Hurricane Sandy and Global Warming
by Marlo Lewis on November 2, 2012
in Features
Both the blogosphere and the mainstream media have been abuzz with commentary blaming global warming for Hurricane Sandy and the associated deaths and devastation. Bloomberg BusinessWeek epitomizes this brand of journalism. Its magazine cover proclaims the culpability of global warming as an obvious fact:
Part of the thinking here is simply that certain aspects of the storm (lowest barometric pressure for a winter cyclone in the Northeast) and its consequences (worst flooding of the New York City subway system) are “unprecedented,” so what more proof do we need that our fuelish ways have dangerously loaded the climate dice to produce ever more terrible extremes?
After all, argues Climate Progress blogger Brad Johnston, quoting hockey stick inventor Michael Mann, “climate change is present in every single meteorological event”:
The fact remains that there is 4 percent more water vapor – and associated additional moist energy – available both to power individual storms and to produce intense rainfall from them. Climate change is present in every single meteorological event, in that these events are occurring within a baseline atmospheric environment that has shifted in favor of more intense weather events.
Well sure, climate is average weather over a period of time, so as climate changes, so does the weather. But that tautology tells us nothing about how much — or even how — global warming influences any particular event. Moreover, if “climate change is present in every single meteorological event,” then it is also present in ”good” weather (however defined) as well as “bad.”
Anthony Watts makes this criticism on his indispensable blog, noting that as carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have risen, the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. has declined.
The US Has Had 285 Hurricane Strikes Since 1850: ‘The U.S. has always been vulnerable to hurricanes. 86% of U.S. hurricane strikes occurred with CO2 below [NASA scientist James] Hansen’s safe level of 350 PPM.’
If there’s anything in this data at all, it looks like CO2 is preventing more US landfalling hurricanes.
Data Source: NOAA; Figure Source: Steve Goddard [click to continue…]
Production Tax Credit: Remove Big Wind’s Training Wheels, Report Argues
by Marlo Lewis on November 1, 2012
in Features
“Remove Big Wind’s training wheels” and let the production tax credit (PTC) expire, argues University of Lousiana State University Professor David Dismukes in a report published by the American Energy Alliance (AEA), a grassroots free-market research and advocacy group.
Wind energy lobbyists and their congressional allies are pushing for a one-year extension of the PTC, first enacted in 1992. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the one-year extension would increase the cumulative federal deficit by $12.2 billion over the next 10 years. Wind industry lobbyists warn that not renewing the PTC would kill jobs. One could reply that jobs dependent on market-rigging tax breaks impose a net loss on the economy and should not be created in the first place.
The AEA report, however, does not take this tack. Rather, the report argues that wind doesn’t need the PTC because it is already competitive and will become more so as efficiencies improve. For example, the report cites a Breakthrough Institute estimate that unsubsidized wind costs $60 to $90/MWh, which “compares favorably with new combined cycle natural gas generation, at around $52 to $72/MWh,” making wind generation “likely already competitive with natural gas in areas that have high wind speeds.”
I’m not persuaded because, as explained in other posts, a megawatt of unpredictable, unreliable wind capacity has less value than a megawatt of predictable, reliable natural gas or coal capacity. Nonetheless, the AEA report presents several criticisms of the PTC that strike me as spot on, three of which are discussed below. [click to continue…]
Production Tax Credit: High Cost Subsidy for Low Value Power
by Marlo Lewis on October 29, 2012
in Blog, Features
In Wind Intermittency and the Production Tax Credit: A High Cost Subsidy for Low Value Power, economist Jonathan Lesser finds that “the vast majority of the Nation’s wind resources fail to produce any electricity when our customers need it most.” He also cautions that the wind energy production tax credit (PTC), which would add $12.2 billion to the federal deficit if Congress extends it for another year, adds billions of dollars in hidden costs to ratepayers “while undermining the reliability of the grid.”
Lesser’s analysis is based on nearly four years of data from three interconnection regions that account for over half of total U.S. installed wind capacity: Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT— over 10,000 MW of wind capacity), the Midwest ISO (MISO — almost 12,000 MW of wind capacity), and PJM Interconnection (PJM — over 5,000 MW of wind capacity).
In all three regions, over 84% of the installed wind generation infrastructure fails to produce electricity when electric demand is greatest.
In MISO, only 1.8% to 7.6% of wind infrastructure generated power during the peak hours on the highest demand days. In ERCOT, 6.0% to 15.9% of installed wind generated power, and in PJM, between 8.2% and 14.6% of wind produced power.
Demand for electricity is highest in the summer, especially during heat waves. But that is often when the wind stops blowing. The July 2012 heat wave is a case in point:
The July 2012 heat wave in Illinois, where temperatures soared to 103 degrees in Chicago, provides a compelling example of wind generation’s failure to perform when needed most. During this heat wave, Illinois wind generated less than 5% of its capacity during the record breaking heat, producing only an average of 120 MW of electricity from the over 2,700 MW installed. On July 6, 2012, when the demand for electricity in northern Illinois and Chicago averaged 22,000 MW, the average amount of wind power available during the day was a virtually nonexistent 4 MW.
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American Non-Profits Financing Canadian Oil Sands Opposition
by Brian McGraw on October 24, 2012
in Blog
A new report published in Greenwatch by the Capital Research Center documents the significant financial backing that Canadian groups have received in order to garner opposition to development of the Canadian oil sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline. Brian Seasholes, an adjunct scholar at CEI, writes:
Media accounts and policy discussions of oil sands and Keystone XL usually portray the adversaries as David vs. Goliath: small, underfunded environmental pressure groups taking on big, wealthy corporations. In reality, the activists, especially in Canada, look less like grassroots groups than like subsidiaries of large U.S. institutional donors, many with billions of dollars of assets—organizations that have funneled colossal amounts of money to anti-oil sands groups over the past decade.
While the U.S. media have paid scant attention to this funding stream, a handful of Canadians have picked up the slack. The first to blow the whistle were left-wing Canadian activists, who feared funding from U.S. donors would make “green” pressure groups less confrontational and more likely to cut deals with governments and corporations. Then in the mid-2000s left-wing journalists in Canada blew the whistle, most notably Peter Cizek, Dru Oja Jay, and Macdonald Stainsby, with the Pew Charitable Trusts as their favorite target.
He includes this helpful table, documenting grants from 1999 to present:
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Sen. Inhofe Releases Report on EPA’s 2013 Regulatory Agenda
by Myron Ebell on October 23, 2012
in Blog
Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee last week released a report that details all the EPA regulations that have been delayed until after the election or won’t take effect until after the election. A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2013 lists thirteen major regulations that “will strangle economic growth, destroy millions of jobs, and dramatically raise the price of goods, the cost of electricity, and the price of gas.” Those are on top of the new regulations already implemented that are constricting energy supplies and raising energy prices.
“President Obama has spent the past year punting on a slew of job-killing EPA regulations that will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more. From greenhouse gas regulations to water guidance to the tightening of the ozone standard, the Obama-EPA has delayed the implementation of rule after rule because they don’t want all those pink slips and price spikes to hit until after the election. But President Obama’s former climate czar Carol Browner was very clear about what’s in store for next year: she told several green groups not to worry because President Obama has a big green ‘to-do’ list for 2013….” Inhofe said in introducing the report.
Senator Inhofe told Caroline May of the Daily Caller that, “In all these [presidential] debates, the thing they overlook and don’t talk about that is just as important as servicing another $5 trillion of indebtedness, is all these rules and regulations.” Read more here.
Anthropomorphized Environmental Movement = Sex and the City’s Libby Biyalick
by William Yeatman on October 23, 2012
in Blog
In season one, episode six of the show “Sex and the City,” Carrie frets whether her new beau, Mr. Big, is keeping her from his social circle. Her worries were prompted by the plight of her friend Mike Singer, who had found an ideal lover in sales clerk Libby Biyalick, but who preferred to keep the affair secret because he was embarrassed to be seen with her in public.
In many ways, the association between the President and the environmental movement is a lot like that between Mike Singer and Libby Biyalick.
On the one hand, the greens and the President share an intimate relationship characterized by symbiotic back-scratching. Environmental special interest organizations increasingly are active in the business of political advertising on behalf the President and his party, which is the ultimate currency with any politician. And President Obama has shown much love for environmentalists, by waging an unprecedented war on their #1 enemy, the coal industry.
And yet, despite this cozy relationship, President Barack Obama clearly doesn’t want to be seen in public with the greens. In the course of three debates, President Obama never once mentioned “global warming,” nor did he tout any of his environmental policies (He mentioned CAFE standards and green energy, but that was in the context of “energy independence” and “all of the above”). Quite apart from bragging about his green bona fides, the President actually tried to appear more of a friend to fossil fuels than his opponent.
Ouch! Humiliation notwithstanding, environmentalists can take much solace in the fact that the President has delivered pretty much everything they could ask for in the way of anti-fossil fuel policies.
[Updated: 6:26 AM, 24 October 2012. I completely forgot to give an explanation for why President Obama wants to be private-not-public friends with environmentalists. At this point in a Presidential election, all of a candidate's actions and words have been focus-grouped and polled, such that they are carefully calibrated to achieve maximum appeal among independent voters. With this in mind, the President's debate performances indicate that the Obama campaign thinks independents give low priority to global warming.]
For the Second Time This Week, WaPo’s Wonkblog Goofs an Energy/Environment Story
by William Yeatman on October 19, 2012
in Blog
Earlier this week, I wrote about how Washington Post Wonkblog contributor Brad Plumer misread a report on which he blogged. Today, his colleague Ezra Klein devoted another Wonkblog post to an erroneous thesis—namely, that opposition to climate policies like cap-and-trade is a strictly partisan matter.
The impetus for Klein’s mistake was a New York Times column by David Brooks, titled “A Sad Green Story.” In the piece, Brooks argues that the prospects for a policy to mitigate climate change have effectively died for two reasons: (1) Al Gore is a highly partisan figure; and (2) a few high-profile taxpayer investments in green energy that failed (Solyndra, A123, et al.). Most of Brooks’ op-ed is given to the latter point, as is evident by his conclusion:
Global warming is still real. Green technology is still important. Personally, I’d support a carbon tax to give it a boost. But he who lives by the subsidy dies by the subsidy. Government planners should not be betting on what technologies will develop fastest. They should certainly not be betting on individual companies.
This is a story of overreach, misjudgments and disappointment.
Klein, however, took issue with Brooks’ “passivity.” According to his Wonkblog post:
This isn’t a story of overreach, misjudgements [sic], and disappointment. It’s a story of Republicans putting raw partisanship and a dislike for Al Gore in front of the planet’s best interests. It’s a story, though Brooks doesn’t mention this, of conservatives building an alternative reality in which the science is unsettled, and no one really knows whether the planet is warming and, even if it is, whether humans have anything to do with it. It’s a story of Democrats being forced into a second and third-best policies that Republicans then use to press their political advantage.
It’s a story, to put it simply, of Democrats doing everything they can to address a problem Brooks says is real in the way Brooks says is best, and Republicans doing everything they can to stop them. And it’s a story that ends with Democrats and Republicans receiving roughly equal blame from Brooks.
Klein has it wrong. Quite contrary to what he would have readers believe, opposition to climate policy is one of the very few areas of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill. On the one hand, the issue breaks down along geographic lines, rather than partisan ones, such that politicians from areas dependent on the production or use of fossil fuels tend to oppose climate policies, whether they are Republican and Democrat. On the other hand, politicians from both parties are always reluctant to enact policies, like a cap-and-trade, that engender economic hardship for their constituents. As a result, global warming is a low priority across the partisan divide. Consider:
- On June 6, 2008, in the immediate wake of the Senate’s rejection of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade, which had been extensively reworked by Senator Barbara Boxer, 10 Senate Democrats—about 20 percent of the caucus at the time—sent Senator Boxer a letter explaining that they voted or would have voted against her cap-and-trade because it would cause “undue hardship” for their constituents.
- On June 26, 2009, 40 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a cap-and-trade bill.
- During the 2010 summer, Senate Democrats held weekly caucus meetings to build support for a Senate companion bill to the American Clean Energy and Security Act. But the caucus never rallied behind the measure, and it was put on ice, without ever reaching the Senate floor for a vote.
If, as Klein believes, Democrats are “doing everything they can to address” climate change, then the 111th Congress would have enacted a cap-and-trade, at a time when Democrats held both Chambers and the Presidency. Instead, 40 House Democrats voted against the measure, which was subsequently shelved by Senate leadership.
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On Energy Policy, Debate Obama Bears No Resemblance to Real-Life Obama
by William Yeatman on October 17, 2012
in Blog
O…M…G! On energy policy, President Obama sounded better than Romney during the debate last night.
Of course, “sounded” is the operative word, as the President’s energy discourse wholly discounted reality. Here on planet earth, his administration is waging a war on energy. Oil and gas production is booming—but only on state and private lands unencumbered by the red tape and bureaucratic foot-dragging that has inhibited drilling on federal lands. In the last year, President Obama’s EPA promulgated two regulations that ban new coal-fired power plants (as if one wasn’t enough?). And when it’s not opposing energy that works, the Obama administration throws good money after bad trying to cultivate “green jobs” at companies