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Energy and the Environment Archive

Wednesday

3

August 2011

0

COMMENTS

Eight Anti-Science Senators Seek to Halt GE Salmon

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment, Government Meddling

For eight years we listened to self-righteous lefties wrap their personal policy preferences under the cloak of objective science, then beat  anyone who disagreed with those preferences over the head with charges of being “anti-science.” So when will we see the same treatment for the 7 Democratic Senators + 1 liberal Republican Lisa Murkowski for their letter threatening the FDA if they do not override the science in favor of their political opposition to genetically engineered salmon?

A group of senators has asked the Food and Drug Administration to abandon its approval process of genetically engineered salmon as food, threatening to push legislation to strip the FDA’s funding to study the fish if the agency does not comply.

Eight senators sent a letter dated July 15 to the FDA asking it to “immediately cease” consideration of such salmon, a product brought before the agency by AquaBounty Technologies 15 years ago.

…Although the fish would be kept in a land-based facility, environmental groups worry that the salmon could escape and potentially harm fish in the sea. They’re also concerned that the fish, which do not get any larger than unmodified salmon but grow twice as fast, could out-compete native populations for food.

…The senators, who represent coastal states with thriving fisheries such as Alaska, Oregon and Washington, pledged not to provide funding for the program should the FDA go forward with the approval process. They argue that genetically modified salmon could kill jobs by interfering with the fish farming industry, cause environmental damage and potentially harm consumers.

“I just don’t see a reason from a fundamental standpoint why we have to start manufacturing ‘Frankenfish’ when we have incredible fisheries that employ thousands of people,” said Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska).

And here we see their true motives. They are seeking to abuse the purpose of the FDA in order to protect existing industries in their states from competition. They threw out some token scientific concerns, but they are clearly flimsy.

“Even if someone were to steal and release them into the ocean of Panama, they would have to swim thousands of miles to find mates,” said Bill Muir, a professor of animal sciences at Purdue University who specializes in genetics and environmental risk assessment, particularly of fish. Muir said he’s looked at AquaBounty’s product and deemed it safe for the environment.

Their real concerns are based on protectionists economics and narrow self interest, as they seek to protect potential donors and supporters in their respective states. In other words, they are putting their political interests ahead of what’s right. This should come as no surprise, as the political system is designed to encourage just such behavior. This is one of the many faults with creating organizations such as the FDA in the first place. They are inherently part of the political process, and subjective to all the negatives of the incentive structure associated with it. Even if this attempted bullying does not succeed on this particular issue, it will and has already on many others.

Friday

29

July 2011

1

COMMENTS

There Goes the Warming

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

A big blow to the warm-mongers:

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

When I debate people on this issue I typically make the point that the computer models are inaccurate. The surest test of any model is to give it data from the  recent past and then see if it can accurately predict the current, observable conditions. The climate models cannot.

Now, perhaps, we know why. Skepticism scores another point over alarmism.

Thursday

7

July 2011

0

COMMENTS

We're All Gonna Die! Pt. 36

Written by , Posted in Economics & the Economy, Energy and the Environment

We’re all gonna die…unless we pay a 3% mini-tithe at the alter of “climate change”:

Governments must invest three per cent of world GDP – about £1.2 trillion in 2010 – annually for 40 years to stop climate change and famine, according to the UN’s department of economic and social affairs.

Just to put this in perspective, the world spent 2.6% of GDP on military expenditures in 2009.

Oh, and since this is a WAGD post, obviously we’re all gonna die:

Rob Vos, the lead author of the report, said that “business as usual is not an option” if the world were to “reverse the ongoing ecological destruction”.

His report said that to feed a rapidly growing number of mouths, farmers around the world will have to essentially double total international food production between now and 2050.

…”It is rapidly expanding energy use, mainly driven by fossil fuels, that explains why humanity is on the verge of breaching planetary sustainability boundaries,” the report said.

“A comprehensive global energy transition is urgently needed in order to avert a major planetary catastrophe.”

This kind of nonsense is not new. What the doommongers always seem to ignore is that innovation and productivity gains make their models irrelevant. The techniques we will be using to produce food in 2050 are likely unimaginable to anyone alive today.

Saturday

11

June 2011

0

COMMENTS

The World is as Empty as Tom Friedman’s Head

Written by , Posted in Economics & the Economy, Energy and the Environment

Pop pseudo-intellectual and China fetishist Tom Friedman apparently went somewhere and had a thought, as he is wont to do. This time, in a column titled, “The Earth is Full,” he has determined that there’s too many plebes and they’re fouling up his precious Gaia (Hat-tip: NewsBusters).

You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

…We’re currently caught in two loops: One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability. At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff. So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories. More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet.

As if Tom Friedman wasn’t insufferable enough already, now he’s dabbling in the Malthusian claptrap, too? No Tom, the Earth is not full, and the world’s population is not a problem. In most developed countries, birth rates are below replacement level, and elsewhere in the world they are declining as well. Estimates suggest the world population will peak around 2050 at 9 billion or so, then begin to decline. Meanwhile, the entire population of the world today could fit in the state of Texas and it would about as dense as New York City today.

As for resources, there’s considerable capacity currently not being used (see American government paying people not to farm), or being used stupidly (see ethanol). Moreover, technological development will continue to allow us to provide more for less, as it has done throughout history. Simply put, this is Paul Erlich level nonsense.

The economics is also head-smackingly stupid. We do not build factories to create jobs, we build factories to meet demand. Moreover, as productivity has increased (he managed to get one thing right), workers have moved into the service sector and work in other industries, such as health care. On the other hand, technological development, while increasing productivity, also reduced pollution.  There’s a reason why the developing nations have much worse environments than developed nations, and that reason is prosperity. Wealth is cleaner than poverty.

“And why do you people want so much crap, anyway?” wonders the man with the multi-million dollar mansion. Hey Tom, Al Gore’s calling, and he wants his hypocrisy back.

Tuesday

24

May 2011

0

COMMENTS

Warmists Jump at Chance to Tie Latest Disaster to ManBearPig

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

Sunday’s tornado in Joplin, Missouri was historic:

The National Weather Service says the tornado that swept through the southwest Missouri town of Joplin was a highest-rated EF5 storm, with winds greater than 200 mph.

The twister that struck Sunday was the deadliest single tornado to touchdown since the National Weather Service began keeping official records in 1950. It’s the 8th-deadliest single twister in U.S. history.

Needless to say, this has the Warmists in a tizzy. In a snark-filled op-ed for the Washington Post (Hat-tip: Reason), environmentalist Bill McKibben sarcastically observes:

Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.

It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. … But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.

If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest — resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi — could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.

Diane Sawyer also suggestively mused, “Is this it, this is the evidence of a kind of preview of life under global warming?”

Yet as I previously highlighted, actual scientists have said there is no evidence to connect these storms to any supposed warming:

A top official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rejected claims by environmental activists that the outbreak of tornadoes ravaging the American South is related to climate change brought on by global warming.

Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said warming trends do create more of the fuel that tornadoes require, such as moisture, but that they also deprive tornadoes of another essential ingredient: wind shear.

“We know we have a warming going on,” Carbin told Fox News in an interview Thursday, but added: “There really is no scientific consensus or connection [between global warming and tornadic activity]….Jumping from a large-scale event like global warming to relatively small-scale events like tornadoes is a huge leap across a variety of scales.”

With this latest tragic disaster, Carbin has now been forced to shoot the nonsense down once again, this time by pointing out that there has not even been an increase in tornadoes in 2011, rather they have just hit more populated areas:

Carbin: “There is no indication of an upward trend in either intensity or numbers. We’ve had a lot more reports of tornadoes, but most of those tornadoes are actually the weak tornadoes, the F-0. When you take out the F-0 tornadoes from the long-term record, there is very little increase in the total number of tornadoes, and we don’t see any increase in the number of violent tornadoes. It’s just that these things are coming, and they’re very rare and extreme, and they happen to be hitting populated areas. So right now, no indication of an upward trend in the strong to violent tornadoes that we’re seeing.”

But don’t expect the facts to stop Warmists like Bill McKibben from drawing connections where none exist.

Monday

2

May 2011

1

COMMENTS

We're All Gonna Die! Pt. 35

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

Extreme tornadoes have killed 300+ in the South, which to the typical environmentalist wacko is the perfect time to remind us that Global Warming climate change is going to kill us all. Or at least it means doom for those of us who commit thought crimes against Gaia, according to Think Progress (Hat-tip: Yid With Lid):

The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.

Another doom-monger writing at the Huffington Post is even more direct. The cost of “denying climate change,” we are told in the headline, is “accelerating climate disruptions, death and destruction.” Cats and dogs… living together… mass hysteria!

I’ll just leave this here: NOAA Scientist Rejects Global Warming Link to Tornadoes

Sunday

24

April 2011

0

COMMENTS

Obama Blames Everyone Else on Oil Prices

Written by , Posted in Economics & the Economy, Energy and the Environment

Despite public demand for increasing domestic oil production, the current White House has sent a clear signal that the U.S. will not be increasing production into the future, despite growing demand. While simply one of many factors impacting the global price of oil, it is a factor. But rather than acknowledge that the price of oil reflects the realities of supply and demand, including anticipated changes in the future, Obama is lashing out at anyone and everyone in an attempt to distract from his failed and misguided leadership on energy.

First, he pulled out that favorite boogeyman of the economically illiterate and blamed the speculators:

“It is true that a lot of what’s driving oil prices up right now is not the lack of supply. There’s enough supply. There’s enough oil out there for world demand,” Obama said.

“The problem is … speculators and people make various bets, and they say, you know what, we think that maybe there’s a 20 percent chance that something might happen in the Middle East that might disrupt oil supply, so we’re going to bet that oil is going to go up real high. And that spikes up prices significantly.”

Yes, they do “place bets,” but it doesn’t matter to speculators whether those bets are for prices to go up or go down, for the long-term or for the short-term, so long as they are right. It is, ultimately, the fundamentals of the market that move prices, not the speculators. It makes as much sense to blame the thermometer for how hot is as it does to blame speculators for the price of oil.

Speculators play an important role by adding additional information to the market. All prices serves as signals, and the more information they can convey, the better. Businesses that rely heavily on oil don’t simply want to know that there is enough supply now. They want to know if there will be enough supply 5, 10 or 20 years from now. If the answer is ‘no’, then they can start investing in alternatives now, when there is still time to adapt. By adding their information into the market system, speculators reduce price volatility. (More on that here)

What the President ignores is that the bets being made are not simply about whether or not instability will overtake production, though that’s certainly part of it. They are also looking at the growth of demand versus the growth of supply. And in so far as the former is out pacing the latter, and is expected to continue doing so, speculators will bring this fact to light by betting on prices continuing to rise. They are, simply put, reacting to reality, not shaping it. The same cannot be said of the President, whose policies are sending a clear signal that U.S. domestic production will be curtailed, or at least not allowed to grow fast enough to match future demand.

The President is also picking on another boogeyman, those dastardly oil companies:

“Four billion dollars of your money are going to these companies at a time when they’re making record profits and you’re paying near record prices at the pump,” the president said at a Nevada town hall. “It has to stop.”

It’s not altogether clear what the President thinks “has to stop.” If he means the fact that we’re paying record prices, it would certainly be nice if it did stop, but the President’s policies are having the opposite effect. Reducing oil production relative to demand, or adopting disruptive cap-and-trade regulations, will ensure that prices continue to rise.

But if he means record profits have to stop, he’s just being demagogic. We know he would be cheering “record profits” from GM, after all. Profits simply serve to encourage more production and investment in a sector, thus providing more of what the public has voted with their wallets that they want.

In either case, the President is clearly exploiting popular ignorances in hopes of distracting from his own economic failures. But he can blame speculators, oil companies, or anyone else all he wants. If prices continue to rise, and the economy continues to struggle, he will be very vulnerable in 2012.

Wednesday

20

April 2011

0

COMMENTS

Death of Gulf of Mexico Greatly Exaggerated

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

In the midst of the BP oil spill, hysterics were common place. Even though the Gulf had survived a previous such oil spill decades earlier, the BP spill was all but portrayed as the coming of the apocalypse. It would take decades to recover. Things would never be the same. We must stop drilling for oil, now and forever!

Of course, things were bad. There’s no denying that the spill severely disrupted Gulf coast economies and harmed the environment. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as many claimed. In other words, the environmental reactionaries did their usual overreaction:

After BP’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico blew out a year ago today, many feared that the resulting oil spill would turn the Gulf into a dead sea, destroy its beaches, kill its vibrant seafood and tourism industries and mortally wound the economies of states from Florida to Texas.

The spill’s long-term effects on the environment are still a serious question, but the Gulf turned out to be surprisingly resilient, and so far the news has been unexpectedly good. Most of the oil is gone. Fishing has resumed, the beaches are clean (with some exceptions), tourist bookings are up and Gulf seafood is safe to eat.

Let’s keep this in mind as they move on to preach environmental doom elsewhere.

Saturday

19

March 2011

0

COMMENTS

The Unprogressive Power of Government

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment, Government Meddling

Progress is a near constant in human affairs. In some times and places it occurs much faster than in others, but human beings tend to naturally seek ways to better our lives. Government certainly plays a role, and is often the institution that is being improved. Some of us have progressed from tyrannical dictatorships to representative government, for instance, and thus bettering the existence of the people living under those governments. We’ve also progressed through our governments via the establishment of basic rule of law, which has allowed economies to flourish.

Government is also a double-edged sword. It carries with it significant power to move backwards not found elsewhere in human society. A free economy, once established with property rights and contract enforcement, will progress at tremendous rate when left alone. Nor is any captain needed to helm the economy. Yet politicians will invariably try to steer economies anyway, seeking to create winners and losers of their own choosing for their own selfish (electoral) reasons. A consequences of this interference is negative progress, where not only does progress in a certain area stall, but our standard of living is actually reduced over time.

Consider this recent example of such meddling from the Wall Street Journal:

It might not have been the most stylish, but for decades the top-loading laundry machine was the most affordable and dependable. Now it’s ruined—and Americans have politics to thank.

In 1996, top-loaders were pretty much the only type of washer around, and they were uniformly high quality. When Consumer Reports tested 18 models, 13 were “excellent” and five were “very good.” By 2007, though, not one was excellent and seven out of 21 were “fair” or “poor.” This month came the death knell: Consumer Reports simply dismissed all conventional top-loaders as “often mediocre or worse.”

…The federal government first issued energy standards for washers in the early 1990s. When the Department of Energy ratcheted them up a decade later, it was the beginning of the end for top-loaders. Their costlier and harder-to-use rivals—front-loading washing machines—were poised to dominate.

…When the Department of Energy began raising the standard, it promised that “consumers will have the same range of clothes washers as they have today,” and cleaning ability wouldn’t be changed. That’s not how it turned out.

In 2007, after the more stringent rules had kicked in, Consumer Reports noted that some top-loaders were leaving its test swatches “nearly as dirty as they were before washing.” “For the first time in years,” CR said, “we can’t call any washer a Best Buy.” Contrast that with the magazine’s 1996 report that, “given warm enough water and a good detergent, any washing machine will get clothes clean.” Those were the good old days.

Friday

11

March 2011

0

COMMENTS

We're All Gonna Die! Pt. 34

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

Tragic earthquake edition:

Hours after a massive earthquake rattled Japan, environmental advocates connected the natural disaster to global warming.  The president of the European Economic and Social Committee, Staffan Nilsson, issued a statement calling for solidarity in tackling the global warming problem.

“Some islands affected by climate change have been hit,” said Nilsson. “Has not the time come to demonstrate on solidarity – not least solidarity in combating and adapting to climate change and global warming?”

“Mother Nature has again given us a sign that that is what we need to do,” he added.

The Global Warming faithful were quick to point to this latest natural disaster as evidence of their deity.

Today’s tsunami: This is what climate change looks like

It’s often difficult to visualize what climate change-related disasters might look like, but the images pouring out of Japan are yet another reminder of the specter of storm surges supercharged by more powerful weather and rising seas, and even climate-change caused tsunamis.

Nature sends a grim warning

What these events prove is that climate change is real.

And then there’s the twitter commentary:

AliceTMBFan said “2 hours of geography earlier talking about Japan has left me thinking…maybe global warming is way more serious then we thought…”

Arbiterofwords tweeted “I’m worried that Japan earthquake, on top of other recent natural ‘disasters’, is a sign we’ve passed point of no return for climate change.”

MrVikas said “Events like the #Japan #earthquake and #tsunami MUST keep #climate change at forefront of policy thought: http://bit.ly/cZe8To #environment

Tayyclayy noted her frustration by tweeting “An earthquake with an 8.9 magnitude struck Japan.. And some say climate change isn’t real?!”

DanFranklin postulated “Never really believed all this global warming talk, but after the earthquake in NZ and today in Japan. Maybe we’ve ruined the world.”

And TeamIanHarding tweeted “While Japan witnessed an earthquake we were talking about the problems that global warming leads to in school. Think. Pray. And change.”

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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