December 2007

A Lightbulb Tea Party?

by Julie Walsh on December 21, 2007

From FOXNews.com

“No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”

That comment by New York State Surrogate Court Judge Gideon Tucker in 1866 aptly summarizes the so-called “Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007,” signed into law this week by President Bush.

First, the law requires auto fuel efficiency standards to increase by 40 percent by 2020. Unfortunately, this goal is presently only achievable by reducing vehicle weight — but lighter cars are deadlier cars. So what’s the purported benefit of mandating 4,000 or more deaths per year?

The law’s supporters claim that it may reduce national oil consumption by about 5 percent (400 million barrels of oil per year). Doing the math, your life is now worth about 100,000 barrels of oil. In touting the law, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “it is an environmental issue, and therefore a health issue… it is an energy issue, and it is a moral issue.”

But what exactly is the morality of risking thousands of lives every year to reduce oil consumption by an inconsequential amount?

Next, the new law doubles the use of ethanol, likely further distorting agricultural markets and driving up food prices. Animal feed costs are already up 20 percent this year, no doubt contributing to the 5 percent rise in consumer grocery prices.

More cropland dedicated to growing corn means less cropland for other important grains. In observing that its food-price index is higher today than at any time since it was created in 1845, The Economist on Dec. 8 noted that filling up an SUV’s tank with ethanol uses enough corn to feed a person for a year. Although current biofuel use already requires one-third of the U.S. corn crop, the new law mandates even more biofuels. This “commits the nation to decades of competition between food and fuel for the use of agricultural land,” observed the New York Times.

The morality of that competition may be fairly questioned since increased biofuel use isn’t likely to produce environmental benefits or make us “energy independent.” The biofuel mandates — which will require technologies that don’t yet exist on a commercial basis — are touted as cutting U.S. dependence on oil imports by replacing 20 percent of the fuel now used. But only about 17 percent of U.S. oil imports come from the volatile Middle East. A 20 percent pro-rata reduction in Middle East imports would reduce them to 13.6 percent.

It’s difficult to see precisely what national security benefit accrues from such a slight decrease. Even if the as-yet imaginary biofuels were to magically free us entirely from Middle East oil, it is worthwhile remembering that oil is a global commodity, the supply and price of which will always remain heavily dependent on Middle East producers and events. Whether we like it or not, as long as we use oil, its availability and price will be affected by the Middle East. Biofuels, particularly imaginary ones, can’t fix that vulnerability.

Another kick-in-the-teeth to consumers is the new mandate to phase-out incandescent lightbulbs in favor of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). The 100-watt incandescent light bulb will be the first to go in 2012. It’s bad enough that the federal government wants to dictate what sort of lighting we can have in our own homes, but it expects us to pay up for mercury-containing CFLs (up to $5 for a CFL vs. $0.75 for a standard incandescent bulb) which are inferior in quality (harsh institutional white light vs. soft yellow-white light) and function (their light-up is slow and inconsistent, and frequent on/off switching shortens their life), and which require special handling and disposal procedures (you’re not supposed to just throw them away in household trash or vacuum up CFL breakage).

Aside from the energy independence canard and the heavy lobbying by the rent-seeking ethanol/biofuels industry, the law’s driving rationale is the much-dreaded global warming. The auto fuel efficiency standards and CFL provisions, in particular, are supposed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide — if only that really mattered. In addition to the umpteen reasons laid out in previous columns for doubting that manmade emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) play a meaningful role in global climate, a new study in this week’s Nature provides yet another.

Dutch researchers reported that during a period of intense global warming 55 million years ago — somewhat before SUVs and coal-fired electricity — there was a tremendous release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But which came first, the warming or the greenhouse gases?

The researchers report that the warming probably began before the main injection of greenhouse gases took place. Moreover, all this occurred at a time when the average temperature in Canada and Siberia was about 65 degrees Fahrenheit, the Arctic Ocean was as warm as 73 degrees Fahrenheit and atmospheric CO2 levels were already in the range of 2,000 to 3,000 parts per million — 5 to 8 times greater than current CO2 levels.

What should Americans do about all this?

I don’t know the answer, but given that CFLs come from China and are imported and sold by businesses that lobbied Congress for the incandescent bulb ban, something akin to the Boston Tea Party comes to mind. That 1773 event stemmed from Colonist resentment of the British Parliament’s Tea Act — a bill lobbied for by the East India Company so that it could monopolize the American tea market.

I suppose we should be thankful that our dim-bulb politicians will be taking the holidays off — at least we’ll have a month’s respite from meddlesome, if not outright menacing government.

 

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Somewhere, Mr. Edison Gently Weeps

by Julie Walsh on December 21, 2007

 From the American Spectator

 A New Yorker cartoon from several years ago shows a vast, cubicle-filled office, with a manager explaining that the "dim fluorescent lighting is meant to emphasize the general absence of hope."

Fluorescents aren't all that bad. In fact, they've steadily gained market share in recent years. But from now on their popularity will rest not on consumer preferences, but on the force of law. If there's anything about fluorescents that involves the general absence of hope, it's that Congress has been able to mandate them with so little opposition.

The new energy bill, signed by President Bush this past Wednesday, is noted for its huge hike in auto fuel economy standards and in ethanol mandates and subsidies. The former will kill people, by causing cars to be downsized and less crashworthy; the latter will waste huge sums of money.

Less well known is the bill's boosting of appliance efficiency standards, despite the fact that items like top-loading washing machines have already been ruined by the stringent standards currently in effect. (That's Consumer Reports' assessment, not mine.)

But for those bugged by nitpicking flexings of government muscle, the most irritating provision may well be the bill's banning of incandescent bulbs.

The bulbs aren't banned outright. Rather, beginning in 2012 a set of increasingly stringent lumen-per-watt standards will eliminate conventional incandescents. 100-watters will be the first to go. In their place we'll have to use compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) or other new-fangled lights.

The reasoning, apparently, is that the public on its own is too dumb to realize what a great thing CFLs are, given that their energy savings far outweigh their higher prices.

The fact that growing numbers of people, on their own, have turned to CFLs doesn't count for much; for our esteemed congressional representatives, the burning question is: Why hasn't everyone? Why is the CFL market share only 6 percent here, compared to 80 percent in Japan?

Well, there are some good reasons:

1. Some people hate the light that CFLs give off. Lots of people, in fact; not just the ones in that New Yorker cartoon.

2. Unlike incandescents, CFLs take time to reach full brightness after they're turned on — from 30 seconds to three minutes. The first time I used one, it was so dim I thought I'd bought a dud. Only when I walked back into the room later did I realize the need for patience. (And only then could I make out the small print on the back of the CFL package mentioning this.) If you're used to full brightness at the flick of a switch, forget it.

3. CFLs can't be used with most dimmers or timers, and they don't fit in many fixtures. I've got several of those Y-shaped ceiling sockets that hold three 60-watt bulbs, but if I replace all three bulbs in a socket with CFLs, I can't fit the glass cover back on. (According to one customer service rep at Westinghouse, you shouldn't mix CFLs with incandescents in the same socket, so forget about inter-bulb harmony.)

4. Some CFLs can't be used in totally enclosed fixtures or in base-up recessed downlights. They can also interfere with radios and televisions.

And here's another lovely reason for hating CFLs, if you typically clean up the mess when a bulb breaks rather than call in your servants:

5. CFLs contain tiny amounts of mercury, and so EPA has a four-step program on how to clean up a broken CFL! First step: "Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more." I suspect EPA is overdoing it, but who am I to argue?

Finally, there's the question of whether CFLs really do reduce the use of electricity. Back in 1987, the small town of Traer, Iowa, handed out 18,000 fluorescents to its residents, in a free giveaway aimed at cutting power consumption. How did that work out?

Despite the fact that over half of the town's households participated, electricity use actually rose by 8 percent. Once people realized they could keep their lights on at lower cost, they kept them on longer.

With this sort of history as a guide, what business does Congress have leading us into a questionably-illuminated future?

Bali’s Little Secret

by Julie Walsh on December 21, 2007

in Blog

Contrary to the focus of much of the media on Canada and the U.S. “backing down” at the Bali conference on climate change, the real story may be quite the opposite. Opposition halted only after the conference agreed not to state specific emission reductions as targets for the year 2020. This was the big sticking point.

Scientists Doubt Climate Change

by Julie Walsh on December 21, 2007

in Blog

More than 400 scientists challenge claims by former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations about the threat of man-made global warming, a new Senate minority report says.

Gore’s double standard turns Nobel into PR nightmare for Nobel Committee

by Lene Johansen on December 21, 2007

in Politics

Breaking news from Stockholm is making Al Gore's trip to the Nobel celebrations into a bigger PR morass than it already was. Al Gore used a private plane from Stockholm to Frankfurt when he left the celebrations to head to Bali according to Swedish blogger Henrik Alexanderson. The story has also been picked up by mainstream media, such as Expressen after Alexanderson broke the news.

The Nobel Committee made a publicity stunt out of Al Gore's means of transportation to Oslo, when he showed up here (yes, I am in Oslo now) to receive his undeserved Nobel Prize earlier this month. But Al Gore's long standing record of "do as I say, not as I do" quickly turned the publicity dream into a publicity nightmare.

Friday morning on the 7th of December, Al Gore arrived at Gardermoen Airport. After a brief Q&A session with reporters, he and his entourage walked across the airport and took the escalator down to the Airport Train concourse and hopped on the train to downtown Oslo with the entire gang of dispatched reporters. Well downtown, they walked the three minutes across the downtown park from the rail station to his hotel, cameras in tow.

This was of course running live on Norwegian television, and the head line on all edited television reports and the next morning's newspapers was "LOOK AT HOW ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY HE IS!!"

The honeymoon lasted only until Sunday when the reporters in the largest newspaper in the country asked the first question I had when I saw the reports; where is his luggage? All the other reporters covering the Nobels had gone all gaga and star struck over the former senator gone opportunist.

The Gore luggage had been picked up and sent by van from the airport, and the Nobel committee PR staff was not happy to be asked the question by VG. The spokesperson expressed dismay stating, "Such incidental logistics could hardly be newsworthy".

I have yet to find information on how Gore made it to Stockholm, but the press secretary of Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation stated that lending the private jet of the executive cabinet of Sweden "was the solution that made it possible for Gore to come to Sweden."

It is illegal for anyone but members of the cabinet to use the plane, so the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation had to accompany Gore on the plane and fly back. At least we know which is the most expendable member of the Swedish Cabinet through this.

This is not the first time Gore is caught saying one thing and doing another. His own inefficient private jet, which he uses extensively in the US, and his energy hungry household in Tennessee, is widely known in the US. The news has reached Scandinavia, but has barely gotten any traction.
If we are to believe Brendan O'Neill's review of Al Gore's speech in Bali, Gore will reveal more of his do as I say, not as I do sentiments now that he is getting more comfortable in his own skin. O'Neill quotes from Gore reveal Gore as an anti-democrat.

German Gov’t: Fuel Efficiency Regs Are Franco-Italian Plot to Destroy German Industry

by William Yeatman on December 20, 2007

in Blog

Bush Signs Bill to Increase Fuel Efficiency

by William Yeatman on December 20, 2007

in Blog

Germany on Increased Fuel Efficiency Standards: “War of Destruction”

by William Yeatman on December 20, 2007

in Blog

Warmer Seas But No Change in Hurricane Intensity?

by Julie Walsh on December 20, 2007

From World Climate Report blog

We have visited this topic repeatedly over the past five years (e.g., here and here), and here we go again given the latest news. Every sell-respecting presentation about global warming includes a claim that hurricanes are becoming more intense, and if you don’t believe it, you will be treated to images of the Katrina disaster as the final proof. Gore’s film clearly makes the case that burning fossil fuel equals higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration which equals higher atmospheric and oceanic temperatures. He claims in the film and during every stop on his global circuit that the warmer sea surface in the tropics clearly means more intense hurricanes and BANG … the Katrina horrors are unveiled. It seems to work every time, and despite a lot of research that suggests the relationship is not so clear, people have bought the intense hurricane pillar of the global warming scare. If you suggest that there is some debate on the subject, you will undoubtedly be told that the climate deniers are few in number, well financed from industry, and discredited by scientists the world over.

Many would argue that Nature is the leading scientific journal in the world, and over the years, Nature has been an ally of the global warming crusade. A recent article in Nature begins with the sentence “The response of tropical cyclone activity to global warming is widely debated.” That sentence alone hints that the article may be somewhat atypical of Nature, since actual acknowledgement of the “d” word is greatly frowned upon by the crusaders. The second sentence states “It is often assumed that warmer sea surface temperatures provide a more favourable environment for the development and intensification of tropical cyclones, but cyclone genesis and intensity are also affected by the vertical thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere.” Once again, we get the hint that this presumed link between warmer oceans and more intense hurricanes may be more complicated than we’ve (or, rather, you’ve) been led to believe by the likes of Gore. We have been telling you this has been the case for several years.

The authors of the latest piece are Gabriel Vecchi and Brian Soden of the NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey and the University of Miami, and the work was funded by both NOAA and NASA (no evidence of industry funding whatsoever). Basically, they note that higher sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the vicinity of a hurricane could, in fact, increase the potential intensity (or, PI, how strong a storm could get if everything fell perfectly into place) of the storm. They state “With all other factors being equal, a local warming of SST would act to destabilize the overlying atmosphere and increase PI. However, remote SST changes can also influence PI through their influence on upper atmospheric temperatures. In the tropical free troposphere, where the Coriolis force is weak, temperature gradients are small and, on timescales longer than a few months, upper tropospheric temperature anomalies are determined by changes in the tropical-mean SST. Thus, local PI in the tropics is influenced by both local and remote SST changes.” Basically, local SST warming can destabilize the atmosphere and increase the intensity of the hurricanes, but widespread SST warming alters the temperature structure of the higher levels of the atmosphere, which in turn cancel or even reverse the potential intensity of the events.

To say the least, including the effect of more distant SSTs really changes the outcome. Vecchi and Soden used three different, but highly correlated SST datasets and calculated the potential intensity of tropical storms for the North Indian Ocean, the western tropical Pacific Ocean, and the tropical Atlantic Ocean (see figure below). In their own words, they note “All three SST data sets indicate substantial warming in the three regions over the twentieth century. In the Atlantic sector, SSTs have been at unprecedented levels since the late 1990s, yet the tropical Atlantic PI is at near-average levels for that period, and had its highest levels during the middle of the twentieth century. The only long-term increase in PI has been in the Indian Ocean, and recent Pacific PI has been lower than the long-term mean (the decrease arising abruptly in the 1970s).” Furthermore, they state “The combined influence of local and remote SST changes on PI can be seen clearly in the Atlantic basin. Atlantic PI began to decrease in the mid-1950s, even though local SST was not changing substantially (PI decreases by 0.6–0.7 °C from the 1950s to the 1980s, while local SST decreases by only 0.1–0.2 °C). This reduction in PI was not dominated by a local SST decrease, but by the rapid warming elsewhere in the tropics (much of it in the Indian Ocean).”


Figure 1. Anomalies of 5-yr running averaged SST and estimated PI levels since the late nineteenth century based on three different SST datasets (from Vecchi and Soden, 2007)

OK, so there hasn’t been any great increase in potential intensity of tropical cyclones over the long run, despite what the global warming advocates would lead you to believe. Well, you could suggest that like everything else, the disaster will reveal itself a decade or so from now. Unfortunately for such optimists (or are they pessimists?), Vecchi and Soden calculated PI for the next 150 years, and as seen below, SSTs are expected to rise, but in the North Indian Ocean and the tropical Atlantic Ocean, there should be no rise whatsoever in potential intensity of hurricanes.

Let’s all wait and see if the global warming crowd (or the media) embraces these results – of course they won’t and of course they will continue to scream that hurricanes are becoming more intense and will become even more intense in the decades to come. The results published in Nature by Vecchi and Soden will be nothing more than inconvenient trash to be swept under the rug of truth!


Figure 2. Time series of future model projections of the June–November change in SST (red) and PI (black) (from Vecchi and Soden, 2007)

Reference:

Vecchi, G.A. and B.J. Soden. 2007. Effect of remote sea surface temperature change on tropical cyclone potential intensity. Nature, 450, 1066-1071.

German Left Threatens US with Carbon Tariff

by William Yeatman on December 20, 2007

in Blog

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