I wonder what President Obama really believes about clean coal technology. Or about anything, for that matter.
Tag: Environment
Fraud, deceit, and misinformation regarding carbon dioxide
An edited version of this editorial by Dennis Hedke appeared in the Wichita Eagle today. This is the original version.
EPA declares greenhouse gases a threat, (Renee Shoof, McClatchy Newspapers, 4/18/09). This pronouncement follows a U.S. Supreme Court conclusion that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant, with a directive to the EPA to study whether this gas posed a threat to our health and welfare, or whether the science was too uncertain to make a judgment.
Let me be unequivocal. CO2 is not now, has never been, and will never be a “pollutant.” It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, harmless gas that is one of the essential components to the life of all plants and animals on this planet. Current concentrations of the gas in earth’s atmosphere average about 380 parts per million (ppm), or about 0.04 %. Current estimates of the human-induced fraction are about 5% of the 0.04%, or about 0.002%.
Let’s talk economics. The US government has defined a strategy (McCain-Lieberman) which on best-case seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of CO2 by 31,400 tons/year by 2050. The calculated temperature reduction due to this “improvement”: 0.04 degrees Celsius, or 0.08 degrees Fahrenheit. The calculated cost: $1.3 trillion. Another one of those trillion dollar “deals” for America.
Earth’s temperature has been rising steadily since around 1750, the end of the Little Ice Age. This temperature increase is independent of CO2 concentration. In fact, what the data shows is that CO2 concentration increases well after the temperature increases on a global scale. Water vapor makes up 90% of the greenhouse gas mix, and is the dominant factor in any greenhouse effects.
If CO2 were a pollutant, then why would our US submarines allow an environmental concentration of this very same gas in the neighborhood of 8,000 ppm? It is unconscionable that our government is demanding that we try to regulate the concentration of this gas in the atmosphere, knowing full well that concentrations more than 20 times that amount produce absolutely no ill effects on American sailors.
34,000 American scientists, including myself, have signed a Petition demanding that the United States disassociate from the Kyoto Protocol, and instead follow the actual data and evidence which clearly shows that CO2 presents not even the slightest potential for damage or risk to our environment. It is high time the fraud, deceit and misinformation being disseminated and thrust upon the American public be brought to a screeching halt.
If any government representative wishes to debate any aspect of this matter, I would welcome that opportunity, anytime, anywhere.
Dennis Hedke
Geophysicist
Wichita, KSShare in the green-energy boom and quit fighting
Share in the green-energy boom. That’s the title of Rhonda Holman’s editorial in Sunday’s Wichita Eagle.
It’s backed up in today’s paper by Enough fighting over coal plants. This editorial is notable for a few points.
Holman makes an argument against the plants by noting that it’s likely that the Obama administration will impose regulation or taxation of these plants. But these plans are unwise and will harm the American economy. Hopefully the Omaba administration will realize this.
She says the plants will stick “the state with all 11 million tons of carbon dioxide.” If carbon emissions are a problem, it’s because of its contribution to global warming or climate change. It doesn’t matter where the carbon dioxide is produced. Its effect is the same.
In this argument, she treats carbon emissions as though they were local pollutants. Coal plants do produce these, but they’ve been greatly reduced through technology. Further, local pollutants are of entirely different character from carbon emissions.
Readers of the Wichita Eagle should be asking if Holman doesn’t know this, or if she does know it, why does she say these things?
It’s a good question. Facts are sometimes in short supply among radical environmentalists.
But the precise content of these editorials is not as important as the premises they’re based on. These are that we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions in order to save the planet, and that we can create a lot of jobs and wealth by doing so.
The science behind global warming is not at all settled. See Global Warming Rope-a-Dope for an example.
As far as green jobs producing wealth, my post Green energy policies causing harm in Europe reports how green jobs in Spain end up costing $774,000 each.
In Academic Study Challenges Projections of Green Jobs, read about a study that concludes “lack of sound research methods, erroneous economic assumptions and technological omissions have routinely been utilized to lend support, rather than provide legitimate analysis, to major public policies and government spending initiatives.”
We need to base Kansas energy policy on facts and reason.
Articles of Interest
Bailout costs rise, local election turnout, health care, light bulbs, newspapers, Kansas coal prospects
Estimate of TARP’s Cost to Taxpayers Increases (Wall Street Journal) “The Congressional Budget Office has quietly altered its estimate of the ultimate cost to taxpayers of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, now figuring the initiative will be much more expensive in the long run than it previously figured. In January, the CBO pegged the ultimate cost to taxpayers of the $700 billion TARP at $189 billion. When the agency issued revised numbers in late March, it revised that to $356 billion, a change that drew little attention.” I don’t imagine this will be the last time we see the cost of bailouts rising.
Expected Turnout For Tuesday’s Election: 12 Percent (Brent Wistrom in the Wichita Eagle) “The six candidates for Wichita City Council have clashed on many fronts. But they agree on one thing. The projected turnout for Tuesday’s election is dismal.”
That’s ridiculous (Letter to the editor of the Wichita Eagle) A letter-writer makes the case for government provided health care by illustrating a scenario where if a citizen calls for police or fire assistance, they’ll have to make payment arrangements before receiving service. This, of course, is a ridiculous comparison and ignores the context in which these services are provided. Besides, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to look into private provision of police and fire protection.
Climate Change’s Dim Bulbs (George F. Will in the Washington Post) Will comments on some of the problems with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL), as recently noted in a New York Times article The Bulb That Saved the Planet May Be a Little Less Than Billed. He concludes: “Worrywarts wonder what will happen when a lazy or careless, say, 10 percent of 300 million Americans put their worn-out bulbs in the trash. Stop worrying. What do you think? That Congress, architect of the ethanol industry and designer of automobiles, does not think things through?”
Life After Newspapers (Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post) Kinsley claims that people are getting more news and analysis than ever. It’s just online. If true — I was not aware of this — then there is hope for newspaper companies to survive: “Sorry, but people who have grown up around computers find reading the news on paper just as annoying as you find reading it on a screen. … If your concern is grander — that if we don’t save traditional newspapers we will lose information vital to democracy — you are saying that people should get this information whether or not they want it. That’s an unattractive argument: shoving information down people’s throats in the name of democracy. But this really isn’t a problem. As many have pointed out, more people are spending more time reading news and analysis than ever before. They’re just doing it online.”
Sebelius holding coal cards (Tim Carpenter in the Topeka Capital-Journal) Analysis of the “coal bill,” which passed the Kansas house, but with fewer votes than it has in the past. House Speaker Mike O’Neal said earlier this year that there would be enough votes in the house to override the governor’s promised veto, but it looks like the vote count is moving in the wrong direction.
Wind power: it’s not free
A letter from a citizen in today’s Wichita Eagle makes the case that electricity generated from coal is less expensive than electricity from wind. I don’t know if the writer’s numbers are correct. Considering all costs, though, it is true that wind power is very expensive.
Here’s something from the American Wind Energy Association: “Over the last 20 years, the cost of electricity from utility-scale wind systems has dropped by more than 80%. In the early 1980s, when the first utility-scale turbines were installed, wind-generated electricity cost as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, state-of-the-art wind power plants can generate electricity for less than 5 cents/kWh with the Production Tax Credit in many parts of the U.S., a price that is competitive with new coal- or gas-fired power plants.”
Note that it takes a taxpayer-provided subsidy to make wind power competitive in cost with coal. This is at odds with claims made by some that once the wind plant is built, there’s little cost.
GPACE’s Scott Allegrucci misleads again
In the energy debate in Kansas, sometimes facts are hard to come by. Especially when green energy advocates mislead others about facts they must be aware of.
An example is GPACE Director Scott Allegrucci’s comments from Clean Energy Day, a post which holds his remarks before a crowd in Topeka.
In his remarks, Allegrucci uses imagery of a western Kansas desert to mislead listeners about the water usage of coal-fired power plants. These plants do use water. Quite a bit, in fact.
But Allegrucci must be aware — if has any interest in being intellectually honest — that the power plant has to purchase water rights for the water it will use. That water, if not used by the power plant, would very likely be used in agriculture. Those agricultural products — mostly corn to be turned into beef and ethanol — would in turn likely be exported from Kansas.
But instead, Allegrucci speaks of Colorado and Texas utilities who “get to use our water.” And this: “We suggest it would be cheaper and cleaner to put Kansans to work building a pipeline to Colorado if we’re just going to give them our water.”
This intellectually dishonest debate does nothing to increase understanding of the issues Kansas faces.
GPACE poll on Kansas energy
Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy recently released a poll that purportedly shows great interest in Kansas for clean energy sources. Looking at the poll, however, leads to little confidence in its results.
Some of the results the poll produced are totally meaningless. For example: “Results show that most voters (almost two-thirds) think the price of coal will increase over the next 25 years.” Is this poll relying on Kansas voters as experts in coal futures? This result is probably more the result of the Kansas press repeatedly reporting the wishes of radical environmentalist groups.
The poll also asks questions that produce results like this: “88% of Kansans feel that it is important that Kansas become energy independent by developing natural gas and wind resources that already exist in the state.”
“Energy independent” sound like a good thing, doesn’t it? It conjures up the fear of the United States being reliant on Iran or Venezuela for its energy. But we’re not talking about enriching rogue countries. We’re talking about our neighbors in Colorado and Texas, for example. Have we declared a trade war with these states? We happily export beef, wheat, and airplanes to our neighboring states. What if Texas decided it didn’t want to be dependent on Kansas for airplanes?
One of the poll questions asks Kansans how important it is that Kansas’ electricity production in the future “will help stimulate the state’s economy and create jobs.” The poll question doesn’t state this, but it clearly alludes to the environmentalist lobby’s mistaken belief that a switch in energy policy will create thousands of “green” jobs and drive the economy forward. Jobs will be created, to be sure. But wealth and prosperity, which is what we really want, will not be created.
This green jobs myth is dangerous. Ask Spain. As reported in Green energy policies causing harm in Europe, each “green job” created in Spain cost $774,000. Academic Study Challenges Projections of Green Jobs provides additional information.
The same question asks Kansans whether it’s important that future electricity sources “can be provided at a long term fixed price.” The future cost of the renewable energy sources that GPACE supports — wind and natural gas, mostly — can’t be predicted. They are both already much more expensive than coal, and their future cost is unknown. This question may be alluding to the threat of taxes or caps on carbon emissions. These policies will affect natural gas power production too, although to a lesser degree than coal.
It is certain, however, that taxpayers will have to continue to subsidize wind power production, or it would not be used. But this poll didn’t ask a question like “should Kansas’ future energy policy include a power source that is so costly that it must be subsidized?”
The same question also asks if it’s important to produce energy in a way that doesn’t cause climate change. Who wouldn’t agree with that? The question, however, ignores important factors of cost. There’s also the realization that anything we can do in Kansas is virtually meaningless in the context of the entire world, as shown in KEEP’s Goal is Predetermined and Ineffectual.
As reported in other stories here, GPACE has a history of asking misleading questions. The results of this poll may be read by clicking on Wind Energy, Net Metering, and Kansas Energy Sources.
Green energy policies causing harm in Europe
In their Washington Times article Lessons from Europe, Iain Murray, Gabriel Calzada, and Carlo Stagnaro warn us in the United States about “green” energy policies that have been implemented in Europe. These harmful policies are just like the ones we are considering here.
The cap-and-trade system that’s been in place in Europe has done little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “The scheme has been repeatedly gamed and manipulated by industry and governments so that emissions have actually increased faster than the those of the United States, with none of the big reductions promised materializing.”
Meanwhile, electricity bills are going up, and Europe has become more dependent on natural gas imports from Russia.
Spain has gained experience with the costs of green jobs. Large government incentives meant that the renewable energy sector in Spain grew rapidly — at a large cost that taxpayers and consumers will continue to pay for a long time.
Furthermore, it turns out that green jobs are expensive. Here’s what Bloomberg reported about a study released by one of the authors of the Times article:
The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power – – which are charged to consumers in their bills — translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.
“The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices,” he said in an interview.
The Times article notes that “most of these ‘green jobs’ were transitory, anyhow, mostly connected with construction, not operation.” This is a common criticism made of the proposal to build a coal-fired power plant in Kansas. Yes, thousands of jobs will be created, but only for a year or two, say the critics. It turns out that green jobs have the same life cycle.
It turns out that cap-and-trade has not worked out well for Europe. Neither has heavy government subsidy worked to create jobs at a cost that we can afford.
We have to wonder, then, why President Obama is so committed to cap-and-trade in the United States.
Furthermore, have outgoing Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius and soon-to-be governor Mark Parkinson thought of things like this?
Articles of Interest
Capitalism, CFL bulbs, green indoctrination, bailout constitutionality, Facebook, Twitter
‘The Road to Serfdom’ revisited: Markets display uncertainty over future of capitalism itself (Scott S. Powell in the Washington Times) Discussion of how government interventionism in the economy is not helping. “President Eisenhower called it ‘creeping socialism.’ Nobel Prize winner Friedrich von Hayek called it ‘The Road to Serfdom.’”
Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don’t Work? (New York Times) Many customers are not happy with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Short life for the expensive bulbs is a common irritation.
‘Green Hell’ Coming Soon to a Life Like Yours (Human Events) A review of a new book that merits reading. “Be prepared the next time your child comes home from school with some nice ‘green’ project or attempts to lecture you about how you ‘should’ be doing more ‘sustainable’ activities to ‘save’ the Earth. You will be ready to confront teachers, political leaders, neighbors, and annoying aunts with the astounding new book by Steve Milloy titled Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”
Bailing Out of the Constitution (George Will in the Washington Post) Is the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 — that’s the $700 billion bailout of banks from last year — constitutional? Perhaps it isn’t, argues Will. It has to do with the Vesting Clause of Article I says, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in” Congress.
Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast? (New York Times) Facebook will soon have 200 million members. All are not happy, evidence being the recent controversy over a redesign of some of its most important aspects. There’s also the “coolness” factor: can kids like a social network that their parents are now using?
When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking (New York Times) “In many cases, celebrities and their handlers have turned to outside writers — ghost Twitterers, if you will — who keep fans updated on the latest twists and turns, often in the star’s own voice. Because Twitter is seen as an intimate link between celebrities and their fans, many performers are not willing to divulge the help they use to put their thoughts into cyberspace. … It is not only celebrities who are forced to look to a team to produce real-time commentary on daily activities; politicians like Ron Paul have assigned staff members to create Twitter posts and Facebook personas. Candidate Barack Obama, as well as President Obama, has a social-networking team to keep his Twitter feed tweeting.”