Harvesting the body heat of Svedes, cheesy floor and cars running on chocolate is some of the environmentally friendly energy alternatives in a recent Guardian article. Great story that shows how innovation happens between self-interested actors, rather than through government planning.
January 2008
There was only a question of time until politically correct energy rationing and reality TV would meet…
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Worthy of its own post (I didn't want it to get buried in the last one) is today's column by John Locke Foundation president John Hood, who follows up all the work done by his people and by the Beacon Hill Institute with his own devastating perspective:
Remember when your math teacher required you to show your work? There’s a good reason for it. In this case, thanks to diligent spade work by Carolina Journal and careful analysis by economists at Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute, it has become glaringly obvious that the “experts” consulted by (North Carolina) officials have no earthly idea what they are talking about….
…When scientists do, indeed, step forward to question the supposed consensus about an impending global catastrophe, the alarmists attempt to assassinate their character or compare them to Flat-Earthers. Only the minority of scientists who subscribe to the entire alarmist agenda are said to be credible.
They say this is science. It is precisely the opposite of science. It allows for no reasonable debate. It asserts the Truth as an article of faith, and treats dissent as heresy.
Well, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander – no matter how much he may squawk. Whenever anyone claims that North Carolina should adopt regulations, taxes, and spending programs to combat global warming, and that the result will boost the economy and make North Carolinians better off in the future, check to see if the speaker is an economist trained to employ mainstream economic science. If not, you are permitted to respond with ridicule and contempt.
It is well worth your time to read the whole thing.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
It’s official: the so-called economic analysis that the Center for Climate Strategies is feeding to state governments is junk, which is what you would expect since their study does not quantify the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and they repeatedly misidentify costs as benefits.
Those are just some of the findings reached by the Beacon Hill Institute, who this week released a peer review study of the methodology used by CCS (and the North Carolina Climate Action Plan Advisory Group) in producing 56 recommendations for the state to act on reducing CO2 emissions. BHI did the study, in addition to a review of another economic model used by CCS (more garbage in, garbage out) to evaluate job impacts, and an earlier review that scrutinized CCS’s findings in Arizona, at the request of the John Locke Foundation. Here is the sobering assessment by BHI’s PhD economist Ben Powell, who wrote this week’s report:
The 56 global warming policy proposals now under consideration for North Carolina include ideas that would increase taxes, restrict land use, ration energy use, and raise energy costs.
“Surprisingly, the NC-CAPAG report claims that the implementation of these measures would bring ‘significant cost savings for the State’s economy,’” Powell wrote. “The NC-CAPAG report gives the impression that the state policy makers can have their cake and eat it, too, and that North Carolina can both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time actually save the economy money. Unfortunately, the seriously flawed nature of the report undermines these conclusions.”
“NC-CAPAG’s cost savings estimates are not just wildly optimistic; they are the product of a purely fictitious analysis,” Powell wrote. “Its cost savings estimates cannot be believed, and it fails to quantify the monetary benefits of reduced carbon emissions. Thus policy makers are left with no basis on which to judge the merits of the NC-CAPAG report’s recommendations for action on the mitigation of emissions of greenhouse gases.”
Finally someone is looking at the real costs (huge) compared to the alleged benefits (unidentified and not quantified) being claimed by the environmental left. Of course, it’s tough to apply statistical analysis when the only goal is to feel good about yourself.
After an outcry of objections, the California Energy Commission withdrew its proposal to require new buildings in the state to have radio-controlled thermostats that, in a power emergency, could be used to override customers’ temperature settings. Instead of making the proposal part of new state building requirements, the commissioners will discuss the use of the “programmable communicating thermostats” when considering how to manage electrical loads — with the understanding that customers would have the right to refuse to allow the state to override their wishes.
The mantra is repeated daily. There is consensus on climate change. Global warming is real. It will be a disaster. Humans are to blame. We have to do something – immediately.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Today the N.C. Division of Air Quality outdoes itself before its state Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change when they bring in as an "expert" witness a fellow named Tad Aburn, who is the director of the Air and Radiation Management Division for the Maryland Department of the Environment.
Aburn, according to the agenda, is scheduled to present a "discussion of strategies to mitigate and adapt to global climate change," and will talk about "emissions reduction goals and standards in the state of Maryland." These brilliant (sarcasm there) folks, in interim recommendations released last month by their own governor-appointed (and Center for Climate Strategies-managed) climate commission, set CO2 emissions reduction targets of 90 percent below 2006 levels in the state by the year 2050. This surpasses the widely heralded (by greenies) targets set by California last year. If enacted into law, Maryland's would have the most stringent regulations in the nation.
Meanwhile, Aburn, who is the man in MD DOE most accountable for this commission process, is a piece of work. Typical of many if not most envirocrats (the kind who often shuffle back and forth between government jobs and advocacy nonprofits), he likes to set goals without considering whether they are feasible, efficient, or how much they cost. Economics are irrelevant to these people. Witness these comments from an Associated Press article last month:
“If you asked me right now, how are you going to do it? What exactly are you going to do? The answer is, I don’t know.”
“It sends a very significant message of how Maryland feels about climate change.”
That's what it is all about: implement some costly feel-good mandates, despite the fact that they won't do anything to affect climate, and that you have no idea if or how they can be achieved.
Besides his economic cluelessness and choked-up emotion about the Chesapeake Bay flooding the Eastern Shore, Aburn is also your standard obstructionist government bureaucrat, as proven in my nearly five-month effort to obtain public records from MD DOE. The Department first told me they would not provide documents because they were “privileged” (I was told that Aburn wanted them withheld). After I made a subsequent exhaustive and expansive request, I was denied again for the same reason. Then after I requested an administrative review of the denial I got a letter from Aburn saying there were 12 pages pursuant to my request and that my administrative review was moot. This was after the agency told a Maryland blogger that there were 3700 pages pursuant to the exact same request I made. So I demanded the records again — on disk — and now I have the same 3700 page answer, in which they told both me and the blogger that it would cost us $1,381 to get the records. Imagine that for a disk. So we’re still at a standstill.
These are the kinds of records I have obtained easily (and much more cheaply — sometimes for nothing) in more than a dozen other states. So it leads me to believe that Aburn has some kind of sweetheart deal with CCS that he is trying to hide. The fact that he is CCS's star presenter today at the NC LCGCC meeting only heightens that suspicion. Also sparking curiosity is the fact that North Carolina had to pay CCS $100,000 for them to manage the state's climate commission process, whereas Maryland has not had to pay a dime. In fact, Maryland does not even have a contract with CCS. What does Aburn have going on here?
I am sure there are many other cases where citizens or reporters have encountered much more obnoxious government obstruction than this. But this experience has inspired me to coin a new phrase for bureaucratic obfuscation and delay: "getting Aburned." This is the "expert" that the NC DAQ wants lawmakers to hear today.
Cross-posted at The Locker Room.
From Joseph D'Aleo, CCM, ICECAP.us
Once again today we were told in the media that the antarctic ice is melting at an increasing and alarming rate. The story appeared in many papers including the Washington Post and the UK Globe Mail today based on a research project, led by Eric Rignot, principal scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and appearing in the current issue of Nature Geoscience. In an e-mail, Dr. Rignot attributed the shrinkage in the ice sheet to an upwelling of warm waters along the Antarctic coast, which is causing some glaciers to flow more rapidly into the ocean. He suspects the trend is due to global warming.
This seemed odd coming shortly after reports that the Southern Hemisphere (Antarctica) set a record for the MAXIMUM extent of ice since satellite monitoring began in 1979 this year. We thought we would take a look at the latest NSIDC graphs for southern hemispheric ice extent.
See full size image here
See full size image here
I will remind you it is mid-summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Ice extent remains well (one million square kilometers) above the 28 year average and an impressive 3 million square kilometers above last year at this time!. There is clearly a lot of year to year variability in the record but the demise of the Antartic icecap seems to be anything but imminent. Most of the warming and melt in recent years has been in the vicinity of the Antarctic Peninsula, a small portion of the Antarctic which reaches above the Antarctic Circle and is a choke-point for the circumpolar ocean currents, and is more susceptible to variations. There’s also an active subsea volcano in the area, perhaps leading to the warm water upwelling in the study.
Huge energy price increases account for almost all of terrible new inflation numbers that came out yesterday, and federal lawmakers deserve much of the blame. The Labor Department said wholesale prices rose 6.3 percent in 2007, the largest jump in 26 years. “Core” inflation (excluding food and energy) rose just 2 percent, but a whopping 18.4 percent jump in energy prices pushed the overall rate sky-high.
I would never want to shoot a polar bear with anything more deadly than a tranquiliser dart. And yet I find myself on the side of Canadian Inuit in a stand-off with US greens on precisely that issue.
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