Articles On Environment

[♦ nivek ♦]

Study: China surpasses US as top carbon polluter

Raw Story

 

"China has already surpassed the United States as the world's largest

carbon polluter, the authors of a California study said Tuesday. 'Our

best forecast has Chinas CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions correctly

surpassing the United States in 2006 rather than 2020 as previously

anticipated,' said the study by researchers at the University of

California. The report, written by economic professors Maximilian

Aufhammer of UC Berkeley and Richard Carson of UC San Diego, is to be

published next month in the Journal of Environmental Economics and

Management. Researchers compiled information about the use of fossil

fuels in various Chinese provinces and forecast an 11 percent annual

growth of carbon emissions from 2004 to 2010." (04/15/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/5trvpb

[♦ nivek ♦]

Bush to announce goal for stopping greenhouse emissions

Amarillo Globe News

 

"President Bush, stepping into the debate over global warming, plans

to announce on Wednesday a national goal for stopping the growth of

greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades. In a speech in the

Rose Garden, Bush will lay out a strategy rather than a specific

proposal for curbing emissions, White House press secretary Dana

Perino said Tuesday. She did not disclose details of his announcement

and would not say whether the president would propose any kind of

mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions." (04/15/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/4vbrf8

[♦ nivek ♦]

Do colleges need green czars?

Inside Higher Ed

 

"At a recent gathering in College Park, Md., for the Smart and

Sustainable Campuses Conference, business officers joined campus

planners and the latest subgroup to make its presence felt: campus

sustainability coordinators. Five years earlier, those coordinators

would have had little to no representation at such an event. But as

colleges commit to reducing their carbon footprints, a growing number

are introducing or redefining a staff position to organize the

efforts." (04/15/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/5p6bhw

[♦ nivek ♦]

The danger of environmentalism

Hawaii Reporter

by Michael S. Berliner

 

"Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The

danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of

rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger

to mankind is from environmentalism. The fundamental goal of

environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the

demolition of technological/industrial civilization.

Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human

happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where

'nature' is worshipped like the totem of some primitive

religion." (04/15/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/5wupgk

[♦ nivek ♦]

Fuels vs. food

Cato Institute

by Indur Goklany

 

"President Bush's call yesterday for a dramatic slowdown of green-

house-gas emissions reflects growing concern for the consequences of

climate change. But what about the consequences of the world's

response? The fact is, food riots resulting partly from the United

States' alternative energy policies have arrived at our front door.

Crowds of hungry demonstrators swarmed the presidential palace in

Haiti last week to protest skyrocketing food prices. In recent years,

we've heard that climate change could be catastrophic for nature and

humanity. But it's becoming increasingly evident that over the next

few decades, climate-change policies could prove even more

catastrophic." (04/17/08)

 

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9337

[♦ nivek ♦]

Biofuels: Who bears the cost?

Liberty & Power

by Sudha Shenoy

 

"Now, govt officials levy & spend tax revenues. Thus they are always

insulated against the actual outcome of their spending & their

decrees. The burden falls always on their subjects. Whatever happens,

the tax-supported official juggernaut can & does roll on regardless.

Thus the costs of biofuels have fallen on the poorest populations --

mostly in the LDCs. Land & output are being diverted away from food.

And the biofuels produced at such unconscionable cost add to

greenhouse gases, on net." (04/20/08)

 

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/49565.html

[♦ nivek ♦]

Our climate numbers are a big old mess

Cato Institute

by Patrick J. Michaels

 

"There have been six major revisions in the warming figures in recent

years, all in the same direction. So it's like flipping a coin six

times and getting tails each time. The chance of that occurring is

0.016, or less than one in 50. That doesn't mean that these revisions

are all hooey, but the probability that they would all go in one

direction on the merits is pretty darned small." (04/18/08)

 

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9340

[♦ nivek ♦]

Irrational green exuberance

National Review

by the editors

 

"The last few years have witnessed an Internet-stock bubble and a real-

estate bubble. Could we be approaching the bursting point of the

climate-change bubble? The intensity of the current climate crusade,

Al Gore's $300 million ad campaign, and Time's fifth panicky global-

warming cover in three years ('Be Worried, Be Very Worried' read the

2006 cover) are all good contrary indicators suggesting that the

hysteria is reaching its terminal stage. Like mortgage-backed

securities dealers, the climate campaigners are in a panic because the

public isn't buying what they're selling." (04/22/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/5s2mj4

[♦ nivek ♦]

Our new energy crisis

Mother Jones

by Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

 

"Switching away from fossil energy requires an economic and social

transformation at least as great as the Industrial Revolution. And we

have to build this new economy on the fumes of the old, hoping that we

don't run out of gas, or ice caps, before we get there. As Roberts

points out in this special issue on energy, if we sit on our hands or

let the process be hijacked by vested interests, 'there may not be

enough crude left in the ground to fuel a second try.' This change

will be painful. Building a new energy economy will require enormous

government and private investment. It will involve massive workforce

upheaval and possibly physical dislocation. The conservation measures

demanded will make victory gardens or Jimmy Carter donning a sweater

look like three-day diets." (for publication 05/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/5lhj8a

[♦ nivek ♦]

http://preview.tinyurl.com/5bng8h

 

 

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

Phil Chapman | April 23, 2008

 

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is http://www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

 

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

 

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

 

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

 

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

 

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

 

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

 

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

 

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

 

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

 

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

 

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

 

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

 

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

 

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

 

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

 

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

 

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

 

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.

 

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

 

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.

 

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

 

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.

 

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

 

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

 

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

 

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

 

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

 

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

 

 

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Earth/...how/2975016.cms

World might be heading towards Ice Age

23 Apr, 2008, 1327 hrs IST, ANI

 

CANBERRA: Scientists have warned that the world might once again be heading towards an Ice Age, with global warming approaching a possible end.

 

Evidence in support of this theory has come from pictures obtained from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which showed no spots on the sun, thus determining that sunspot activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low in March last year.

 

A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark.

 

Some scientists believe a strong solar magnetic field, when there is plenty of sunspot activity, protects the earth from cosmic rays, cutting cloud formation, but that when the field is weak - during low sunspot activity - the rays can penetrate into the lower atmosphere and cloud cover increases, cooling the surface.

 

According to Australian astronaut and geophysicist Phil Chapman, this might have caused the world to cool quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

 

"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," said Dr Chapman.

 

"If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over," he added.

 

Dr Chapman has proposed preventive, or delaying, moves to slow the cooling, such as bulldozing Siberian and Canadian snow to make it dirty and less reflective.

 

"My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades," he said

[♦ nivek ♦]

Climate "fix" could deplete ozone

BBC News [uK]

 

"Research has cast new doubt on the wisdom of using Sun-blocking

sulphate particles to cool the planet. Sulphate injections are one of

several 'geo-engineering' solutions to climate change being discussed

by scientists. But data published in Science journal suggests the

strategy would lead to drastic thinning of the ozone layer. This would

delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by decades, and cause

significant ozone loss over the Arctic, say US

researchers." (04/25/08)

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7365793.stm

[♦ nivek ♦]

Running on empty

The Nation

by Mark Hertsgaard

 

"It used to be that only environmentalists and paranoids warned about

running out of oil. Not anymore. As climate change did over the past

few years, peak oil seems poised to become the next big idea

commanding the attention of governments, businesses and citizens the

world over. The arrival of $119-a-barrel crude and $4-a-gallon

gasoline this spring are but the most obvious signs that global oil

production has or soon will peak. With global demand inexorably

rising, a limited supply will bring higher, more volatile prices and

eventually shortages that could provoke -- to quote the title of the

must-see peak oil documentary -- the end of suburbia. If the era of

cheap, abundant oil is indeed coming to a close, the world's economy

and, paradoxically, the fight against climate change could be in deep

trouble." (04/24/08)

 

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/hertsgaard

[♦ nivek ♦]

Phil Chapman | April 23, 2008

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...76-7583,00.html

 

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

 

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

 

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

 

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

 

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

 

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

 

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

 

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

 

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

 

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

 

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

 

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

 

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

 

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

 

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

 

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

 

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

 

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

 

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.

 

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

 

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.

 

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

 

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.

 

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

 

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

 

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

 

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

 

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

 

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

 

[♦ nivek ♦]

Let them eat ethanol?

National Review

by Mona Charen

 

"The inflation in food prices worldwide -- prices have soared 83

percent in the past three years, according to the World Bank -- has a

number of causes. Certainly increased demand from India and China --

nations that until quite recently maintained hundreds of millions of

people at subsistence levels -- is part of the explanation. The

Chinese and Indians are eating better, but their enhanced diets are

putting pressure on supply. And our good friends at OPEC can take a

bow. The oil sheikhs and that great tribune of the poor, Hugo Chavez

of Venezuela, are doing their parts to plunge millions of poor people

around the globe into starvation by artificially boosting the price of

oil (which is required to grow food and transport it). We in the U.S.

and the European Union are not blameless either. Not by a long shot.

In our search for cleaner energy we jumped aboard the 'biofuels'

bandwagon. This debacle should be an object lesson. Fighting global

warming (if there is global warming) is a tricky business and can only

be undertaken after careful review of the costs and

benefits." (04/25/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/467bz2

[♦ nivek ♦]

Peak oil panic

The Weekly Standard

by Irwin M. Stelzer

 

"According to WorldPublicOpinion.org 'majorities in 15 of the 16

nations surveyed around the world think that oil is running out. ...

Only 22 percent on average believe that 'enough oil will be found so

that it can remain a primary source of energy for the foreseeable

future." Those majorities who think we are running out of oil include

76 percent of the American citizens polled. Luckily, they are wrong.

Production of oil is being constrained by several forces, none of them

due to God's failure to put enough of the black gold under our

feet." (04/29/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/5vfga3

[♦ nivek ♦]

We must imagine a life without oil

AlterNet

by Mark Hertsgaard

 

"It used to be that only environmentalists and paranoids warned about

running out of oil. Not anymore. As climate change did over the past

few years, peak oil seems poised to become the next big idea

commanding the attention of governments, businesses and citizens the

world over. The arrival of $119-a-barrel crude and $4-a-gallon

gasoline this spring are but the most obvious signs that global oil

production has or soon will peak. With global demand inexorably

rising, a limited supply will bring higher, more volatile prices and

eventually shortages that could provoke -- to quote the title of the

must-see peak oil documentary -- the end of suburbia. If the era of

cheap, abundant oil is indeed coming to a close, the world's economy

and, paradoxically, the fight against climate change could be in deep

trouble." (04/29/08)

 

http://www.alternet.org/environment/83548/

[♦ nivek ♦]

Plug in -- and pay up

The American Spectator

by Eric Peters

 

"Will plug-in hybrids save us from $4 per gallon fill-ups -- or at

least, ease the pain a little? The hype about these vehicles -- which

differ from the current crop of gas-electric hybrids in that they can

run on pure battery power for longer and, when their batteries run

down, can draw power from a household outlet instead of an internal

combustion engine -- is that they have the potential to lower fuel

consumption by as much as 20-40 percent over what the best

conventional hybrid cars (like the Toyota Prius) can deliver. But,

there's a catch. Several, actually." (05/01/08)

 

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13137

[♦ nivek ♦]

“Hiatus” forecast for global warming

Arizona Republic

 

“Global warming is taking a break that could last for another 10 years or so. That’s the latest word from a team of climate researchers in Germany. Global average temperatures should remain above normal, the team suggests. … The forecast is ‘very bold,’ cautions Tom Delworth, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University. But, he adds, it represents the cutting edge of climate modeling. The German effort is one of the first widely published attempts to offer climate forecasts on time scales of a decade or so, rather than a century or more. The findings appear in today’s edition of Nature.” (05/01/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/5jlaur

[♦ nivek ♦]

More carbon dioxide, please

National Review

by Roy Spencer

 

"There seems to be an unwritten assumption among environmentalists --

and among the media -- that any influence humans have on nature is, by

definition, bad. I even see it in scientific papers written by climate

researchers. For instance, if we can measure some minute amount of a

trace gas in the atmosphere at the South Pole, well removed from its

human source, we are astonished at the far-reaching effects of

mankind's 'pollution.' But if nature was left undisturbed, would it be

any happier and more peaceful? Would the carnivores stop eating those

poor, defenseless herbivores, as well as each other? Would fish and

other kinds of sea life stop infringing on the rights of others by

feasting on them? Would there be no more droughts, hurricanes, floods,

heat waves, tornadoes, or glaciers flowing toward the sea?" (05/01/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/5cxnw8

[♦ nivek ♦]

It's either too hot or too cold

The American Spectator

by Lisa Fabrizio

 

"It was 1943. We were in the middle of a global conflict that was

caused by the predilection of evil men for power. Predictions of doom

and gloom abounded. How would the world survive? What could mankind do

about it? Into all this angst and depression strode Bette Davis in a

gorgeous beaded suit, to deliver her own personal lament about the

lack of eligible men on the home-front called, 'They're Either Too

Young or Too Old.' Today, the global-warming folks are hot and

bothered about another threat to Mother Earth. But this time it's

about man's predilection to breathe. However, given recent reports on

cooling trends, they've changed their tack to purport that whatever

the temperature may be, it's still all our fault." (05/07/08)

 

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13167

[♦ nivek ♦]

Biofuel: Burning away our food supply

National Center for Policy Analysis

by staff

 

"What started out as a great idea -- replacing our dependence on oil

with a renewable clean-burning resource, biofuel -- has quickly

sprouted unintended consequences. Americans are diverting perfectly

good growing land to produce crops used exclusively for biofuel

production. We have essentially decided to burn our food supply in

attempts to replace our oil fix, which seems about as logical as

burning money for heat, says Krystal Ford, a research intern at the

American Council on Science and Health." (05/07/08)

 

http://tinyurl.com/62mxlt

[♦ nivek ♦]

A wall between environment and state

The Free Liberal

by Micah Tillman

 

"Many people can only believe in humanity as Robert Heinlein did for

so long, and eventually must either cling with Joe Klein to 'the

perfectibility of human nature,' or give up altogether. (The same

process can be seen among progressives when it comes to patriotism.

Faced with an unlovable country, they either turn to loving it for its

potential/perfectibility, or they give up trying.) Those who give up

on humanism are finding something more transcendent waiting to take

over the role of prime valuer: the environment. And with the advent of

the Carbon Footprint, environmentalism stands ready to not only

structure every aspect of your life (as religion is said to do), but

to give meaning and importance to things that never mattered before

(like what you eat for breakfast). Every decision takes on a life-or-

death importance. Even your choice of windows or lightbulbs becomes a

way for you to 'save the environment.'" (05/08/08)

 

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/003330.html

[♦ nivek ♦]

The biofuels dilemma

AlterNet

by Stan Cox

 

"Perhaps the starkest measure of the car culture's energy appetite is

the fact that the state of Iowa, the nation's leading corn producer,

will soon be importing corn. If a meteorite were to land randomly in

Iowa, there's a 35 percent chance it would land in a cornfield; Iowa's

corn harvest last year contained more calories than the state's human

population would consume in 85 years of eating; yet Iowa will be

hauling corn in from other states. The grain will be fed to a

multitude of new fuel-ethanol factories, along with the state's

existing corn syrup and livestock industries. The world is learning

fast that when fuel demand competes with food needs for the sun's

energy, it's not a fair fight. The energy contained in the gasoline

that fills a typical SUV's tank contains approximately the same number

of calories as are required in the annual diet of one

adult." (05/09/08)

 

http://www.alternet.org/water/84628/

[♦ nivek ♦]

LewRockwell.com

 

What? Those Magic Beans Called ‘Ethanol’? Never Mind

 

by Vin Suprynowicz

 

For decades, sensible skeptics have warned that government tariffs and subsidies designed to encourage the conversion of corn to alcohol and requiring fuel distributors to mix this corrosive stuff into our gas tanks was not going to “solve the energy crisis,” reduce dependence on imported oil, or do anything helpful for “the environment” – unless by “the environment” you actually meant “the bank account of Archer-Daniels-Midland.”

 

If the critics failed to mention this expensive boondoggle could also promote starvation and food riots around the world, it was probably only because they were afraid of being ridiculed for “piling on.”

 

Guess what.

 

While both Congressional Democrats and Republicans were cheering a fivefold increase in mandated ethanol use as little as a year ago, and President Bush was calling the cornfuel program a key to his strategy to cut gasoline use by 20 percent by 2010, today The Great Ethanol Mandate seems to meet Count Galeazzo Ciano’s definition of an orphan. (“Victory has many fathers,” etc.)

 

Former “renewable fuels” champion Lester Brown now writes in the Washington Post “It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed.”

 

“Our enthusiasm for corn ethanol deserves a second look,” said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., in a House hearing Tuesday.

 

It’s hard to believe ethanol is getting “clobbered the way it’s getting clobbered right now” over something as insignificant as some starving Africans, says longtime champion Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

 

What happened?

 

Everyone knew all along it takes 1,700 gallons of water and 51 cents in tax credits to create one gallon of ethanol from corn – at which point the stuff still can’t compete without a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff to block the importation of cheaper sugar-cane ethanol from Brazil.

 

Everyone has long known we use up more petroleum-based fuel in trucks and tractors and distilleries to produce and transport ethanol than it ever saves us in the tank – and that (speaking of tanks) the stuff is meantime creating unmeasured private costs by rusting out our gas tanks and fuel lines.

 

It’s long been clear the 30 million acres of American farmland devoted to growing corn for ethanol this year will consume almost a third of America’s corn crop – driving up prices for meats and all other grains, worldwide – while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3 percent of our total petroleum consumption. (If cattle stop eating corn, you have to feed them something else, driving up the price of other grains, even if Sen. Grassley still can’t seem to figure that out.)

 

In December, the Congressional Research Service warned that even if we devoted every acre of American cornfields to ethanol production – at who knows what human cost in terms of world-wide hunger and starvation – it still wouldn’t be enough to meet current arbitrary and grossly optimistic federal mandates.

 

In February the journal Science reported “Corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20 percent savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years. …” (Not that this really matters, since current minimal rates of global warming are mostly caused by solar activity and other natural causes, and are a good thing, anyway. More food production.)

 

Forests? Being bulldozed for more corn production. O, Bambi and Thumper lovers, what hast thou wrought?

 

Suddenly, inspired by the sight of thoroughly predictable food-price riots overseas, political candidates who were happily hopping on the ethanol bandwagon as recently as 2006 are looking for a way out. Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it may now be more important to help “people get something to eat” than to keep pushing the biofuels boondoggle up the hill.

 

“Corn ethanol was presented as an almost Holy Grail solution,” moaned Rep. Mike Doyle, D. Penn., this week. “But I believe its negatives today far outweigh its benefits. … We need to revisit this … and back away from the food-to-fuel policy.”

 

Would those be the same negatives I and the other skeptics have been warning about for years, Congressman? What did someone do in the interim, teach you simple arithmetic and Economics 101?

 

Meantime, the governor of Texas and 26 U.S. senators, including GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain, have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to cut in half this year’s requirement for 9 billion gallons of corn ethanol in order to ease the pressure on rising food costs.

 

That would be a start. But washing their hands and pretending they don’t know who gave birth to the biofuel boondoggle will not suffice. Congress needs to repeal the ethanol mandates, subsidies, and protective tariffs immediately. The congressmen need to admit they don’t know a darned thing about energy markets, and vow to stop using billions of our precious tax dollars meddling in matters they don’t understand.

 

Finally, investors and energy companies need to soberly review where it gets them to rush into programs that couldn’t possibly survive in the unmanipulated market, based on the promise that big federal subsidies are going to make everyone rich.

 

The old warning was “Remember Colorado oil shale.” The new one will now be “Remember ethanol.” But the lesson itself is the same: Depending on idiotic congressional enthusiasms is like trying to buy presents for the kids based on last year’s Christmas list. Best to double-check. By now they’ve probably outgrown the Lego set and the Chatty Cathy, and moved on.

 

That thing they left you holding? It’s called “the bag.”

 

May 14, 2008

 

Vin Suprynowicz [send him mail] is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of The Black Arrow.

 

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Save energy, get punished

The Free Liberal

by Fred E. Foldvary

 

"Sometimes governments act so ridiculous that they clarify the true

role of the state. Government chiefs claim they want to reduce

environmental damage and promote energy conservation, but in practice,

they punish people for doing this. A clear example came to light in a

news article in the Los Angeles Times on May 6, 2008. A mechanic was

using fuel made of fryer grease for his fleet of motor vehicles.

Government's response was to slap him with fines, paper work, and

taxes." (05/13/08)

 

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/003337.html