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The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) today released an Economic Assessment of Biofuel Support Policies. Several findings should be of interest to Planet Gore readers.

Third, “The medium-term impacts of current biofuel policies on agricultural commodity prices are important, but their role should not be overestimated.” The report estimates that current biofuel support measures “increase average wheat, maize and vegetable oil prices by 5 percent, 7 percent, and 19 percent, respectively, in the medium term.” These are bigger impacts than ethanol proponents acknowledge, although smaller than those estimated by former USDA chief economist Keith Collins. Corn averaged $2 a bushel in 2006 and is forecast to remain about $6 a bushel in 2008-2010. Collins estimates that ethanol accounts for 25-55 percent of the increase in corn prices under one analytic method, and 40-60 percent under another method.

Fourth, the OECD acknowledges as “real” the concern raised some in recent studies that land conversions associated with expanded ethanol production could release huge amounts of carbon dioxide stored in forests and soils, making ethanol a significant net contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. However, the OECD finds these studies controversial and methodologically immature, and does not endorse their findings.

Nonetheless, even assuming that corn ethanol delivers net emission reductions, the costs far outweigh any potential climate benefit. The OECD comments: “Biofuels produced from wheat, sugar beet or vegetable oils rarely provide GHG emissions savings of more than 30 percent to 60 percent, while corn (maize) based ethanol generally allows for savings of less than 30 percent. Current budgetary support, mandates and trade restrictions . . . reduce net GHG emissions by less than 1 percent of total emissions from transport. Fossil fuel use is also reduced by less than 1 percent for most of these transport sectors by 2-3 percent in the EU diesel sector. These relatively modest effects come at a projected cost equivalent to about $960 to $1,700 per ton of CO2-equivalent saved, or of roughly $0.80 to $7.00 per liter of fossil fuel not used.” For perspective, $960 per ton is 15 to 17 times more expensive than the American Council on Capital Formation and the National Association of Manufacturers estimate carbon permits would cost in 2020 under the Lieberman-Warner bill — legislation that the Senate in its wisdom considered too costly to pass.

I missed this when it was first published, but it turns out that fat people cause global warming!  Reports Reuters:

Obesity contributes to global warming, too.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school’s researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.

“We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility,” Edwards said in a telephone interview. “Obesity is a key part of the big picture.”

I concede my own responsibility.  Since having a knee replaced (using up enormous amounts of energy and creating a huge carbon footprint in the process!), I’ve gained a lot of weight.  So I guess I’d better contribute to one of Al Gore’s enterprises to assuage my guilt.  And everyone else who’s put on some extra weight as they’ve gotten older should follow suit!

Maybe we need a government “cap and trade” program for pounds.  We each get a permit for the average body weight, and have to buy more permits if we go over.  Thin people could sell permission to put on some extra fat.  Whaddya’ think?

Dow Chemical Company announced this week price increases of up to twenty percent for their 3200 products.  Andrew N. Liveris, the chairman and CEO of America’s biggest chemical company, said that soaring costs for feedstocks and energy were to blame.  Dow’s feedstock and energy costs were 42% more in the first quarter of 2008 than a year ago.

The principal feedstocks Dow uses to produce most of its chemical products are natural gas and petroleum, so this is really all about oil and gas prices.  According to Bloomberg, “Liveris said today the U.S. government's failure to develop a comprehensive energy policy is causing the nation's chemical industry to lose ground to global competitors.  ‘The country now faces a true energy crisis, one that is causing serious harm to America's manufacturing sector and all consumers of energy,’ Liveris said in the statement.”

That’s true, but Liveris failed to go on to explain that he and his company are leading the effort to make our energy crisis much worse.  Dow is a founding member of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership, which supports federal cap-and-trade legislation.  Liveris has been one of the most visible big business cheerleaders for cap-and-trade. 

Cap-and-trade is designed to raise the price of lower-cost hydrocarbon fuels so that people and companies are forced either to use higher-cost alternatives or to just use less energy.  The first effect of cap-and-trade will be to reduce coal use because burning coal produces significantly more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than natural gas.  The only large-scale alternative to coal in the near term for producing electricity is natural gas.  So pushing coal use down will raise gas prices. So Liveris and Dow are working to enact policies that will exacerbate the problem they are complaining about.

Which leads me to the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill, S. 2191/S.3036 (it will be the latter bill number that comes to the floor).  As I reported last week, this energy-rationing monstrosity is now scheduled for debate on the Senate floor next week.  It’s still not clear how long Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will allow for debate or how many amendments he will permit to be offered and voted on.  I have produced some basic talking points on what’s wrong with cap-and-trade, which can be found here.

The pain caused by the global food crisis has led many people to belatedly realize that we have prioritized growing crops to feed cars instead of people. That is only a small part of the real problem.

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

The topic of rising food (and feed for livestock) prices, partly as a result of ethanol subsidies (an incentive to burn our food), has been discussed much in this space. Well, now the effect has trickled down to our beloved pets.

Keep an eye on Fido.

According to an article in today’s Greenwire, Concentrating Solar Power technology has a bright future if

1.      federal renewable tax credits are extended;

2.      a federal 25% by 2025 renewable portfolio standard for electric utilities is adopted;

3.      a carve-out specifically for solar is included in the 25% RPS;

4.      European-style "feed-in" tariffs are adopted;

5.      more transmission lines to remote areas with high solar resources are built:

6.      a multibillion-dollar federal fund is created;

7.      a national cap on greenhouse gas emissions is enacted. 

If this level of government support were given to horse-drawn carriages and wagons, the era of the automobile would soon be a brief interlude in the age of the horse.

President George W. Bush spoke about what to do about rising gasoline prices at a press conference on Tuesday.  He said that the Congress was to blame for not passing legislation to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to exploration and production.  As he correctly said: “Members of Congress have been vocal about foreign governments increasing their oil production; yet Congress has been just as vocal in opposition to efforts to expand our production here at home.”

In reply to a question, the President said about increasing domestic energy production: “We can also send a clear signal that we understand supply and demand….”  Then he went on to defend the corn ethanol mandate on the grounds that it was only contributing 15 percent to the increase in food prices.  Apparently, the President could use a little remedial tutorial in supply and demand.  The prices of products like corn, wheat, and soybeans are set in a global market on the margin.  A small decrease in supply (such as diverting enough corn to feed 250 million people for a year to ethanol production, as happened last year) can have a dramatic effect on price.

Luckily, President Bush is a lagging indicator.  As news stories on the catastrophic consequences of the corn ethanol mandate threaten to become an avalanche, the Congress is full of talk about the need to do something.  Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Az.) has introduced the most sweeping bill, but there are many others being drafted.  Even Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the Majority Whip, said this week that they were going to have to look at the mandate.  Durbin represents Illinois, the nation’s number two corn-growing State.

From CO2Sceptics.com

As I understand it the solar effect on climate has been discounted by the climate modellers because the variation in total solar irradiance between the peak and the trough of a single eleven year (approximately) solar cycle seems far too small to make any difference to global temperature.

There are a number of problems with their assumption as follows:-

The concept of total solar irradiance is purely a convenient construct. We do not know all the different mechanisms by which the sun can have an influence on global temperature either directly or indirectly. The use of the word "total" is therefore misleading. Even the concept of irradiance is vague and maybe incomplete.

The fact is that in the real observed world over centuries cooler weather has been seen to occur at a similar time to longer less active solar cycles and warmer weather similarly occurs with shorter more active solar cycles. If total solar irradiance does not seem to account for it that is no reason to ignore the phenomenon yet the modellers and the IPCC do so. I assume that the reason they ignore it is because, being unaware of the cause of the observed phenomenon, they have no numbers representing it to feed into the models. Their model output should therefore be qualified by an admission that at least one substantial observable real world phenomenon has been wholly omitted. Unfortunately for them that would render the models useless for policy making purposes.

The IPCC and the modellers do recently seem to have come to accept the influence of the EL NINO/ LA NINA cycle as a warming/cooling process. However they currently regard it as a purely redistributive mechanism rather than one which could actually be part of a driving mechanism. They would be in error if variations in solar energy input to the Earth operated a switch between the predominance over time of either EL NINO or LA NINA.

The variation between peaks and troughs in the solar cycle may be very small but if continued over long periods the effects could soon accumulate. If, say, the difference is only 1% then if a reduction or increase in incoming solar energy continues for many years, perhaps over several solar cycles, then it is the cumulative effect that should be considered and that could well be substantial over a number of decades.

There could also be other unknown mechanisms driven by solar changes that exaggerate the effect of small variations in total solar irradiance. A current possibility being investigated is a suggested link between cosmic ray flux and cloudiness. The flux varies depending on the energy from the sun and may drive cloudiness changes.

It is possible that over the millennia the earth has become a very accurate "thermometer" in terms of its reaction to solar heat or other forms of solar energy input. The entirety of the global heat budget may be very sensitive to solar changes. Over millions of years the earth has arrived at a temperature balanced between incoming solar energy and outgoing radiation of energy to space. The balance could well be much finer than we have so far realised. There are certainly no available figures that describe the sensitivity of the global temperature to variations in solar input and without knowing that level of sensitivity as a first step I fail to see how we can know anything useful about the sensitivity of the Earth to other influences.