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Obama Commands the Impossible
Today’s New York Times reports that President Obama has “ordered the rapid development of technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal,” as well as mandating the production of more corn-based ethanol and financing farmers to produce “cellulosic” ethanol from waste fiber.
You’ve got to like the president’s moxie. Faced with his inability to pass health care reform and cap-and-trade, he now chooses to command the impossible and the inefficient.
Most power plants are simply not designed for carbon capture. There isn’t any infrastructure to transport large amounts of carbon dioxide, and no one has agreed on where to put all of it. Corn-based ethanol produces more carbon dioxide in its life cycle than it eliminates, and cellulosic ethanol has been “just around the corner” since I’ve been just around the corner.
However, doing what doesn’t make any economic sense makes a lot of political sense in Washington, because inefficient technologies require subsidies–in this case to farmers, ethanol processors, utilities, engineering and construction conglomerates, and a whole host of others. Has the president forgotten that his unpopular predecessor started the ethanol boondogle (his response to global warming) and drove up the price of corn to the point of worldwide food riots? Hasn’t he read that cellulosic ethanol is outrageously expensive? Has he ever heard of the “not-in-my-backyard” phenomenon when it comes to storing something people don’t especially like?
Yeah, he probably has. But the political gains certainly are worth the economic costs. Think about it. In the case of carbon capture, it’s so wildly inefficient that it can easily double the amount of fuel necessary to produce carbon-based energy. What’s not to like if you’re a coal company, now required to load twice as many hopper cars? What’s not to like if you’re a utility, guaranteed a profit and an incentive to build a snazzy, expensive new plant? And what’s not to like if you’re a farmer, gaining yet another subsidy?
Filed under: Energy and Environment; Government and Politics
Copenhagen Agreement Is Just More Hot Air
Late Friday afternoon, the White house announced a “meaningful agreement” at the Copenhagen climate summit. Details are currently unavailable, but a White House official said that developed and developing countries have agreed to list their national actions and commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with a “target” of a two degree (Celsius) limit to any further global warming.
In other words, there are no specific emissions reductions targets and timetables. A country may choose no national reductions, or maybe a national program and that would be their “list.” And just what carbon dioxide level will stop warming over two degrees?
No one knows, at least until computer models stop forecasting warming that isn’t happening and/or drastically overstating the warming that is verifiable.
It sounds like the Copenhagen agreement is just more hot air. But not to worry, it will be hailed as a “breakthrough” by all the participants.
In reality, nothing much was accomplished and any significant agreement for emissions reductions has been punted to the next UN climate confab, beginning on November 8, 2010 in Mexico City, six days after our congressional election.
Filed under: Energy and Environment; International Economics and Development
Forecast for Copenhagen: Cloudy with a Large Chance of Nothing
The big UN climate conference at Copenhagen is supposed to produce a new schedule for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.
In fact, Copenhagen in 2009 is beginning to look a lot like Kyoto in 1997. Back then, the two-week conference was “deadlocked” as it drew to a close, with a major split between the United States and Europe. President Clinton had committed the U.S. to a relatively innocuous target of holding U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide constant, while the EU wanted much more costly reductions.
Vice President Gore jetted in near the end of the scheduled conference, and instructed the U.S. negotiators to be “more flexible.” The meeting was extended for days, and suddenly we agreed to reduce our CO2 emissions seven percent below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012. For the record, we’re currently emitting about 17 percent above 1990 levels, though that number may drop a couple of percentage points in 2009 due to the recent economic malaise.
The fact that emissions and economic growth are highly correlated wasn’t lost on the Senate, which never ratified Kyoto.
This time around, President Obama will descend upon Copenhagen on the conference’s last scheduled day, December 18. He’ll be plenty flexible, which is pretty easy to do when nothing you say legally commits the U.S. to anything. That’s because what comes out of Denmark will either be an extension of Kyoto (not ratified), or a new protocol (with no hope of garnering the 67 Senate votes needed for ratification).
Nonetheless there will be a great pronouncement whenever Copenhagen ends. The betting is that the Chinese and the Indians, who have steadfastly refused to agree to reduce their overall emissions, will agree to some vague targets thanks to a bribe courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. Of course, that agreement will be contingent upon them actually getting the loot, which seems pretty unlikely given the upcoming election.
So, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The UN is going to announce a breakthrough, world-saving agreement with no real buy-in from the Chinese and Indians and no chance of approval by our Senate.
Filed under: Energy and Environment; International Economics and Development
Copenhagen: Let the Games Begin!
25,000 bureaucrats, factota, hangers on, and representatives of various environmental organizations have just converged on Copenhagen for the UN’s latest “Conference of the Parties (COP) to its infamous 1992 climate treaty. Expect a lot of heat, not much light, and a punt right into our next election.
President Obama says that the US will agree to a “politically binding” reduction of our emissions of carbon dioxide to a mere 17% of 2005 levels by 2050. This will allow the average American the carbon dioxide emission of the average citizen in 1867. Obama’s pronouncement has stepped all over the toes of the US Senate, which really doesn’t want to vote on similar legislation this election year. Jim Webb, a democrat heretofore very loyal to the President recently wrote Obama a very tersely worded note reminding him that the power to commit the nation to such a regulation lies with the Senate, not with the Commander-in-Chief.
The UN’s own climate models show that even if every nation that has obligations under the failed Kyoto Protocol (which is supposed to be replaced by the Copenhagen Protocol) did what Obama wants, that only 7% of prospective warming would be prevented by 2100. The world’s largest emitter—China—was exempt then, and won’t agree to these reductions now.
Instead they will agree to reduce “carbon intensity”—the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit GDP—by 20% per decade. This is nothing but business as usual for a developing or robust economy. In fact, when President George W. Bush said that was our global warming policy, he was roundly booed. The Chinese announcement—already telegraphed, is being greeted with unmitigated praise by the same environmentalists who beat on Bush for the exact same policy. India has just announced that there is no way that they will agree to any emission reductions unless we pay them lotsa money. Obama thinks that’s a good idea, too. Polling data, anyone?
Since there’s no way that India and China will agree to large reductions, the real result of Copenhagen is that the climate can will be kicked down the road to the next COP, which begins on November 8, 2010, right down the road in Mexico City. That’s six days after our Congressional election, guaranteeing that cap-and-tax will be on the voters’ minds when they close the curtain on the current Congress.
The Long Road to Copenhagen
There are two different stories coming from the same political party on global warming, leading to only one conclusion: President Obama is about to (or has) ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to mandate some type of cap on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.
Harry Reid and other democratic leaders in the Senate have clearly indicated that cap-and-trade legislation will be put off at least, until what they call “spring”, which is long after the upcoming UN climate conference in Copenhagen next month. At the same time, President Obama has said that the U.S., along with China, will announce some type of emissions cap in Copenhagen. Obviously this cannot refer to legislation that has yet to be voted on in the Senate.
President Obama keeps using the language “operationally significant” when referring to what the U.S. will agree to in Copenhagen. The only way that he can get around the Senate and still have a credible position in Copenhagen is for the EPA to announce specific regulations for carbon dioxide emissions between now and the conclusion of the Copenhagen meeting in mid-December.
The Post and Times Push for Cap and Trade
Since the June House vote on the Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill, lawmakers from both chambers have backed significantly away from the legislation. The first raucous “town hall” meetings occurred during the July 4 recess, before health care. Voters in swing districts were mad as heck then, and they’re even more angry now. Had the energy bill not all but disappeared from the Democrats’ fall agenda, imagine the decibel level if members were called to defend it and Obamacare.
But none of this has dissuaded the editorial boards of the The New York Times and Washington Post. Both newspapers featured uncharacteristically shrill editorials today demanding climate change legislation at any cost.
The Post, at least, notes the political realities facing cap-and-trade and resignedly confesses its favored approach to the warming menace: “Yes, we’re talking about a carbon tax.” The paper—motto: “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it”—argues that in contrast to the Boolean ball of twine that is cap-and-trade, a straight carbon tax will be less complicated to enforce, and that the cost to individuals and businesses “could be rebated…in a number of ways.”
Get it? While ostensibly tackling the all-encompassing peril of global warming, bureaucrats could rig the tax code in other ways to achieve a zero net loss in economic productivity or jobs. Right. Anyone who makes more than 50K, or any family at 100K who thinks they will get all their money back, please raise you hands.
The prescription offered by the Times, meanwhile, is chilling in its cynicism and extremity. It embraces the fringe—and heavily discredited—idea of “warning that global warming poses a serious threat to national security.” It bullies lawmakers with the threat that warming could induce resource shortages that would “unleash regional conflicts and draw in America’s armed forces.”
(Note to the Gray Lady: This is why we have markets. Not everyone produces everything, especially agriculturally. For example, it’s too cold in Canada to produce corn, so they buy it from us. They export their wheat to other places with different climates. Prices, supply, and demand change with weather, and will change with climate, too. Markets are always more efficient than Marines, and will doubtless work with or without climate change.)
Appallingly, the piece admits that “[t]his line of argument could also be pretty good politics — especially on Capitol Hill, where many politicians will do anything for the Pentagon. … One can only hope that these arguments turn the tide in the Senate.” In other words: the set of circumstances posited by the national-security strategy are not an object reality, but merely a winning political gambit.
There’s no way that people who see through cap-and-trade are going to buy the military card, but one must admire the Times’ stratagem for durability. Militarization of domestic issues is often the last refuge of the desperate. How many lives has this cost throughout history?
Nevertheless, one must wonder at the sudden and inexplicable urgency that underpins the positions of both these esteemed newspapers. Global surface temperatures haven’t budged significantly for 12 years, and it’s becoming obvious that the vaunted gloom-and-doom climate models are simply predicting too much warming.
Still, one must admire the Post and Times for their altruism. The economic distress caused by a carbon tax, militarization, or any other radical climatic policy certainly won’t be good for their already shaky finances, unless, of course, the price of their support is a bailout by the Obama Administration.
Now that’s cynical.
Comments on Criticism of Cato Ad
Our friends at www.realclimate.org and www.ryanavent.com have been taking shots at the statements in our ad, so I’d like to offer a little commentary.
We make three factual assertions.
First, we say that “surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest”. We cite Brohan et al., Journal of Geophysical Research (2006 and updates) and Swanson and Tsonis, Geophysical Research Letters, 2009. The first is the latest update of the East Anglia temperature history, which long has been the IPCC staple. It is the one most cited over the years by the IPCC because it was the first long history that contained much more than simply World Weather Records data updated with local records at the end of a month. At any rate, both it and other global histories indeed show modest warming, about 0.8degC from 1900-2000, and indeed it is episodic. Everyone (well probably almost everyone…there are some real people who don’t believe it is right) pretty much agrees that there are two periods of warming, 1910-45 and 1977-98, with a slight cooling in between and no trend after. If that’s not “episodic”, I don’t know what is. The Swanson paper in fact specifically quantifies these episodes. The paragaph near the end of it that says this may mean that warming will be faster than we thought was pure speculation. It could just have easily been argued (as I do) that the lack of recent warming more likely indicates that 21st century warming will be lower than forecast by oceanic feedback because lack of warming simply delays any water vapor amplification. Pure and simple.
The second assertion is that, “after controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather events”. The citation is short — a note in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, by Pielke Jr. et al, 2005. The et al. numbers over ten other large-name scientists/analysts, and the reference list is the important part. There are a large number of citations on climate-related damages for various places and/or periods. We couldn’t list them all in this format, so we chose a single citation that could be consulted and an interested reader would find all the subsidiary supporting material.
Finally we state that “the computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior”, citing Douglas et al., International Journal of Climatology, 2007, which showed the major disparity between forecasts of the upper tropospheric tropical “warm spot”, a hallmark of greenhouse projections, and observations in the radiosonde record. Yes it is true that Santer et al. have published a lengthy rebuttal, but it is extremely dense and marks just another go-round-and-round over this issue. Douglas et al. have a response but it hasn’t been published yet. The debate will go on and on. Further, it is quite apparent from comparing midrange multimodel estimates from the IPCC to observed temperatures, and those indeed projected for coming years, that there is a signficant disconnect developing between the models and surface temperature. They simply don’t anticipate multidecadal periods without warming. Oh yes, since this has happened, all of the sudden models can be forced to “explain” it, but that’s not prospective. Instead, it is retrospective adjustment. Such work wouldn’t be performed if there weren’t something wrong.
That’s more than enough to negate President-elect Obama’s statement that “The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear”!
Hot Air in the Senate Bailout
What does global warming have to do with the liquidity “crisis?” Nothing! But not according to the Senate, whose bill includes a provision, Section 117, directing the National Academy of Sciences to “undertake a comprehensive review of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to identify the types of and specific tax provisions that have the largest effect on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and to estimate the magnitude of those effects.” For this, The National Academy is appropriated $1.5 million.
In other words, somehow the government’s purchase of bad loans is related to global warming? This is a naked attempt by environmental extremists to use people’s fears of financial collapse as an excuse to ultimately skew the tax code in such a way that it makes energy even more expensive. Some bailout!
Filed under: Energy and Environment; Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy; Government and Politics
Gore Outrage on Larry King: Some Inconvenient Facts
Here’s the transcript of a Q/A by Al Gore last night on Larry King Live
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Vice President Al Gore, what issues caused by climate change globally are likely to affect the United States security in the next 10 years?
KING: Al?
GORE: You know, even a one-meter increase, even a three-foot increase in sea level would cause tens of millions of climate refugees.
If Greenland were to break up and slip into the sea or West Antarctica, or half of either and half of both, it would be a 20-feet increase, and that would lead to more than 450 million climate refugees.
The direct impacts on the U.S. have already begun. Today, 49 percent of America is in conditions of drought or near drought. And we have had droughts in the past, but the odds of serious droughts increase when the average temperatures go up, as they have been going up.
We have fires in California, in Florida, in other states, unprecedented fire season last year, directly correlated with higher temperatures, which dry out the soils, dry out the vegetation.
We have a very serious threat of losing enough soil moisture in a hotter world that agriculture here in the United States would be greatly affected. Now, the list is too long to give you here, but look, these issues are more important that Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton, and they are not being talked about.
FACT 1. There is not one shred of evidence in the refereed scientific literature speaking of a three-foot increase in sea level in ten years. The best estimates from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change range from 0.8 to 1.7 INCHES.
FACT 2. There is no trend towards increasing drought area in the United States that is related to planetary warming. We have good data on drought area back to 1895. The correlation between the area of the U.S. under drought and planetary temperature is statistically ZERO.
FACT 3. As the mean planetary temperature has warmed since 1975, U.S. crop yields have INCREASED significantly, just as they did during the period of cooling from 1945 through 1975, or during the warming from 1910 to 1945.
It is a true outrage that Gore can get away with this on live television and not be called out by the inconvenient facts.
Filed under: Energy and Environment; General; Regulatory Studies
Smeared by Krugman
Well, Paul Krugman sure smeared me in his May 29 column (sub. req’d.) where he accused me of “fraud pure and simple” in congressional testimony eight (!) years ago.
Krugman’s screed was just another salvo in the current global warming charm offensive, coinciding with Al Gore’s screeching movie, demonstrations against Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, because he had the audacity to NOT blame last year’s Hurricane Katrina on global warming (which would have been “fraud pure and simple”), and multiple smearings of any climate scientist who dares to speak out against the current hysteria.
Krugman was incensed with my July 27, 1998 testimony before the House Committee on Small Business. In it, my purpose was to demonstrate that commonly held assumptions about climate change can be violated in a very few short years.
One of those is that greenhouse gas concentrations, mainly carbon dioxide, would continue on a constant exponential growth curve. NASA scientist James Hansen had a model that did just this, published in 1988, and referred to in his June 23, 1988 Senate testimony as a “Business as Usual” (BAU) scenario.
BAU generally assumes no significant legislation and no major technological changes. It’s pretty safe to say that this was what happened in the succeeding ten years.
He had two other scenarios that were different, one that gradually reduced emissions, and one that stopped the growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2000. But those weren’t germane to my discussion. Somehow, Krugman labelled my not referring to them as “fraud.”
The BAU scenario produced a whopping surface temperature rise of 0.45 degrees Celsius in the short period from 1988 through 1997, the last year for which there was annual data published by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the time of my testimony. The observed rise was 0.11 degrees.
I cited the reasons for this. In fact, the rate of carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere was quite constant–rather than itself increasing like compound interest–during the period. Ten years later, Hansen published a paper in which he hypothesized that “apparently the rate of uptake by carbon dioxide sinks, either the ocean, or more likely the forests and soils, has increased.” This was not assumed in any of his scenarios. In fact, the general hypothesis has been that, as the planet warms, the ocean takes up carbon dioxide at a slower rate.
Then, contrary to everyone’s expectation, the second most-important global warming emission, methane, simply stopped increasing. Some years have shown an actual drop in its atmospheric concentration. To this day, no one knows why.
There’s also the nagging possibility that we haven’t yet figured out the true “sensitivity” of surface temperature to changes in carbon dioxide. Scientifically, that’s a chilling possibility.
On May 30, Roger Pielke, Jr., a highly esteemed researcher at University of Colorado’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, examined Hansen’s scenarios. Of the two “lower” ones, he concluded, “Neither is particularly accurate or realistic. Any conclusion that Hansen’s 1988 prediction got things right, necessarily must conclude that it got things right for the wrong reason.” (italics in original)
That’s precisely the keynote of my testimony eight years ago: in climate science, what you think is obviously true can literally change overnight, like the assumption of continued exponential growth of carbon dioxide, or how the earth responds.
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