Julie Walsh

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.

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.

Year of Global Cooling

by Julie Walsh on December 19, 2007

in Blog

Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.

Vuitton’s new “Dissonance” line

by Julie Walsh on December 18, 2007

It seems that we’ve all been had in a bit of fun, involving a good old campaign of commercial build-up. Who doesn’t remember the enigmatic advertising blitz for “Gabbo” in the Simpsons’ “Krusty gets Kancelled” episode?

Well, “the day has finally arrived at which Gabbo’s identity will be revealed” or, in this case, the line of luxury products that apparently were the point all along of the global warming hype are rolled out.

The January ’08 issue of Vanity Fair has three Louis Vuitton ads inside the front cover, featuring Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, Gorbachev, and Catherine Deneuve. A small caption in each ad notes that Graf, Agassi and Deneuve (along with Vuitton, of course) support Gore’s Climate Project while Gorbachev (and Vuitton) supports the Green Cross.

The ads’ common thread is rampant luxury consumerism joined with luxurious consumption of energy. In the Agassi-Graf ad, they’ve just landed after having flown who knows how far.

Who would begrudge them, having just played the doubles match of all our lives, taking climate change to extra sets!? Their laptop computer hums in the background, doubtless powered by the morning sun breaking through the drape, and behold all manner of luxury travel paraphernalia lying about including the camera, slyly teasing possibly a slide show depicting the horrors of St. Tropez, a climatic fate that could befall Minnesota if we’re not careful.

Gorbachev rakishly directs his driver (just imagine if he’d won the Cold War!), James, once around The Wall, then off to give a speech about the immorality of individual energy use! To each according to his needs, and all that..

 

The ageless Deneuve adorns a steam train, if only of the movie-set variety so as to simply romanticizie the idea of burning coal and wood.

Where might this mysterious woman be going to deliver Gore’s Power Point? Somewhere on the Orient Express no doubt (though most of the stops along the way are in countries exempt from Kyoto). Possibly the message is that the millions of people who go to see her movies will travel the several miles to and from the theater by train, instead of car? Who can care of such things when decked out in such finery as she, perched atop numerous Vutton suitcases, stuffed no doubt to the hinges with pamphlets?

In short, each ad glorifies and promotes a luxury lifestyle that requires several times the CO2 emissions of even the average, supposedly gluttonous American. Yet somehow, apparently, such high falootin’ consumerism fights climate change.

Hat tip to by PG colleague Joel Schwartz for passing these along.

Carbon hypocrisy–-what does it reveal?

by Julie Walsh on December 18, 2007

Al Gore says his high-carbon life-style of private jets, limousines, and four residences–including a mansion that consumes more energy in a month than the average household does in year–does not make him a hypocrite, because he purchases “carbon offsets.”

Amazing what some guys can say with a straight face. Let’s leave aside the question of whether Gore actually pays for those offsets, and whether paying someone else to plant trees that won’t mature for decades actually offsets any emissions you produce today.

Instead, let’s look at the morality of offsetting. If a glutton pays someone else to go on a diet, is he any less a glutton? Can an adulterer offset his sins by paying other people not to cheat on their wives?

Someone who looks strictly at energy balances might question the appropriateness of these jibes, but Al Gore says global warming is a “moral” and “spiritual” issue. In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore admonishes readers to “reduce the number of miles you drive by biking, walking, carpooling, or taking mass transit wherever possible,” and to “reduce air travel.” Does he practice what he preaches? Nope.

But does this make Al Gore a bad person? By his own lights, yes. But in reality, no. Gore’s high-carbon life-style reveals that he is a preacher of sham virtue. An Inconvenient Truth, the Oscar, the Nobel Peace Prize, and Live Earth, to say nothing of all the campaigning and networking and media outreach Gore did over the years would not have been possible without lots of affordable energy produced from fossil fuels.

Not even Al Gore, one of the world’s richest and most powerful men, can afford to live “beyond petroleum” for a single minute! Isn’t it a little crazy then to demand that government put ordinary folks on an energy diet?

Women Who Find Ferrari Drivers Sexy Contribute to Global Warming?

by Julie Walsh on December 18, 2007

in Blog

We doubt this came up last week at the United Nation's conference on global warming in Bali, but Britain's top government scientist says the best thing women can do to ease global warming is "stop admiring young men in Ferraris."

If an emission falls and there’s no bureaucrat to mandate it…

by Julie Walsh on December 18, 2007

Yesterday's Washington Post coverage wrapping up its assessment of the Bali coverage and, one hopes, ending its recent run of ill-informed global warming activism, came and went without them running a letter I had sent in response to said string of items.

The long and the short of it is found in George Will's comment, also yesterday but in an entirely unrelated context. "Today's liberalism, combining tolerance and statism, cares less what happens than that it be mandatory." So here it is FWIW:

To the Editors,
The preference for rhetoric over substance is widespread in Washington, but the Post is increasingly aggressive in its claims that the U.S. is "doing nothing" about greenhouse gas emissions or climate change, sitting on the sidelines, refusing to act, and otherwise falling behind in comparison with some subset of the rest of the world. Yet nowhere in its recent series of editorials, news articles and human interest stories covering the topic has the Post actually noted comparative U.S. and EU greenhouse gas emissions performance — Europe, the self-proclaimed "world leader", being the most likely party in comparison to which we are not acting. It seems the Post believes that if an emission drops and no bureaucrat was around to mandate it, it didn't really drop.

Disappointed though the Post may be in all things Bush Administration, imagine how this malaise could be improved by acknowledging actual comparative performance, figures for which are publicly available. Under any relevant modern baseline, e.g., the year Europe made its Kyoto promise (1997) or thereafter, U.S. emissions have risen far more slowly than those of its noisiest antagonists. For example, International Energy Agency data show that over the past 7 years (2000-2006), the annual rate of increase for U.S. CO2 emissions is approximately one-third of the EU's rate of increase. Indeed, over the same period even the smaller EU-15 economy has increased its CO2 emissions in actual volume greater than the U.S. by more than 20%, even while the U.S. economy and population also grew more rapidly. At minimum the Post can acknowledge performance, before trying to explain it away. In truth, mandates are not everything any more than Europe's rhetoric amounts to policy.

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