationship with nature, torn as it continues to be between celebrating the natural world and ruthlessly subduing it. Muir, the Club’s first president, understood the concern that drives much of contemporary environmentalism: Wherever human beings are, there’s much less of everything else. And he vowed to protect the remaining wilderness. [Read more →]

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote a lengthy article, “Building a Green Economy,” in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Krugman is an able writer.  He laid out the textbook arguments on climate change from the problem-and-act perspective, and his fact-of-the-matter tone and apparent expertise no doubt misled many readers.

Although he technically said nothing demonstrably false, Krugman gives the impression that there is widespread consensus that drastic action is needed to avert catastrophic climate change. This is simply not true, and all we have to do is actually read the consensus reports to see that Krugman is misleading his readers.

Krugman’s Summary of the Climate Science

After giving a good summary of the standard issues in the economics of climate change, Krugman pauses to comment on what the natural scientists (as opposed to the economists) have to say on the subject:

This is an article on climate economics, not climate science. But before we get to the economics, it’s worth establishing three things about the state of the scientific debate.

The first is that the planet is indeed warming. [I]f you look at the evidence the right way ­— taking averages over periods long enough to smooth out the fluctuations — the upward trend is unmistakable: each successive decade since the 1970s has been warmer than the one before.

Second, climate models predicted this well in advance, even getting the magnitude of the temperature rise roughly right. While it’s relatively easy to cook up an analysis that matches known data, it is much harder to create a model that accurately forecasts the future. So the fact that climate modelers more than 20 years ago successfully predicted the subsequent global warming gives them enormous credibility. [Krugman page 3, emphasis added.]

Now Krugman’s summary above is either accurate or not, depending on how much error we will tolerate in the predictions. But fair enough, we’ll agree with Krugman that climate models 20 years ago predicted higher average global temperatures, and that’s indeed what we’ve experienced. [Read more →]

Last week in the Huffington Post, climatologist Dr. James Hansen made an impassioned plea to President Obama to ditch cap-and-trade and instead advocate a plan to tax carbon-based fuels with 100% of the revenues returned to households. This was not the first time. Hansen made the same pitch back in December 2008 in a letter to President-elect Obama. President Obama did not heed Hansen’s advice, keeping his wagon hitched to cap-and-trade, the policy darling of Big Green, U.S. CAP, and congressional leaders. But with cap-and-trade bogged down on Capitol Hill, Hansen argues, his plan gives Obama ”a second chance on the predominant moral issue of this century.”

Hansen made the case for “tax-and-dividend” in testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee on February 25, 2009. I commented on Hansen’s testimony a week later on MasterResource. Substantively, there’s nothing new in Hansen’s Huff Post column, but rhetorically there is one modification. He now calls his proposal a “fee” rather than a tax. Despite Hansen’s earlier criticism of cap-and-trade as a hidden and thus dishonest tax, and his call for a “transparent” approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, he now avoids the “T” word as assiduously as any shifty cap-and-trader.

Today’s column offers a running commentary on Hansen’s Huff Post piece. [Read more →]

Middle America has awakened, and its slogan appears to be “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  At least, that seems to be the meaning of the Tea Party movement and the recent elections in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia.

But other than being “mad as hell,” what are the Tea Party’s positions on issues such as the environment?

There is no simple answer to this question because there is no “Tea Party.”  There are, rather, a multitude of Tea Parties.  The Tea Party is a movement and not an organized, monolithic political party.  Tea Parties may support some candidates, and conservative candidates will claim they have Tea Party endorsement, but they will most likely be running as Republicans or Independents rather than as registered members of the Tea Party. 

So, what is the Tea Party about and what does that really mean with regard to environmentalism?  It’s probably not quite what you think. 

The Tea Parties generally adopt a very simple platform:  Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets.  This simple formulation embraces “Free Market Environmentalism” as described in Anderson and Leal’s 1991 (revised 2001) book of the same name, and in the reading list at The CommonsBlog.org.  As Jonathan Adler explains it: 

Free market environmentalism (FME) rejects the “market failure” model. “Rather than viewing the world in terms of market failure, we should view the problem of externalities as a failure to permit markets and create markets where they do not yet—or no longer—exist,” argues Smith. Resources that are privately owned or managed and, therefore, are in the marketplace are typically well-maintained. Resources that are unowned or politically controlled, and therefore outside the market, are more apt to be inadequately managed. “At the heart of free market environmentalism is a system of well-specified property rights to natural resources,” explain Terry Anderson and Donald Leal, authors of Free Market Environmentalism. Adds Smith, “Rather than the silly slogan of some environmentalists, that ‘trees should have standing,’ our argument is that behind every tree should stand an owner who can act as its protector.”

In short, free-market environmentalism argues that private property rights and the marketplace, if not obstructed by big government, can better protect the environment than can big government. [Read more →]

My post the other day on nuclear power prompted a number of comments – most of them hostile.  Because the comments offered were fairly standard-issue arguments that one often hears in the debate about nuclear energy, it’s worth surveying them seriously.

Markets Schmarkets

One argument often heard is that market actions are not indicative of economic merit.  Rod Adams, for instance, writes: 

Markets dominated by people whose only motive is making more money are not the best decision makers – the people making the decisions in that situation will often decide to influence the law of supply and demand by keeping their hands on the levers that they can use to keep supply restrained. If their hands are “invisible” it is because they work at keeping them hidden or because observers and academic study producers do not work very hard to find them. 

Well, the desire to make money is what makes markets work in the first place.  Rather than walk through an Econ 101 text to flesh out that point, let me ask a question: If profit-hungry investors aren’t the best people to make decisions about whether to invest in this or that, then who are – vote-maximizing politicians?  Who has the better incentive to make efficient investment decisions?

Rod seems to be suggesting that nuclear power prices are high because plant operators make more money that way.  Given that those operators have to compete with coal and gas-fired electricity, how exactly do cost overruns and high construction costs help nuclear power plant operators?    

Regardless, if you really believe that market actors maximize revenues by restraining supply to the detriment of consumers, then you should be in favor of a total government take-over of the energy industry.  Nothing else will solve that problem were it to exist.  But what makes us think that a government-run energy sector will perform any better than a government-run health care sector, a government-run agricultural sector, or what have you?  When politicians elbow aside market actors and call the shots, we get decisions that are designed to help politicians, not the economy.  See, for instance, the utterly insane ethanol preferences that make absolutely zero sense from an economic or environmental perspective but wonderful sense from a political perspective.

Jon Boone seconds Rod Adams’ contention that markets are worthless in this context:

As Adam Smith himself wrote, his unseen hand works effectively when the field is level and the players share a common sense of the rules, values, and objectives of the game. Such is not the case today in the energy marketplace.

That’s not quite what Adam Smith wrote, but never mind.  Jon’s indictment of the market could be made in every sector of the economy because there is no instance that I am aware of when all of these alleged preexisting conditions for effective market operation exist. [Read more →]

[The other parts of this series on the activism of Texas A&M climatologists are here: Part I, Part II, and Part III]

“If the models are as flawed as critics say … you have to ask yourself, ‘How come they work?’”

- Gavin Schmidt [NASA], quoted in David Fahrenhold, “Scientists’ Use of Computer Models to Predict Climate Change is Under Attack,” Washington Post, April 6, 2010.

“We do not know much about modeling climate. It is as though we are modeling a human being. Models are in position at last to tell us the creature has two arms and two legs, but we are being asked to cure cancer.”

     – Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), November 12, 1999

A Washington Post piece last week, “Scientists’ use of computer models to predict climate change is under attack,” has brought attention to the importance of climate modeling in the current debate over climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases (GHGs). And not surprisingly, few mainstream IPCC scientists want to cast doubt on the current state of the art.

But what do open-minded climate scientists who are not formal modelers say behind closed doors? For part of this answer, I have collected these quotations from Dr. Gerald North of Texas A&M’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences and Department of Oceanography.

Prior to Climategate, at least, North was a straight shooter on the problems of climate models. [North's Left turn to go arm-in-arm with Andrew Dessler with regard to Climategate is examined here , here, and here.] 

North’s estimate of climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases is about one-third below that of the model average that make up the IPCC projection (about 3ºC). As he said:

“I agree that the case for 2ºC warming [for a doubling of manmade greenhouse gas forcing in equilibrium] is pretty strong.”

- Gerald R. North to Rob Bradley, email communication, August 13, 2007.

North’s error range is 1/4th of a degree, so his warming estimate for a doubled GHG forcing is between 1.75ºC and 2.25ºC, the low end of which is outside of the IPCC range of 2ºC–4.5ºC. Yet Dr. North dare not advertise his dissent or what he believes is climate realism versus model-contrived climate and the resulting alarmism.

Climate models are only as good as what goes into them and our understanding of some of the physical processes that control key aspects of the climate (for instance, cloud behavior) and their response to human alterations of the atmospheric composition is less than ideal. Models cannot magically generate the real, operative microphysics of climate to inform us what will happen when climate forcings are altered. However, a preference for a particular outcome can quickly turn a garbage in-garbage out situation into alarmism in-alarmism out.

Models are not ready for prime time and may not be for many more years if not decades. But this inconvenient fact is downplayed by the scientists involved for two reasons. One is the massive government funding of climate modeling predicated on an assumed “climate problem.”  And two, there is a widespread Malthusian virus among natural scientists–a belief that nature is optimal, man’s influence is bad. (Just the opposite might be the case.) So the happy middle of the debate has been absent.

Alarming, but Flawed, Climate Models

One of the reasons I am not a climate alarmist is because of Dr. North. I believe North points us toward the elusive happy middle of the science debate between ultra-skepticism and alarmism. [Read more →]

Last week whilePresident Obama was touring a factory in Charlotte, N.C., one of the workers asked the President why he didn’t use an electric limousine. According to the LA Times , the President, who had just made his customary speech extolling renewable energy and green jobs, said there’s not much he can do to wring more fuel efficiency from the armored limousines that drive him around. He had asked the Secret Service about converting to hybrid vehicles, the president said, but was told that it’s not possible.

“It’s because the cars that I’m in are like tanks,” Obama said.

But he did emphasize that he ordered a tripling of the number of hybrid vehicles in the federal government’s massive fleet. That’s our proactive president where image, not the cost to taxpayers, is what matters.

The event was also, unintentionally, a microcosm of federal policy missteps driven by the lack of concern of regulators to the myriad performance demands of the auto buying public. If the President has unique needs for performance, isn’t it possible others do as well? What about considerations that go beyond fuel economy?

Electric Vehicles (Remember the Biofuels Bust?)

Today’s favorite among the political cognoscenti are electric vehicles and hybrids cars. They are riding high, as noted by the New York Times, while tax subsidies have made them appear a realistic option. But the increased attention will undoubtedly highlight flaws of this fuel source in comparison with gasoline.

The attention being paid to the electric vehicle industry also irritates the biofuel industry, whose own overheated market was abruptly halted in 2007, with subsequent bankruptcies and a fall from grace, after nexus were drawn between biofuels and higher food prices, and between some biofuels and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Biofuels went from hero to zero, along with billions in investments in factories and farms to produce the fuels. Yet gasoline-powered cars may trump both biofuels and electric/hybrids for decades as the least-worst option. Not only do they fit within existing infrastructure, but wider adoption of more efficient conventional cars will help to curb carbon emissions and oil dependence. Of course, the lower energy content of most biofuels also conflicts with increasingly stringent mileage standards.

Are EVs Really the Future?

So will EVs, hybrids, biofueled or improved conventional cars dominate the future? The uncertainty is striking for a $5 trillion global auto and fuel supply market where there is agreement only that the number of cars will keep increasing, perhaps doubling to two billion by 2050, driven largely by the surging Chinese and Indian middle classes.

Last week, the United States announced new fuel efficiency standards, following similar rules in Europe. Green cars took center stage at auto shows in New York, Geneva and Detroit, including all-battery cars; hybrid varieties that switch between electricity and gasoline; and small (some really, really small), more fuel-efficient conventional cars. But battery-only electric vehicles are expensive.

As reported in the Times:

Mitsubishi Motors and Nissan Motor announced prices for their battery-only electric cars, which are in production already or about to be introduced. Before government subsidies, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV will sell for about $42,000, and the Nissan Leaf for just a few dollars less. And a single charge allows for a driving range of about 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, far less than for a gasoline-powered car. American consumers typically expect to exceed 300 miles on one tankful.

The average refill time for a tankful of gasoline is about ten minutes, not the several hours needed for an EV charge. The time value of refilling is absent from most economic analysis of vehicle technology, but even a once every two weeks instead of once every three, can add to the cost of fuel. For alternative fuels, any temporary price advantage can be quickly eaten up by convenience costs. [Read more →]