Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
My colleague at the John Locke Foundation, Geoff Lawrence, in a blog post today looks at economic modeling for costs of solar power as North Carolina lawmakers last year were putting together a renewable portfolio standard law for the state's utilities. His analysis shows that modelers were way off:
The model they developed included scenarios in which the price of solar power (the most expensive form of electricity production) declined by 25, 50, and 75 percent by year 2021.
These projections likely made the solar set-aside more palatable to consumer groups. However, they have little basis in reality. The primary chemical input into production of solar panels is polysilicon – the same chemical that is used to manufacture microprocessors.
Limited supplies of this chemical are resulting in a global shortage as more of the chemical is demanded for solar panel production. As a result, the price has increased from $20 per kilogram to $300 per kilogram over the past five years and continues to rise. The solar panel industry has grown into a major competitor with microprocessor manufacturers for this resource and is starting to bid polysilicon away from microprocessor manufacturers. Government mandates for solar power will undoubtedly cause this trend to accelerate.
These guys were about as good as all those global warming modelers!
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Being the non-egghead, borderline C-minus high school science student that I was, I inquired with a few scientist acquaintances about the logic — as far as greenhouse gas emissions and effect on global warming goes — that Honda's new hydro-powered car would improve matters. The question: If the only emission from Honda’s new hydrogen vehicle is steam, and water vapor is the most influential greenhouse gas, isn’t that making the greenhouse effect worse? Or am I missing something?
The two answers I received:
Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at University of Alabama at Huntsville: "The big difference is that extra CO2 stays in the atmosphere much longer (many years) than extra water vapor (days)…the extra water vapor won’t accumulate the way CO2 does. But I predict that a city filled with hydrogen fueled vehicles on a hot summer day is going to get pretty unbearable."
Dr. Howard Hayden, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Connecticut: "About two years ago, NASA launched the AQUA satellite, whose purpose is to start to begin initiating (note the redundancy for emphasis) some preliminary studies of the water cycle. In other words, it is an admission that nobody on the planet has the vaguest understanding of the most important greenhouse agent. (H2O is not always gaseous, and, aside from being a greenhouse gas, is a major player in heat transport.)
But wait! There's more! What is the source of the hydrogen? Commercially, the biggest source is methane (CH4), with energy supplied by combustion."
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
The global warming panic perpetrators that are bankrolling nearly all greenhouse gas emissions policy in the states, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, are still in full-throttle marketing mode. I wrote last week about their promotional film, and how they've totally financed climate change panels in the states and written glowing articles praising their own work and that of the Center for Climate Strategies. Now RBF's Michael Northrop has written another puff piece, with zero disclosure of his organization's tight relationship with CCS:
The fact that so many states are acting with a similar impetus begs an important question: What would happen if you aggregated these policies and applied them on a national scale?
One study conducted by the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) — a non-partisan group that has worked on climate policymaking and analysis with many of these states — indicates that the adoption of a comprehensive, nationwide climate and energy policy would have substantial economic benefits. Using data from 12 states that are leaders in the field of climate change and energy, CSS (sic) calculated that were all 50 states to adopt similar rules and legislation, the aggregate economic savings would be $25 billion. The nation could achieve a 33% reduction in projected greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 — a common interim target — and save money doing so.
Amazing numbers! So why again couldn't Lieberman-Warner, which had similar high aspirations, get passed?
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
How unsurprising — a mainstream news media outlet (this one a Gannett property) finally takes a look at the absurd economic claims coming out of one of the state climate commissions (North Carolina) run by the Center for Climate Strategies, and rather than emphasize the findings of economists with PhDs, they instead play up the promises of a political science graduate student (and mouthpiece for CCS, who commissioned the rosy-economic scenario):
Appalachian State University researchers think they have the answer. Recommendations to state government by a climate-change commission wouldn’t hurt North Carolina’s economy and would actually create a modest number of jobs, the university’s Energy Center predicts.
Its study of 30 potential policies found they would create more than 32,000 jobs a year by 2020.
Next to the 5 million jobs workers in North Carolina held in 2004, it’s a drop in the bucket. But the researchers emphasize the overall positive impact.
Some of the biggest gains would come from requirements for energy efficiency, which shrink power bills, researcher David Ponder (aforementioned poli-sci guy) said.
Compare that to what the credentialed economists at the Beacon Hill Institute, who were commissioned by my colleagues at the John Locke Foundation, had to say:
“By 2011, the state would shed more than 33,000 jobs,” according to the report from the Beacon Hill Institute, the research arm of the economics department at Boston’s Suffolk University. “Annual investment would drop by about $502.4 million, real disposable income by more than $2.2 billion, and real state Gross Domestic Product by about $4.5 billion.”
“The negative economic effects would spill over into state and local tax collections,” the report adds. “We estimate a loss of $184.6 million in revenues in 2011.”
The failure of Lieberman-Warner ought to indicate where most folks believe the truth about energy costs, effects on the economy, and job creation lies.
This movement has become a religion and the faithful will never listen to logic and/or reason. Most are not aware that this movement is an anti-capitalist, anti-free enterprise movement. It has nothing to do with climate change but everything to do with weakening America. When the Berlin wall fell in the late '80s, the communists had no where to go but soon found that the environmentalists were getting a foothold with our political leaders. It has become the perfect venue to alarm the folks on doom and gloom. The sad thing is that most people buying into this madness are so emotional and unwilling to listen to reason, that any conversation or contradiction is met with scorn and halted. My conclusion is that these folks are sadly misinformed and if common sense doesn't come into play soon, we will cripple our economy and a millions of people will be hurt beyond repair. You will see food shortages, fuel shortages and a depression that will dwarf the 1930s.
In the final week of May, environmental ministers from the world’s richest industrialized nations met to prepare a common international climate policy in advance of the G8 Summit this July in Japan. After three days of talks, they agreed on a long-term target of halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and the meeting chairman told reporters that there was “strong political will” among the G8 countries to meet this ambitious goal. The following week, energy ministers from these same nations met to prepare a common international energy policy in advance of the G8 Summit. In a joint statement, the ministers expressed “serious concerns” over the high price of oil, and they asked major oil producers “to increase investment to keep markets well supplied in response to rising world demand.”
Of course, “well supplied” oil markets are antithetical to emissions reductions, because cheaper oil means more of it will be used, thereby resulting in more greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, the most popular climate change solution among G8 countries—a “cap-and-trade” scheme—is designed to increase the price of gas, so that consumers use less and emit less.
The G8 can have emissions cuts and expensive oil, or emissions increases and cheap oil, but it can’t have both.
President Bush's hopes for reaching a climate-change agreement among the world's biggest economies got a boost from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's leading global advocate for tough new greenhouse-gas limits.
The Courant's June 9 editorial ["The Senate's Shame"] was wrong to imply that the leading climate legislation in Congress, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, failed because of partisan opposition from the Republican Party.
On June 6, 10 Democratic senators wrote an open letter declaring they could not support final passage of the Climate Security Act. That's 20 percent of the Senate Democratic caucus.
Rather than partisan politics, the act failed because a bipartisan group of senators refused to pass a bill that would have reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by increasing the price of energy
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
The Washington Post today reports there is great movement in Congress to set aside thousands upon thousands of more U.S. acreage as (mostly) untouchable wilderness area, as environmentalists gain ever greater influence in the nation's capitol. Meanwhile that kind of effort, as the Washington Times notes, is undermining the enviros' own goals (mandates, that is) of expanded use of renewable fuels to generate electricity. They want solar and wind energy tapped, which generally is found in the largest amounts in remote areas (the desert sun, and mountain and coastal breezes, respectively), yet oppose connecting those sources to the users:
Build one of the world's largest solar-power operations in the Southern California desert and surround it with plants that run on wind and underground heat.
Yet San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (SDG&E) and its potential partners face fierce opposition because the plan also calls for a 150-mile, high-voltage transmission line that would cut through pristine parkland to reach the nation's eighth-largest city.
The showdown over how to get renewable energy to consumers will likely play out elsewhere around the country as well, as state regulators require electric utilities to rely less on coal and natural gas to fire their plants – the biggest source of carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S.
Is there any element of environmentalism where these activists can apply their "solutions" while not showing themselves to be foolish, hypocritical, or both?
Last week, I summarized what happened to the Lieberman-Warner-Boxer (hereafter L-W-B) energy-rationing bill on the Senate floor. This week I want to begin discussing what can be learned from it that might be useful as we prepare to fight cap-and-trade in the next Congress. What strikes me most strongly is that while the push for reducing emissions is coming from environmental pressure groups, the push for cap-and-trade as the means to do so is coming from big businesses that hope to make a lot of money in the short term. The battle is therefore really between special interests and consumers (that is, the public). Special interests are organized to exert considerable pressure on Congress, while consumers are not. That is usually bad news for consumers. The 2005 and 2007 ethanol mandates and the new farm bill are good examples of how things usually turn out in Washington.
However, L-W-B crashed in less than a week. Why? First, the environmental pressure groups were divided. Friends of the Earth led a “Fix It or Ditch It” grassroots campaign, while the big Wall Street establishment groups, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund, supported the bill. Second, there was no way to pay off all the special interests. Some big companies didn’t do so well. Thus James Rogers, Chairman, President, and CEO of Duke Energy, has been the biggest promoter of cap-and-trade in the business community, but he lobbied actively against it because he felt that Duke wasn’t getting its fair cut (that is, more than its share of the loot). Now, Rogers has come out in favor of a carbon tax, which may or may not be a strategic ploy.
The fact that big business was divided meant that there was room for the public to make their views heard in Washington. Since Kyoto hasn’t been a live issue since it was negotiated in 1997, most conservative groups haven’t paid much attention to it—and understandably so: there are many other important issues and resources are limited. But in the weeks leading up to the debate, many conservative grassroots groups got active. Talk radio paid a lot of attention to L-W-B, and listeners started to light up the phone lines. I don’t know how many people called or wrote their Senators, but I did notice in the debate that quite a few Senators who support cap-and-trade suddenly felt obliged to express concern about the costs to consumers.
My preliminary conclusion is that the public can be heard when cap-and-trade comes up again in 2009 or 2010 and therefore it can be defeated in Congress, but only if we can keep the special interests divided and pushing and shoving each other to get to the trough. If the proponents figure out a way to pay everybody off, then it will become very difficult to save ourselves from energy rationing.
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