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Keep Kicking that Ethanol Can

Friday, August 10th, 2012

By David L. Brown

Yesterday I posted an analysis of the current forecasts for a poor corn crop due to heat and drought, and also mentioned that the obvious step to take is to suspend all ethanol production to free up the approximately one-third of the U.S. corn crop mandated to go to distilleries and into our gas tanks. If the corn crop drops by a significant degree, as seems likely, that mandated amount of corn will take an even larger bite out of the supply, perhaps even surpassing one-half of the total.

It’s deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra said. Back in 2008 I posted this editorial cartoon that appeared on the cover of Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. (I am a 50-year member of SPJ and am immediate past-president of the New Mexico chapter.)

That cartoon is even more appropriate today, because the USDA is refusing to put a stop to the travesty even though a world food crisis is inevitable, putting hundreds of millions at risk of famine. And today, writing in The Financial Times, José Graziano da Silva, the director-general of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, wrote (as reported by Reuters here):

“Much of the reduced crop will be claimed by biofuel production in line with U.S. federal mandates, leaving even less for food and feed markets,” he wrote in an op-ed just a day before the U.S. government issues a pivotal crop report that is expected to show U.S. corn output falling to the smallest in six years and stockpiles at near record lows.

“An immediate, temporary suspension of that mandate would give some respite to the market and allow more of the crop to be channeled towards food and feed uses,” he wrote in a high-profile yet indirect message to Washington.

Obviously, the line has been drawn in the sand by those in charge in Washington and it’s to favor the owners and operators of ethanol plants vs. hundreds of millions of endangered human beings. And not to mention the “inconvenient truth” of food shortages and higher prices right here at home. Already, as I mentioned yesterday, ranchers are liquidating their herds in the face of dried-up pastures and hay crops. How bad is it way out West? I saw a post a few days ago from a rancher in west Texas who said that he’s received just three inches of rain in the last two years.  His critters have long since gone to market and he’s facing a bleak future.

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Posted in Age of Oil, Agriculture Issues, Energy Technology, Famine, Fossil Fuels, Global Security, Transportation | Comments Off

Drought Spreads, World Famine to Follow

Thursday, August 9th, 2012

By David L. Brown

The drought in America not only isn’t getting better…it’s getting a lot worse. The combination of heat and lack of rain has put a large portion of the nation’s field crop prospects in severe jeopardy. The Associated Press today has an update, and the news is far from encouraging. (You can read the AP article, “Report: Drought Worsens in Key Farm States” here):

The latest statistics from reporting agencies reveal that the proportion of cropland in Iowa that’s in extreme or exceptional drought more than doubled just in the last week, from 30.74 percent to 69.14 percent now. In Illinois, the levels of extreme or exceptional drought rose to 81.18 percent. And in Nebraska, the percentage of land in those categories rose by another 8 percentage points to 91.2 percent of the total.

It’s hard to grasp just how serious the implications of such catastrophic figures are for our future, and the degree to which the situation has worsened in just since the last weekly report is ominous to say the least. Overall, more than one-half of the nation’s corn crop is rated poor to very poor.

The conditions in Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska are particularly serious. You may think, well those are only three states so can it really matter that much? Well, first, they’re not the only states that are in trouble, but there’s something special about those three, Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska. That special thing is that they are generally our nation’s three largest producers of corn. Let’s look at last year as a benchmark. According to a USDA report issued in September, 2011, Iowa’s corn production was projected at 2,296,250,000 bushels. Illinois came in second at 1,980,300,000 bushels, and Nebraska was in third place at 1,544,000,000 bu. Between those three states alone a total of 5, 820,550,000 bushels were projected. That’s just under six billion bushels of corn.

How much was the entire nation projected to produce when the harvest was done? Good question, I’m glad you asked. The answer is 12,497,070,000 bushels. About 12.5 billion bushels, of which about 5.8 billion came from those three states of Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska. Which means that those three states represent about 46.4 percent of America’s total corn crop as of 2011 and the other 47 states produced only 53.6 percent of the total (and just to make sure you understand, crops in many of those states are experiencing extreme drought stress).

Note also that the U.S. usually grows about 40 percent of all the corn in the world, and is the largest exporter by far. What all this means is that that old Nemesis Famine is about to stalk the planet. Drought is also being experienced in other parts of the world, including India and China with their huge populations that need to be fed. Some countries, such as Egypt with about 80 million people in a country that is 97 percent sandy desert, are almost totally reliant on imports of grains, including corn which is used to grow livestock and poultry for food. Other nations, such as Mexico with its need for tortillas, are also dependent upon imports of American corn.

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Posted in Agriculture Issues, Climate Change, Famine, Fossil Fuels | 1 Comment »

Seeing the Future Dimly

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

By David L. Brown

One of the news websites, Fox News (here), today featured excerpts from a number of predictions made 25 years ago by “science thinkers,” predicting conditions in our time of 2012. I recognize the names of most of these “science thinkers” and they are actually “science fiction writers,” but that’s okay because they’re in the business of imagining the future as much as anyone. I’ve always had a passing interest in futurism, the attempt to predict how things will be in future times. In general, these tend to be wildly inaccurate due to the many uncertainties and the phenomenon of straight line thinking. Too often futurists tend to look at what’s been happening recently and simply project a straight line into the future.

Even a cursory look at history will knock enough holes in this procedure to make Swiss cheeses look like solid objects. Imagine the application of straight line thinking to the U.S. economy in the summer of 1929, the likelihood of war in Europe in 1913, the future well-being of the little Roman village of Pompeii in 78 AD (Mount Vesuvius erupted the following year), and so many more examples of unexpected and unpredictable events that dramatically change the future.

One thing that struck me abut these predictions was that they were for the most part pessimistic, in contrast with the usual fol-de-rol about a Jetsons future with flying cars and an abundance of everything. Here are some excerpts with my comments:

Isaac Asimov: “Assuming we haven’t destroyed ourselves in a nuclear war, there will be 8-10 billion of us on this planet and widespread hunger.”

Isaac’s view was fairly accurate, even though he was a little on the low side on population (it’s actually just something over 7 billion). He was dead on about the looming hunger, hastened by this year’s worldwide drought.

Jack Williamson: “If we had a time-phone, now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have burdened you with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should have been your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance, want, and war.”

Of all the predictions, I nominate this one as the most accurate. I have expressed similar thoughts myself, many times. Anyone who looks around the world today with open eyes can recognize Williamson’s vision of our time.
Sheldon Glashow: “The American economy will have experienced a gentle yet relentless decline. Our children will not live such comfortable lives as we do. The spread between the rich and the poor will have grown, and crime will have become so prevalent as to threaten the social fabric. The rich and the poor will form 2 armed camps.”
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Posted in Conflict and War, Energy Technology, Essays and Opinion, Extinction, Famine, Fossil Fuels, Medicine, Politics, Population Issues, Resource Depletion, Space Exploration, Technology | Comments Off

California Stays the Course on Green Energy

Friday, November 12th, 2010

By David L. Brown

Another example of the way in which energy moguls work to block development of sustainable, clean energy was the recent introduction of Prop. 23 in California. This proposition, which came to a vote on November 2, quite simply was aimed at dismantling the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, passed in 2006. Also known as AB 32,  the GWSA calls for the state’s producers of greenhouse gas to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. Many initiatives are well under way to replace fossil fuels, create greater efficiency in existing technologies, and move the state toward a cleaner “green” future. Beginning to take effect in 2012, the act will require about a 15 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from present levels by the target date ten years from now.

This seems a moderate goal, perhaps even less than might be hoped. But nonetheless, it had drawn fire from the usual suspects, who organized Prop. 23 to demand that AB32 be suspended until the state’s employment rate dropped below 5.5 percent for a full 12 months. Because this is an unlikely event (that level has been reached only three times in the past 40 years), the proposition in reality was a move to permanently gut the GWSA.

And who was behind this end run to set California up to continue down the dead end path toward oblivion as resource depletion continues to undermine the old economic infrastructure while forward-looking nations such as China and Germany stake their futures on rapid development of alternative energy? Why, the usual suspects, of course. Although the California Republican and Libertarian Parties signed on to support the proposition, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger strongly opposed the proposition and was joined by GOP candidates Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman among others, proving that the party structure is increasingly at odds with its own candidates.

But politicians weren’s the real conspirators behind the proposition. The individuals and corporate entities that acted in support of the proposition wrapped themselves in a cloak of deception, claiming to be concerned with jobs. In fact, they called their effort the California Jobs Initiative. And yet, a look at the list of major donors to the movement tells a different story. Top contributor was a company called Valero Energy ($4.05 million), followed by (among others) Tesoro ($1.525 million), Flint Hills Resources, LP ($1 million; this is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, a major supporter of anti-global warming initiatives); Occidental Petroleum ($300K), National Petrochemical and Refiners Assn. ($100K), Tower Energy Group ($200K); World Oil Corp. ($100K); Southern Counties Oil ($50K); Frontier Oil ($50K);  Murray Energy ($30K); and Berry Petrochemical ($30K).

Hmm, do we see a pattern here? Are these leading supporters of a move to block California from improving its greenhouse gas footprint acting out of concern for the jobs of Californians—or from their own self-interested desire to continue to profit from fossil fuels and the destruction of the environment? It’s rather clear that the answer is the latter, the profit one, the evil one, rather than the charitable desire to protect jobs. for ordinary Californians. In fact, suspending the act would have put paid to at least 50,000 new jobs relating to clean energy initiatives.

To put this in further perspective, let’s take a closer look at some of those supporters of the proposal to block the green act. No. 1 contributor Valero operates two oil refineries in California. No. 2 donor Tesoro is the 24th largest producer of air pollution in the United States. And Koch Industries, the third largest contributor, is one of the top 10 corporate polluters in the nation.

What more can we say, except to applaud the wisdom of California voters who soundly defeated Prop. 23 by a 22 percent margin, approximately 61 percent to 39 percent. The Golden State may face deep and serious problems but at least its people have the courage to stand up against polluters and those that Ayn Rand called “looters,” the corporate highway robbers who want to continue their nasty ways at all costs.

California, and the world at large, needs to vastly expand support of alternative energy programs. It’s not the time to listen to those who advise us to inserting our heads into the sand in ostrich-like denial.

In an editorial written prior to the election, Science magazine editor Bruce Alberts had this to say:

The public and private investment in energy innovation now totals only about 0.3% of U.S. energy expenditures. California’s Proposition 23 needs to be soundly defeated, sending a clear signal to Washington that the people of the United States are ready and willing to mobilize its considerable resources in the vital drive to a sustainable energy future.

To which I add, bravo! And thanks to California voters the message has been sent.

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Posted in Age of Oil, Climate Change, Conservation Issues, Economics, Energy Technology, Fossil Fuels, Melting Planet, Politics, Pollution | Comments Off

My New Book

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

By David L. Brown

depcovercropI am pleased to announce the publication of my new book DEAD END PATH: How Industrial Agriculture Has Stolen Our Future. This work, in the form of an extended essay, is the result of a lifetime of experience and study. It is written in an easy-to-read style and thoroughly documented with more than 250 footnotes and a bibliography of nearly 150 volumes included in its nearly 300 pages.

DEAD END PATH is unusual in that it is part essay, part memoir, part speculative journalism and part research-based analysis. It examines the serious challenges that face the human race, including the unhappy facts that as human population continues to grow the resources on which our technological civilization depends are being depleted through runaway “progress” and “development,” code words for the destruction of the environment in the interests of profit for the few.

Many of the ideas in this book have been discussed in this weblog, including population issues, resource peaks, and economic considerations. The main argument of DEAD END PATH is that while most of the structural problems of our civilization can be traced to over-population, that core fact itself rests on the short-sighted use of industrial methods to produce more food in the short term than the Earth can sustain. As resources peak and begin to decline, a food crisis looms ahead of us at the terminus of the path we have taken.

To give you the general flavor of this work, here is the official description from the publisher’s website:

DEAD END PATH is an important book because it describes in simple, jargon-free words the critical dangers facing humanity, including many facts that the media seldom report. It’s an extended essay on how industrial agriculture has led us down an unsustainable path that threatens our very civilization. The danger is real and looming before us in the here-and-now. Our petroleum-based technology is reaching its limits and the coming collapse will likely trigger a domino-like food crisis that will change the world forever.

Readers will learn how machine technology has transformed food production and pitted the human race against Nature herself. Topics include over-population, resource depletion, climate change, economic realities and the long-term outlook for human survival. Part journalism, part history, part memoir, part essay — this book aims to entertain and inform curious readers in non-technical language. The subjects of this book are possibly the most important issues of the 21st Century, a stark reality that is little reported by the media and largely ignored by world leaders. Every thinking person should be aware of this looming threat to civilization, the real-life story that unfolds in the pages of DEAD END PATH.

To help bring the message of DEAD END PATH to a wider audience, I have begun to create a new website at www.agdeadend.com. It is only partially constructed, but you may find it interesting to visit it now to read the text of the Author’s Note from the book in which I explain my personal life’s journey and how it resulted in the writing of this book. Please bookmark and return to it as it takes form. It will contain news and commentary relating to the subject of the book.

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Book Reviews, Desertification and Soil Loss, Economics, Essays and Opinion, Famine, Fossil Fuels, Politics, Resource Depletion, Technology | Comments Off

A New ‘Champion’ for Anti-Climate Change

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

By David L. Brown

We’ve railed for several years about the support of anti-global warming activists by self-interested corporations. Now, according to an article on Scientific American’s web site, here, there’s a new champion handing out money to shills for the energy companies that want to keep the Earth on the greenhouse gas merry-go-round.

The new villain in this tragedy is Koch Industries of Wichita, KS, which has surpassed even the mighty ExxonMobil as a source of funding for climate change deniers. The source of the news story is a report produced by the environmental organization Greenpeace. According to SciAm:

Koch subsidiaries own refineries, oil pipelines, fertilizer facilities, coal and cement transportation systems, and other industrial operations. The company also has several foundations through which it gave $24.9 million to conservative groups between 2005 and 2008, the report says.

“The combination of foundation-funded front-groups, big lobbying budgets, [political action committee] donations, and direct campaign contributions makes Koch Industries and the Koch brothers among the most formidable obstacles to advancing clean energy and climate policy in the U.S.,” Greenpeace says.

The energy conglomerate, which is 84 percent owned by brothers Charles and David Koch, helps support activities by individual purveyors of “junk science” and such conservative think tanks as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute.

Anti-climate change is an insidious endeavor that attempts to spread misinformation by picking at small details, many of them of no consequence or even non-existent, as illustrated here:

gwcriticsClimate scientists are ill-prepared to defend their work against this kind of attack. They work through a system of peer review, which means their ideas and data are evaluated by experts in their field, rather than by public opinion. Unfortunately, the press and the general public are pretty much unaware of how science works, and it seems perfectly natural to the average Joe Sixpack that any talking head on TV or even just some guy in a bar can have a say in the evaluation of scientific work. In fact, as I pointed out in my  essay “Science, Propaganda and Climate Change,” here, the anti-climate change activities are classic examples of the kind of deliberate misleading of the public that was practiced by the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong.

The parallel with anti-evolutionary activity such as so-called “intelligent design” is apparent, but in that case the efforts to discredit science are based on the mistaken religious belief that evolution somehow invalidates their perception of a supernatural power. (Doesn’t it ever occur to them that if there were an all-powerful deity, evolution would logically be the method through which that deity works?)

No, the program of anti-climate change agitation is clearly based not on faith but on personal or corporate greed. In the case of those who work and spend millions to confuse the issue of greenhouse gas warming, the only apparent motivation is to allow themselves to continue to profit from the “development” and use of fossil fuels. Take away the profit, and there would be no incentive to make up stories and spread lies to muddle the issue.

The Koch Brothers obviously have every profit incentive to prevent the world from reducing emissions of greenhouse gas, and they are putting their money where their interests lie. According to the SciAm report, Koch Industries has supported misinformation campaigns purporting to prove that polar bears are not threatened; encouraged suspicions that climate scientists cherry-pick data and suppress findings that don’t suggest global warming is taking place; and financed studies that “misinform the public on renewable energy benefits.”

I find it ironic that the deniers, whose motivation is to make money from continued fossil fuel use, criticize those who push for alternative sources such as wind and solar power as greedy profiteers. This is a classic tactic well-known to Nicolai Machiavelli, Joseph Goebbels, and Saul Alinsky. There is an old saying about pots and kettles, but in this case perhaps the kettle isn’t even black, only the pot.

Will the confusion about global warming ever come to an end? Yes, it will, for nothing can go on forever. Unfortunately, this mess will probably come to a conclusion either when there is no more money to be made from exploiting fossil fuels, or when the Earth can no longer  support industrial civilization. These two conditions are not mutually exclusive, and the final scenario could include both factors.

As to the odds in favor of dramatic action by governments around the world to turn the tide against global warming, I can only suggest that the power of greed is mighty and the love of money and power is a sickness more terrible than any mere disease.

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Posted in Climate Change, Essays and Opinion, Fossil Fuels, Melting Planet, Politics | Comments Off

$100 Million Funding for Algae Biofuels Plant

Friday, December 11th, 2009

By David L. Brown

A $50 million federal grant has been awarded to Sapphire Energy of San Diego, CA, for a revolutionary bio-fuels plant to be built in New Mexico. The announcement was made by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department issued the grant under the economic recovery program. At the same time Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the USDA would further back the program with loan guarantees up to $54.5 million.

The company is pioneering what it calls “green crude oil,” created from renewable algae. The “green crude” will be used to make biodiesel and jet fuel. The company has already demonstrated the concept with research facilities at Las Cruces, NM and Portales, NM. The process has been demonstrated with several airliner test flights powered by fuel made by the company, and experiments are underway to prove the ability of algae-oil to be used to make gasoline.

potential_mainThe project will demonstrate an integrated process in which algae will be grown in ponds, then processed to remove water and extract oils. In a second stage the oils will be processed to produce fuels. Algae, pictured at left, not only grows fast (think kudzu here), but naturally contains a high percentage of oils.

According to Sapphire CEO the project will create as many as 750 direct and indirect jobs in New Mexico during construction, and 30-40 full-time positions after the plant is opened. Construction is expected to begin next year.

Sapphire claims that the new energy model, which uses water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to grow the algae, will be carbon neutral and produce fuels identical to those made from fossil fuels. It does not require large inputs of water and energy, nor does it rely on agricultural crops as is the case with some other alternative fuel processes such as those used to produce ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans.

New Mexico Senator Tom Udall hailed the project, saying it “will decrease our dependence on foreign oil, reduce our carbon footprint, and create jobs for hardworking New Mexicans.”

Algae offers one of the best sources for bio-fuels, since it can be grown relatively cheaply in ponds or tanks in areas with lots of sunlight, even deserts as in southern New Mexico. Corn for ethanol, on the other hand, is a farm crop requiring many inputs of land, labor, chemicals and seeds. Using farm crops to replace oil is unsustainable, uneconomical, and just plain foolish.

This is not the only such program in the works. On July 15, 2009, I reported (here) a major investment by oil giant ExxonMobil in an algae energy joint venture with Synthetic Genomics, a company founded by geneticist Craig Venter. ExxonMobil was reported to be putting $600 million into the plan. BP and other companies are also jumping on the algae bandwagon, making this one of the hottest areas in alternative fuel development.

All is not roses in the risky business of alternative energy. On May 13, 2009 it was announced that GreenFuel Technologies was closing down, a victim of the credit crunch. I posted an extensive report on this company’s algae fuel program on October 20, 2006 (here). GreenFuel was a joint venture between Harvard and MIT, and invested millions before falling victim to the economic troubles.

Posted in Age of Oil, Agriculture Issues, Bio-Engineering, Energy Technology, Fossil Fuels | Comments Off

High Hopes for Copenhagen May Be Dashed

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

By David L. Brown

081204093041Great hope is being placed on the upcoming conference on climate change, to take place December 7*-18 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The meeting has the acronym COP15, which indicates it is the 15th “Conference of Parties” in the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change. Representatives from 170 countries are expected to take part. It is hoped that COP15 can make substantial progress toward a replacement of the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

Although there is much sturm and drang about this issue, my feeling is that any significant progress may be difficult if not impossible to achieve. The problem is that most poor or developing nations want exceptions to the need to reduce emissions of CO², methane and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), in effect pushing the problem onto the advanced nations. The general argument is that the rich nations have been the biggest polluters in the past, and that they should therefore bear the expense of fixing the problem. That particularly targets the United States, which was formerly the No. 1 source of carbon emissions. Unfortunately, in view of the present economic woes, the First World economies are not exactly robust.

Another fact to consider is that the advanced nations have already passed into what is called the Post-Industrial Age, even as developing nations are introducing into the world a new era of industrialization. Thus, the title of the world’s No. 1 source of GHGs has recently passed to China.

Identifying rich nations as the responsible culprits also flies in the face of the fact that developing countries are the main source of rising GHG emissions. For example, the amounts of carbon released by India grew by 103 percent between 1992 and 2007. China did even worse, with carbon emissions growing by 150 percent. As we’ve reported here, China is bringing nearly two coal-fired power plants on-line each week.

How do these figures relate to the global picture? Taking all nations into account, on average GHG emissions increased by 38 percent during that period. In the United States, a rise of just 20 percent was reported. Some EU member nations have done even better, with several including Germany, France and Great Britain among others actually achieving net reductions.

Now I will be the first to point out that to compare statistics in the form of percentages such as those can be extremely misleading, subject to the embarrassing question “percentage of what?” To explain by example: If you have one apple and get one more apple, you have enjoyed a 100 percent increase. A very big increase, right? But it’s relative, you see, for if you have 100 apples and get one more apple you have experienced an increase of only one percent . A very small increase—and yet in both cases the difference was precisely the same, one apple.

India and China were coming from behind, with lower bases against which to measure the increase (fewer apples), so it makes their statistics seem larger. The US had a higher starting point (more apples), thus making that increase seem smaller by comparison. Indeed, according to the World Resources Institute:

Overall, with less than one-twentieth of the world’s population (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2009), the U.S. currently accounts for about one-fifth of total global emissions of [GHGs].

It is common sense that the world’s largest economies would be the largest sources of carbon emissions, because development has been based on fossil fuels since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. However, the problem of GHG emissions cannot be solved by looking into the past, but by changing future actions everywhere. Unfortunately, the general drift seems to be that the majority of the world’s people, as represented by the governments of populous nations such as India and China, would like for the more advanced nations to contribute most of the hard work and sacrifice of reducing carbon emissions, while leaving the “developing” nations to continue relatively unimpeded on the course of industrialization.

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Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Fossil Fuels, Pollution | 1 Comment »

Science, Propaganda & Climate Change

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

By David L. Brown

If a climate change denier wants to make a point, it seems there’s no need to worry about the facts. No, just making stuff up seems to be the policy being followed these days. As someone recently pointed out, the argumentative* model used by climate change deniers is looking more and more like the crazy ravings of Creationists, or as they like to call themselves, advocates of “Intelligent Design.”

It goes something like this: Conjure up a strawman based on some unsubstantiated “fact,” then use that to attempt to destroy the entire edifice of scientific knowledge about the subject at hand. In the case of “intelligent design,” the process is to state that, for example, it would be impossible for a certain feature of living creatures such as the eye to evolve, ergo, evolution is a hoax, Charles Darwin was the Anti-Christ, and the Earth was created 4000 years ago. Trouble is that there is no basis for the starting statement, because evolutionary biologists can quite easily explain the evolution of the eye. What seems reasonable to the uninitiated  has no basis in fact, and such processes of “reason” depend for their success upon the ignorance of the audience.

With the question of global climate change, the usual “argument” goes something like this: “It’s colder today in (fill in place) than usual, so there is no global warming.” The trouble with that utterly simplistic statement is that no climate scientists believe or have ever stated that global warming will be observed as an overall steady rise of temperatures equally spread out all around the world. In fact, the concept of “climate change” allows for and indeed predicts that some areas will grow colder (thus the stupid movie The Day After Tomorrow). It is the average temperature that is rising, not the temperature in Podunk, Minnesota where it might be colder than a… well I’ll let you complete that statement (Hint: rhymes with “which is it?).

Nowadays climate change deniers are becoming more aggressive than ever. For example, there is presently a big hoo-haw going around about the “fact” that the “hockey stick” graph made famous by Al Gore in his An Inconvenient Truth has been discredited, and in fact the world is actually cooling. Articles, blog entries, op-eds and media commentators have sprung up everywhere to trumpet this “news.” According to the general theme of the reportage, the big bad wolf of climate change is dead, we can all go back to burning fossil fuels forever, and it might be a good idea to invest in a nice warm set of woolen underwear.

The trouble is that the underlying “fact” of this “argument” isn’t true. For a complete debunking, see this analysis on the RealClimate.com web site. (Incidentally, that site has the subtitle, “Climate science from climate scientists.” Wow, what a concept!) I won’t even attempt to summarize this report and invite you to follow the link if you want to read the details, including a batch of graphs that show that the “hockey stick” still lives and there is no credible evidence for the position that it has been in any way discredited. I will share with you this graf from the RealClimate article, referring to these kinds of “kerfluffels”:

The timeline for these mini-blogstorms is always similar. An unverified accusation of malfeasance is made based on nothing, and it is instantly ‘telegraphed’ across the denial-o-sphere while being embellished along the way to apply to anything ‘hockey-stick’ shaped and any and all scientists, even those not even tangentially related. The usual suspects become hysterical with glee that finally the ‘hoax’ has been revealed and congratulations are handed out all round. After a while it is clear that no scientific edifice has collapsed and the search goes on for the ‘real’ problem which is no doubt just waiting to be found. Every so often the story pops up again because some columnist or blogger doesn’t want to, or care to, do their homework. Net effect on lay people? Confusion. Net effect on science? Zip.

One of the things that must just frost the deniers’ butts is the fact that we see glaciers receding, the oceans rising, permafrost melting and so forth. So another thing they do is to make up stories about these realities. For example, in a letter to the editor of the Orange County Register today, a certain Larry Hamlin chimes in on the subject. The author identifies himself as “former state energy czar under Gov. Gray Davis” and a retired vice president of “SCE Power,” which is the working name of Southern California Edison, the local electrical power company.

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Posted in Climate Change, Fossil Fuels, Melting Planet | 1 Comment »

The Power of Economic Incentives

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

By David L. Brown

How do  we go about reducing carbon emissions to prevent climate change from spiraling into a global catastrophe? One obvious answer is to slow down the go-go industrial economies that pour CO2 into the atmosphere. Not so easy? Well, actually we’re already doing it, according to this article in today’s New York Times. The story leads off with this:

Global carbon emissions are expected to post their biggest drop in more than 40 years this year as the global recession froze economic activity and slashed energy use around the world.

The decline comes as political leaders are struggling to come up with a common approach to dealing with climate change.

The main factor behind this year’s drop in emissions is the slowdown in industrial activity and trade around the world, according to a study due to be released in November by the International Energy Agency.

But the energy agency, which provides policy advice and research to industrialized nations, found that government actions had also contributed to the drop in emissions. The agency said it expected to see global carbon emissions fall 2.6 percent this year.

So, see, we can do it … all it takes is the economic incentive to decrease the use of fossil fuels. There is no doubt that last year’s spike in oil prices has a lot to do with this.

The Times gives credit to the economic bust and “government actions,” but there is another important aspect to this, perhaps the most important one of all. Millions of individuals have learned to think twice about driving unnecessary miles, leaving the thermostat at extreme settings, or letting the lights burn all over the house 24/7. They’ve made personal decisions to reduce energy use.

That’s called conservation, and without a doubt conservation is the easiest and most effective way to deal with CO2 emissions in the short term. The more people become conscious of their contributions to carbon pollution and take steps to reduce their “footprint,” the better for all of us.

And what is the secret behind all of this? It’s easy. Think Bill Clinton’s campaign theme: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Yes, the high price of oil and its economic effects — from international trade right down to individual household budgets — is the reason why carbon emissions have dropped.

Your ordinary Joe may not understand global warming or even give a hoot about the environment, but he does react when he sees his wallet taking a hit. Like most of us, he’s on a limited budget, so when the cost of profligate energy use starts to hurt, he does what he can to save money. In this case, he stops using as much energy.

A major reason why alternative energy sources have been slow to arrive on the  scene is that petroleum remained relatively cheap for far too long. In their self-interested way, for decades OPEC and major oil companies did everything in their power to hold down costs and stifle alternatives. They did it by using the  power of supply-and-demand, turning up the pumps whenever there was a new spurt of interest in alternatives. They played that game for years, until it became no longer possible.

It is fairly well documented that the Oil Peak has been reached, or at least we are teetering on the top. Beyond lies the downside slope of the Hubbert Curve, leading to a time when demand for oil cannot be met by supply. That means sustained higher costs for petroleum, which will introduce new opportunities for alternatives. We are already seeing voluntary conservation in response to costs, and as time goes on, we’ll undoubtedly see more people embracing alternatives. After all, the human race has been labeled Homo Economicus, “economic man”. Create an economic incentive, and humankind will react accordingly.

There are limits to how much conservation can do to turn around carbon emissions. Of course, none of us want an endless depression to “solve” the threat of climate change. But there are lessons to be learned from the recent experience, and we need to act on them. In fact, the very forces of  economics will make  it almost automatic, because dwindling oil resources will make it difficult or impossible for the world economy to enter a new “bubble” of rising  expectations. Less oil means higher prices, and we have seen that higher prices will put a lid on demand.

We can hope the world economy will begin to edge back from the brink, but we can’t afford to return to the same-old, same-old process of driving economic growth through continued use of fossil fuels. We need to begin to move toward new-style economies that are based on sustainable and environmentally friendly models.

Can we do it? Who knows — but since there’s probably no alternative it would be best if we at least try.

Posted in Age of Oil, Climate Change, Economics, Fossil Fuels, Pollution | Comments Off

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