Comments apsmith has made

I think there's a subtle effect here that you're missing - why are fuel-efficient cars money-losers for American manufacturers? Because of CAFE standards. Since the fleet average has to reach a certain level, manufacturers have to under-price the efficient cars to sell enough of them to keep the average up. That means they look like money-losers in all their financial analyses. And the manufacturers get stingy on innovation and marketing for that class, since it looks like they're not making money off them. Until they collapse.

A better system, other than simple fuel taxes which would also do the trick, would be the sort of feebates Amory Lovins (who I'm not generally a fan of) has proposed. This way the manufacturers can directly see higher prices and actual profits on their more fuel efficient cars, while the government shuffles the money from gas guzzler purchases (imposed fees on purchase) to efficient car purchases (rebates). Otherwise manufactures simply have a continuing disincentive on fuel economy, simply because the CAFE standard exists.

He's not on those lists because he's *old*

Joe - I respect you, but I also respect Dyson for his great contributions to physics many decades ago. The Tiger Woods of physics of recent history was, almost without question, Richard Feynman; Feynman developed his own approach to quantum electrodynamics that has become an extremely useful calculating tool (Feynman diagrams) in the 1950's; around the same time the traditional quantum mechanics people (Schwinger) developed their more mathematical-looking perturbation theory approach. Dyson was the one who proved the two methods were equivalent, essentially by putting Feynman's diagrams on a firm theoretical footing, and one of the fundamental equations still used in quantum field theory is the Dyson equation.

So Dyson isn't Tiger, no. But he wasn't far off in his prime about 40-50 years ago. Now, well, he's like many of those curmudgeonly old physicists - in fact I suspect he was good friends with Frederick Seitz as they're both Princetonites. There are Dysons and Seitz's and Roy Spencer's who we just have to deal with somehow or other. Denigrating their past contributions is probably not the best approach...On CEI deniers praise Andy Revkin, diss Tiger Woods posted 1 year, 5 months ago 9 Responses

I thought of it first!

I was all ready to start a new "blue" party after Gore lost the 2000 election - the name for me came from "blue sky", and the thinking that we needed a new 3rd party with a focus on the future (emphasis on science and technology as well as the environment and economy, etc.)

But then I thought a bit more. "blue" and the optimism I was shooting for didn't seem to go together. Besides which, the Democrats seem to have adopted "blue" in the color-coded electoral maps of recent years. And then Howard Dean convinced me that Democrats really can think coherently about science and technology and the future.

So really, "blue" = Democrat, and I'm happy with that. Now, what was this post supposed to be all about again?On Adam Werbach follows up 'Death of Environmentalism' with 'Birth of Blue' posted 1 year, 7 months ago 46 Responses

The sense of urgency vs long term needs.

I've known Marty for years (and Chris Green a bit less), met him on several occasions. He is deeply aware of the need to reduce CO2 emissions; when we last met we discussed the Stern report, and he was very dismissive of conservatives who critiqued the discount rate numbers, for instance - he thought applying an economic discount rate to people's lives was reprehensible...

He's an old-style liberal too, wants to save the world from poverty and all that. Which is why in the studies he's done they always tend to favor higher world GDP growth rates than you might expect.

But I think the key issue Joe, between what you and Marty are advocating for, is the time-scale you each feel is relevant. There is a lot we can do now, with present technology. I believe there's more we can do than Marty sometimes says. But when you look all the way to the year 2100, there is a real gap between what it seems we can do with present and likely evolutionary technology, and what we need.

Your fear is that looking to the distant needs will detract from the effort to do the best to deploy the technologies we can now. Marty's fear is that the emphasis on present deployment will neglect the need for advanced alternatives that we really do need 50 years down the road. In my view, both are needed - let's do it all. How's that for solving the conflict? :-)

And on Nature's "shame" here - I very much doubt Schellenberger's "Breakthrough Institute" actually has given money to Pielke, Hoffert, or any other of their "fellows" - you could do some investigating of their finances if you felt it was a real issue. It sounds much more like an honorary designation than anything else; in the modern era we seem to receive a plethora of associations (I'm a "guest researcher" at Brookhaven National Lab for instance) that really mean less and less regarding who we are or how much weight our opinions should be given...On Shame on Nature for quoting Hoffert on behalf of Pielke without noting they're colleagues! posted 1 year, 7 months ago 22 Responses

Revkin

Andy Revkin has an unfortunate history of quoting from these guys. I think the problem is, for one reason or another, he has them in his Rolodex (or email address book these days) and his reporter's instinct just compels him to ask them for quotes on a regular basis. Why do we hear so much from the Roger Pielke's and Marc Morano for instance? Unless there's something more sinister going on - like pressure from his editors/publisher.

Jeff Huggins had a great comment over at DotEarth on this latest thread - I suggest everybody go read it (#31 - "He said, She said reporting and uncertainty" at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/reconciling- ...
). The "burden of proof" on the "denier" side is apparently zero - they have only to sew doubt, they have to prove nothing at all, and whatever media attention they get furthers their cause no matter what caveats it may include. No such luck on the side of reality...On A (sort of) cold January doesn't mean climate stopped warming posted 1 year, 9 months ago 10 Responses

Hey thanks

Dave, I wonder if I'm the only person who's met both you and Elder Oaks (mentioned in the quote) in person! Probably not, but at least I got to comment first :-)

Yes, I'm a Mormon, and I can give a shout-out here to any other "left" leaning LDS people - come join us on the LDS-Left mailing list and help change the world!

Despite recent affinities with the Republican party, there is quite a long history of environmentalism among Mormons. Brigham Young and Joseph Smith (the second and first of the prophets) both made statements that sound very environmentally enlightened for the early 19th century. Organizing the settlement of the essentially desert areas of the Great Basin meant learning how to live sustainably from the first.

Now I just hope Mitt Romney gets repudiated by the voters for some of his stupidities on this - he's been attacking McCain on the environment lately, I can't imagine that will go down well in Florida or California. There's no basis in his faith for that stance, it's all politics. Sad really.On Mormon green posted 1 year, 10 months ago 9 Responses

Apples to apples

Once again Khosla starts by talking about existing technology (hybrids and near-current plugin hybrids)  and then talks about what we can expect over the next 10-25 years from future technologies (referencing primarily a paper we can't even read yet!)

While we obviously don't have access to all the background claimed here, I think the argument boils down to one of capital cost. Khosla's claim is that switching vehicles to "flex-fuel" and oil production to cellulosic ethanol will have lower capital cost than switching vehicles to plugin hybrids and coal plants to renewables. Well...

He may have a point, but I would like to see the numbers more plainly. Since we don't have cellulosic ethanol on line at large scale yet, we probably don't have a good handle on its capital costs. Say it depends on a certain kind of bio-reactor which has a lifetime of, say, 10 years. So we have to ramp up production of those bio-reactors to a very large scale - what's the cost of building all those bio-reactor production plants themselves? Cellulosic ethanol will depend on some new large-scale biomass farming, say of switchgrass. We'll need farm machinery equipment designed for these jobs - what's the capital cost of building all those extra harvesters?

The argument that we won't close down old coal generators is, I sincerely hope, just wrong; that's exactly what a carbon cap and trade/auction regulatory system will do, with the worst ones closing first. It's a perfect market-regulatory combination to cut CO2 emissions - what's Khosla's position on "cap and trade/auction" anyway?On Hybrids and biofuels: The road ahead posted 1 year, 10 months ago 44 Responses

On transit: new report out

Very interesting recommendations here from the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission:

- Ease traffic congestion by expanding state and local public transit systems and highway capacity.

_Protect the environment by smoothing traffic flow, encouraging alternative commute options such as carpooling and public transit and promoting energy-efficient construction and lighting in transit systems to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

_Seek to develop new energy sources with new research programs costing $200 million annually over the next decade.

_Raise the current gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon by 5 to 8 cents annually for five years and then index to inflation, to help fix infrastructure, expand public transit and highways as well as broaden railway and rural access.

Nice to see public transit and highways on an equal footing - even better would be + on public transit and - on highways...On Business-y news I should write more about, but probably won't posted 1 year, 10 months ago 5 Responses

Khosla *is* dissing hybrids!

Not only is Mr. Khosla accused of it, he admits it, and piles on...

But some of the statements made here, even if accurate as stated, are misleading. Khosla says:

"one can get the same carbon reduction by buying a cheaper, similar-sized and -featured car and buying $10 worth of carbon credits"

But it's not the CO2 reduction that's making us Prius owners smile. A typical car is driven something like 15,000 miles/year. The CAFE number for new cars now is 27.5 mpg (not even going into the SUV mess). That comes to 545 gallons of gasoline per year, or about 5.5 metric tons of CO2. Which you could certain offset (say at $15/ton CO2, a typical price now) for under $100/year.

Now if you get a Prius instead, with say 45 mpg average, that's 333 gallons/year or about 3.3 metric tons of CO2, saving 2.2 every year. Sure doesn't hurt.

But what Khosla doesn't include is the cost of the gasoline itself. At 3.30/gallon, 545 gallons amounts to about $1800/year, while 333 gallons is about $1100/year, for a difference of $700. That's a 14% yearly return on even a $5000 price difference, and in my experience the $5000 is a significant overestimate of the price difference from a comparable non-hybrid (the other cars I was looking at when I bought mine would have been only $2000-3000 cheaper than the Prius).

The carbon offset/CO2 reduction effect adds another $50-$100 to the annual payback, so it helps a little, but it's not the main reason so many Prius's are being sold.

The higher gas prices go, the better the deal.

And as for the Tata Nano, it gets 50 mpg now - why would we have a problem with that car?

No, hybrids can't "solve our problems". The Nano won't either. Nor will ethanol. As Khosla points out here, the long-term solution is electrification of ground transport. To the extent hybrids are a step along that path (and they surely are at least as much as corn ethanol is a step on the path to cellulosic), they should be applauded. Why not push for bio-fueled hybrids, instead of trashing the concept, hmm?On Prius: Green or greenwash? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 36 Responses

Khosla lost credibility on energy a while ago

See this post on "The Oil Drum" from Khosla, and linked posts by Robert Rapier:

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/8/8/2049/64576

His optimism on cellulosic ethanol may be understandable, but his support for large subsidies for conventional ethanol production now just makes little sense to me. And there are a lot of other odd arguments in there as well. Not credible, I decided when I read that the first time.On Venture-capital star ain't no clean-tech expert posted 1 year, 11 months ago 54 Responses

explanation

Wolfy - the key names in this post for us were not Falwell and Robertson, but Shellenberger and Nordhaus. Their article "The Death of Environmentalism", and their recent book "Break Through", claim to offer a middle way for those who want to solve global warming etc. without hearkening to the rabid alarmist rhetoric of us "environmental" folks.

So Ken Ward here simply projected the same arguments back a few decades to a different situation. My take on the translation:

Jerry Falwell = Al Gore
Christianity = Environmentalism
New Jesus = Apollo
denominational leaders = environmental leaders
pastors = congress?
Ok, the analogy gets a little hazy at that point. But it made sense in a sort of holiday haze way...On Somewhere in a parallel universe ... posted 1 year, 11 months ago 5 Responses

But that wouldn't reduce fuel use

One of your statements was "Burning less fuel to make a kWh lowers power costs -- and therefore, we don't focus on it."

Can you state a specific example where a utility could literally "burn less fuel" in a way that actually "lowers power costs", with numbers? co-gen may have niche applications, but it's not going to significantly change power plant efficiency, especially when you account for all the thermodynamic components of efficiency correctly (heat, by itself, is a poor use of fuel energy because of the randomization of thermal processes).On A plead for utility leadership on climate change posted 1 year, 11 months ago 14 Responses

"The Death of Christianity"

If only Falwell had listened, we'd all have been better off, huh? :-) Nice parody, if a little unfair... thanks Ken for a post-Christmas laugh!On Somewhere in a parallel universe ... posted 1 year, 11 months ago 5 Responses

Dave, you did good

Your answer on appealing to authority was spot-on. Horner looked ridiculous.

Did the "400" actually sign something put out by Inhofe? Kurzweil and Dyson and the others? That seems very unlikely!On Me on Hannity & Colmes posted 1 year, 11 months ago 22 Responses

Jon - thanks

very interesting post - and touching on many economic ideas I'd heard of before if only peripherally (I actually looked up one of Romer's papers maybe 15 years ago when I'd heard something about it, to see what all the fuss was about.)

From my own limited readings in economics, and talking with a few real economists, "micro" economics seems certainly a sound science that can produce useful analyses to help in real decision-making for businesses in many sectors. But I simply cannot say the same for "macro" economics, the analysis of economy-wide growth, impact of government policies, trade etc. There certainly is an application of logic and reason that seems to make sense, but there appear to be so many different assumptions and starting-points and underlying political philosophies behind the different ideas that I am surprised anybody can substantiate any claim in the field. Is "neo-classical" economics even sufficiently well-defined to have adherents agree on the fundamental principles?

Having recently read Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach" and James Gleick's "Chaos" both for the first time (though I was pretty familiar with the ideas in both from way back), an inkling of a better way of thinking about economic processes came to me - I don't know how far it's been explored although I expect some of the "econophysics" folks have done something along these lines.

The central element in both chaos and Hofstadter's "strange loops" is a self-referentiality or self-similarity that comes through an iterative process - that may sound complex but it's ubiquitous in nature and in human affairs as well. In particular, in the economy you close a "loop" of this sort as soon as an output of an economic process is in some way (directly or indirectly) used as its own input (in a later iteration). One of the inputs to building renewable energy infrastructure (and perhaps the limiting one) is energy itself. The time for one unit of renewable energy infrastructure "output" to generate enough energy to produce another gives the fundamental cycle-time for one of the "loops" in this case, and puts an intrinsic limit on growth rate for the technology.

I think a better understanding of detailed micro-economic examples of that sort would bring a lot of enlightenment to the question of growth in macro-economics as well. Just a thought though at this point, not very well followed through yet...On Why ecology explains growth, and economists don't posted 1 year, 11 months ago 33 Responses

Hey, we all love 5-part series!

I think the key question right now pertinent to the Bali discussions is what international regime can do better than Kyoto's clean development mechanism to steer capital investment to renewables worldwide, rather than to more coal plants?

The theoretical trouble with CDM is that it motivates developing nations to over-state and over-plan their future expectations of CO2 emissions so they can earn higher credit levels from developed nations for not emitting so much, when in reality they wouldn't have anyway. The practical effect has been to limit trust (most spectacularly in the US) that everybody's getting a fair shake on this, and in particular to severely limit the investment levels in renewables in developing countries that were originally hoped for.

So is there a fundamentally better and fairer way, or do we just need to tweak CDM to fix it? I think there's a need to look at the whole issue holistically, but I can't say I see a good solution obvious to me now.On Even in the short term, R&E is a better choice than clean coal for developing nations posted 1 year, 12 months ago 8 Responses

more metaphors

Steve,

  let's say we are walking out over a cliff edge, on a plank of wood held down by rocks. Most of us refuse to look down, most of us refuse to notice that the plank is starting to bend, and its abrupt end not far ahead is shrouded in mist. A few lone voices cry out to pay attention, but they are scoffed at and condemned. Those rocks holding it down look so big, we feel so small, the plank looks so long, we're safe, right?

We have choices that will save us, but they cannot be made individually - we're all bonded together on this one, and only collective action by a united world will succeed. How do we get that to happen?On A guest essay from climate scientist James Hansen posted 1 year, 12 months ago 16 Responses

Questions for Andy

One thing that seems really odd about all this is Revkin's question #4 to Hansen - "this kind of language inevitably becomes the issue, distracts from the real questions, and could in fact further polarize or paralyze discourse." Actually, it didn't "inevitably become the issue" for months after Hansen made his comments. And I had seen none of it in any sort of context until Revkin posted it. So Revkin is at least one of the ones making it "become the issue" and "distracting from the real questions", thereby "paralyzing discourse". Why?

I posted the following questions for Revkin on his blog, might as well add them in here.

The most recently released IPCC synthesis report includes the statement (p. 13 of SPM): "There is medium confidence that approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average warming exceed 1.5-2.5C (relative to 1980-1999). As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5C, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe."
Do you have reason to doubt these risks? Why?

• Assuming you accept the IPCC assessment of 40-70% extinctions under temperatures likely by 2100, do you have reason not to consider this extinction of millions of species of life on Earth to be one of the worst acts ever perpetrated by human beings on the planet? Why?

• Since the scientific indicators of this scale of risk have been published, do you have reason to judge the continued increase in CO2 emissions to be innocent, negligent, or deliberate choices of humans to favor selfish interests over the life of most of the other species on the planet? If we are innocent from lack of knowledge, who is responsible for keeping this knowledge that scientists have uncovered from the bulk of the people?

We don't

There's no need to accept "a monetary system that must grow without end". I haven't watched the video, but no video polemic can match a few minutes of thinking clearly about the problem.

First, what are the alternatives? A given currency represents a store of value, but like any such store, its value relative to the value of everything else will change with time. If you back your currency with gold instead of debt, then the cost of everything in your currency is governed by the relative supply and demand for gold, relative to everything else, but it's still going to change just the same.

The major advantage of fiat (debt-based) currencies is that their changes in value (overall inflation) can be controlled by a central bank. In particular, deflation is generally viewed as a very bad thing (associations with the Great Depression etc.) mainly because it's very hard to lower salaries. Under deflation the cost of labor stays high, and unemployment soars. So central banks fiddle with the money supply to avoid deflation and keep a relatively steady modest target inflation rate.

But that bears no relation to the absolute growth or reduction in the size of the economy. If debt-based currencies required absolute growth, we'd never see recessions. In fact, the usual argument on this point is specious, because it ignores the fact that those running the banks are also a part of the economy. Banks are not some separate entity storing value in some other manner. Banks make their money from debt so they certainly encourage it, but they can just as easily decide some debts are too risky and switch to a more cautious mode, causing a shrinking of money supply as we're probably seeing now. There's no forced growth in the monetary system at all.On A critical issue wrapped in a dose of black helicopters posted 2 years ago 10 Responses

A personal note

I recently discovered that the city I grew up in, St. John's, Newfoundland, has in several respects some of the worst weather in North America. Hey, I never knew any better - I thought spring was supposed to include 30 consecutive days of fog every year :-)

Enjoy LA David, and the presidential candidates! Good luck!On L.A. bereft of clouds, rain; climate change the culprit? posted 2 years ago 3 Responses

Response to Shellenberger

I'm flattered that this excellent discussion includes a long post addressed to me that seems to respond to my comments on "Break Through" in several other venues, but not really what I said here! Anyway, I think I'll leave the substantive answers to elsewhere. Michael Shellenberger and I have been having an interesting email conversation offline, which may lead to a more nuanced view, I hope from both of us.On NYT author discusses recent story on climate 'centrism' posted 2 years ago 17 Responses

I second Jon Rynn's

Public transit and transit-oriented development are key steps to making us less dependent on oil - and unfortunately those subjects are usually forgotten.On Leave suggestions in comments posted 2 years ago 35 Responses

Leveling the playing field

Sean - absolutely, we should be talking about leveling the playing field. To my mind that's exactly what the talk about a carbon or coal tax is for. How else would you attach the externalities of health and environment costs to coal? There's no market-based mechanism to do that without government enforcing it through taxation.

And $50/ton of CO2, the highest level in the EPRI graph, is nothing. It would have negligible economic downside. The studies I've looked at on long-term large-scale CO2 reductions, the ones that do have some economic downside as we fight against global warming, see costs of over $1000/ton. My guess is we'll be able to eliminate CO2 to the extent we need well below that number, but $50/ton is probably not quite high enough.On How high a price on carbon is needed to make renewables competitive? posted 2 years ago 26 Responses

Central vs. local

I don't know about your house, but my house uses most of its energy after dark (for lighting, cooking, electronic devices), not the middle of the day. Solar panels on a residential property are not well matched to local demand. Exact matches between generation and demand seem generally unlikely on a local scale; even if they match at one given point in time, demand changes far faster than generating capacity can, and seasonal changes in demand are unlikely to be well-matched to the variations in renewables supply in particular. That's why distribution over a regional scale makes sense, because the averaging on both supply and demand sides makes a match easier to achieve. That lowers capital costs for generation, which more than makes up for increased T&D costs. Despite being regulated monopolies, utility companies are in business to make money, not to waste it.

And I think you are painting an incorrect picture of what "centralized" means now. New York City already has generating capacity of around 80% of its peak electric needs within the city limits. Long Island, where I live, has capacity close to 100% of peak, so we're not importing huge fractions of our power from up-state or elsewhere over long distances. The only reason long-distance power transmission is used is where you have very localized generation for a reason - Niagara Falls for example can't be moved, that's where the power is. So people build large T&D for it - but that's typical of renewables, it's not where the people are, and makes David's arguments all the more suspect... On How high a price on carbon is needed to make renewables competitive? posted 2 years ago 26 Responses

Which costs does the market take care of?

The costs of grid transmission and distribution are not paid free by the government, they are included in retail electric rates. So if the question is what price on coal makes other alternatives competitive in the retail electric market, the costs of grid transmission are already included. Similarly, if the risks of a coal-fired generator are becoming higher from climate-related changes, that should make coal less competitive because of the higher bank rate plants need to pay, or higher insurance rates.

The one thing that's not included in the current market system is the cost to the world of the CO2 emissions themselves. So we're talking about a carbon tax scenario to levelize that concern, and it sounds like the EPRI study has done just the right things to make a comparison in that scenario. I don't see the justification for your more optimistic estimates here.On How high a price on carbon is needed to make renewables competitive? posted 2 years ago 26 Responses

Jobs and automation

By the way, along the lines of Ryan's discussion here, one of my complaints about the "jobs" argument for a green economy is that it necessarily implies that green solutions will be expensive. The more "jobs" are created, the more costly the solutions because each of those jobs comes with a salary that's coming out of our global-warming-solutions budget. The problem though is so large that this pulls capital and labor out of other parts of the economy that could bring other great benefits to the world.

While we push for solutions to global warming and our energy issues, let's argue for those solutions that generate the lowest number of jobs per kWh, because those are the most cost-effective ones and will bring the most benefit to all.On We don't need to destroy our economy to save the planet posted 2 years ago 79 Responses

There's something here, but 40 GW?

I really am surprised it's that high a number that have high-temperature waste exhaust. What are your typical capital costs for, say, a 10 MW system using 500 degree-F heat? Or is every case very different?

I guess I have to take back some of my earlier comments. I didn't intend to imply industrial processes should run at lower temperatures to be more efficient - obviously they have constraints on that. And I realize now the waste stream may be more than just heat - it would typically include byproducts from the industrial process that they probably don't want to feed back in to raise byproduct concentrations at the start (you'd probably make the coffee beans taste bad if you were recycling the hot air too much). So if a process really necessarily has a hot exhaust stream, generating electricity off it isn't a bad idea.

Still how much of the 40 GW total is power plant exhaust? Because I have a hard time believing there's really much opportunity there - these guys are already making electricity, and fuel costs aren't zero for them - if there was a simple way to be more efficient, why haven't they taken it? Is it just that fuel is still too cheap?

Anyway, 40 GW is still less than 9% of the 460-500 GW average electric power production in the United States, so as I said at the start, it's not going to be a huge contributor. A good thing to do, but it doesn't solve all our problems!On A very promising climate change solution with an image problem posted 2 years ago 15 Responses

Yup!

I'm very happy to see this passed, and hopeful the House will follow up with matching legislation sooner rather than later.

My analysis of S.294 (the bill just passed) and some related House legislation from earlier this year is here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/1/223530/8311

-- ArthurOn Could intercity public transit finally be getting some support from Congress? posted 2 years ago 7 Responses

Learning from nature?

Nature also suggests we make changes slowly - evolutionary time-scales are hundreds of thousands of years. I'm sure in that time-frame we really will have figured things out (or become extinct). In the mean-time...

David, when you say large-scale solutions are

"... a species of violence. One can perfectly easily envision governments embracing these solutions, diverting huge amounts of taxpayer money to enormous, politically connected industries, engaging in fraud-ridden boondoggles..."

you seem to be rejecting out of hand organized, thoughtful, cooperative efforts at solving our problems. Is government always bad in your view?

I realize the comments here are directed at solutions based on panic - and I agree, panic is not a good start to solving things. But that doesn't mean the solutions can be found through independent individual action without coordination. Real solutions will require state action, "a species of violence" in right-wing terms, that will involve using taxpayer money for things that not everybody agrees on. Regulations, carbon taxes, subsidies for alternatives, developing and deploying new technologies on a large scale will be essential. I seem to recall you've spoken in favor of such things before. Why descend into the rhetorical "return to nature" talk here?On James Lovelock's terror masks the same old industrial-era thinking posted 2 years, 1 month ago 13 Responses

Speaking of the Pentagon...

Any comment on the new report on space solar power from NSSO? I attended the press conference yesterday and had lunch with some of the military folks involved:

http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com/2007/10/10/sbsp-inte ...

"Preventing resource conflicts in the face of increasing global populations and demands in the 21st century is a high priority for the Department of Defense. All solution options to these challenges should be explored, including opportunities from space."On Stabilizing climate means embracing technology, public investment, and global economic development posted 2 years, 1 month ago 6 Responses

Only the conveyor issue has legitimacy

In each of the other cases the effects of increased CO2 and the resulting warmer temperatures are clear contributors, and Gore states nothing stronger than that in the movie. Have people forgotten what rational thought means these days?On Brit judge claims to find errors in Gore movie posted 2 years, 1 month ago 15 Responses

That's hydrogen from aluminum

and gallium - those are where the chemical energy comes from. Do you know how expensive gallium is? And how much energy goes into reducing aluminum from oxide?

Like all hydrogen schemes, this one makes very little sense.On The Republican candidates acknowledge climate change, but they don't much care about it posted 2 years, 1 month ago 5 Responses

Ok, not what I was expecting

David, I'm afraid this argument sounds very much like the "manufactured uncertainty" that critics of climate change keep drumming up to convince us that scientists haven't actually come to a consensus on the causes.

That may seem harsh, but in the argument here (obviously I haven't read the book itself) I don't see any quantification, and quantification of the uncertainties claimed is key to understanding whether they're actually important or not. Take the "continually shifting non-linearity" issue for instance. For a given generator, say a coal-fired power plant, you can quantify exactly what fraction of capacity it's running at, or whether it's turned off, and you get a standard capacity factor. That's really all you need to know to combine capital and fuel/maintenance costs to get the actual cost per kWh. There's no deep mystery from "non-linearity", it's quantifiable.

Similarly attributed cost of externalities may be a political decision, but it cannot be entirely arbitrary. In fact finding a way to quantify the externalities of carbon is exactly what carbon cap-and-trade markets are all about. If politics sets that cost too high, then the people with clean energy solutions can do very well. If politics sets that cost too low, we end up with a system with a bias against clean energy solutions (as we have now). But there is a quantifiable measure of that bias you get from the carbon price if you had cap-and-trade...

Capital costs of renewable solutions with current technology are known, and in particular for solar are very large. Built in to those capital costs are underlying energy costs: a substantial fraction of the cost of a standard solar panel can be attributed to the energy input to create the silicon, glass, and metal components. If the cost of fuel increases a factor of 10, your capital costs have just shot up too, so you can't think of the capital costs of renewables as intrinsically separate from the costs of other energy sources.

Yes there are differences that make the typical "cents per kWh" estimates somewhat arbitrary - most importantly the cost of financing in estimates I've seen has been all over the map (perhaps partly because of different estimations of risk premium). That's because people try to compare with a single number that doesn't always make sense. But there are real hard numbers behind the cost estimates. The choice of generating technology could still be "essentially political" because you can legislate anything, but is that a wise use of political power?On Walt Patterson argues that electricity cost comparisons are political, not economic posted 2 years, 1 month ago 4 Responses

Economic vs. physical facts

David,

   I like your comments (and enjoyed your and Bill McKibben's discussion at YearlyKos!) but I'm not sure I agree with your arguments here. In particular you write

 "To say that clean energy "costs more" is not a statement of objective economic fact; it's a political statement that makes sense only given a contingent set of laws, practices, and market institutions."

But there is an objective physical issue behind the economic costs which boils down to essentially an "Energy Return on Investment", though the issue is more complex than a single number. Energy input costs for potential technologies are time-dependent and widely variable, including the costs of the basic R&D to make it possible, capital costs to deploy it, the costs of providing any needed fuel, maintenance, or other consumables or short-lifetime capital expenses, and end-of-life/disposal/cleanup costs.

We artificially subsidize fossil fuels because the cleanup costs associated with emitted CO2 are not accounted for. But then it's not clear what those costs actually are, so cap-and-trade or a carbon tax are part of the solution to make that more accountable.

The general objective problem for clean energy is two-fold: (A) capital costs (in energy or dollar terms) tend to be much larger than for fossil technologies, requiring large up-front investments and (B) the "Energy Return on Investment", however you may define it (basically it's a maximum potential growth rate in energy use for the technology) tends to be a lot lower than for fossil fuels, with current technologies.

But - many of us believe that technologies will become available to greatly improve that "return on investment" for clean energy. The question then is what is the best route to get to those clean technologies with the greatest return, that can grow the fastest in the end?

David, your line here may sound contradictory to some, but it is a very common environmental stance to favor market-based solutions that encourage the growth of "green" businesses. I see the Apollo Alliance as in that same arena; I haven't read S&N's new book yet, but I'm guessing from what I've heard that they're arguing for a different focus.

It's possible that businesses spawned by carbon taxes and the like will come up with the needed innovations, but what I see happening recently is only slow improvement in costs, for example in the solar and wind industries. And this is typical of industrial innovation.

Advanced technologies primarily come out of government and university research - in particular, the dramatic drop in commercial solar costs in the early 1980s seems to have been a direct result of a huge bump in government/university R&D investment in the field during the Carter administration.

We could make do with the technologies we have now, but it's going to be very costly (in dollar terms and in the limited speed with which we're able to invest and respond to the threat). Or we could at the same time invest a much lower dollar amount in government-funded R&D in the expectation of far better technology allowing much faster response ten years down the road.

Of course if we had continued Carter's R&D investment over the last 27 years we wouldn't be in this pickle.On A reply to Shellenberger & Nordhaus posted 2 years, 1 month ago 20 Responses

Exactly!

David, I bow down before your wonderful rant! Even though I thought Revkin's article was ok... :-) So - how do we fix this?On Wherein I finally get it all out posted 2 years, 10 months ago 22 Responses

You're not far off at least!

I think you get the message across very well in this article. The one thing I would note is that "Big-industry supply-side options" aren't necessarily the enemy - in fact some big industry supply-side options may be a good part of what will save us: large-scale wind power and solar installations for instance.

The problem is the universal technological displacement problem: the old dinosaurs are not interested in investing in unproven new ways of doing things when they think they can just keep on making money and providing what the market wants with small changes to the old ways. They need either some major shock from the markets, or very strong government regulation, to see the light; the Prius for instance is an example of the market shocks the new technology should bring in coming years, but that's going to be a slow road without government support.On TomPaine op-ed: 'The Alt Fuels Distraction' posted 3 years, 6 months ago 17 Responses