Comments Sam Wells has made

"The climate finger"

LOL, I love the motif, rather graphic, too!

As to George Will, I had responded in a way that Will had some OK points about alarmism but remember, he's a very smart East Coast intellectual who knows his stuff and which battles to fight - and I don't think he is fighting Climate Change, which you mistakenly assumed.

As to his piece on food, I say right on. I have the pleasure of being "off beef" for so long even a little bit makes my stomach sick & sour. I got tired of preserving fruit in all that sugar so I found the miracle of dried fruit - so the stuff would last longer. Food is a national crisis, and worldwide too. Kudos for spreading the word.

Onward through the fog

Paterson's dilemma

The RGGI is not a New York thing but is a consortium of Northeast states where certain power companies, industries, and environmental groups have forked to raise a few hundred million by selling carbon permits for auction prices somewhere around 3-4 dollars a ton.  

The low credit auction values reflect the fact that the RGGI is "skimming the cream of the top" rather than making meaningful reductions. I have high hopes for it too, but to make that mandatory in one area and not another can really mess up the markets. Of course Paterson knows the realities of the situation, that carbon credits should be mandated nationally, and something would have to be done about purchasing electric power from Canada (and to the south, Mexico). For example, some of the power consumed through the grid comes from the Ohio Valley, which relies on stinky old coal. Interstate Commerce Clause, folks.

In my port work for New York and New Jersey, greenhouse gases were and are a hot topic. There have been some major improvements on the land-side, such as the port loading and unloading equipment, but again there was a major regulatory roadblock because international ships are regulated by the IMO, not even the EPA. Let's not even mention that cleaner fuels, as opposed to that high sulfur fuel used in ships, result in HIGHER CO2 emissions.  International treaties, folks, and the US hasn't even signed the IMO regulations!

So it's a difficult issue with lots of national and international implications. It is easy to wildly speculate and imagine that Elliot Spitzer would be more forceful on the issue, since he also knows that defending against lawsuits of this kind are more difficult than going after some dirty trading on Wall Street (for which had partial jurisdiction). Some people will make up the darnedest things to "prove their point."

To his credit, Paterson has denied an LNG facility in Long Island Sound called Broadwater.  he has many other energy-related programs and initiatives. I'm not defending him as much as to say you're taking unfair pot-shots at him for grappling with a very difficult and complex situation.  -sam

Onward through the fog

Good Discussion Dr. Dessler

There is always some tension and back-and-forth between the theoretical folks, the modelers, and the emission inventory assemblers. When things work well, all three contribute together towards a common goal ... instead of trying to rip each others heads off!

Surely I exaggerate but being familiar with all three camps for over 10 years (including a 4th, policy), but I would never say that the models aren't "valid" in some respect. Some algorithms such as arctic sea ice seem to have been less robust than other model components - emphasis on the words "less robust." But the important point is that for the time, we used the best science possible.

It is true that our comprehension of how a simply cloud works isn't all that great, although big strides have been made lately. That brings us to how clouds (or lack of them) can have a dramatic impact on atmospheric mechanics, chemistry, and exchange between the ground and different layers in the atmosphere. Simple clouds have confounded how ozone models work in coastal cities such as LA, Houston, New York, and SanFran. But that doesn't mean the models are no good - it means we keep improving upon them.

I was just discussing such issues with my modeler buddy up in Austin at TCEQ, who was improving upon plume dynamics after being released from the ground or a stack. He mentioned wildfires, which apparently not only release vast quantities of carbon (in various kinds) but also ... water. Large, hot wildfires can effect any clouds in the area and indeed a firestorm can intrude into the Tropopause or as we joked, "all the way to the moon."
-sammie

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Eco-Pessimism

You all might be great environmentalists but you're horrible readers. George Will wrote a fairly good article about calamities, eco-pessimism, and how US opinion has relegated climate change way below other pressing concerns such as the economy. His forays into sidebar discussions of arctic ice were less than perfect but it is true that there was a dramatic build-up of fresh sea ice between last September and now.  This was noted by several scientists and is fairly factual.

If you were smart you would have gotten a piece published that stated the problems with using the referenced Illinois study, and mention that first-year sea ice has not chance against the summer warming ... warming that could result in less sea ice than ever in the arctic.

Nope, instead you go for the jugular like a bunch of rabid wolves foaming at the mouth. You might have forgotten that George Will would be very pleased with your rabid response, as that was exactly what he hoped: you fell into his trap. Gosh, how does Grist feel about being the true cause of "The day that environmental journalism died"?

Think strategically, folks! By pointing attention to George Will you just made him famous and you less so. Is George such an expert on climate science that he threatened the very core of your values? Well it sure seems so. George Will's understanding of climate change is elementary and biased at best but he is no threat.

Finally, you have no idea what is happening to newspapers these days - well maybe you do because they've laid off most of the environmental reporters, most of the editorial staff, heck about two thirds of the staff. Subscriber numbers are worse that at any time in the paper's history. Fact checking - puleeze, save that for murder cases and such.

Yup, you walked into a fluff article on a slow day in Washington and made a big deal about it.  I find it quite amusing!
sammie

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True But Hansen Is A Bloviator

I have great respect for Mr. Hansen, who has been in the game for quite a few years longer than I have. Somewhere along the line he did seem to trade his very good applied science for policy and politics and became a wonk.  Us techies have other unmentionable names for policy wonks, and have about as much for them as the recently departed Bush advisers.

My perspective is that Hansen had a noble idea in just saying "no" to new coal powered electrical generation units (EGU), and when 17 were planned for Texas a few years ago we went after them big-time and won - we the protesters in Texas that is and Hansen was not to be found anywhere. But the fact is a couple were allowed to proceed even in our case, since it was obvious that clean alternative power could not provide reliable base loads. How much clean power does it take to equal two or the 250 MW EGUs?

Then I think it would be fair to mention that China and India burn some fairly sizable amounts of coal - like scary statistics that a new coal powered EGU is built every day in China or something gross like that. Great Britain as the worst offender? That's pretty amusing.

Meh, no big deal. There's all the same old talk about tipping points, feedbacks, and the Armageddon scheduled for tomorrow at 5 o'clock. Nothing new, or to counter the persistent and annoying "global dimming" and global cooling crowd. Perhaps it just sounds like old science mixed with an unhealthy dose of political vindictiveness.  -sam

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Wolverine

Wolverine a good comment but the central thesis is that as global warming occurs - fish depletion or not - migration patterns will change in many significant ways. It is a matter of an educated guess, such as by using models and such, to predict these changes but I can say without a a doubt they are happening right now - a seemingly irreversible thing.

Certain duck, goose, owl, and other bird species are going to areas never seen before. Arctic birds are showing up in Tennessee. Certain birds found way down deep in South America are now found in Texas. And the fish are no different.

An aquatic biologist would also agree that global warming has also caused certain invasive or opportunistic plant species to multiply like heck. I could go on and on about this. In many cases we're not talking about depletion as much as a invasive species taking over the habitat and multiplying geometrically. Forget what you learned in college and the common-speak, what is happening is truly momentous. -samOn Climate change to cause dark night of the shoal posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 5 Responses

Do you know coal?

According to the DOE, coal demand is even in the US, plus or minus 1-2 percent, and although costs per ton have risen that is mainly because of higher transportation (diesel truck and locomotive fuel) costs.  Other reputable sources predict flat coal economies in in near future in spite of Obama Administration initiatives to limit mountain and underground mining in Appalachia.  

Despite some reports that coal is running out in the Powder River area, there is plenty of found coal but it is not accessible due to federal permitting regulations - but that does not mean that when existing surface mines play out, the coal will stop. Why are you kidding yourselves?  

It is funny to see wise old environmentalists squirm when they have to redefine "peak oil" or "peak coal" based upon current technology and price, and say "well the peak passed several years ago." No reputable scientist would ever touch such a political football although Mr. Romm is fearless nonetheless. Which says to me that it is the political journalism talking rather than pure science.

No offense and I hate coal with a passion and wish it would go away. But cost and "easy" removal are not reasons why it should go away. Don't fool yourselves, the amount of coal could actually grow for many decades. There's a reason why I say this and I don't mean to offend anybody, but as the economy comes back we'll be in a need for base load generation power.

It turns out that wind power, solar, and all the alternates have only been taking the slack out of growth - until the economic malaise that is - and has not been able to significantly push back on coal and natural gas usage at electrical generation stations very much. I'm just telling the facts folks, and I hope that isn't true in 30 years.

But what happened with Germany and the EU trading program for CO2 is almost a time-bomb. Sure, Germany made huge strides in clean energy. It sold the CO2 credit to coal-powered industries THAT INCREASED CO2 emissions overall. Bummer!

So be careful about predicting oil, natural gas, or coal into the future because supply, demand, price, and easy availability mean nothing. The "Economics 101" approach to such industries simply will not work. Peak theory is a joke. We have to be realistic and no amount of arm-waving and shouting is going to make a jot of difference. Perhaps I am a pessimist, but it is not looking good. Look at China is you want to know your future, maybe learn the language too.
-sammie

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The problem with coal

The problem with coal is mainly the mining and the landfilling of the wastes. State and federal regulations for mining and coal waste disposal are antiquated and archaic at best. There are major disasters and toxic landfills that date back to the early 1900s as a result. We may never find all of them.

While it is true that coal seems to be an offender in the CO2 department, CO2 is a direct function of carbon content and coal has the highest carbon content and energy density of any given fossil (yuck) fuel. Scrubbers and precipitators can remove over 95 percent of the toxic gases and aerosol from the stack waste stream, and technology exists for mercury removal as well.

Switch to a natural gas fueled generation station, you need enough BTU to equal that of coal, which is a function of carbon content (and some inherent efficiencies). Switch to wind farms, you'll need to equal one to three units that can each generate 125 to 250 megawatts to take a coal plant offline. It takes about 100 to 150 giant wind turbines (on an average windy day) to equal one 250 MW unit, enough to power about 80,000 homes. Wow, loads of acreage.  The numbers might be whacked but that's a rough feel for them.

Listen, coal sucks. Diversification is good. But if you think all that power can be converted to wind and solar within a few years, well, "I be smoking some good stuff too!"

Onward through the fog

Transmission tower failures

I liked some of the arguments regarding renewable sources and such, but I guess my point is that much of our electrical transmission towers and lines are old, some on the verge of falling down.  

Evidence is mounting that several California wild fires were caused by transmission towers that simply fell down. Also, in hurricane areas near the coast, most are not "hardened" to withstand high winds.

Perhaps we don't "need" new transmission trunklines as much as fixing the old system and carefully adding for new, clean power generation stations.

My limited understanding is that the way the system is set up, there is little incentive for the majors to perform much other than rudimentary maintenance - no vision, no discussion of D/C, no fixing of towers that keep falling down.
-sammie

Onward through the fog

I hope so too

I didn't know Mr. Obama is a body surfer and sponger, wow, I live for that action.  

And thanks for the well-written article. There are a myriad of issue, a key one being the "zoning" of the ocean such as for restricted fishing areas and suitable areas for offshore power (wind turbine, wave machine, etc.). In fact, we don't have a national policy and design standards for any wind turbines (bird impacts) and wave machines (whale impacts).

Then we need a thorough revision of Magnuson, which can be said to have wiped out more fishing species than it ever saved (sorry to say that, but it's true).

After 25 years, we have a polluted Chesapeake Bay that no longer supports what used to be the largest oyster, crab, and menhaden trades in the world; it is a virtual desert now. The dead zone off the Mississippi seems to be expanding again and ships are ready to measure it again (if their budgets have anything left).

So I doubt that Obama can solve 25 years of horrendous mismanagement, but as a fellow body surfer, I imagine he well knows what is happening to the beaches and surf breaks.  -sam

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Read the conclusion?

The conclusion of the linked story was very clear in saying what we don't know, and that another study should be done to determine adverse environmental effects, the economics, and the use levels. In other words, the original EA or EIS was BS, and many of its contentions are not borne out in fact, or very truthfully.

The average American can only walk or cross country ski about ... what do you think, 10 to maybe 15 miles a day, pushing it? I think we need to get more people out in the wilderness to appreciate the natural beauty. And you know what, some folks are going to leave trash, act like "trail blazers," start fires, or make a mess with motorized vehicles. That's why trail maintenance is such a big issue.

I do detect a subtle undercurrent of a stereotype of "noble green hikers" versus the great unwashed, the redneck boobs who love off-road equipment from motorcycles to snowmobiles, and those who probably drive big American trucks instead of the Toyota Prius. Seems like a personal folly, since one discriminate between the two, and both can be managed equally as well if done correctly.

As a final note, why did the Paiute Trails go that way? The answer was that the Fed was going to close down the entire system ... to everybody! In the rush to get something on the table, of course the off-road lobby did some homework and donated some stuff for the record - which I agree was questionable at best. But public lands are ... public. The government is supposed to work for us, not the other way around.
-sammie

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Dubai? Come on!

Dubai only has a little dab of natural gas and while it is a huge economic capital just next to Saudi Arabia, it is not a player in the game of world energy supplies. It's main holdings are in real estate and financials - and many financials are now collapsing, contrary to rumors that Dubai is still booming. So claims like some major OPEC player was going into green energy are a bit hard to swallow, or at least to keep the snickers and chuckles down.

The fact is, they're waiting for crude oil to rise above 80 dollars a barrel so they can resume their former lifestyle, while giving lip-service to the new green-washing concept.

The funny part is, they know they have the United States by the proverbial balls, since right now we really don't have an energy plan or means of regulating price or supply, or any new meaningful alternative energy investments on a large economic scale. They point and laugh at us. I'm not kidding! -sammie

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Beyond Cap-Trade and Carbon Taxes

I don't think that commercializing what should be public environmental policy works. Moreover, my experience with cap-trade in SO2, NOx, and hydrocarbon was that nobody wanted to participate and the value of a "banked credit" actually went down. Many trading houses when bust in very short time.

The issue is that stationary source permits are written with a not-to-exceed level, often in terms of stack emissions, fuel, and material throughput. That is the "allowable." But in truth, most plant operations are somewhere about 75 to 85 percent of full load (sometimes much lower), called "actual emissions."  So in any given year you can subtract actuals from the allowable and get a real fat check in the mail, for doing less than nothing!  

As an example, one year Asarco, a large copper smelter, claimed 12,000 tons of SO2 by using exactly this strategy. Such flooding of the SO2 credit market drove down the value of a credit from over $700 to less than $70 a ton. Many claimed this as one of the great accomplishments of the Clean Air Act and others (like me) saw it as a big scam where industry manipulated the value of the credits and subverted the system.

But over time, industrial SO2 emissions did lower simply because of cheap solutions like low-sulfur fuels and stack scrubbers, a good thing and don't get me wrong. Many old plants that used to burn high sulfur "Bunker C" fuel oil simply switched their boilers to natural gas. But the entire "trade" function was taken away, and only had limited applicability.

Industrial CO2 emissions are much more problematic in that there is no "beast available science" to reduce it, such as underground sequestration or scrubbing, so reductions in fuel use is the only means to achieve substantial reductions.

Of course you can't do cap-trade for domestic and mobile source emissions, which represent a fairly large component of the CO2 emissions inventory, so something else like a carbon tax would have to me imposed, a completely different topic that has it's own set of ugly "unintended consequences."
sam

Onward through the fog

thanks for link about aerosol

I appreciate the link to SAP 2.3 regarding aerosol research. Previously aerosol was thought to associated with "global dimming" and cooling, and I always mistrusted that. The more I learn about the subject the less I seem to understand - but maybe someday the global synoptic models can have an aerosol component, which might better explain some feedbacks, tipping points, and so forth. -sam

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It's politics, mon

Many forget that politics really isn't about real things, and is always a unwieldy compromise anyway. It goes to show how political some of us have gotten, fighting rather than working together.

And let me ask a rhetorical question - does anybody else in the world have a working system that really reduces greenhouse gases, other than on paper?  

About the only real cause of any reduction I can see if the horrible global recession. All the command & control systems I can thing of just are unworkable, from cap-n-trade to carbon pricing and trading. It is time to think outside the box.

And we've done a horrible job of that. Damn coal but promote electric vehicles - what a farce! We've got a lot of growing up to do. Let's hope any bill that emerges from the Congress isn't so awful, stinking bad we can't fix it down the road.
sammie

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No answers?

I guess nobody can answer my question about how to make the rails - and any new ones - sustainable without massive infusions of our tax money. And I thought the smart money was over here!

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Towboats and Barges

I appreciate the focus on freight rail and thanks for the postings.

Even more efficient than rail are the tug and barge mode of transportation. Inland and coastwise towboats move a great amount of dry and liquid bulk products, of course being located on the coast or major rivers and canals. If there is a 6X factor for rail over trucks, it might be 16X for barges.

What has happened to our country's inland waterway system is nothing short of a travesty. The channels are silting up, canals are being closed because of lack of maintenance, and the Army Corps of Engineers has cut lock and channel maintenance by about half.

I have worked on proposals to ship municipal waste out of New York via barge instead of truck and have helped with a "container on board" barging system as well. A few things have worked! Let's be fair, barging need to be included along with rail. I agree with the customer service part too!  -sammie

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Rampant ignorance

Google Earth? Fishing boats use GPS chart plotters and computers, get with it. Seems like both the Chairman and the enviros don't have a clue.

Commercial fishing vessels all have a VMS, for vessel monitoring system. This tracks the boats and if they "go over the line" they get in big trouble. Gosh, nobody said that?

The Coast Guard and Department of Defense already have a thicket of air, ground based radar, photography, and other instruments as well. They are especially thick in the Hawaiian Islands because it is a strategic part of the world (e.g., missile defense). How do you think that the Coast Guard busts drug and fishing boats in the first place?  By waiting for them to do something bad? By having NMFS patrol boats anchored over the reefs?  Get real.

And then there is the "feel good" aspect of enforcement - like using speeding on the highway as an example. Even with the best surveillance programs, only about one in ten perps are both caught and convicted, emphasis on the conviction.

Sorry to be strong willed about this, but with satellites and all the hi-tech stuff, they know exactly what is going on in these marine protection areas (MPAs). The question is, is somebody awake at the switch who can make a decision for an interception and boarding? That question is problematic because the Coast Guard and NMFS have conflicting missions - not because they are underfunded. Many Coast Guard ships that could be running blockade in the MPAs are stuck in the hell hole known as Iraq. The NMFS is building a few research vessels though, and it would be a good idea to give the Hawaii fish & game officials a few million for them to help as well.  -sammie

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Another view

Let me start by saying that Dynegy started out as a green kind of company, and always built new or very clean emitting power plant sources.  My dad the certified engineer explained that even with natural gas, three-step steam turbines or what they call "combined cycle" were probably the most efficient power source unless you got into nuclear, which he admitted was a long shot.  

I've got a question for the smart girls and boys out there: what's the difference between burning exactly the same BTU or therms with natural gas or coal in terms of carbon dioxide? In theory, I say it is very much the same except with natural gas you don't get all the dirt.

Whups!

Perhaps I've just exposed a major flaw in environmental thinking, that natural gas is cleaner than coal in terms of CO2 and methane stack emissions. Of course coal is dirty as heck but same BTU, the reaction works just as well. If you're going to go after coal as being dirty, that is a complete different issue from greenhouse warming gases.

A rough translation of what Mr. Williamson said was that the new power market was not making commitments for future power and transmission investments because of the blown economy, and that he has existing plants that can be managed to be improved with enough efficiency under any stupid regulatory "cap" or whatever trading scam the government invents because it has no clue what it is doing: it's uncertain and I don't blame the guy.

The fact of the matter is we'll need more electric power in the future and we'll need more lines to carry the juice, and we have an aging infrastructure that is literally falling down, at least in some crucial places. More old plants must be mothballed and taken offline simply because they cost too much to run and are falling down. Literally, they are about to turn into rust.

So much hedge fund money dried up that nobody is investing now, perhaps a great thing for air quality concerns but not so good for bringing us Americans cheap, reliable electric power. Same for crude oil, and that's why it is below or at $40 a barrel instead of $100 more. Well with low prices, business will contract and not expand, so it's tough making progress to say the least.

As a footnote to history, you can ask the American steel mills to make about 100,000 wind turbine pylons (think thousands of tons of steel) and whatever solar collector parts you need. That with the transmission line tower metal and what we need to do is perhaps a good part of a trillion dollars, not a bad estimate if you include bridge reconstruction and transit steel rails. People want buried cable in their neighborhoods too! Wow, as John Lennon said, "Imagine."  -sammie

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The Texas Promise

Ir ain't looking so good down here in South Texas, where a cotton seed factory (think hexane reactors for oils and cattle feed) promised diesel made from switchgrass. They even made a small batch in a pilot plant. No new stories since last spring.

You have to hand it to them, the entrepreneur wanted signed commitments to plant units of 100 acres to yield "x" tons of switchgrass with a guaranteed payment, like a hedge. A hurricane (Dolly) and then falling diesel prices made everyone think twice about the deal.

So it wasn't or isn't all about cellulosic ethanol but diesel as well, but neither worked out very well and if semi-normal conditions come back, the farmers will be rotating corn, cotton, and sorghum just like the old days. Meanwhile the big story is the "winter garden" crop where many truck farmers are getting into the organic produce industry, or at least trying to get into higher niche markets (selling to Whole Foods is very tough, actually). Cool, I like that kind of story, for a redneck ole bloke of a state!
-sammie

Onward through the fog

Pretty loose writing style I admit

Usually the Germans are extremely technical and down to the nitty gritty details, so this fellow sure seems a strange monkey - "these developments"? What developments, the ones outside Grand Wazoo, Michigan?

If that sounds vague, the referring article mentions nothing but the Arctic, and some kind of plea to reduce global CO2 emissions by 80 percent within 40 years. Now THAT would be a development!

But maybe this is a really smart dude and a famous one, so I am not casting any aspersions except when I contemplate ... how on Earth do we reduce fossil fuel emissions by 80 percent in about a generation?

Gosh, what's the world population growth rate, maybe 2-3 percent per year? Most fossil fuels available today will still be there in 40 years even if it takes a few wars to figure it out. I like it when people submit proactive measures to help to get to those kinds of numbers, but I don't have a feel for it yet. Seems almost unattainable. -sammie

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Still Confused

I'm looking for a win-win situation for both China and the US, and it appears that "green manufacturing" in the US would do something good for China? How strange, but perhaps you could complete the thought.

We all know that large steel components are made in foundries such as in Poland, Korea, Japan, and China, just to name a few key areas. Thing towers for wind turbines, solar refractories, and bridges and rails for mass transit.

Last I checked, the US does not have the ability to come up with hundreds of thousands of tons of high quality steel. To make steel, one must first make pig iron, a nasty process involving coal, coke, sulfur, and lime. Then you need to heat it up in an electric arc furnace to remove the carbon content (I'm thinking CO2 and waste slag here). True, a small amount of steel is recycled in the US, just using the arc furnace method.

But I think you got my point. I doesn't make sense to run basic industry here in the US with all its draconian environmental laws, so we import the steel, glass, and all kinds of nasties. Reverse the laws? I don't think so.

So we're in something of a jam. What bothers me is that we're facing a monumental crisis on the electrical side, yet we don't have the wherewithall to fix it because we need more steel for new power generation stations. Personally, I think we're shafted but in this time of peace and hope, I beg you to prove me wrong.  -sammie

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The Jainist & Animist Argument

Why just cows and chickens? Some of the early religions of mankind originated in animism which evolved into Jainism, which taught that every living thing had a soul. That, ugh, includes wheat and fruits and nuts and all the plant leafs you like to consume without guilt. A Jainist would be horrified at such a blasphemy, that only humans had real souls and that chickens and cows only had secondary feelings. Point number one.

If you look at how Jainism evolved into Hinduism you'll see that cattle and cows were considered somehow sacred, to be used for beasts or burden, for milk used in yogurt, or just to roam free without any subjugation. However, they ate chickens with great relish - especially Tandoori chicken with yogurt! I am not sure of the philosophical reasons but that is how they worked it out in their minds over centuries and centuries, nor do I care to explain it. Point number two.

If animism and Jainism influenced Hinduism, it also was a powerful influence on Buddhism, which spread across many areas of Asia and the Orient. The population and population growth of India and countries that were formerly mainly Buddhist is indeed immense and rapid. However, note that these are the same places facing a profound shortage of food, calories, and protein, and further that these are the same areas where "food wars" and trade protectionism have occurred in recent years. They are facing the exact same dilemma we are, perhaps not in the context of global warming & climate change, but nonetheless just as crushing.  Point number three.

Deal with it.  Season's Greetings!

Onward through the fog

More ...

One of the big challenges for Obama is to reinvent capitalism as we know it today, as obviously it has failed on the grand scale of things. As Amazngdrx points out, that is precisely why "economists" have failed to do their jobs. The laws of supply and demand and investing were turned on their head (derivatives and CDS), and no way these kinds of linear thinkers can save us from ourselves.

I really don't know if any policy wonk, even Obama, can "run" an organic economic model because it does not flow down from command decisions at the top, but works from the bottom-up in a non-linear fashion starting with us - the consumers. There is a huge difference between "creating" a million or two green jobs that are temporary and making them a permanent thing that grows and creates linkages. That takes vision, not the economics of spreading around some cash from some lame-brain gov'mint incentives, tax breaks, subsidies, grants, and cash payments, as if the US was a slice of bread you could slather peanut butter and jelly, maybe some bananas and nuts here and there.

Some people don't get the difference and that's OK, as perhaps I'm not the best writer or even more than an average thinker. As Thomas Kuhn might say, it takes a completely new paradigm and mindset. I think many of you on the Grist forum do understand aspects of the new vision, however.

What seems to be lacking is good old American Realism, that these things cannot be changed overnight, and if they change too fast they could actually backfire - I mentioned the ethanol scam earlier, a prime example of a good idea gone bonkers, and a lot of people lost fortunes on the casino-like approach to problem solving.  

"Casino-like approach to problem solving."  I hate to quote myself, but that's my warning to wide-eyed environmentalists who want to push the market, the technology, and the people so fast that the end result is worse than when you started. Beware!

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NOAA Mission

I think you folks might be in for a rude awakening about what is the mission of NOAA. It's duties are to monitor the weather (NWS) and hurricanes (Miami Hurricane Center), to manage coastal resources other than oil and gas, and to support commercial fishing.  Yes, I said to support commercial fishing.

In practice, the Magnuson Act of 1976 was supposed to create sustainable fisheries but has been a disaster, and over-fishing by the commercial fishing industry with large factory ships has resulted in worse and worse conditions for the recreational fishermen. Nowadays, the value of recreational boats and gear is 10 times that of the commercial fishery, yet their quota keeps getting chopped because of the failure to properly regulate commercial fishing.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to prejudge an appointee such as Jane. I just don't see Congress or the NOAA bringing any equity or clarity to the table - just more bureaucratic red tape and more draconian regulations, and many things that clearly do not work such as the Vessel Monitoring System. I can go offshore and get one or two tuna by rule, but a factory trawler can go out there and catch 50 or 100 tons ... it is sickening.  -sammie

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Environment as Big Business

Just like rock and roll, the environmental movement is now a huge bureaucracy of mainstream business, and worth a ton of money. Perhaps our conservative warriors are jealous? Folks, it's not a bunch of hippies smoking dope and having a protest.

Is there some of the original spirit left to the cause? I think so, although THAT part is rather romantic, like talking with great respect about the Yardbirds or the 13th Floor Elevators. But as David points out, the exaggerations of the far right simply don't work anymore - we're white collar, blue collar, and green collar workers who are extremely productive. We bad. We're nationwide.

But why do yo worry about the condescension? The political pendulum swung so far to the left it is almost embarrassing. All we need is the money, a tough call because we'll have to print the stuff from trees, but that's the truth and some money will come. Perhaps not enough fast enough, and a subsequent administration could mess it all up, but folks like they say in Texas, we're in Tall Cotton.  -sammie

Onward through the fog

A strategy?

Dealing with emission inventories every day, I know the strategy of establishing a baseline. That simply means you can sell more credits! What you do is design a system where the baseline is fairly high. This automatically allows companies to jack things up, don't mention the "flexibility" word.

Now do some reductions below the artificially high baseline, and claim all the credits as you can! Why didn't I think of this sooner?

I guess if I was prime minister or whatever, I'd pray I could arm-twist a bunch of companies to reduce CO2 emissions - or else. And I think that's the gamble for the minister here. Will he take that second step?  Your call.On Protests heat up over Australia's climate plan posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 5 Responses

Still don't understand it

I guess I'm still at a loss, and I'm no dummy.  What is "decoupling?" Sounds like really bad sex. Perhaps it had something to do with ENRON and their ilk? Nobody can explain it and apparently now there are two kinds, one an evil one! Yipes, we're in trouble now.

It was worthy to note that many utilities have scaled back on aggressive expansion plans and frankly, most state and federal laws don't encourage utilities to sell less power, or transmit it more efficiently. Then I consider that the California Model for decoupling will raise rates, force me to consume less, and not pay me anything for improving my energy efficiency. Wow.

Perhaps the best idea is to buy out all the utilities and nationalize them, which is a goal I think many have wanted from the beginning. A lot of people would love to "decouple" the utilities from their electric power stations and transmission lines. But then I think, gee, when did the government ever run a business right?

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Carlolling the good and the bad

I was around when Carol was Administrator, and yes, some good things got done - mainly because her deputies pushed her that way.  

But there's more to the picture, if you have an inside track. Let's put the diplomatically: the Florida environmental folks said the best thing to ever happen to improve the environment in Florida was for her to take a job in Washington D.C.  

Ouch!  

Let's just say she's a classic wonk, not a teckie bone in her body. It was always a joke back then: is this a really cool teckie conference or are the wonks showing up again? Blah-blah-blah, rah-rah-rah, throw in some buzzwords and talk about "warm and fuzzies" and "low hanging fruit." It was tough even then, with the Newts around everywhere ... and all these liberal wonks. It was pretty darn disgusting if you ask me.  

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Aw common naw!

Bush sucks for the environment and even when he tried fish policy he got it all wrong, poor fella. I don't blame Mr. Steve "Who Me?" Johnson or "got drugs?" Levitt before him for being proverbial turds, as their major achievement in life was to be political cheerleaders. Claims of them being "political apparachniks" are way over-stated, as they are fairly shallow and daft people with nothing other than being crafty & wily weasels as a strategy.  Ain't this a great country or what?  

The only comeuppance is that on January 20, 2009, these folks will be fired, laid off, and sent to the broom closet.  Sssssweet!  

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I'd be happy at 55 MPH

I liked the quote David but IMHO we need lots of dependable regular short-line commuter and regional trains that can go 55 MPH instead of 200. We need to be careful here, as mag-lev are a million dollars just for the train trucks - those steel wheel assemblies at each end of a train car with brakes and DC motors and whatnot.

Well, we don't have a national grid of trains that can go 55 in between stops. We seem to have more accidents and breakdowns than ever. Despite Amtrak making a come-back and some local initiatives, we don't have a national plan. he worst way to fritter away money is to develop super-trains that only work in a limited area and really can't go 200 MPH all the time anyway (check the experience in Spain).

Integration of light freight with passenger also makes some sense to me. To me these would be real "super trains." Plus there is the problem is that rails like UP, BNSF, and CSX own most of the track rights in the US and there isn't a lot of new room for building track easements in new urban areas. But I think that kind of vision can be done ... yup, about 55 MPH.  -sam

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Industrial, Commercial, Residential

I guess I'm going to say this all backwards. But the way I envision this happening is that the EPA would regulate the primary industries first and then expend the scope of rules into the commercial sector. The residential and consumer focus would be last.

Of course, creating the "paradigm shift" as Thomas Kuhn would begin in the home, the store, and the car. I think some voluntarism would be excellent here, as it is starting today. But I hate to enforce draconian laws on the people until we get the major industries and commercial interests regulated FIRST.

I have a reason for saying this. Who opposes global warming strategies the most? Who does the "green-washing"? Sorry for the unnecessary rhetorical questions but such a targeted enforcement strategy is essential, and I don't see why bazillions of public money should be spent on those investments - although I know we will pay higher bills no matter what the pay-backs might be.

After going through the big stuff and working through things commercial, then I would focus on changing consumer habits. This is a big deal because you still have about 30 percent of the people who think global warming is a crock. But should that cost the government money, other than maybe some incentives, grants, or tax breaks? I don't think so.

So then Gar asks, "how much money should we spend on greening America?"  My answer is: nothing and everything.

OK, humor aside, the US does run a highway system, has jurisdiction over interstate rail, and also runs the waterways (a major oversight Gar, since barging is 2-5 times more efficient than rail is).

But that's all the command side of the equation: making mandates or paying for public works that make our nation greener or hopefully more sustainable - I like the sustainable part myself too.

The response side of the equation is bound to he enormous and I'd just like to remind Grist readers of that. There could be extreme drought in the Southwest, massive wildfires, extreme coastal retreat and perhaps more hurricanes, and even horrendous cold and snowy conditions up north, simply due to the "freaky weather syndrome" caused by global warming. Sorry for the run-on sentence but that seems to be almost a given. Lord knows, we may have changes the climate so much that earthquakes could happen as well, especially as we draw down the water tables and start injecting more pooh into the ground.

Aye, perhaps we need a rainy day fund reserve just for global-warming related disasters (as opposed to military or political ones). This would be a major changing in thinking, something that would be fitting if you've ever read Thomas Kuhn about paradigm shifts.  

One the whole, I liked the rather simple, "no new technology" approach but would simply ask for a mare targeted and comprehensive look at things. Thanks Gar you made me think ... I have a few OK ideas here maybe and sorry to write so long.  -sam

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Potential to emit, PTE

Great concept, but after being in the stationary, industrial side of things for many years, find it rather difficult. An industrial process, from plastics to generating electric power, has a potential to emit (PTE). Permits are written as to the "maximum allowable emissions rate" that cannot be exceeded. Actual emission - which you're talking about - may be between 80 and 90 percent of the maximum in the permit, and sometimes much lower in a slow-down or idling of the plant due to economic considerations (and some natural ones like hurricanes).  

Perhaps a stupid example is a good idea. Few or no permits have a PTE for CO2, so using a fuel analysis and some engineering, annual CO2 emissions were 1.0 million tons per year.  In reality, speaking of 2008 calendar activity, actual emissions were 0.8 million tons as measure by stack monitors. Wow, that's like a 20 percent reduction, way cool.

Not so fast. In order to "lock in" that 0.8 million tons, it has to be certified and written into some kind of permit amendment. In other words, you can't have a cap without an enforceable limit and enforcement requires a permitted maximum emissions limit.

The existing industry could very well say that the state and federal governments allowed up to 1.0 million tons, so since we emitted only 0.8, therefore we are entitled to a huge carbon credit!

So slow-downs aren't the answer.  But if some technology known as BART, BACT, and LAER come along (sorry for the alphabet soup), the permit would be amended for perhaps even a lower emissions level such as 0.6 million tons a year, such as with a combination of combustion fuel efficiency and utilization of clean power (waste heat recycling, wind, solar, geo, etc.). The government can do this in many cases, even for old "grandfathered" sources subject to BART *best available retrofit technology).

Now here's the question: did the source reduce emissions from 1.0 million tons of CO2 or from its base year emissions of 0.8? See, there are many complexities about how to certify a baseline and what is the cap - things that politicians, lawyers, and lobbyists will fight about for years.

Sorry to confuse the reader but it is complicated, although very simple in design as compared to mobile sources - which are like herding cats. That's a topic for a different discussion because mobile sources are not permitted and really can't have a "cap." Shame, because mobile sources burn an incredible amount of liquid petroleum fuels made from crude oil (you can regulate the refinery but not the car).

I will say that as I have tried over the years, there is a trade-off between reducing CO2 and possible increases in conventional air pollutants such as NOx and PM in combustion devices. That too is a discussion for a different day ...

David if you meant establishing national targets instead of "caps" during a recession, well that is a different thing, political and not technical. Taking credit for CO2 reductions in a severe downturn in the economy is a very serious no-no, however, since the emissions could zoom right back up during better times, a process designed for failure. That's why I talked about enforceable permit limits, which have penalties under the Clean Air Act of over $25,000 per day per violation. Unfortunately, you have to do it the hard way like this, or "wish on a star."

'Nuff said.
sammie

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Interstatel versus Shortline

Those light rail cars such as made by Bombardier Corporation are only meant for local, short-line transit and cannot be certified to high speed or interstate uses by the Fed. So if you're talking local short-hop transits within parts of a city, that science has been around since the 1800's. It's called a tramway.

I've helped conduct studies of light rail in Austin TX and we similarly only found marginal CO2 benefits from the program. The real purpose of the whole thing is to reduce congestion and enhance "rail development districts" which yes, do seem to benefit as to land prices. Been there, done that.

Onward through the fog

Good point Smokey

I think David was barking at the political aspects of things, like how some dumbchit "gurl" named Erika found that the consensus was aerosol cooling and not greenhouse gas warming - not that she would know about radiative forcing and atmospheric science.

But getting a bunch of scientists together such as the IPCC to reach a consensus must have been like trying to make cats march in a parade! Scientists don't do "consensus" unless somehow their work is peer reviewed, replicated, and somehow years later their work becomes the accepted norm. Last I checked, there were some hypotheses and theories that Einstein proposed (relativity, unified theory) that still have not been completely vetted.

Matter of fact, most scientists hate each others guts - by profession, university, corporation, politics, where they publish, or whatever.

You have to admit one thing, the Conservative Model really works and it has scared the chit out of the people who really do treat this stuff seriously, as a threat to our environment and ecology: us liberals.  People actually believe that line of hooey!
sammie

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Sounds like a school or something ....

When I was a kid I did all kinds of jobs, including building houses. We used to "green build" in the early 70s by finding old churches, barns, docks, schools, and houses that were being demolished and scrap them out for lumber and parts - and the demolition with the bulldozer and excavator guys loved us for having less waste.  It was FREE. We built many a house out of that stuff, although none of them were particularly energy efficient, LEEDS, or super-green. But we recycled and re-used and that was good - and the owners loved it.

Nowadays it's like a school or cult or something, and highly "technical."  

Recycling all that old stuff probably saved more energy than much of the new techniques, like building hay-stack, recycled concrete for blocks, and some of the other expensive and wacky things we built over the years. It is true that 25 years later you have get very efficient appliances and utilities that we didn't have but the beginnings were back then - we tried.

The best job we did was almost a disaster. It was mostly recycled with some new wood stud and rafter construction with organic cellulose shot by this machine into the bays of the studs and such. Entire sections of it looked great and then went "ploof" and all of it fell on the floor like wet paper mache. Massive piles of it, really. So I got the bright idea to buy a few gallons of Elmer's glue to re-mix and re-shoot that puppy, seemed the "green" thing to do, and it worked. Once covered up in energy-zapping drywall and bead-board (sorry), it was possibly the tightest house we ever constructed, especially with my expert messy but sufficient caulking job.

What bothers me are all these high-dollar consultants who want to "evaluate" houses to certify them green, LEEDS, city energy goals, state energy grants, organic, or even non-poisonous - yes, I built a house for a woman who was allergic to EVERYTHING. Heck man we just did it, no fear.

Last story ... one lady was so happy with a house built on a poor-man's budget that she asked if we could please (she asked so nice) please install her Swedish porcelain wood stove in her kitchen. Us dudes thought that was mighty strange, but so far she had paid off like a slot machine (my back remembers this, it was so heavy). It was a very pretty stove, white, artsy, and chrome, maybe small but very functional with an oven; we did the pipe job for her too by knocking out a window pane in an upper 6-light colonial window.  

Coming back to get the final check, money you know, it had lightly snowed. I was greeted at the door and took my rather nasty boots off and ... it was warm in there. "Look at this," she said, "this stove is so efficient I can throw knots of grass in there and keep the house 70 degrees." She explained that she had only burned three clumps of hay all night - clumps of dry field grass balled up like the size of your fist. She was beaming, so happy.

I knew there was a little smokestack outside, with the emissions from that grass - and probably more than just a few handfuls! But I truly think the net effect was better than some of the crap we design today.  -sammie

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'Bout Time

It sounds like the race can be called with only 2500 votes to count and Mayor Begich leading by over 3000. So close and down to the wire! It is not official but good enough for the major media. But what a change. I know Ted was loved in Alaska and did some groovy things, but he also was ... well let's not go there, as he is no friend of the environmentalist.

Plus, the loss saved Ted from the potentially embarrassing ordeal of appealing his verdict as well as facing the Senate Ethics Committee. Don't worry, I'm sure the poor man will be hired as a lobbyist and put on the boards of several companies, so he'll be fine.

It is indeed a big day.

Onward through the fog

A Million Apples

Something bothers me about these stories about "food miles."  Of course if you put a million apples on a freighter ship, it could go halfway around the world for the same emissions if you used small pickup trucks to get to a local market. That's the economy of scale in transportation.

But wait, a real carbon/CO2 analysis forces us to take a look at the inputs to what went into those apples. If you had an organic apple farm that re-used hay and manure, avoided using fertilizers and tractors, and used disease and pest resistant strains, gosh, wouldn't that count for something?

Perhaps the life cycle concept is just not there.

And then let's look at these apples themselves. The ones packed overseas require significant amounts of cardboard boxing, containers, and pallets. Don't all imports have to be gassed, inspected, and then ripened or given chemical to not ripen?  All that adds up, right? Now let's count how many apples spoiled before getting to market, and thus had to be turned into juice or thrown away. Something tells me the loss rate is higher with the longer transportation distances.

Fundamentally, if I walk out in my backyard and pick an apple and eat it, isn't that the most efficient model of all?

I think what the right answer, muddled as it may be for CO2 emissions, is price:  you'll pay more for a domestic, organic apple, plain and simple. I wouldn't give up just because of somebody comparing a farmer's truck to a shipload of a million of the suckers.  -sammie

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I see why now

I am not such an optimist either, as the NMFS has been to over-shoot or undershoot what is called the Total Allowable Catch, or TAC. This number might be expressed as "x million pounds of species y for the current year." Surveys, computer models, and annual carryover (any over-fishing from the previous year) then go into the new TAC. So if that number it too high or too low, either the fish or the fishermen suffer.

The results so far are very uneven.

There seems to be some major BS flying around the media that under the IFQ system, the fishermen would manage their own fisheries and do a better job than the government because if they over-fish, they will work themselves out of a job - possibly permanently. This is technically known as "a crock." The NMFS has absolutely no intention of letting fishermen manage anything of their own except in cases of aquaculture and fish farming (a different subject but it was in the NYT article by Bittman, who like me thinks they are horrible although for shellfish I disagree).

The IFQ system was merely a way to weed out the small players in the game, those that had traditional permits but only used them rarely. This tended to aggregate the permits to those boats and captains with historically high catches. Many independent, small guys HATE the IFQ system for that reason - they lost thousands in when the old permits expired.

The sister program to the IFQ was the boat buy-back program, where NMFS would purchase the boat, permits, and gear in a kind of auction and pay cash to the permit holder - to scrap the boat. It is not as well known and wasn't funded all that great, although a few hundred boats did go that way.

Neither program to limit fishing has had much effect, either, as the historical catches reported by NMFS bounce around 9.2 to 9.5 billion pounds a year since 2001. This means that there has been some consolidation in the fishing fleet, where less boats are catching more fish! Nothing is perfect, I suppose.  -sammie

Onward through the fog

Missed the point

Any commercial fisherman must now notify the NMFS before landing at the dockside. The fish house must keep records of everything and if there are any problems, the fish cops nail BOTH the fisherman and and wholesale seafood processor.

Most catches are indeed inspected as to species, poundage, and any size limits by state and federal officials. It is one of the most regulated industries in the nation.

Where do you get the idea all the sudden that the fishermen would regulate themselves? You show both a misunderstanding of the industry as well as a horrible prejudice.

And who said that IFQs allowed some relaxation in any rules? If anything, there are MORE rules such as GPS monitors and more observers than ever.

If anything, the IFQ system should reduce catches in two ways:  (1) by-catch is included in the IFQ tally and (2) if a boat has a little left in its IFQ allotment, it would be uneconomical to go back to sea to catch a very small load.

I have no idea why you folks blindly repeat stereotypes and the "fish rapers of the sea." True there are bad actors just as there are bad environmentalists! Je t'accuse!

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Fool's Errand

Honestly, if I hear the term "feedback" so butchered again I am going to puke.

And please prove to use that brine waste from desal operations is "acidic."

And what on Earth do you think the Australians are supposed to do?  Sit there and think about reducing CO2 whilst they run out of water?

Think, man!

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Like GreenMom says

Like GreenMom says, there ain't no BACT for CO2 right now, so EPA would probably take a year or two to figure about what that was and how to implement it. Perhaps the merits of the case need to be further examined.  

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Border Wall

Certain sections of the border wall in the Rio Valley do seem to be under construction. One section in Hidalgo County was actually a good idea because of their problems with the levee system. The parts that are most controversial are in Cameron County, which has those remaining populations of wild cats.

Chances are that the December 31 deadline will run out the clock and much will not be re-authorized to complete the walling projects. Three sections have already been taken off the table. Nobody here likes the border walls, including the Fish & Wildlife Service. Chertoff has proven that he is a mad fool for pursuing this goals despite Congress telling him to work with the locals. Us locals lost standing on one court case but have filed another - we'll see.

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Dangerous Thoughts, Pangolin

Socialist, huh? You must be stoned. Obama has to follow the laws just like everyone else in the democratic republic. He cannot and should not pick the winners but allow bidders to qualify based on performance, cost, and return.

The problem with the article in the Economist is that is just wasn't written very well. I detect the hand of a rookie or distracted, aged person.

That said, there is a case to be made that the government shouldn't directly invest in a particular technology, but only help provide the R&D, infrastructure, and seed money to start things up. That's MY point and I'll stick by my guns. I'm big on the infrastructure thing and I think many of us are, too, including Obama.

The Ethanol Disaster is something of a poster child for why the government should not be directly involved in heavy subsidies for the end products - combustion power, electricity, or whatnot. I realize that wind power is still addicted to a subsidy of a few cents a kilowatt hour, but my druthers are that this addiction should be rehabilitated.

In the case of wind power, if the infrastructure was improved - all those electric lines and towers - then they might not need such subsidies. If the archaic laws regarding power loading were fixed, they would do even better. If the government invested in "smart transmission," well now we're getting somewhere!

Onward through the fog

I don't agree

Load this puppy up and see what you think.

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr_webpage.html# ...

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Stealing Internet Ideas?

It is easy to criticize Tom for stealing ideas from the Internet, although it sounds like he fessed up on a few such as with Joseph Romm. You should be pleased, not prissy.

That said, some Greens are not exactly pleased with the man. Last April when presenting his book at Brown University, students pelted him with peas and one student was arrested. His stances on carbon trading could be considered controversial, I suppose.

Hey at least somebody is out there making more people think, and many don't blog ... like we do.
sammie

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LOL

You're not supposed to "vaccinate" babies with heroin, folks, big diff. Plus, our soon to be ex-President was a coke-head and Clinton was a weed head. Let's talk quals and not smack, OK?

Onward through the fog

Some more thoughts, corrections

There are only about 65,000 large ocean-going ships of the world when navy, fishing, tug, offshore, yacht, and small coastal ships under 400 feet are not included. They do present an air quality problem because they can be 7,000 to 70,000 kW diesel engines that essentially run 24 hours a day except when in the shipyard - if not running, smaller auxiliary engines and a boiler are used in port when this ship is stopped. There are absolutely no emission controls, catalytic converters, electrostatic precipitators, scrubbers (except some tankership boilers) although cleaner fuels are often used within the port areas.

The new IMO air emissions rules only apply to special control areas that nations may petition for, such as the one in the Baltic Sea and Sweden - the only one I know about now. There was some thought given to making offshore California such a special area but that was killed by the EPA Administrator and the White House.

Slowing ships might sound like a good deal but think about it, the slower you travel the longer it takes. So while it can be demonstrated the most air pollutants go down when you slow before entering a port, but over the entire ocean trip fuel and resulting CO2 emissions remain fairly much the same because they are linear, not exponential. In simple terms, a 1,300 mile trip will use a very similar amount of fuel if you go 12 knots or twice that much.

This leads one to think that to reduce the global warming potential from ships, one must simply reduce ship trips! The recent economic slow-down appears to be doing that very well ... although shipping companies do spend a lot of money on routing schedules, fastest path, avoiding storms (a horrendous waste of energy), and increasing efficiency. One must be careful because if cleaner fuels and more ozone and particulate related reductions are imposed, CO2 emissions will have to go up - there is no way around this logic.

-sammie

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Jet Stream and Coriolus Force

Calm down, my man.  What happens is that loops in the polar jet stream cause mid-latitude warm air to shoot towards the arctic, something that has happened for millions of years. What happened was that ozone and particulate was swept up and this causes some serious damage to the heat-forcing potential of the arctic zone. While the jet streams are constantly moving, the two polar pathways appears to be off Japan and the US Northeast coast.

True, there may be some increased carbon dioxide in these two (or maybe three) poleward flows. But it is the air pollution from ozone and particulate that is probably doing most of the damage, or is accelerating it in some way. Things are NOT linear with CO2 emission by any means, which is why we can't figure out the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice in the last few years.  And don't tell me about artificial "feedback loops" from some silly model. Ozone and particulate are screwing up the north pole, plain and simple, and the enriched CO2 environment is not helping.

Do us a favor and the next time you see a real solid cold front coming out of Siberia into Alaska and Canada, dropping down into the US mainland, take a look at the water vapor loops on NOAA.  The cold air descends, and hot air shoots up northeast ahead of the front - sometimes as speed of 40 MPH at ground level and much more aloft.  

Here is where is gets worse,  If the Subtropical jet stream is positioned over Texas from Pacific Mexico, enrichment of air pollution from Texas all the way up north past Michigan and Nova Scotia would be really something.  

At the end of the day, what you'll find as being "global warming" is actually a northern hemisphere phenomenon based on these jet streams and cold front cyclones that pump so much air up to the Arctic. I think residual hurricanes also have a major impact.  Note that the Southern Hemisphere and Antarctic has a completely different dynamic - fewer hurricanes and typhoons down there, for example, and much less pollution loading.

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Well you're just not very creative!

I read Grist from time to time and find it oftentimes hilarious. Really,, it would make a great sitcom, like Jabailo talking about nuculer hydrogen rats and somebody else saying "just plug his arse into the smart grid and light him up, heh-heh." You're missing it. We're too damn serious! We think we have God, Mama Nature, and half the EPA staff on our side - usually the wrong half.  

Many Hollywood and strange Austin cartoonists who publish using Korean graphics treat the enviro movement as off limits anyway, and if they do, get it wrong on purpose ... in order to make you THINK.

The message is that we're just not funny people. We're worse than a pack of uber-conservative fundamentalist neo-cons in the laughter department. At least Bush would joke about Karl Robe as being called "turd blossom," the funniest thing I've heard since SNL. Our feeble attempts at humor are mainly about "denialists" who are so crazy they sound like a crack-head freak in a bad part of Brooklyn. How sad, how disappointing.

Grist, I take you to task. It is time for some humor, hilarity, and fun.

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Ah, crude oil versus "energy"

Alaska used to produce maybe 20% of the US domestic crude oil production, 14% today, and that does not include the imports.  With imports, Alaska only provides about 4.8% of the crude oil to US refineries and end markets.

Over the last ten years or so, Alaskan crude oil has fallen by about 60%.  California crude oil is way off of course.  The West Coast (PADD 5) now gets a substantial amount of crude and refined products from Canada, OPEC nations, and even the US Gulf (Houston mainly).  A pipeline from El Paso to Tuscon is the only other supply route I am aware of.  

Interesting developments on the West Coast.  But anyone who confuses the word "energy" with crude oil processing ought to be spanked!
-sammie

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Religion and economics

The only similarity I see between the fishing industry and the market is that people had the belief that the "system" would work perfectly rational using a free-market approach, with some restrictions of course but virtually un-regulated otherwise.

It turns out that such Puritanical thinking was dead wrong. Some fisheries (not all) collapsed. Some markets (not all) collapsed as well.

The recent issue of Harper's has a wonderful article about the recent market collapse and its religious history. I wonder how one would re-write that for what happened with the fish? -sam

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Where the money's going

Thanks for the article, Joseph and Grist.  

My take is that the smart money has departed from computers, housing finances, big oil, and all the other bubbles. Many investors have fled to the relative safety of T-bills, minerals such as gold, and food-grade commodities (but watch ethanol bubble too). So where does the savvy investor look for action? Clean energy certainly is one.  

The numbers mentioned in the article are but a very small part of the market, like almost nothing. Algae? You must be kidding. The "staggering" 620 million for thin-film is tiddley-winks. But it does show some inertia in non-traditional markets outside of windmills and the hocus-pocus pipe dream about clean coal. Why not mention the tide and wave machines as well?

By the way, "smart grids" aren't smart and they're not a source of energy at least as I know. I've always promoted the concept of improving the electrical infrastructure but you're talking some make bucks there, and the states, regional power consortia, and national government does seem to have a clue ... maybe except a few West Coast folks. It's simply called "hooking up power in a manner to distribute it more efficiently and to expand into the electric vehicle sector." Gee, how much simpler.  -sam

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Sir Lost-A-Lot

None of this makes any sense to me.  If credit lines dry up, who is going to invest billions in green energy? All those notable quotables saying that "a major recession or depression is no reason not to invest now" are full of hooey. If you want to print more money, you'll just drive up inflation, making everything more expensive. Higher interest rates and costs mean less demand.

Including green, renewable energy sources.

Anyone who has faith that a trillion could solve the current financial dilemma is probably smoking something really good.  There is 43 trillion in funny money around the globe. Yet we still hold onto our dreams, promised, and visions. I guess it is the American thing to do.

Onward through the fog

What's Happening

After that AP wire story, General Land Office Commissioner Patterson issued notice that the Texas Open Beaches Act (TOBA) would be suspended for 120 days, pending further study. The TOBA basically says that if a property or structure is in the submerged waters below the mean high water line, it becomes property of the State of Texas and must be removed.  The second main thrust is that new or reconstructed (more than 50% damaged) homes must be set-back from the vegetation line.

Well there's no beach and no vegetation line in many places, especially on Bolivar Peninsula.

Only two other states, have such a forceful law as TOBA, that requires public access to the beach, and essentially makes the beach up to the vegetation line a public easement. It's going to take a while to sort out what to do in light of Hurricane Ike.

So the commenter above, I'm baffled by the claim that (a) it should be illegal to rebuild even if legal under TOBA, and (b) that somehow the marches and swamps would miraculously come back.  Katrina showed up that a hurricane can tear up miles and miles of swamp and barrier island environment. Nothing comes back. It's just underwater.

Many do want to rethink coastal development in light of Ike, however, a very healthy thing. What many enviros fear, on the other hand, is that is the TOBA is opened up for revision, it would be gutted by "all those rich people." -samOn Severe erosion caused by Hurricane Ike may make many homes illegal posted 1 year, 2 months ago 2 Responses

Another problem ...

One of the issues with clean energy is how to send the juice down the power lines to the customers. We simply don't have a good electrical distribution system. So what happens is that if a wind turbine farm is cranking some wonderful KVA (kilo-volt-amps), it must pay EXTRA to load the wires with their juice. Heck of a way to run a railroad.

I mean an electrical infrastructure.

I wouldn't worry about the investor pool in clean energy, as many have bailed from financials and traditional oil and are seeking new opportunities. True, the "clean liquids" market for ethanol, bio-diesel, and synthetic distillate may take a bum rap. But thanks to Florida Light & Power, some major Australian and EU investors, and more interest in clean power sources, my thinking is they should do OK.

If they can sell electrical power over this WWII system of transmission wires we have today.
-sam

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Fuel IS Mileage!

When you tax a gallon of fuel - which hasn't gone up in a long time to match inflation, the cause of the highway fund shortfall - you ARE taxing mileage. See, if you get 8 to 60 MPG, you're paying a carbon tax right there,  It is a beautiful system where the less economical engines driven the most pay the most!

So raising the tax on gasoline and diesel makes a lot of sense in one way, since it would recover some of the money needed for highways and transit.

However, it is horribly regressive for the poor and lower middle class, as well as the transportation sector (think truckers).

Politically, I think most uber-conservatives could care less about a tax being regressive, such as having to pay more for gasoline and have less food on the table.  However, luck is on our side for the meantime largely because of the "no new taxes" mantra.

If we can figure out how to handle the socially regressive aspects of higher state and federal motor fuel taxes, I say jack them up to about 50 or 70 cents a gallon.

Remember, those folks making $14,000 a year can't afford to buy a brand new electric or hybrid car, my friends.  -sam

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Speculating again ...

I never said that speculators ran up the price of oil, just that about a trillion (just guessing) in betting money came to that market sector after deals in financials went sour.  That is, for every bet that oil would rise in price, another contract has to gamble that the market would go lower. Just like a casino, the middle-man takes the skim off the top.

I am certainly no expert, but a bunch of companies that buy fuel, like shipping, airlines, and trucking, bought out all the low-end contracts they could lock in. Southwest Airlines was famous for this. So many of the new bettors gamble higher than the low end of the spread. What I don't understand is the "herd mentality" that drove up the price of crude oil, although some very famous market analysts were talking $200/barrel oil for several years now.

Well the herd "done stampeded somewhere else" as a Texan would say, which I can directly associate with softness in the market now. It could go up or down in light trading, and act more on its fundamentals than group psychology.  That is why Hurricane Ike has about a 30 cent premium instead of a much more at the retail pump.  

The same old day-traders are there after the herd left, call them speculators if you must. It's just a different game now. The question is whether the run-up in oil (caused by the herd) will create a disastrous bubble, or if in the long term "peak oil" will rear its ugly head based on fundamentals.  Nobody knows, as it is notoriously fickle and volatile market.
-sam

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Speculations about the speculators

For all the wonderful idea presented here, all make a serious slaw in assuming that the crude oil market is rational, and be predicted as to the relationships between supply and demand. How wishful and childish.

One thing for certain is that about a trillion in speculator money has left the market for elsewhere, so we can't blame cost inflation on them. Now other factors such as the rising dollar and geopolitics seem to have more of an impact. A rising dollar is in a way very bad news, as crude is always traded in dollars per tonne or barrel.

A rising dollar could not only lower crude oil costs but also inadvertently cause economic growth to go very flat. This has some rather insidious effects. If there is no economic expansion, then people won't buy as much crude oil and its refined products.  

Could it be a blessing? Well heck yeah, some are looking at alternative clean/green energy sources, and I am surprised that Grist did not pick up on the market signal. Of course it is an election year, but even Big Oil expects more "windfall profit taxes" in an marginal or declining market in the US.

So get with it and figure it out - the next bubble will be in food commodities. No, we won't fix that before disasters happen, but that's where the missing trillion in speculator money largely went. So concentrate on what Grist is so good at - promoting clean energy and protecting our food supply in a sustainable manner.

Good luck on the latter one. Whoa, that's a nasty bubble, amigos and amigas, food.  -sammie

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It's pretty much all gas taxes

I don't know where you read that the USDOT gets much money any funds other than the per-gallon tax on gasoline and diesel - it's all oil money except for some special "pork" earmarks such as the Highway to Nowhere, the Senator Byrd Highway, and a few special line item that might include transit projects.

So what I take home is that the USDOT needs a new way to raise money for maintaining and constructing highways and mass transit, as our infrastructure continues to degrage and fall apart - a bridge falling into the Mississippi was just a first sign.

True, the mass transit fund hasn't been affected all that badly yet, but there is no mechanism to give that a real "shot in the arm" to increase capacity; in fact many cities are curtailing bus and train transit due to rising energy costs.  Bad combination!
-sammie

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Sea Weed is Good

The use of seaweed in gardens dates possibly back to the medieval days - and served as the basis for riparian law. The best potatoes, for example, are those grown in Brittany, France using seaweed for fertilizer.  

Sea weed was also used extensively by the Colonialists along the coast, and was used extensively until perhaps the end of WWII.  

The method is a little different but hey, here's what the did. They (usually kids) build "ricks" made of saplings and driftwood a few feet off the beach and covered them with about a foot of kelp or other "good" seaweed (Irish Moss has special medicinal and beer uses). This allowed some rainwater to wash some sand and salt off the weed.

Then the seaweed was carted to the fields and thrown straight down, evenly as possible.

Later, horse and cow manure and spent barn hay was applied on top of the seaweed. This mixture would be very "hot" so it was done well ahead of spring planting (but not when the ground was frozen), and turned under with a horse & plow or tractor.

This 50/50 mixture worked well for root crops and vegetables - only manure and spent hay was used on the hay and grain fields. Why improve on something that worked for 700 years?  

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The Big Picture

You're really doing a disservice by looking at things today as disasters "caused" by Global Warming, since the point is that in the long term, major disruptions could occur. I'm talking like a hundred years. The point is that unless we do something NOW, there are some "tipping points" where reducing CO2 could little or no effect.

True, we are seeing some of the very early signals and signs of a warming planet. The ice melts faster, the average temperatures increase a few tenths of a degree, and even biologists note the tropical species are moving northward.

But none of us will be around 100 years from now when the true terror, destruction, and food crisis becomes a very real thing. That's what we should be working on, and I think was what Al Gore was trying to say.

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Well it was funny for a minute ...

In game theory, nothing is off limits.  True, Ford and GM are spinning off factories, workers, and divisions as fast as they can. Even Toyota is mothballing a huge line for pickup trucks and is retooling ... hopefully for more Prius production but don't hold your breath.  

Take that together with the "spayed and neutered airlines." They're going to cut flights and over-fill everything they can starting on Labor Day. Early reports are that many more US travelers are taking short car trips or even using mass transit and buses.

I think I'm on a roll!

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Game Theory

Perhaps game theory, an economic science that won a few Nobel awards, describes the situation better than simple "fundamentals" - a concept I've been trying to clarify here many times but usually get blasted.

There are two other key players, one being that Big Oil no longer commands a majority of the supply and production of oil. The majors only control about 20 percent of the worldwide stocks and the nationals control the rest, meaning that geo-politics is an increasing cause of volatility.  And now you know why the US-based majors want to further develop some offshore fields.

Then you have a pesky economic downturn that started with funked US housing financing and has now spread to global markets such as China. Yes, as US consumers buy less products overseas, that means less energy demand for offshore manufacturing and shipping.

But game theory explains things so simply - that people make irrational decisions about the market in a psychologically "rational" method. And remember, the house always balances with winners and losers and takes a cut down the middle. Why do you think the casinos hate the PHD heuristic modelers worse than the card counters? Because a sucker is born every minute!
-sammie

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Every year ...

Every year some college kids and some car companies get together for an August "fun run" across America and this year is no exception. Hey, if some big money and some kids think it's fun, let them have their fun. If it is commercially viable, like solar powered vehicles, well, that's not the purpose of these PR jobs.  

Every summer engineering kids get to build robotic vehicles, like for a Baja course, and yes we now have a hydrogen "fun run." So what? We know about energy density and upstream energy leakage and things like that. Let 'em have their fun, the PR fade away, and see what the market has to bear.

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Republicans and renewables

I hesitate to use such a broad assertion that all Republicans hate renewable energy.  Here in Texas, the Governor and Land Office Commissioner are big fans of wind power. Interesting dynamic, how the enviros sued the state based on the Migratory Bird Act.

On Capitol Hill, the fight isn't about private business (with government permits) but all about HUGE subsidies and pay-outs to the renewable energy sector. If wind power and other renewables are so good, why do they need tons of money? Keeping the kW-hr subsidy as it is seems to work, and little more is needed - other than perhaps a plan to coordinate permit approvals by federal, state, and local governments. Am I missing something?

You'll fall into a big trap is you say that tons of R&D are needed, which is a classic Republican solution (that they don't want to fund, by the way). What we have today in terms of wind, wave, thermal, and solar energy works just fine. So tell me, is "more technology" the solution?

My opinion is that the government should support regional programs that are developed locally, and only fund them for seed money so as to attract businesses to implement renewables.

Disclaimer:  I'm an independent.

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Big Business

Even the Indie and "alt" music niche are big business and there is a bottom line. Even a medium-sized concert/fest can rack up a good chunk of a million dollars. All that extra green stuff you do takes away from the profit, as often paying for advertising and security can be huge expenses without even paying off the musicians and PA system.  

Living in Austin for a long time I picked up on a good sense of how these producers work, even the Austin City Limits Fest. They try to do some nice "green" things but spend an inordinate amount of time on preventing fake passes and resellers.

And the amount of power! All those lights and amps take some major juice. Show me a "green" amp board and PA system for a large fest and I'll eat my hat.

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Lower carbon in fuel???

Hmm, diesel has a carbon content of 86% and gasoline is somewhat lower, depending on additives. To lower it leans having LESS power so you have to burn more fuel. It is simple thermodynamics. That's when I wondered about the first list "to lower the carbon content in fuel." Are you nuts?

Energy density is why gasoline and better yet, diesel are so efficient. To reduce carbon means using massive loads of alternative fuels that have a lower carbon content. So we're back to alternative fuels like it was 1992 again, huh? Well that didn't work so I guess we should do something else.

We all know that natural gas vehicle literally crapped out. Ethanol and methanol each have horrendous diseconomies. Using coal-powered generating units for electric vehicles is really a stupid thing once done on a large scale. I don't get it. Propane has its issues as well, although was actually closest to working in the fleet (LNG was a disaster in the making).  

There is no way for modern technology to face the physical properties of these kinds of alternative fuels. There is no magic formula except electrification and a slim possibility of fuel cells. If you blend certification gasoline or diesel, you pay more because you have less energy, and since you have less energy you burn more and get about the same carbon emissions in a combustion motor vehicle.

The trick is to get people out of combustion motor vehicles and stay with gasoline and diesel for needed uses. That's a more rational fuels-based program. Rail and even buses can haul many people more efficiently than driving their own cars. In many cases these larger units are easier to electrify, like subways and urban rail (if you have clean electric power, better). I've thought about this many times and found all the alternative fuels to be a complete crock of snake-oil. I used to be the alternative fuels director at the Texas environmental commission.

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Trolling for votes!

Oh I think it is a masterful swipe to take the wind out of Mc-Lame's sails and neutralize any platform he may have. The race is surprisingly close in recent polls, given a huge block of independents, a vast third party that does include some disillusioned former Republicans. Sure, he has to race to the center, much as Mc-Lame has to pander to the old style Reagan conservatives.

But last I checked, a President can't unleash vast oil fields, create a million plus-in electric cars, or whatever is on your menu de jour. The US Congress has to provide enabling legislation and then the appropriations, right? He's not showing his hand about a possible veto, right?

True, by Executive Order, Presidents can open or close various tracts of land but Congress holds the trump cards.

By the way and speaking of the SPR, we need to stop a Bush project that would create a vast salt dome storage area for crude in Mississippi up the Pascagoula River. It is an environmental nightmare, the proposed Richton facility, which would be created by sucking 50 million gallons a day from the Pascagoula and flushing the brine into the pristine Mississippi Sound.  This could create a dead zone that could challenge the larger one to the west and south from the Mississippi River and its toxic brew.  

In fact, a sitting president could spend about two years just undoing the crap foisted on us by Boosh. Fark Boosh! Stop the madness and fund some real projects, OK?

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Oil for War?

The US continues to burn about 50 million gallons a month of fuel for all military operations, although I don't know if that includes all the aviation and ship bunker fuel such as with civilian support and logistics.

About 1.6 million gallons a day is just for the Iraq effort, a remarkable 27 gallons a day for every person in the service (in WWII it was less than 2 gallons a day per serviceman).

Folks, we're paying for all of that and we're getting suckered at the gas pump!  

I don't know what to make of the exorbitant profits from the big oil companies but I have heard that even if we threw billions and billions at R&D and exploration, nobody could spend it because we don't have the equipment and labor.

This makes a little bit of sense to me. Could anyone figure out how to burn 10 or 20 billion a year on R&D with what you have today? Get real. We don't have the infrastructure for that. The universities and government research facilities have been cut back so far and endured so much "brain drain" that it could take five to ten years just to find enough qualified engineers. It is really a shame.

Of course, some on the far left would like to tax the oil companies and throw the revenue into the general slush fund. This is a very bad policy would result in the opposite effect - less R&D and less alternative energy. You have to be careful how you play your cards on this table ...

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Two market signals

I don't know about the hybrids but I did see a fairly good article that noted two very powerful market signals. The first was the PEMEX was cutting oil supplies by 10-15% to Valero (a large refinery consortium) because Mexico is running out of oil to sell on the market (no, it is a lie they are "holding back").

The second was that small car producers like Tata (sp) of India and other companies were going to flood the market with very cheap cars that were extremely fuel efficient.

My only beef with the article is that Joe and WSJ think that markets are rational and really react to such "market signals" in a normal manner. That make me laugh, like people really think oil and gas trades on supply and demand. Nowadays trading is done with Internet rumors - get with it, pilgrims!  -sammie

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OK Hal

I guess this thread is going into the proverbial Grist trash can, at the end of the list, but I fail to see how such second custom homes, even engineered with all the "green" accoutrements, are anything more than making obscene amounts of money while paving the wilderness.  

That goes to some very failed land policies about building expensive houses in forested areas, which need to be protected (at very high taxpayer cost) from wildfires and other natural disasters.

So you're right, Hal, if some government agency is silly enough to allow such wonton destruction, you can build all the "green" homes you want.

But there once was a time when real cabins, some made of logs and quite energy efficient, had a very small footprint. No land was cleared except for a narrow dirt lane and enough to sink posts into the ground for foundation pilings. Such cabins were used by fishermen and hunters and might only have a few cots, an oil lamp, and a potbelly stove. I will say that when spaced far and wide, these real cabins were sustainable (some are approaching 80 years old). Completely different vision, bruddah, and I'd love to see how long these richie-rich people could last in really rustic conditions.

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Bingo - Election Time

Silly politicians always want to appear in control of things, even though they can't do diddley squat.  

A far greater vision would be to sponsor large clean energy projects such as wind, solar, wave, and thermal - almost a competitive "shootout" if you will.

This would do two things. First, employment, R&D, and investment would flow to clean energy sectors using the government seed money for building infrastructure (not subsidizing energy and kW-hrs). Second, Big Oil would probably want to get some of that cash, and perhaps even try to ramp up near-term "dirty energy" supplies as well.

Just trying to fix an emergent oil crisis is playing the cards the exact wrong way.  

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I dunno

As much as easing some restrictions in the GOM (Gulf of Mexico) may help, the rather sad fact is that the GOM is basically "holding its own" ... the EIA figures could indeed be a little on the optimistic side. I don't think anyone in the industry views this as a panacea - although rather interesting to hear the urban myths that Big Oil is sitting on massive GOM oil deposits to run up the price, or that somehow the fields could be developed quicker. You try to build a deepwater spar or floater rig and see how long it takes from construction to actual drilling - ten years isn't that unrealistic (some types of rigs can be moved about though).  

Whoever said that "opening the GOM" would instantly drive up supply, drive down prices, and fix out economy was nuts. Trying to leverage it for a few more basis points (percent volume) is about all we can hope for ... then those fields will mature and die off and we'd better have a full-blown clean power program ready for when it does. That's the Law of Diminishing Returns, baby.
-sam

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Doomsday

Good dialog but I am reminded of what Gonzo Don (love the monniker) said, "Take cheap oil and natural gas and other fossil fuels out of the equation, and it could get ugly. Fast."

That could be downright scary. Wars couldn't be fought with vehicles and jets. Ships would run out of Bunker C and global trade would stop. Farm tractors would sit idle and food would rot even if you had any. People would run out of the cities and chop down all the forests for firewood.

I am kidding in a way, but mankind shows a remarkable ability to put things off and get slammed by whatever comes next. Intelligent monkeys don't make good planners, I suppose.

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Hey why not!

Sure I consider myself an environmentalist, even though I have a big Ford pickup. I use it almost exclusively for transporting sea turtles, putting in butterfly gardens, reclaiming and vegetating dunes, taking stuff to the recycling center (lots of cardboard from UPS and FedEx packaging on our street), and hauling tons of garbage we pick during beach and bay clean-ups. I burn a tank of gas every month or two, so no biggie.

But it's like saying you're a "geographer," which I also am.  There are at least 40 kinds of geographer, from weatherman to historical geographer and GIS analyst. I have a diploma that says  I'm a geographer but not one in "environmentalism" even though that was my concentration.  -sam

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What I'm mad about ...

What I'm mad about ... is that many countries are on the way towards the goal of energy independence, yet we're not doing boogie in the USA. I mean we suck. Where's all the electric vehicles, natural gas vehicles, methanol vehicles, and other alternative fuels? Brazil is looking much better than we are, as they used to import 80% of their transportation energy and are working on importing none. Meanwhile, over three decades we went from importing 30% of our crude in the Oil Crisis to about 60% today.

Yeah, some freaking leaders we are ...

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Bad weather

The effect of bio-fuels on global food prices and markets is really quite marginal, although possibly significant depending on who is doing the math. What perhaps is more important are huge natural disasters such as the failure of the Australian wheat crop. Even disruptions such as a plus-10% hit on corn acreage due to Mid-West flooding can ripple through the markets quite quickly. Many developing countries are facing food shortages because of population growth, poor land management, wars, and so forth.  Finally, increasing consumption of meat in countries such as China and India are thought to be problematic as well.

Diversion of foods into bio-fuels only serves to amplify the wild upswing in food commodity prices, although by itself it is not a root cause (nice pun).  

By the way, I appreciated the links to the Brazilian sugar cane industry and I learned a lot.  

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More on Infrastructure please

Hey I'm not the expert on engineering electric cable transmission, although I've heard about DC technology and stuff that could enable "intelligent grids" right here on Grist.

As to fuels, be it ethanol, natural gas, or crude oil products, I am not so convinced that "playing with quotas" such as Brazilian ethanol will make a fart's difference - and could aggravate further destruction of the Amazon, one of the world's largest reservoirs of freshwater and photosynthetic oxygen.  

If one had a policy to use sugarcane for industrial food sweeteners instead of that nasty corn fructose sugar, I guess I would be for it. One small pleasure I have is going to Mexico where Coca-Cola is still make with real, honest sugarcane dextrose - I mean it actually tastes good.  Heck with the tequila, I want a real Coke!

Back to the infrastructure concept, "build it and they will come."  -sammie

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Chicken feed ...

The $100,000 donation was from "Bo" Pilgrim of Pilgrim's Pride, the largest chicken processor in the US, with substantial holdings in cattle as well. Many ethics lawyers cringe when Bo starts writing checks of $10,000 a pop and handing them out in the lobby of Texas Legislature.  In this case, it was a larger check that followed 6 days after a secret meeting with Governor "Good Hair" Perry (TX) who subsequently sent a nice letter to the EPA docket for a fuel waiver so Texas would not have to comply with the federal ethanol mandates ... whatever it takes I guess, but it doesn't pass the smell test.

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Good Ole Rhode Island

I don't think you understand that bad in the 70's, many paint companies including Sherwin-Williams went to latex alkyd paints, away from leaded enamel paints for exteriors. Sherwin-Williams bought a local paint company and yes, sold some for a while ... but lead paint had been used for decades before 1978.

By 1974, lead paint was getting very hard to find in the Northeast. This might come as a surprise to many. You actually had to order it especially from Rhode Island paint companies that would still sell it. By 1978 you probably could only buy it on the black market, as it was phased-out very quickly from production.

So my point is during those transition years, the paint companies knew about the dangers of leaded paint ... but people had to specifically order it instead of their new line of no-lead paints. I worked in the remodeling business back then and we actually had to drive to Rhode Island to get that "good" white leaded paint for a customer in Connecticut.

Before the 1970's, nobody really knew that leaded stuff was bad.  EPA hadn't taken the lead out of gasoline yet - remember the signs saying "this product may contain Tetra-Ethyl Lead"?  At that time we were just becoming concerned about the ospreys dying off because of some toxic we really didn't understand.  

Sorry to write a book here but the problem is when you repaint the outside of a house and it must be stripped down to the wood because of cracking and peeling. So the problem was the old paint coming off, not the new paint going back over the boards. Gosh, what a mess we made, with burners, grinders, and strippers! The stuff went everywhere with a very distinctive taste in your mouth - little did we know we were poisoning ourselves and any kids who played in the chips and dust.

That paint might have been over a dozen coats applied over a century on the older houses and buildings. You could see the old limestone linseed oil paint (organic!) and the leaded paint in distinct layers. But back before the 1970's we had no clue that the leaded stuff was bad for you.

If you lave little stomach for that, consider that marine paints -- many made in good old Rhode Island - had massive doses of mercury, copper, cadmium, and other bad actors to prevent fouling of the boat bottoms, a subject for another day.  -samOn R.I. court reverses ruling, says paint companies not responsible for lead cleanup posted 1 year, 5 months ago 2 Responses

Private Hedge Funds

I don't know about this specific race in Oregon and will stay out of local politics there. But the chatter seemed to run off a bit like some kind of "Grist Fund" for things the government can't or won't do. It's worthy of another blog thread for sure.

With investors running away from financials to commodities, now "clean industries" such as wind and solar power are attracting major investment pools. Earlier Grist ran some articles about an investor who went long on ethanol, which turned out to be a poor investment because supplies are high and some processors are going bankrupt. OK, it was and is a disaster from the start.  While we tend to treat such investors as proverbial scum, they are the true motivators of our modern economy, having access to billions of dollars (Euros are even better!).  

From a policy perspective, this is troubling for our government because we don't regulate that kind of economy very well, and the government hasn't come through with a meaningful program for renewable energy. Can we or should we rely on market investors who treat wind and solar power like a traded commodity to achieve our goals?

Look at it this way, it is a relatively safe hedge to get into renewables because (1) they're making good money and (2) a cap & trade program will only make them MORE money by taxing others.

The only thing to watch for IMHO is a giant bubble of over-speculation in renewables. The latest crash in housing is a classic example of a bubble in the making for over ten years - which was caused in part by the US government and it's lax standards of performance. So the question comes down to how to harmonize a public-private clean energy program while being able to make corrective actions so as to prevent a bubble.  -sam

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Menhaden, maybe?

I am not sure about the animal feed fishery globally but here in the US it is mainly the menhaden (pogie) that is harvested for fish oil, fertilizer, and supplemental animal feed. Omega is the largest company. The experience on the Chesapeake was not very good, and are now expanding in the Gulf of Mexico. Not a good example of environmental stewardship but there are good reasons to utilize fish waste products.

But the pogie is an oily, smelly trash fish that no sane person would ever eat.  

Historically, farmers in the US used seaweed and trash fish to fertilize their fields. Why not use fish wastes and trash fish such as the sea robin if they're going to waste anyway? Throw them in the dump? You're crazy.

The practice of using fish for animal feed, outside some Indian tribes such as the Inuit in Alaska (salmon for dog food), is relatively recent. As good animal feed declined in quality, supplements were used to increase the protein levels. This is a relatively modern practice that started after WWII.

If it is well regulated, since many of these herring-like fish are plankton-eaters at the bottom of the food chain, I don't have such a problem. I can't speak for the rest of the planet.

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Amazing Heirloom Maize

Well the title got my attention, as well as some revulsion with the corn industry as it is today - a genetically altered monoculture of few varietals, some better for eating and industrial foods, cattle feed, or even deer corn. That's about it.

Heirloom corn has a long history in the Americas, with many kinds from Mexico to Canada. True, it germinated and fruited unevenly and had to be hand picked, but that stuff at least had some taste - indeed, some say that good corn is like a fine wine.  There were dozens of kinds, not just "Indian corn" as we would otherwise think. Some were better for eating (white corn) roasting, grits, preserving, or even making whiskey.

These more native kinds of corn were much more tolerant of the bugs, weather, and the fungus but had to use better prepared soil and greater spacing, although fields had to have over a hundred stalks to properly germinate. Many of these heirloom varietals have been lost but a few afficiandos take great pride in bringing them back on organic farms. The fact that the product is not uniform and closely planted makes it more drought and water tolerant - and taste like heaven.

Many people have no clue that corn should even have a fine taste, with that yellow cow corn they pass off these days. One problem with NAFTA and flooding the Mexico market with US corn (at very high prices) is that native species of Mexico corn, some centuries old, are now being lost due to lack of seed. Ah, anybody for some of the treasured huitlacoche, corn smut? It lends an earthy, mushroomy taste to gormet dishes.  -sam

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Constant occurrence?

I'll call you're bluff on that one. Prove to me - and all of us Grist readers - that oil spills from offshore drilling is a common & significant occurrence. I don't think you can pull it off. Even during Katrina and Rita, which idled many offshore platforms, spills were remarkably low, like 15,000 barrels.

This is nothing compared to the massive, million-barrel spills of Santa Barbara (1969), Ixtoc (1979), and the tanker ship Exxon Valdez (1989).

Are there huge risks?  Well yes but so is driving down the highway, which results in some pretty good oil spills too.  But I think you're way off base to say the offshore drilling is inherently dirty.  

Onward through the fog

Thanks Mr. Krupp

I was thinking that's what you might say, but the airwaves are so darned confused these days. There is some oil out there in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, and is just coming online.

An offshore rig like Thunderhorse take several billion just to build, perhaps taking five years for construction and two years for deployment and drilling - without any pesky hurricanes. When the larger fields are drained, I guess it will be over, but there's plenty right now under lease and contract, as you say.

Interestingly, the continental shelf could provide smaller but significant amounts of natural gas, which is a "fossil fuel" but certainly cleaner than coal or oil. Most of these natural gas wells are very clean, with a few percent by volume weight of condensate and crude slops. This won't reduce our demand for liquid transportation fuels but can work on the electric power side of the equation. I wonder if ED has an opinion on this.

The only environmental problem I saw with these shallow-water gas rigs was that they often flared a bunch of gas during initial break-through in the well itself, perhaps a few days or a week. No leaking liquids or drilling fluids were detected, at least in the four or five we have 12 miles off South Texas. A side benefit is that the rigs hold great schools of fish, many species of which seem to be under pressure. I can understand the negative reactions because of the massive oil blow-outs from Ixtoc and off California during the 60's and 70's, but today it is a much cleaner technology for offshore gas wells than ... coal.
-sammie

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Anti Bush & Rove & Cheney & McCain

The reasons I support a narrow short-term drilling policy in relatively "good" areas such as the deepwater Gulf of Mexico is not because of money or that the US would become more "energy secure."  That's a joke! It simply is a hedge against other countries bidding up the supply side.

Take Southwest Airlines, which for years used a hedging as a mechanism to keep fuel coming at a reasonable cost, even though rising all the time. SW Air is a good example because they're using electric ground power rather than auxiliary jet turbine power when docked at the terminals - well, imagine if that power was solar and wind? Imagine of that solar and wind power was a hedge against other rising energy costs?

Perhaps we all want instant gratification, an overnight sensation where coal power would disappear. But one has to work on the margins and chip away a little at a time, changing the economics and the way people think. And I think we're reaching that tipping point pretty fast ...

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Keep going!

I think the US should shut down the blue fishing along the US & Canada Atlantic seaboard as well - most blue fin fishing is closed in the Gulf because that's where they spawn. There are plenty other tuna species that taste fine and are not so threatened, including the yellow, black, big-eye, and albacore.

Yes, we have some purse seine trawlers in the US that target blue fin.  They should eliminated from the permit season, and only hook & line used.  I believe US hook fishing only allows 1 blue fin per vessel with a maximum of two on a two-day voyage, something like that.

Anyway, thanks for guarding the Med - a bunch of our Gulf fish end up over there!
-sammie

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Green Noise

I read an interesting article about "Green Noise" on a NY Times blog. The hole idea is that as the "greenies" shout more, and anti-regulators (deniers) shout equally as loud, thus producing a sound not unlike white noise. It's like a rock and roll show with two acts going on at the same time - the result is truly awful music.

To me, I think the naysayers are truly worried, as climate change bills are considered with more seriousness in the Capitol. It is, pun intended, their "Siberian Moment."  That's when a fisherman falls through the ice in a Siberian lake:  you can get out of the water and freeze instantly, or paddle in the water and slowly drown.  

No wonder they are shouting so loud, and may I add backed by some serious money and redneck NAASCAR appeal.

Just put on your headphones and carry on.  -sammie

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Oxygen as a "pollutant"

There is some evidence that as life evolved on Earth, it originally started or went through a period when the atmosphere had little oxygen, being mostly CO2, sulfur compounds, nitrogen, and stuff like that. A certain kind of blue-green algae dominated and then oxygen levels increased dramatically, killing off many of the "reducers." One can still find these primordial reducing bacteria surrounding hot vents in deep ocean trenches.

So the question becomes whether mankind, with is huge air and water emissions, has tilted things enough to be considered as pollution even if it is CO2, oxygen, nitrogen compounds, sulfur, or whatever.  Remember, even clean water can kill you - it's called drowning!  Darn pollution ...

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Variability versus a trend

Looking at weather extremes is not helpful so much as the long-term picture. Myself, I like a rolling 30 year window for averaging. That's what climatologists do unless you're into paleo-climatology where tens of thousands are no problem. Suffice it to say we don't have reliable weather recordings for the US prior to the late 1800's and with better satellites today we can see much more than we earlier missed. Many tornadoes and hurricanes went undetected back in the early days. But the average temperatures, rainfall, and stuff like that is what we need.

I'd like to also mention that a one-year "global mean average" or AGW of temperatures does not indicate a signal for climate change. That is completely wrong. The correct was to do the analysis is to use statistics on departure from mean statistics using a 30-year rolling window. This will show where and how much temperatures or rainfall is trending over a longer period of time.

Onward through the fog

Jeff Masters, I meant

oops!

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with all due respect ...

The so-called dead zone has only been discovered since the 1970's when scientific measurements and satellite data came on line. Many other have been found as well, if you would take the time to look at the NASA, NOAA, EPA, and other websites.

My purpose was to say it happens all over the world in large basins such as the Mississippi and Amazon. And it's not just corn doing it - a preposterous suggestion. The run-off is a soup that includes wastewater, golf course wash, urban toxics, and many things including just good old eroded soil. The extent to which corn agriculture has added to this soup is great yet but one of many causes.

To blame the Mississippi Dead Zone on corn is beyond all stupidity. It is typical for J-majors to write in such blunt terms without qualification or a scientific understanding.

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Let's Talk Capitalism

Easy post for Mr. Romm, but I don't see much progress unless there's Big Money to be made on the deal. Basically, you're just redistributing billions here and there, maybe a trillion. Somewhere there is some kind of expectation that along the way, the secondary benefits are less CO2 getting into the air. Nice after-thought.

I know much about this, and would rather call it the Right to Work Act for policy wonks such as many on the Grist. Well darn it, it pays big money. Big Oil will even figure out a way to make money as well. You're kidding yourselves if you think they're going to sit back and watch a trillion bucks go bye-bye.

Hmm, the irony is there, with a socialist redistribution of wealth AND a money-grubbing ethic.  This is going to be fun to watch. How many fools and knaves will make it through? Well let's just say history is President Bush's favorite subject. Not that HE could do squat right, but we'll see what happens...

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Thanks Amazing!

For once somebody tells the truth. We have no clue what the price, supply, and demand will be in the near term. History is paved with bodies who got it all wrong. And I'll even make a point that "peak oil" is irrelevant.

I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories but the currently market bubble in crude and other commodities sure seems orchestrated to me. Several trillion dollars was pulled from equity markets and dumped into commodities - what on Earth did you expect?

So you have market "cheerleaders" that continuing high prices on what is essentially a huge market bubble. Bo, I don't think prices will crash but a few hundred billion will be lost, just like ENRON and our current stagflation scare. Better watch out:  the tons of money rolling into clean technology could become the next market bubble.  

Who knows? Pay no mind to the pontificators.  

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No Texans?

I was relieved to see no Texans on the "list of 10 perps."  Wow, hard to imagine that!

I think people are worried about the numbers, since there are CO2 (and methane and nitrous) emissions, the value of those permits in dollars per ton, the cost-effectiveness threshold, and what the valuation of the cap would be.  

For example, annual permit fees run about $25 per ton of VOC, CO, and NOx; the cost effectiveness threshold is $13,000 per ton, and credit are trading for about $11,000.  

But there's so much CO2 being released obviously those numbers would be one to three orders of magnitude lower.  If there is no "reasonableness" or "threshold" built into the system, a bunch of very bright permit engineers are going to lobby their bosses against such a system.  

So I guess they need some hand-holding, eh?  Folks, trust me, most of the Politicos don't know dookie about air permitting, and have little snappy terriers telling them what to think!

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Sidewalks ...

One of the problems we're starting to see is we can't build any sidewalks anymore - the cupboard is bare. Add trails and bike lanes to the mix. The grant money went "poof" and the costs exploded.

As for asphalt repairs, summer is "paving season" up north and you know what, they're not! A dab of cold patch on the big holes is all you get. This has nothing to do with cars, trucks, or buses running over the roads, just ice-heave.

As to rail, the northern winter really socked it to rail, a story that isn't sexy enough to make the media. Lack of infrastructure repairs and making bridge crossings higher and wider for larger trains is maybe 10 years behind where it should be.

And that includes passenger rail.

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Clean Air Act

To be fair, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 strengthened provisions and added many more, since the States were lackadaisical and there was a lot of what is called "slippage." I think it's a major milestone and many EU and worldwide standard use us as a model.

EPA staff - not the big policy wonks - said that much of what California and other states want to CO2 is some hard and fast rules and that they could do it. They backed the California CO2 regulation that the EPA Administrator rejected under OMB and White House pressure. I think you will find EPA staff very knowledgeable about how to harmonize CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) with ozone, particulate, and toxic air quality regulations.  -sam

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A couple comments ...

Thanks for the thought-provoking article. I am a little confused about forestry, however. In the US, the largest owner of forest is the federal government. Out west, a major problem is that forests have too much litter and under-story, which has resulted in massive forest fires. I hope these facts don't contradict what is being proposed.

Second, I personally wouldn't support any international offset program. The "date palm for carbon credits" scam was and is that, just a scam and an ecological disaster at that. I want to fix up my forests and plains in the USA.

Third a regional approach is needed. Texas where I live is a perfect example. It is one of the larger CO2 polluters - indeed larger than many countries - but the Fed only owns a few percent of the land. So any improvement in forestry offsets in Texas would be complicated because nearly all the land (except for Crockett National Forest in East Texas) is privately owned.

I could go on about the Indian Nations and other facets that make a simple idea very complicated in practice. I'm not being negative, just trying to think it out. To me, the largest threat to the forests are the ever-creeping farms and suburban communities, a true failure of national policy.
-sam

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Wow, Black Rust & Smut, Huh?

Agriculture has always been a big gamble in good times and now it looks even more prone to ruin because we went for mono-culture instead of regional "boutique" crops. Good article but depressing.

Some of us brewers and bakers are in a state of shock. Those prices hurt!  What are we supposed to do, grow our own grains because of the stupid system?

So great article - I think that fungus and insects will teach us a lesson in short order.  By the way, the spring crop plantings for the Mid-West were knocked back by weeks because of cold weather and rain - they just couldn't tractor the fields. I wouldn't pack a lot of significance into those statistics, other than as you say, we have no national reserve system.  /sam

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Right on

Thanks cavecanem, about the only think I haven't figured out are thick swarms of grasshoppers or locusts, since even the birds can't handle them.  

The idea about essential oils such as rosemary was also a good one. I don't "make" essential oils, I just throw some stuff together as an infusion, as sometimes those oils are way too strong.

I do have a word to say about some "bugs" such as caterpillars. I am a butterfly freak as well as an amateur gardener and whenever I plant certain crops certain caterpillars come to feed on them. So I'll pick the nasty ones like the Tomato Cutworm but plant a little heavy for a little "sacrificial food" for a few butterflies. Happy gardening!

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Units of measurement problem

Umm, I don't think CO2 is directly emitted by warming and rotting permafrost. Methane is. You can turn that into an equivalent mass of carbon or a greenhouse reactivity (e.g., 31 x) but it is NOT CO2 being emitted unless I am missing something.  

I'd like to see some numbers about what those emission potentials for permafrost methane are, since it is my understanding that freshwater and coastal swamps are much more productive at bubbling up methane. I respect UCAR as an organization but tend to wonder, since I don't have an extra couple hundred to through down on such academic papers.

And one has to ask, since ordinary swamps are such heavy producers of methane, yet we drained millions and millions of acres of it, why the planet didn't "exponentially" turn stone cold as some kind of reverse "tipping point." Perhaps it is because the atmospheric half-life of methane is much shorter than that for CO2?  -sam

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Retail rates artificially depressed?

Great post although I don't know about saying that residential electricity rates are artificially low. Ever since deregulation it seems to have gone sky-high. I think you're point is that if you build a powerplant today, it would be hard to sell juice without being higher than the good old prices we're used to - at least that makes sense to me.

Working against coal are rising costs of ... electricity! Coal mines not only require massive amounts of electricity but diesel as well. I find your conclusion that cheap coal may come out to be more expensive than cleaner alternatives such as natural gas and wind to be refreshing. I hadn't thought of that.  Thanks for the new concept!

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My prediction

My prediction is that most of us Merkins are tired of the old system and want a Democratic President, along with some serious discussion of (1) windfall profits taxes and (2) a carbon tax or some kind of cap & trade system.

This will blow the oil speculation bubble away but not the underlying economics of supply and demand, which are becoming all too evident. -sam

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Wait a minute

If we agree that Al Gore did not claim that Nargis was caused by global warming, being some right-wing hoax to vilify his name, as some hack journalism, then why all these silly side arguments?

Any respectable scientist knows that proving that hurricanes are "caused" by global warming can't be proven.

If you want to see a better example, take a look in our own backyard with all those tornadoes in America's mid-section. Now that's impressive, a record breaking year. Interestingly, the tornado activity is caused by cold air to the north mixing with warmer-than-usual air in the south.

This is a bad sign because polar melt-water will continue to cool the northern tier, while the south should continue to warm (aside from El Nino events). Global warming can partly explain some of that, at least.  -sam

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Regional aspects

Thanks for the great article about the woes of people up the the Northeast that require heating oil for energy during the winter. That is truly a massive problem. The people who really get nailed are the elderly living on low, fixed incomes. Occasionally social workers find elderly clients living in old houses with no fuel oil, one electric heater, and the inside temperature of about 45 degrees - in the living room next to the heater.

Sometimes I think Jabailo is living on nuclear boogers. Dude, this is serious stuff.

I'd like to see more articles about how different regions of the US are being impacted by the combination of global warming (which will cause cooling in the northern tier), hurricanes along southern coastal areas (insurance), a food crisis, and energy crisis, a mortgage crisis, and a general recession. Not a good combination different areas have a different mix of problems.

I live in lower coastal Texas with its high electrical costs from summer heat - the opposite of the Northeast. Due to deregulation gone wild, we have very high electrical costs in cents per kWh. But nothing tops the 42 cents that my friends are paying up on Block Island, RI. They rely on shipped fuel for a diesel generator station that sells it at a whopping 42 cents per kWh.

The millionaires like Billy Joel who live up "on the Block" don't think twice about paying 42 cents. The locals working in services simply cant afford it. In their case, it is the kids who suffer. Damn, we're so self-centered. It's not about us ... its about the kids and the elderly that we are literally making sick. Some country.
-sammie

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About those dams

I may be mistaken but most of those dams were built quite some time ago, and the salmon run was very good in the old days.  Plus think carefully, because taking out a dam can costs as much as it cost to build in the first place, and the opportunity for hydro-power and flood prevention is lost.  

I really don't think we know what all the causes are for the nearly complete collapse of the salmon fishery.  It could be some hypoxia caused by low flows during the drought periods ... to global warming effects ... to the effect of fish farms and pollution ... to more recreational fishing pressure.  

The collapse of the grouper fishery off Florida in the mid-80's seems similar but for very different circumstances (e.g., they don't spawn upstream in rivers and creeks).  There is was a clear case of commercial fishermen taking out the "brood stock" or large females that were prime restaurant fare.

I am not completely convinced that as Bio-D says, the salmon fishery collapsed just because of commercial over-fishing.  Nor am I convinced that the parallel to the lumberjacks (the timber industry) is a good one.  It is all rather shocking what has happened in a very short time, and I think it will be years before we get a good salmon run again, if not a decade or two.  /sam

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About Time

Thank you for the posting.  

I was working at a state air quality agency (TX) when emissions trading, netting, bubble permits, flexible permits, and offsets were invented.

You're right the money was in the permits and standards - the lawyers and not the market trading side.

How refreshing!

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Pass me the A-1 sauce, dear

Let me see here, we got an economic crisis, an energy crisis, a food crisis, and who knows what the hurricane season has to offer and you're worried about ... being a vegan? Well good for YOU!!

My goodness, way too much time on your hands. Maybe the big picture is needed one more time.

There's an economic crisis, an energy crisis, a food crisis, and who knows what the hurricane season has to offer.

'Nuff sed.

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A very strange question

Let's say I was concerned about methane releases from melting permafrost in the Arctic region. Well, could you mine the methane like a municipal landfill?  

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a "farmer"

Great writing is always a please to peruse.

Basically, a person is a farmer is he or she calls himself or herself one.  A refinement on that argument is if other farmers call you one, a title that takes years to earn.  End of story.

Many lie though, like absent landlords owning thousands of acres of agricultural lands which is all leased, subcontracted, and hedged on the commodity market.  That's no farmer - that's called a speculator or investor.

And then there's the jolly rancher, and watch out because many farm as well but they call themselves ranchers and are seen by others as ranchers.  The only exception I can think of is if you're into livestock such as dogs, you'd be accused of running a "puppy mill."

Sounds horrible!  

Can you imagine me saying "My name is Sam Wells and I'm a puppy mill operator"?  Not that I am but I think people would start throwing stuff at me if I sounded serious.  sigh

But in the US unless you do it all, cultivation to selling the product like at a farmer's market, you're really just an "agricultural jobber."  Yup, they hire tractor crews and fertilizer applicators and pesticide sprayers and pickers and cultivators and packagers and storage units and truckers (many farmers are into trucking).  

Whatever they call themselves ...

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Good Point RACC

I was just thinking about how battery and plug-in hybrid vehicles could actually improve the bottom line for dirty coal plants, and provide a justification for them to stay in commission longer.  

Be careful about what you ask for ...

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Wait a minute here

A fundamental flaw in the argument is that the US is exporting more ag products than ever, thanks to a cheap dollar and bumper crops. The problem is more Malthusian, in that people are running out of staples like rice, wheat, and corn. Many of those food riots have nothing to do with ADM, Cargill, or whoever you're trying to attack.

Thailand, India, and Vietnam are major rice producing areas yet due to population growth, have had to curtail exports, which drove up the price of rice 2-3 times. The US is not an active player in those markets at all. There is some good information about the topic out there if you'd research it.

If you want to talk about the domestic/internal ag economics with ethanol production, you have a point, and there has been some deleterious effect on the Mexican corn market as well. But basically we're screwing ourselves - not causing food riots elsewhere in the world.

Has market globalization and a recession had an impact? That's a topic for another blog but what I think you'll see is that many overseas ag producers protect their crops with subsidies, caps, and rent controls. Of course, "free trade" destroys all that and throws the system out of whack.

If you want to lectured about how great NAFTA is, just ask a Mexican what the price of masa and corn tortillas is today.  -sam

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Mode Choice Splits

There is a field of math - used as part of the 4-part transportation models - which allocates transportation trips between car, bus, rail, bike, pedestrian, and other forms.  If you don't have rail you're obviously limited, and good bus systems can be hard to find. But those decisions are called "mode choice."

Surveys prove that the more modes you offer the more people will take the alternatives.

And no, Jon, I wouldn't have the that Greenspan job for all the money in the world.  I'm just a dumb redneck surfer hippie from South Texas.  

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Trains ...

If you hadn't read the papers, freight trains are being parked because of lack of shipping, due to the recession. Only coal and agricultural products are moving very well. Intermodal fast-trains are being hit the worst.

Passenger trains seem to be gaining some traction especially in some cities such as Austin with light rail, although Am-Trak is a complete disaster except for the core runs in Bos-Wash and maybe Chicago midwest.

Unfortunately when the economy is off and there is less tax revenue from motor fuels, mass transit of all kinds take a big hit because of the funding formula. Having a "tax holiday" on the federal motor fuel tax would be a disaster for funding mass transit including the buses. Nice try, Mr. McCain but it shows a complete lack of knowledge about transportation planning.

Implications for barge and ferry operations, which are usually not federally funded, are unknown. I know that Seattle is having a very hard time with its large public ferry operations, though.  -sam

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Wind sheer

Well for Jabailo that was a very smart comment about differentials.  Obviously if there was a huge high pressure cell of hot temperatures over the entire Atlantic, you'd never ever see a hurricane form.

The idea with global warming is that the heat can, if not reflected and absorbed by atmospheric dust and aerosol to dim its strength, will evaporate more ocean water into the lower atmosphere. There are many good models to predict this, and the reason why Australia is "jonesing" right now is because of persistent high pressure and resulting drought. There is no mechanism to raise the air column to cool it (adiabatic lapse rate) and form water droplets, since it is capped by miles of descending hot air.

Aha! We need a trigger of some kind to take that thermal energy and moisture and throw it up to 15,000 feet in the atmosphere (some hurricanes top out at about 20,000 feet). In fact, Dr. Masters at Weather Underground once mentioned a hurricane hunter flight where the eye core temperature was nearly the same as at sea flight level (500 feet) as that at 10,000 feet, about 85 degrees F. The cloud tops around eye had cooled to amazingly low temperatures near freezing. [If you can check out the flight videos of the lightning surrounding the inside of a huge hurricane eye wall, amazing stuff.]

Nothing is easy in this hurricane game. Lots of people have gotten egg on their faces by making bold, unproven statements. Me too ... sheesh.  Glad Dr. Emmanuel is still learning as well.  

samOn Link between climate change and stronger hurricanes becomes fuzzier posted 1 year, 7 months ago 4 Responses

Dude, it's been illegal since 2002!

I have to wonder about all this because the NMFS made finning sharks an offense back in 2002, including trans-shipment of any shark fins without their corresponding carcasses.  

There may be some minor loophole in the legal language of the Shark Finning Prohibition Act of 2000 or some NMFS 2002 regulations that allowed some foreign boats "not under US jurisdiction" to trans-ship shark fins - but the main point is that the practice by US fishermen in the EEZ is extremely limited and restricted to a very few fish pirates.

So I think this is "much ado about nothing."  You all act like it is the end of civilization but thanks to conservation efforts, the sharks are coming back nicely. The notable exceptions are (a) long-line fishing and (b) menhaden "pogie" ships. I don't think you've done your research here, and question your motives, beyond simply cleaning up some minor and slightly errant legalese that was not intended in the first place.
-sam

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Machete chunk bait

For those of you who don't fish, there is no way to catch a fish with a machete, a long knife. You catch fish some other ways and use a knife to cut the bait into chunks for fishing other fish on a hook. A machete would be a horrible knife for the job but whatever.

Now using a sports fish for chunk bait is a major no-no. But it is relatively infrequent and only a few fish pirates do that kind of thing. What happens is that under-sized fish, be it a grouper or salmon or whatever, are indeed used as bait for bigger fish sometimes. When caught the perps usually pay a very severe price. Here's the one-sentence story:

"In Sutter County, a man was using a machete and a large piece of cloth to catch salmon at the river's edge."

I'd say the man was insane and the story really didn't need mention.

For comical value though, it worked.  -sammie

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save the tomato!

Tomatoes are the top crop for recreational gardeners in the US. No other plant comes close. I'd sure hate to see the market taken over by just a few companies selling mono-culture hybrids.

Know how I get my seeds?  Go down to the local farmer's market and buy some organic tomatoes. Try the heirloom goldens and rare Italians - if you really like a few for color or taste, save one or two for seeding. Simply scoop out the seeds with a small spoon onto an old newspaper, towel, etc.

Of course, you might need instead gratification, ini which case you'd try FedCo or one of the Internet seed sellers (some are very expensive).

OK NAME THAT MUSICIAN.

Who wrote "Homegrown Tomatoes"?  Sing along now...

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small hydro

The old mill wheels - the ones not converted to steam power at least - turned at very slow RPM and did not work well for spinning up a generator. The principle of using "hydraulic head" such as to squirt water out the bottom of a dam became popular by the Civil War and sometime thereafter. Early designs were simple a propeller connected to a drive shaft, not exactly like a turbine but close.  

However, the dams messed up the fish that spawned up the rivers and we're still seeing the consequences today. Enviros talk about blowing up dams so that the Atlantic and Pacific salmon would come back, for example. Small hydro could be a solution ... or aggravate a problem that has been growing for over a century.  

But there may be ways such as to collect water in a 24-inch intake pipe and simply run the pipe downhill until you get about a 150-foot drop. The force of that water coming out the end would be tremendous - and indeed one would have to build a capture weir because the force of the water could even wear down rocks. Indeed it will act as a powerful siphon (any beer brewer would know this). A high-speed hydro-turbine would be used at the business end of the pipe. Then in the weir one could also make electricity from the slower flow from the weir to the receiving waters.

It should be noted that any of this takes a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers and the lead state agency. But if we can get rid of dams or improve them with fish ladders, while adding micro-hydro in a way that is environmentally benign, that would be great.  -sammie

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Let's be fair

The fastest I have ever seen EPA rulemaking is about 9 months. An advanced notice of proprsed rulemaking (ANPR) can take 2-4 years to final rule, but even if done as quickly as possible today, the next administration would end up signing any new rule. As such, the reference to "shunting" the rule on purpose was unfair.

I realize that "time's a-wasting" and we need to regulate CO2 as quickly as possible. However the ANPR option was always used as a means to prevent lawsuits. In the case of locomotive and marine engines, the process worked. Which would you prefer, the California ARB approach where fast rules end up in federal district court for years or a slower method that gets what you want?  

If you want to berate the Bush Administration for dragging its feet on climate change, well that's a very old story line. To be honest though, a congressional bill to reauthorize the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 might have opened up the law to major stripping and weakening by special interests, and regulating CO2 would probably be vetoed by the President anyway.

See you about this time next year!  -sammie

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Tongue in cheek

I was being a little facetious when I said "CFL sucks." I've got them everywhere except for a rusted out porch light and the refrigerator.  

The point about CFL is that they don't generate heat, which is wasted energy. That means lower electric bills. If you count up all the residential light fixtures in the US it's a huge deal - don't get me wrong - but to me and my household it's no big savings as claimed.

I'm going to upgrade to a heat pump or advanced HVAC unit instead of the 1970 air conditioner so that will save TONS of money. This means a lot in 100-degree territories like Texas. Over about 90 F my computer servers might start frying.

So with all deference to Mr. Romm's article, on one hand we have this mandate for CFL which really doesn't help me personally, but on the other have HUGE energy draws for HVAC, water heating, and other large appliances. I see little help there except some communities have a rebate program based on CEER or something of that ilk. Not here in my town, though.  -sam

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It gets worse than that ...

Many inventories report individual species such as CO2, CH4 (methane), and N20 (nitrous). However, one can also compute Global Warming Potential (GWP) by combining them together. So CO2 has a GWP of 1 but methane has 62 times the warming potential (20-year lifetime); N20 can be 275x.  These are included in the IPCC and EPA protocols and are very frustrating sometimes, a source of confusion as well. Some are pre-adjusted and some are not. Obviously, with N20 there is no carbon equivalent ... haha! -sam

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Yes indeed

Good to hear somebody with an appreciation of the subject of aerosols. I would be hesitant to say that black carbon (also black soot or BS, sometimes elemental carbon or EC) takes away anything from the CO2 pathways.

But I was surprised that when our company applied for contracts to measure transportation releases of particulate aerosols for several large federal agencies, all the bids were pulled and none were funded. Whaaaaaaat?

The way of the future for diesel transportation is low sulfur fuels for less sulfate and particulate filters [and similar technologies] for the exhausts - by 2014 we'll be seeing many on the road and used off-road in the US.

When I was on an EPA committee regarding emissions inventories for fine particulate one of the fascinating studies was done to show that many small, prescribed fires used to thin forests were much better than uncontrolled wildfires. Geogenic and biogenic aerosol continues to be a large problem in any country.

Then here's one for the Gristers. Bio-aerosols from cattle, hog, and other CAFO's not only carry some nasties, but some of the most potent and drug resistant diseases we know. Mid-West Research, Texas A&M, and EPA-Research Triangle Park did a bunch of work on that. Stay away from those boogers - and those partly treated wastewater systems for golf courses ain't too dang healthy either!

If anything gets swept up into the transport layer above 30 meters it can go a long, long way.  /sam

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Baseline EI and Rate-Based Reductions

I hear some wonderful ideas and some hand-waving but in my mind, we should do a baseline emissions inventory for CO2, methane, and N20 first.  I don't think we'll have the allocation problem because CO2 is a function of BTU and carbon content, and other greenhouse gases be measured very well. For Kyoto, EU, and EPA the baseline year was 2000 but whatever, we need some very strong numbers and no "allocations" such as for grandfather permits.

A mass emission cap and trade program then says "OK, by this date give me a 15% reduction," or something like that.  

This allows the regulated industry (hopefully not consumers) to reduce emissions or buy some from another company that has banked extra reductions.  Just as with any new source permit, one would have to buy credits in order to construct and operate a facility, since no doing so would create excess emissions.

There is no auction and no money exchanged unless one cannot meet the percentage reduction targets.

How hard is that? Occam's Razor says to keep it simple. I fail to see why we need to debate elaborate schemes that are too hard to explain and too hard to understand.  

Then there's what is called a "pull ahead" for wayward industries that are known to have best available retrofit equipment and best available technology. Again, no cap or auction required. The rate of reduction over time is simply steeper. Think coal here.

Of course, nothing is that simple. If hundreds of people on a US island require a diesel generator and can't reduce CO2, what are you going to do, kill the people in the minus 40 degree weather? Of course not. You're not going to auction or allocate them; you're going to hand out exemptions.

And I think that's what environmentalists fear the most, that any system even as simple as mine would require special cases, temporary delays, and potential loop-holes. Well that's just a fact of being a regulator.  Caps, auctions, and international trades (especially to palm oil plantations) is not the way to business though, none of it.
-sam

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Snob Terror Potential?

I don't thing that the Cape Wind - the Nantucket offshore wind farm project - is a good comparison. Opposition is not about a snob's views or the risk of the potential conflagration from a terrorist strike. But the project will kill a whole bunch of fish and restrict fishing and recreational boating, among other sins. Cape Wind will not interfere with boating and could actually improve the fishing.

But the restriction zones - done to protect the facility from terrorists and madmen - will be quite large and each LNG tanker will have one-mile separation zones even while inbound from Montauk all the way to the LNG terminal. It would basically turn Long Island Sound into a demilitarized zone, a DMZ if you will.

Still those aren't the main reasons to object to Broadwater. On Feds approve floating liquefied-natural-gas terminal in Long Island Sound posted 1 year, 8 months ago 12 Responses

Boutique fuels, cont.

Bio-diesel and ethanol are and always will be boutique fuels and I wish we would get over it. By the term "boutique" I mean small terminals, small markets, and small volumes. It's not so much the economics and subsidies as that the infrastructure will never work. You will never see bio-diesel and 90% ethanol sold in gas pumps all over the US because we're not hard-wired for it. Never work.

Let's not make fun of it or belittle it, since bio-diesel does hold some promise and ethanol isn't a bad oxygenate for gasoline. Many enviros have a dim view of any bio-fuels - I guess this article is just sticking the knife in deeper?

May I end by switching the subject to gasoline and ethanol. You all know that MTBE was phased-out because of concerns about groundwater toxicity (I hope). Other compounds such as TAME, ETBE, and so forth were so expensive they could not be marketed (check out Ethyl Corporation). So ethanol became the de facto required oxygenate for gasoline motor fuels, usually blended up to 10%.

Folks, we need to lower gasoline and ethanol oxygenate usage, plain and simple. If we can figure out some other synthetic oxygenate (which reduces carbon monoxide) that would be wonderful.

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How 'bout the Jagarundi?

There are several wild cats down here, one being the Jagarundi.  Magnificent cat, tho' rarely seen.  

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I'm trying to tell ya ...

It is illegal in the US to fin a shark so no change in that rule is needed.

If you want better enforcement by the Coast Guard, please get the troops out of Iraq and double the size of the Coast Guard to protect our shores and fisheries.  

The fact is that the Coast Guard has caught several large illegal shipments done with "mother ships." In this case they did not win on appeals - not because of the law but because of poor surveillance.  

Just because you make another darn law, put up a sign, and talk about it does not make an effective strategy in the real world.  -sam

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We're outta cash, bro'

My point is that we could not afford the War in Iraq, are losing in Afghanistan (the real war), and are in a horrible recession. We're dead broke. Print more paper dollars and the price of the currency goes down and the commodities go up.  Oh, THAT'S why oil is over $100. No duh.

If President Bush blew our collective wad of money on a war but it could have financed so many good things like climate change and education, that is still called ... blowing your wad!

The think-tank folks say that "fixing global warming is cheap" simply must face the present condition that we're slap out of money. Poof, it's gone. You can credit Mr. Bush for a slight down-tick in US global warming gases simply because the economy has gone to pot.  /sammie

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more red tide?

I did read about the red-tide blooms off Tasmania.  It should be clarified that most all these diatoms, dinoflagellates, and algae have existed since time immemorial, and that they periodically bloom such as when fertilized by high-iron dust settling from the atmosphere. That's a suspected trigger for red tide blooms in the Gulf of Mexico. Usually the bloom is from one non-toxic kind of algae that is feasted upon by another predator; as the predator dies certain toxins and neurotoxins are released into the waters and even the atmosphere.

I'm not aware, however, of a red tide or "dead zone" of causing regulators to change what is called the Total Annual Catch, of species-specific TAC.  Only in cases where seafood becomes contaminated and may present dangers to consumers are temporary bans put in place.  We see these bans all the time in the form of restrictions on gathering oysters, which may contain E. coli or V. vulnificus.  

The interesting part of the story is whether Climate Change is causing the blooms of Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB) to be of greater areal size, duration, concentration, and periodicity (happening more often). Some studies done by Mote Marine in Florida do seem to bear out this conclusion, although warming was also confounded by point and non-point water pollution and deposition from the Saharan dust layer.  

And more tropical biomass seems to be transported further north along the Gulf Stream as well, include some brown tides and algal types not common to the Northeast. In fact we're seeing all kinds of crazy critters such as the manatee, Portuguese Man-O-War, and tropical dolphin-fish. I have not studied the West Coast as well but was surprised to learn about Humboldt Squid as far north as Dutch Harbor, Alaska. To me it does have all the appearances that Climate Change is changing the ocean in ways that we had least suspected, and the consequences are quite profound and shocking.  

Yer philosopher-comedian,
sam

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Jeff Masters sez ...

Jeff Masters sez that with any global warming, evaporation from the oceans will cause some interesting results. This water vapor can be estimated fairly well in at least a steady-state manner - and it is HUGE.

The question is the amount of aerosol in the water vapor plumes, and where the water vapor plumes go.  Dry areas may end up with "dry" lightning storms that create more wildfire, and some coastal water may see more tropical cyclone action.

Or perchance the Bermuda and Continental high pressure cells this summer will become so embedded that it will be like Australia, hot and no rain at all. I've given up on prognosticating just because it's gotten so darn weird. -sammie

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Why allow trading at all?

Hate to sound like a stick in the mud, but trading doesn't work and always leads to corruption, bad policy, and it undercuts needed gains in the system.  Just do caps with no trading.  Seems simple to me!  Why on Earth should we even consider market trading?  It really doesn't work.  It was a sham even with sulfur dioxide.  Nobody is trading NOx except a few weirdos.  Why do it?  You have just given me another reason to avoid the entire cap and trade system.  Just give us a limit let's be done with it - the best one yet.  /sam

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opinion changing maybe

The folks I talk to up in that area of the Northeast seem to be much more positive on wind turbines.  Rhode Island is looking into it very hard. I know that the Kennedy Clan doesn't want the project but they might be a minority of opinion now.

Enviro opinion has shifted over the last year, and quite dramatically. Concerns about birds are much more remote although I still have reservations about wind turbines on the lower Texas coast, the confluence of three bird migration flyways. Outside that area I'm all for them.

The big issue is the marine environment with the cabling, hazards, and so forth. Construction is 2-3 times more expensive (do we care?). Corrosion would be a extreme. This isn't a nice wetland in Denmark; this would be the first offshore wind turbine farm in the US.  /sam

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Fond memories

Hey Eric I distinctly remember the bluffs of northern Long Island across from Clinton, and wondered what those people were thinking over there.  

Glad to hear about another swamp Yankee and I hope our paths cross again one day.  

And Mr. Bailo, you do know that lobsters taste better of worse depending on condition, water quality, and their molting cycle, right? Some say the reef and phase of the moon as well. Size has little to do with it. My biggest, about 4.5 pounds, was very good except the claw meat was reserved for lobster salad because they can get rubbery. I do detect a novice who doesn't know his tamale. The 1-pounders are known as "chix," "twins," or "culls" (one claw missing) but do sell OK, not that they sell any better - just a cheaper buyer I suppose.  Tamale, try it bro.  -sam

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Global market; pogies

It is hard to figure out what any company buys these days since it's a global economy - speaking of McDonald's and Pacific Cod. Sadly, even that fishery off Alaska if highly regulated, relies on huge factory ships, and uses gear such as fish pots and long-lines. I truly "sustainable" fishery would be one man and one fishing pole on a boat ... making a living ... selling good product ... and fishing in numbers so as to not threaten the species. My bad to using a word more commonly applied to things that at least seem to "sustain."

Now lets talk pogies! Those are menhaden, another factory fish, a large, very greasy, fat minnow. A company called Omega used to fish them mostly in the Chesapeake and decimated all the fishing there, and have concentrated their efforts off Louisiana. Huge nets worth millions of dollars are used to coral giant schools of pogies that are located from aircraft. The net is so heavy with fish that special pumps are used to vacuum the fish into the ship's hold.

These pogies are then turned into oil (refined) and the scraps pressed and sold as fertilizer and mulch. Thus you get medicinal grade fish oil high in omega-3, fish emulsion for plant fertilizer, and even a food additive for the hog industry (yucko).

I thought you might find that interesting ... I became interested when some of us down in Texas were looking at a request by Omega to expand into Texas waters ... something like 31 million pounds of pogies a year and that is a "small" catch! The issues were by-catch (mainly black-tip shark), which even at 2-4% is high numbers. Second, by removing natural bait from the waters, predator and sport fish would decline because they'd have to feed somewhere else. Ah, those little gel caps don't seem so benign anymore, do they?  -sam

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sustainable fisheries, cont.

What happens is that the media, apparently including Grist, has sold the idea that all fish are over-fished all over the globe.  The is very far from true (re: comment that the words "fish" and "sustainable" do not belong together).

Last I checked the Pacific cod fishery off Alaska was certified sustainable. That's where McDonald's gets more of it fish for its fish sandwiches.

Red snapper in the NW Gulf of Mexico are sustainable although the NMFS does not want to admit this, because shrimping is bad (I admit the by-catch).

Success stories include the Striped Bass and sea scallop off New England.  And incredibly, the lobster fishery off Maine has been growing each year.  

Sure, many fish species have been depopulated but as trawlers and factory ships are phased out, some remarkable come-back are occurring.  One interesting "new" fishery are three kinds of squid off the California coast (including the most Humbolt Squid).

Dogfish - that's a good one.  The Brits use them mainly for "fish and chips" and they are the ugliest kind of shark you ever saw ... and there are millions of them infesting our Atlantic shores eating up all the cod and depleted species with a vengeance.

Where mariculture (shellfish aquaculture) is blooming in some areas, such as oysters from Texas, mussels in Maine and Canada, and quahogs off Martha's Vineyard.  

But we only hear about the disasters, since that is what sells print these days. To be sure, fish is meat.  It is a very good kind of light meat on small doses, far better than heavy beef (which is nearly indigestible).

You Grist readers don't need to attempt changing my mind but I am trying to get you to open up your minds to the realities of the science and the situation. There are glimmers of hope out there, some success stories, and indeed a few sustainable fisheries.  Thanks!
sam

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the commie thang

Good start on the concept. Many of the denialist persuasion do view climate change as being ultra liberal Al Gore smack, something to be defended against like the devil. But even such crude generalities really aren't worth squat.

Fact is, some people just don't want to believe in climate change. Free country I guess.

The main argument is not over whether it exists or that man-made emissions contribute to global warming, but how to finance it without ruining the economy - the economy as we know it today and not some vision created by a pot-smoking professor at Stamford (giggles and illegal smiles here). On the subject of economics most environmentalists really suck except for the few like Joe Romm who really know their beans.

And money can be a deal-breaker. If you have something like thermal heat efficiency products that save money, you will win. If you start talking about trillions in new investment you're pretty much dead in the water - Bush spent all the money already. Our economy is one stroke away from being in the morgue. Goodness knows if the economy goes so bad the foreigners might start buying our power infrastructure and doing clean technologies on their own. Who knows? We're broke.

Intellectually, we're broke too. Most all of the new technologies for doing something about clean energy (and not talking about it) come from places like Australia, Europe, and the Far East. Ah, now you're getting a clue. Taken together with byzantine laws passed over a century or so we're basically screwed because we have to undo so much just to make very simple things work. That's why we ended up with a failed ethanol strategy, after all. -sam

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The biggest solar collector ...

The biggest solar collector is the ocean.  Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a promising technology to use the ocean surface waters and very deep waters as a giant heat pump. Much of the truly deep water is polar melt water that cycles through the oceans. For coastal areas with access to deep water, OTEC is certainly promising.

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An editor please?

Sure would be nice if we could edit our stuff on Grist but I think you can figure out my salient points.  Peace,
/sam

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Bio-diesel

I don't know if bio-diesel advocates ever (realistically) claimed they could replace conventional fuels. Instead it was meant as a boutique fuel so as to diversify the market.  

For example the Bahamian government figured it was collecting over 300,000 gallons of waste cooking oil a year, and all of that was being transported to their landfills. What a waste! If some entrepreneur wanted to turn that into bio-diesel that would be great.  It's a drop in the bucket but every drop helps.

So good on the Brits for capitalizing on at least something ... that waste chicken fat would have been rendered and the scrap dumped, anyway. Do I detect some technology snobs here?  

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Costs of mass transit

If you think highways are expensive, millions a mile and about 7 million an overpass, try rail of any kind. Good comment about laying metal-on-metal rail systems, which cost many millions more a mile. Hey let's really blow our wad and get Mag-Lev everywhere for tens of billions for just a starter kit?

I've written and blogged about this many times.  Dallas and LA tried rail transit and the congestion got worse. The issue with old city mass rail transit is simply to keep them from falling apart!

And that's the rub. Our country went on a building spree and we forgot to invest in the old bridges, rail lines, and stuff mysteriously called "infrastructure." A bridge in Minnesota fell into the water not too long ago. About 70 percent of our bridges are beyond their useful life or have structural problems. Folks, we have to maintain what we have today before we have these Jetson visions of the future.
-sam

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Huh?

I don't know if any of the claims made in the referring article have one iota of scientific analysis or statistics, but some fisheries have been mightily impacted by warming waters and increased carbonic acid inputs.  To prove that with numbers might take several years and a few million bucks, using independent sources of data.  

But when I hear of jumbo squid in Alaska or Portuguese Man-O-War jellyfish off New England I have to pause and say something truly weird is happening and we don't know what it is.

Mostly, we killed off the fishing by catching too many, which applies to Hawaii as much as anywhere.  The extent to which climate change makes it worse (or better) is extremely difficult to tease out of the data.  -sam

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Good point Tasermons

ERCOT is not all that bad, although periodically investigated for this and that, and is unique because it covers most of Texas as a single electrical reliability authority.  Wind power is expected to bring more capacity online and as you may recall, Texas has more wind generation than California or any other state (or electric reliability council).  

It might still be winter but in Texas we get some warm temperatures so heating and cooling is no longer necessary.  The ERCOT sends a message that demand is down in certain parts of its market so some base-load generators are allowed to "spin down."  Spring (even if still winter) is when many power utilities perform maintenance anyway, before the air conditioning season which is the max usage.  

So if a minor shot of cool air came in but did not have any wind behind it, there could be a problem because lots of people turned on their electric heaters. ERCOT was running on very marginal loads at the time and it was no fault that the wind turbines output less power when more was needed.  I am not sure of the details but perhaps ERCOT felt it was cheaper and simpler to pay some large industrial users to curtail electric consumption rather than importing expensive electricity from outside the grid.  

The facts are than in the "dog days of summer" when winds are slack and temperatures are above 100, wind energy would not have been there to help save the day.  Yup, if not for all those wind turbines, the lights would have gone off.  Saved the day, really.  

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risk assessment

I saw an interesting article done by Texas A&M being published in a journal called Risk Assessment.  I didn't read it completely but the argument was that the more people are educated about Climate Change, the less they do about it.  This a something of a paradox because in theory, education should motivate people to do more about the situation.  Us wild and crazy Americans sure are something else.

After reading that article I came across all these nice goals that we just stop all CO2 emissions at once and thought "gee, dream on teenage queen."  It reminded me of a ozone dispersion model of Houston that showed if all ozone precursors were zero, no cars or industry, ozone would still occur.  

Telling the public things like this - that warming  and ozone will still happen even if all emissions were stopped - isn't very smart PR, is it?  

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immense risk

True, I am not one in favor of draconian, top-down regulations. But the situation with tanker ships and barges is that even small spills and releases can have a horrendous impact on the environment, and there is no "acceptable level" of discharge. It's not all about requiring double hulls and handling legal claims but prevention, training, and spill response.

Further, this is not just a "silly American law" but is part of an international set of regulations for all tanker ships, where single-hull tankers are to be converted or scrapped by 2026 (MARPOL 73/78). It should be acknowledged that many lobbyists from the tanker operators participated in the rulemaking and supported it.

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I dunno bruddah ...

Bio-diesel is not green and that track house there with no greenery is butt ugly.  The architecture screams "car" all over it.  I love green construction and remodeling but those couple of things I see in the picture kinda turn me off.  I mean that with no disrespect, sir.  /sam

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Whale sharks 'n' Tree Frogs

The whale shark is a plankton eater that is quite docile so you meant to say the Orca, the Killer Whale, which is more common not in the upper Gulf of Mex but the Atlantic and Carribe especially off Brazil - different from the ones off the Pacific and the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

The frogs I feel bad about.  Last year we had some good rains and we had three kinds of peepers singing at night: the toads, a water frog, and a kind of tree frog.  There are hardly any left here in our little area of south Texas; I could count the male calls on one hand.  No peepers this year so far and it was been warmer than normal but very dry.  

We live in very strange times my friends.

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good article on shark "highways"

I really liked the link to the shark story ... thanks Grist!

I think the new research underscores the fact we don't know very much about sharks, either inshore, offshore, or deepwater, and how they migrate.  

The pelagic shark probably most endangered in the Gulf on Mexico is the Mako ... no clue as to where they spawn ... they seem feed right in tight with the tuna ... some are actually prize catches for the fighting and jumping ability.

A word about the US regulations:  finning a shark of any kind is highly illegal and any fins cannot be bought or sold in the US - the ingredients for sharkfin soup are imported from the Orient.

Seems like most of the good tuna and shark research is in the Pacific though.  -sammie

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Rationing?

One of the aspects that troubles me is that it is being suggested that we (1) tax the heck out of gasoline and diesel so people will use less of it, yet would consider (2) some kind of credit card for the po' people, even by pirate banks.  That's complete fruit-cake nuts, IMHO. Why not (3) just ration the stuff, just as ludicrous.

You haven't considered that any means of controlling energy and fossil fuels should be (4) regulated by regulating the companies, refiners, importers, and Big Oil - as opposed to taxing the people.  Several studies have noted that previous regulation of Big Oil dropped the amount of capital for new exploration and new rigs.  It was considered bad back then but might appeal to you these days as an effective way to reduce fossil fuel mining and extraction.  

Unfortunately that tactic also has issues, since (5) many Big Oil and Dirty Coal companies are investing in clean power of some kind, even if it involves hanging out at the government trough.  

So it's complicated machinery but I don't see how or why one should slap a tax on the consumers, especially in a recession when we're giving away free money.  /sam

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Causality

As a scientist you should know that causation comes in many forms with many qualifiers, and to say that man-made CO2 is "causing" climate change is not exactly a truth that can be debated. At the end of the day you end up with a plausible partial explanation that can be backed by a scientific body, as in a vote where most would agree and some do not.

Mere correlation does not prove causation and that is a major point most non-scientific do not get.  Yes, more CO2 from anthropogenic sources such as smokestacks and tailpipes do correlate very well. But geogenic and biogenic sources contribute massive amounts as well, and the trend has been for the climate to warm if you look at estimated temperatures periods of over thousands of years.

Partial, incremental, plausible causation is one of the hardest to prove. It is not as simple as testing a hypothesis against a room full of experts and wonks. If the Earth was in fact warming on its own without the benefit of us humans, then those "feedback loops" would exist at least in elementary form. In fact, major shifts in global climate such as in the dinosaur ages have absolutely nothing to do with anthropogenic inputs:  a good part of the northern US used to be covered in glaciers for example, after a period of jungle-like tropical growth.

To date, the consensus is that man-made inputs of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have pushed the envelope to move climate change faster that what we had expected. This is a very critical point, that man-mad inputs have somehow acted in a manner that accelerated global warming. But to say that "man caused climate change and global warming" would be enough to expose you as an outright fraud and possibly an idiot.

What has happened over the last 25 years is that scientists have begun to bring some clarity to climate change issues regarding partial correlation, causation, interactions, and effects. Has anything been "proven"? Again I would have to say the evidence is overwhelming to such a degree that objectors have little ground to argue aside from exceptions to the rule, such as anomalies that show climate cooling.

In most cases of applied science, as opposed to our theoretical cousins, having some clarity and a preponderance of evidence is what matters. Good article, sir.
/sammie

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Help me here

I like in a place where we get maybe 280 days of sunshine a year at latitude 26 but I've priced some solar-electric units and each array or box seems like $10,000. Two or three would be required to do the job right but no way I can afford that much as a Joe Six-Pack. So the price pay-back seems like 30 years or something as compared to just paying the coal and gas burners (the electric companies).

For about a thousand bucks I can make me a redneck solar water heater no problem, all depending if I want an expensive rainwater collection cistern or what I can clean-salvage.  

So My point is that sure, lots of energy out there, lots of stuff you can buy, but can you afford it especially in a recession? Heck man, some of my brothers went back to burning wood up north it was so bad this winter.  /sammie

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Good catch Canis

The ice season was bad last year and the ice broke up during a big storm when a small fleet of boats were up on the Harp Seal grounds. The storm piled the ice up in the channels so the fleet was stuck for I think 30 days. It cost millions to get those boats out of there, some by helicopter and some by ice breaker. They did not have a good year on the harvest, and it sounds like the pups had a hard time too.

All I say is the the Law of Unintended Consequences (my invention, darn it!) works in mysterious ways.  Let's take the Atlantic Striper, a sea bass famed for its sporting fight. They came back from seriously depleted stocks then to eating up about everything inshore, including lobsters, flounder, cod, shad, crabs, bait fish, and so forth. Catches of 4-foot long stripers are not uncommon. So while environmentalists hailed the come-back of the striper as a signal that their rules were working great, other stocks were depleted by this "Franken-Fish."

Oops, no offense there Al Franken!
-sammie

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Flaws in the Analysis

Most all of the work that went into this report are subjective in the extreme and should have been rejected as junk science. Even the authors admitted that more work would be necessary to compile a better map of human encroachment on the oceans.

So what if ships and boats sailed over the oceans, that surely does not harm it. The entire study sends the wrong message that we really know what's happening in the ocean and that was a horrible thing to say. We know more about outer space than we know about out own freaking oceans.

I agree that some coastal areas have pollution problems, reef damage, and man-made construction but the study just plopped a bunch of "human activity" themes over a GIS program and let her rip:  gosh, 41% of the oceans are unfit and no good anymore.

That my friends is voodoo science of the worst sort. /sammieOn Nearly all of world's oceans tainted by human activity, says study posted 1 year, 9 months ago 4 Responses

energy and environment

Our system is a little screwy because environment and energy are viewed as being two very different things - good point in the previous post by CE.  

With CO2 we have a situation that when talking of carbon-based fuels, environment IS energy, since stack emissions are directly related to carbon content of the fuel (coal, natural gas, refined crude oil products).  So to properly do things right, we need an orchestrated plan for enabling bills and appropriations for EPA and DOE at the same time ... otherwise we will have failed.  -sam

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Monitoring Part Deaux

Thanks Green Mom for the insights and to Gar Lipow, we're talking not about money, policy, or any voodoo like that, but what comes out the stacks, vents, monitors, exhaust pipes, and any area sources such as open fires. Emission are recorded in PPM or percent and if you know the flow rate and how to correct it for standard conditions (density, temperature, oxygen, humidity, calibration, etc.) you can calculation CO2 in terms of mass (grams, pounds, short tons, or metric tons). I'm not getting down on you but that's how the job gets done when measuring emissions against a "cap."

So it is an issue because not but a few very large industrial sources have automated CEM technology installed, continuous emission monitoring. Other methods are estimated, mass balance, AP-42 (an EPA "cook-book"), and empirical models (the latter used for mobile sources especially). The range of error with a CEM is one standard deviation but with the other methods it could be plus or minus 15 to 30 percent ... and I freely admit that as an emissions inventory planner and scientist,

So I guess I would have to say that unlike how the states and EPA have worked out measuring the traditional pollutants known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), anybody who says we really know how much CO2 is being emitted today is full of baloney.  

The only saving grace is that some standardization has happened, so imperfect methods are used in a relative sense. This method is not good for absolute numbers but is OK for defining "rate of progress" as to reducing emissions but not for the purposes of establishing a cap.  /sam

Onward through the fog

Good point, but IPCC said ice model was bad

I think any prediction a century out is rather bogus, but it is true the rate of existing erosion of arctic ice and northern glacial ice is at a much faster rate than anticipated by IPCC.

One thing causes me some difficulty because most polar ice melt models assume the Earth is flat; that is, if "x" many billion tons of glacier ice melts, the ocean would rise uniformly as "y" in millimeters per year, similar to pouring water into a cookie sheet for baking.

Well the Earth is not flat, nor is it perfectly spherical. Trust me, the ocean turns out to be quite lumpy.
-sam

Onward through the fog

Long term problem

Let's not just blame sub-prime for everything, since what is happening today has been building up for about 40 years (good column in Washington Post today). Even with good credit, Americans increasingly find themselves where they really can't afford their dwellings. It used to be that you could but a house with 20% down and pay it off over 30 years in payments no more than 25% of you annual income. Honestly, can anyone do that these days, including home insurance, mortgage insurance, interest, and property taxes?

-sammie
870 square foot house, $205,000

Onward through the fog

Could be true ...

Suzannah, I certainly don't have any facts for ocean fishing outside the US waters, and it could well be that some operators (fish factory captains) manipulate the flag of convenience to their advantage. I just don't have the facts and that's my lacking, I will readily admit.

Due to the Magnuson Act, foreign flagged ships cannot fish in the EEZ of the Unites States. Period.

Interestingly, US-flagged fishing boats have to comply with any US and foreign regulations, and the Coast Guard and bust US boats even outside the EEZ.  

That happened recently in a story about small US boats catching queen conch and spiny lobster in the Bahamas and Caribbean and taking them to a "mother ship" which boxed hundreds of tons of them as "Product of Columbia." It was a major bust.
-sammie

Onward through the fog

Could be, but the proof?

Um, NASA is probably seeing a correlation with warming temperatures and the ability to evaporate more water into the air, which can have some unpredictable results (droughts in this region, severe storms in that).

But Joseph, tornadoes are caused by cold air colliding with warm air ... no cold air no tornadoes. The cold air came from the arctic on the jet stream as the subtropical jet pumped up warm, moist air from the equatorial Pacific, over Mexico and Texas. Before the storm it was 70-80 degrees F and the cold air was at least 30 degrees cooler. Add a meso-cumulus storm that can pump air up 50,000 feet into the air you might predict some tornadoes.  That prediction was made 24 hours ahead of when the storm hit.

The point is, if the entire US was cold, or warming uniformly with an early spring, the severe thunderstorms which packed four EF-4 tornadoes and many smaller twisters would not have happened. You have a point that many NWS records were set before the cold front, some dating back to the early 1950's.  Yes, it was that warm on that calendar date in 1949, too.

It doesn't help that NASA, NOAA, NWS, and the academics are all racing to publish papers on such issues, creating a great deal of confusion.  -sam

Onward through the fog

Be careful on terrorism

Bandying about a word like terrorism and applying it to things that happen with a true battle, bombs, or some orchestrated underground organization is absurd.

It is similar to use the term "war" when talking about the war on drugs, when there is no condition of war.

By appealing to base emotions such as "terrorism" evokes is exactly the same social conservative plank that got us here, such as the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not even ... wars.

If you want to co-opt the Republican Neo-Con play book be my guest, but consider yourself as tarred with the tame rhetorical brush.
-sammie

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"Drops"

It is true a bunch of "drops" or downed cattle end up as hamburger. I don't think really sick ones can be processed, and ones dead already for a while are not supposed to be used either. In many cases the poor cow simply has too much weight for its bones, and lays down.

Americans have a funny view about this because they think if livestock are to be eaten (gasp!), they should be happy and frolic among pristine fields, never in old age where they want to lie down. Indeed, laws have been passed to outlaw the practice of rendering horses, many of which were old or severely disabled. So instead of recycling them the horse must be buried in a landfill at great cost. Over in England they're called "knackers."

So I guess more laws to prevent cattle "drops" from being consumed are needed for the gentle-minded, I suppose. Maybe somebody can turn them into ethanol or something, right?
-sam

Onward through the fog

Both I think ...

Not sure, Edward. Some say that as a result of climate warming there should be more hurricanes and that those hurricanes would be more intense. Then folks get bogged down in whether a hurricane strikes the US and whether a "fish storm" really matters (a fish storm usually forms over the Atlantic and dissipates without a landfall). Intensity is also measured about five different ways. -sam

Onward through the fog

Kinda of agree

I don't know where the pressure came from [to approve GMO livestock] but it certainly isn't like growing soy beans for sure. Heifer seeding have been done for maybe three decades, called artificial insemination, but that was just for the breeders (bulls and heifers) as opposed to every baby born.  

I don't know about the cattle brain-power over at my old alma-mater, but Texas A&M is a leader on issues of how to genetically screen breeders for (1) maximum calving rates and (2) highest quality meats. Similar things have been done with sheep and interestingly, racing horses.  

No idea what the worry is, since 99.97% of the breeders for any livestock is letting a male and female in a pen for the afternoon. You don't eat the special bulls or heifers until they about drop dead, in which case they make hamburger.  /sam

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PADD III RESERVE

Not only has Bush invested bazillions (my favorite unit of monetary measurement) in the Strategic Petroleum Research, he authorized building a new one near Richton, Mississippi.  

Construction of the salt dome reserve involved pumping with water and then discharging the waters of the Gulf, which will essentially kill all the local marine life along the area.  

"Seawater is typically about 30 parts salt per thousand parts water, while saltwater coming out of hoses spread every 60 feet along a mile-long section of pipe south of Horn Pass would be at 263 parts per thousand."

Horn Pass is near Pascagoula, an extremely sensitive ecosystem. Of equal concern is that the project will pump 50 million gallons of freshwater from the Pascagoula River, which would diminish its ability to dilute the briny water.  

Yup, that's our taxpayer money, all so we can pump 160 million barrels of crude down the hole.  /sam

Onward through the fog

Staying the course

I agree about temperature-based methods being absurd ... I think we have our work cut out just trying to keep GHG emissions from man-made sources the same as they are today.

I will go further to say that concentration-based methods are also a huge problem, since there are lag response times between emissions input and average ambient concentrations.

We need to recognize that even emissions, in tons or terra-grams, are not so perfect either. To say the art of the emissions inventory is the be-all-end-all is rather silly.  However, we should work on reducing man-made CO2 emissions as fast as we can just to offset growth, and achieve further reductions as well. As noted by many here at Grist, these kinds of actions will take very deep cuts.

In a somewhat smug maneuver, EIA and EPA are claiming CO2 reductions for 2006 as compared to 2005.  A little research shows that this is complete crap, especially with international shipping and military fuel uses which increased:

"Because the definition of energy consumption by the IPCC excludes international bunker fuels from the statistics of all countries, emissions from international bunker fuels are subtracted from the U.S. total. Similarly, because the IPCC excludes emissions from military bunker fuels from national totals, they are subtracted from the U.S. total."

You read it here on Grist.
-sammie

Onward through the fog

Dude, let's start over

OK man, the air is:
78% inert nitrogen
21% oxygen
--
99%

Everything else is less than 1%. Given such low concentrations, all other gases are considered "trace gases" that can increase of decrease based on inputs and removal mechanisms.  For example CO2 is about 0.4% of sampled air and such trace gases are often measured in parts per million.  Therefore, what seems like a very small change in trace gas levels may have dramatic effects on health, visibility, climate forcing, and so forth.  To refresh your mind, in the Industrial Revolution a century ago CO2 was at about 280 ppm; now it is at about 370 ppm.  

All gases including nitrogen and oxygen recirculate but it is the trace gases, especially toxic and climate change ones, that we watch the most because small changes in PPM can have such huge impacts.  

There are emission releases and there are removal mechanisms.  CO2 is fairly stable and will not react chemically, photochemically, or form particulate.  That is an important point because most trace gases have an "atmospheric fate" of less than a second to years, with CO2 lasting being pretty much forever.  

Thus scrubbing by rain and mixing into the stratosphere are the only pathways for removal besides the fact that photosynthetic plants metabolize CO2. The stratospheric mechanism is mostly conjectural on my part and not a fact. For example, a volcano can inject a plume as high to 50,000 feet into the atmosphere so exchanges with the middle atmosphere are not common and may be freakish, but so occur. Large thunderstorms and powerful hurricanes can attain such heights as well, although recordings of much more than 50,000 feet are very few.  Vertical exchange does occur, and is why ozone depleting compounds were phased out many years ago.  

To deny that trace gases don't recirculate in the environment is real stupid, though. Whoever said that? /sam

Onward through the fog

CO2 versus aerosol

Perhaps Dr. Dessler knows if middle and upper atmospheric removal is significant or not (hurricanes, jet streaks, severe thunderstorms). He might have some ideas about variable CO2 removal by rain, which I think is how coral bleaching got bad (mild carbonic acid).

What I do know is that the typical planetary boundary layer that captures most of the pollution is maybe 3,000 to 5,000 feet above ground level in the early afternoon but often low at night, and there is another "transport layer" over that, known as the tropopause. The transport layer is how we get Sahara dust in Texas and pollution from China on  the upper West Coast.  

Obviously we know that CO2 cannot mix uniformly into the entire atmosphere all the way up to the stratosphere. This throws a subtle twist into the "concentration versus emissions" discussion. I just thought I would note that industrial, geogenic, and biogenic plumes are where it is at.
-sammie

Onward through the fog

Privatizing Infrastructure

So far the only Republican proposals I've seen were to privatize even more infrastructure, such as highways with tolls and electric power distribution lines. Many towns and cities are actually looking forward to new subdivisions having their own water and wastewater treatment systems, since it doesn't cost the taxpayers at large. This is a tremendous shift in outsourcing that perhaps you have overlooked.

As out city and town facilities crumble, it will only get worse because in a recession like this, it is hard to raise bond money ... we even have entire towns threatened with insolvency because they invested "rainy day" funds in sub-prime accounts.  

Then take a look at fairly good infrastructure, like New York and its subway system:  if it rains more than an inch, the entire lower levels become flooded and unusable. No telling if climate change will bring more or less rain to NYC but they're in deep trouble just as it is.

I'm not going to diss the private sector but they serve corporate investors and not the public at large. If they default they dissolve the company, pull out, abandon the all local projects, and mysteriously appear to some other state or country.

The municipal bond market acts just like the stock and private sector except that traditionally such bonds were deemed to be very safe, a wise investment over the long haul. This is no longer true in all cases. Think about that ... shouldn't we be able to float bonds in a safe manner for investments in public infrastructure, perhaps including clean energy initiatives?  /sammie

Onward through the fog

Wild bees

I agree with some earlier posters who noted that the wild, feral bees seem to be doing fine, and perhaps that CCD was happening to domesticated bees on commercial farms. Works for my veggies and fruits.

As to folks who dream about eliminating GMO mono cultures, well, I am not that optimistic.

Dream on teenage queen.  

Onward through the fog

Veddy interesting

A carbon tax would mainly affect basic industry, manufacturing, and agriculture. Sure, that's a large chunk of the different markets (NYMEX, DOW, S&P, CiBOT) but not all of it. See, one can bet long and short on intangible indexes, and indexes of indexes.

Which is precisely how we got got into the current fix, along with a shrinking dollar and a housing bubble. My conclusion is that a carbon tax wouldn't change things very much, other than to pass through costs to the ultimate consumer. Wall Street is not there to absorb any of those costs, but simply to bet by placing a short or long position on anything.

But if consumers react, watch out because over a third of the US economy is simply driven by consumers. In other words, Wall Street had little societal benefit to anybody besides some very rich traders themselves.  

Many economists thing we're already in a recession and their numbers prove it. With tightening budgets, less money is available for nice Climate Change programs. Those opposing forces, shrinking liquidity and expanding need for Climate Change action, is a tough topic to predict.

But if calamities happen, the people consumers pay for it if they can see it. Incidents like Bhopal really get people. An example of "Bhopal" incidents would be the remarkable growth in wildfires out west. As we run out of money to fight the fires, more people are building in sensitive fire zones! Obviously, climate change will have an impact there, since we can't afford to keep [literally] burning our money in a senseless way.

Discussion of disasters linked to Climate Change are pouring in every day. The only exception, as I have noted before, is that there is no clear proof that hurricanes are getting worse. Amazing though, with less hurricane risk over the last two years Wall Street has jacked up coastal insurance by approximately a factor of two.  

Let's face it, Wall Street is in la-la land and is no longer relevant to consumers except when it bites them in the butt.
-sam

Onward through the fog

tuna grades

The reason why those sushi samples were so high in  mercury was because they were very old, large, and fatty bluefin.  Methyl mercury takes a long time to bio-accumulate in fatty tissue. So one would expect the most expensive grades of sushi to have the highest methyl mercury levels.

Thus it is erroneous to say all bluefin tuna or that all pelagic fish have high mercury levels.  This is simply not true.  

Onward through the fog

Poleward ice starting to go?

A wee bit off topic, but some recent scoop says that the Antarctic is losing lots of ice on the western side near the Ross Shelf ... a volcano was discovered, and "lakes of water" exist under the pack ice that when warmed, could really melt it fast. Not sure if I got the stories right but they're dramatic and attention-grabbing.

Meanwhile in the Arctic, sea ice formation is extremely thin and likely to melt even faster next summer (source:  Jeff Master's blog, highly respected).  

Good article, Mr. Romm. If there was some BS it was about whether CO2 was man-made, which obviously not all is. It should be noted that the generalized models are only capable of measuring increases in anthropogenic CO2, which in turn increases CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, all other things being equal.

Unfortunately, the only way one can portray a "model" to a redneck is to show a cardboard cut-out of Farrah Fawcett with her tits falling off....

Onward through the fog

Iran not Iraq

my bad in the last para there.  /sam

Onward through the fog

Piracy is illegal, Canis

The salient point is that such actions are illegal and constitute open piracy, exactly like the pirates off Somalia, Bangladesh, Straits of Malacca, and Nigeria. Maritime law has always held it as a punishable offense, more recently affirmed in the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas and later in 1982.

Both Greenpeace and Sea Shepard have violated international piracy laws so many times it is not funny. Folks, this isn't chaining yourself to a tree, it includes acts such as ramming huge ships and attempting to board them. What's next, Boghammer boats with missiles on them?

Sea Shepard goes completely off the top, and throws nets and ropes into the water to foul their quarry's propeller, and even equipped their ship you like so much with a battering ram to attempt to sink their opponent.  They're sick, and you're sick if you like it.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

Best Grist headline in a while

Love to hear more ... I had heard the local diet was composed of much more grain and corn than the American diet and that it was good for you.  Local corn though, varieties of maize.  That chit from Iowa will give you the chits, all I can say.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

Meanwhile back in the US ...

Why go elsewhere when the problem we seek to solve is here? Hong Kong has no match anywhere else in the world; so what if everyone takes mass transit there?

The problem is charging gasoline users a tax to fund mass transit - let's be honest here. As long as gasoline users pay it, the money will go to highways, plain and simple.  

The economics seem so upside-down in the US, though. If one was to charge exactly what rides on mass transit cost, it would be almost as expensive or more expensive than taking the car. The salient point is that in places like New York City, you literally cannot drive downtown because you'll sit in traffic for hours. Try the experiment if you like - I did.

Then consider some very good projects in places like LA and Dallas involving mass transit rail. Great idea, heavily funded, and by golly it worked. Was there a concomitant reduction in highway VMT?  No, no, and no. In fact, highway usage increased.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend living in the US and working on practical solutions for solving what is a massive problem that not only involves a corrupt Congress but corruption at every level, from the construction to the operating unions. Oh, did I say that?  Shame on me!

Onward through the fog

Globalization

Excellent blog there Sean. You probably have anticipated that there is a real nasty side to globalization as well as all the benefits you mention. Beyond the cost of tortillas in Mexico and the horrendous coal-powered industry in China and India, (1) globalization increases pollution and (2) the decline in the dollar could lead to a real world war. I'm not this Arab terror thing Bushie calls a war today, which is just a cover-up for the real issue. It's all about energy and food.

But as you say, the global economy is just what it is, and there is little that a president or king can do about it. Taken in that scope, it was laughable that Bushie-Boy even tried to ask the House of Saud to increase oil production so as to lower the price of liquid fuel energy. As has been told by the House of Saud to our Bushie-Boy several times, America has failed to reform its internal woes with respect to consumption, efficiency, distribution, conservation, and vast energy supplies of its own.

I can't put my finger on it, but somehow I detect a fundamental mis-reading about what is happening today with globalization, energy, and food. Part is the answer is painfully obvious and some seems elusive, perhaps an issue that you are just starting to raise, Sean.  Thanks for your post.
-sammie

Onward through the fog

Fighting large developments

Perhaps you underestimate the very vocal groups that have mounted campaigns against large developments, such as in the inter-mountain area, coastal resorts, and even offshore in the Bahamas and Panama.

But those are not campaigns against sprawl, a critical distinction. Nope, those are campaigns against uber-rich living quarters, or middle-income developments so large as to baffle the imagination.  Key tools are requirements that mini-environmental impacts for clean air, water, and soil.

We lose a bunch of the battle but the recent downturn in the economy has really given us some breathing room - nice!  /sammie

Onward through the fog

OK let 'er rip

The Cape Wind has been litigated and may be litigated yet again. I suppose it's a good deal in the name of "feel good" offshore wind farms.  

All I ask is that if the project fails, all the equipment and gear be removed. All of it.

Onward through the fog

If I were king for a day

I dunno, comments about "tweaking" the economy smack of some kind of hubris, like Tom Petty wishing he could be king for a day. The point about the original essay was that in the energy investments, solar, wind, and some energy conservation are looking much better than in the past. We're talking private corporate money here, and as was pointed out, many of the investments on the manufacturing side are coming from EU countries and places like Australia. Has our country run out of intellectual steam so bad we have to import everything, including the green energy stuff?

Onward through the fog

Swordies and Subbies

Canis the PR campaign on swordfish consumption was paid for and sponsored by none other than NRDC, about as enviro is the day is long. They hired Fenton Communications and got an award for it.  Based on action by President Clinton and NOAA, large section of the US waters were closed to swordfish longlining. Makes me wonder if Al Gore had some input on that topic ... oh, he's a movie actor, not an enviro, my bad. (Just laughing, bruddah!)

As to the Navy's mid-frequency sonar testing, I think the Judge ruled a major decision that permanently closed some areas for training missions yet allowed some flexibility ... as long as a whale was not detected within about a half mile (which is too close I will admit). The ruling appears to apply to the lower West Coast, since San Diego has the largest submarine fleet there.

The case against mid-frequency testing was really documented in the Bahamas, however, and the effect of the ruling is not known there. Only time will tell if we have to fight for special deals to limit such sonar testing off places like Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Cape Cod. The East Coast is dominated by right whales, another truly endangered species. /sammie

Onward through the fog

To whom are you directing this question?

Actually, "to whom are you directing this question" is perfectly good grammar, and you would fail that test question if you selected the word "who."  To rewrite the sentence, you would have to day "Who are you directing this question to?"  The first sentence with the word "whom" is actually better, since you're ending a sentence with a dangling wrangler.

And I honestly don't care who Al Gore endorses!
digger sam

Onward through the fog

Offshore and Coastal Wind Farms

Very astute logic here on investments by the author and Sean. To me the risks are greatest along the coastal areas, particularly ones in submerged offshore areas. The costs of installing and maintaining coastal and offshore wind turbines is possibly double that of an inland program. The salt eats everything; submerged pilings are very difficult to anchor; many coastal areas are located on very active bird migration routes. Do the concepts of "hurricane" and "global warming" mean anything here?

The situation in Texas is not exception although I won't bore you with the details here, noting that Senator Kennedy does not live down here (re: Nantucket wind farms in coastal waters). These kinds of concerns should mean something to alternative energy fund managers, however.  

'Nuff said.
-sammie

Onward through the fog

Yorke said something new!

When you're done having you fun, Mr. Yorke had the fresh idea of not only thinking about him, his entourage, and the stadium with respect to Global Warming, but the audience as well.  

Have any of YOU thought about that?  The audience?

Onward through the fog

Pollution tax:

Sometime you flirt with the idea of a carbon tax but seem ambivalent on it, Joe. There is no ozone tax, clean water tax, or any kind of tax on any pollutant I know. It just costs more when you buy the products and services.

So you're maybe mixing up public perception a little with regulatory command-and-control. Except for possibly the vehicle smog check for your car (a stupid idea that should be repealed in the future as the fleet becomes near-zero emissions), you don't pay cash for pollution. Nope, most all costs are borne by the industries and passed onto the customers. And people will pay whatever those trickle-down costs are instead of even a smaller tax. That's how people work.

I'm not familiar with Proposition 87 in California but it would be very easy for industry to say voting for it was a huge tax, and taxes are not good. It's the old bait-and-switch gimmick.  Remember, you're asking voters for a pocketbook decision.  Further, the tax revenue would be for research, not actually doing anything in a meaningful way to expand incentives and activity use with today's science. Uh-oh!  -sammie

Onward through the fog

scrap tire brouhaha

Perhaps Hillary got some real bad from her advisers? In the early stages of the game, many states had a huge glut of waste tires, many dumped in illegal landfills where they could (1) breed mosquitoes and spread disease and/or (2) catch on fire, in spectacular events that took weeks to extinguish. Thus from the beginning, many states wanted to find ways to recycle, burn, or somehow get rid of a few million tons of scrap tires.  

And industry was willing to oblige.

The unanticipated problem was that scrap tires are difficult to burn in a power boiler that uses coal, oil, natural gas, wood products, and so forth. The emissions, so far as I know, where never a big issue, although I'm glad that became one. But the main engineering problem was that most tires these days have woven steel belts in them.

The woven steel belts in the tires made it very difficult to split and crumb the tires very quickly, and engineers became alarmed that a big fraction of steel could get into the power boiler. They were right. The steel was clogging the slag and ash outlet on the boiler bottoms, a condition that if maintained for a while could blow up the entire unit (I am not kidding).  

So industry said "no thanks."  

Needless to say, there was a lot of eggs left on many faces, and not just Hillary's either ... nothing compared to what her husband did with his lawyering of hazardous waste dumps in Arkansas, I mean, come on get real.

Onward through the fog

"aether"

Interesting you bring up that word, "aether."  It simply means ether, although the concept included everything from evil airs at night to physical properties with less magical connotations. It turns out there were amazingly correct, as long as we take some poetic license (e.g., strong a weak forces not fully explained by particle physics). Even more astounding, trees and vegetable matter play a major role on the Earth, just as oceans do offshore. Sign, no time for a book here ...

But I must admit, beyond the science which has shown serious doubts about trees being "carbon sinks" over the last decade, it just doesn't make any sense to give credits for planting trees - because we're cutting down the forests as fast as we can! How can we give a CO2 credit for 50 acres of new trees when 500 acres of trees were bulldozed down at the same time, and another 500 went down due to diseases and pests?

Give me a break.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

Mode Choice Model

Excellent point in your second paragraph, Bruce.  transportation mobility is just not cars, but may apply to mass transit, bicycles, and yes, walking.  Complex models are constructed to describe the patterns of mode choices, which sometimes involve interesting combinations (e.g., bike racks on buses).  

The resulting data is parsed by transportation activity zone (TAZ) and reported as "mode split" in fairly large tables. To lower single occupancy vehicle (SOV) driving, one would obviously want to create incentives for other mode choices.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

Good Point; Grandma Driving Cycle

I have commented many times on various blogs that driving smoothly can reduce emissions and fuel consumption maybe 10% as opposed over-speeding and "jack rabbit" acceleration.  That doesn't sound like a lot, but let's say New York City regional drivers consume 5 billion gallons a year, 10% is a lot of juice! [No idea if the numbers are right - you get my drift.]

Well it turns out that nobody drives smoothly anymore, "the Grandma driving cycle," and the original drive traces done decades ago were worthless.  That driving "trace" or pattern of driving was made much more aggressive for laboratory testing and even the fuel economy for the Prius dropped by about 15%.  Ouch!

How did scientists figure out that people were acting wild with the gas pedal and brakes?  Interesting question, since they couldn't use anecdotal evidence. Nope, the fitted a bunch of small, GPS and data acquisition computers in some cars in five cities starting in LA (Five City Test). Lots of work processing all that hooey, I'll give them credit.  Results were astounding.  People basically drive like horse's asses. Equally weird was that the truckers seemed to be hopelessly lost.

But I digress, it would be nice if people would ease off on the gas pedal a wee bit and save some serious money. Changing human behavior, however, is a different animal.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

Importing GHG

Good points but the concept of exporting heavy industry ... and then re-importing the finished goods seems like a tighter argument.

That is a function of many things, such as globalization and how the heck we're going to measure the life-cycle emissions of GHG such as CO2.  

For example, I would predict that given the tightness in the US refinery industry, more refined hydrocarbons such as gasoline and distillates would be imported to to the US.  This is a fairly new development, and use of coal-to-chemical technology in China is no exception.  

On its face, this strategy would appear to allow for growth in the US and be able to claim emission inventory reductions at the same time, with the exception of shipping (most of which are internationally registered so we can't regulate them).  That is no Great Conspiracy, other than the policy is to only include emissions within the physical boundaries of the US - thus taking out the upstream emissions from offshoring and importing.

Put that in your Occam's slicer and see what you get!  -sammie

Onward through the fog

That's fair, Canis

It's easy to equate anti-big-meat people with vegetarians, but you're right.  

Loved the "CAFO Queen" label for Hillary!

Roasted squash is smelling awful good right now ...

Onward through the fog