Wolf Howling: biofuels

Showing posts with label biofuels. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Climatega Update 23: Hadley-Russian Surface Temp Fraud, Solar Activity & AGW, Driving Motivations At Copenhagen, Green Energy, & The Goracle's Prayer

In yet another major revelation, Russia's IEA is asserting that the UK's Hadley Center for Climate Research cherry picked - on a grand scale - Russian climatological data to show anthropogenic global warming (AGW) where none existed. This from a Russian news translation:

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.

Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country's territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.

Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.

IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world's land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

Global-temperature data will have to be modified if similar climate-date procedures have been used from other national data because the calculations used by COP15 analysts, including financial calculations, are based on HadCRUT research.

(emphasis added)

It further appears that Michael Mann was aware of this fraud and intervened to see that it went unreported. This from Watts Up With That, quoting one of the CRU e-mails from Mr. Mann:

Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.

And as Watts Up With That further comments on the Russian revelations:

Again the accusation is completely believable, yet is completely unverifiable because CRU has refused to release the data. This data and code release is the subject of illegal blocking of FOIA’s is one of the keys in the Climategate emials. We need to know the list of stations used and we must have copies of the raw data.

This is a very powerful accusation, which if true could change much about the climate science debate. Many papers are based on this dataset which has the highest trend of the major ground datasets.

As ever more revelations come out relating to Climategate, the goings on in Copenhagen seem ever more surreal. Stripped of trustworthy scientific underpinnings for AGW, both the machinations of the third world attendees to engineer a massive transfer of wealth, and the machinations of Gore and other rent seekers - not the least of them being multi-millionaire IPCC Chairman Rajendra Kumar Pachauri - to ride the carbon gravy train to massive wealth, are all laid bare. More on this from No Oil For Pacifists and EU Referendum, here, here and here.

I have blogged before that many believe that the sun is the 800 lbs gorilla when it comes to determining the earth's climate. We know from multiple sources that all of the IPCC computer models have proven fatally flawed. All predicted future warming concomitant with a rise in carbon. None predicted our current decade long period of global cooling that has occurred even as carbon levels have risen. In a recent article, a South African physicist, Dr. Kevin Kemm, expounded upon a Danish model programmed to vary the climate estimate based on solar activity - or lack thereof. This from Dr. Kemm:

a Danish research group led by Henrik Svensmark has found an exact match with the level of sun spot activity on our sun. What is more, the match is spot on over the period of the last 1 500 years.

This scientific mechanism actually fits the evidence!

What happens is that cosmic rays impinge on the Earth from outer space, and these rays produce clouds much like high-flying jets leaving contrails behind their engines.

More cloud means global cooling because not as much sunlight reaches the ground to warm it. Less cloud leads to global warming. The sun creates a magnetic bubble around the Earth, which acts as a shield to incoming cosmic rays, preventing some of them from reaching the Earth.

Many sun spots mean a stronger shield, thus less cloud cover and so global warming. Currently our sun is passing through a record period of no sun spot activity.

Politicians are suppressing this information. In Newsweek of November 16, in an interview promoting the use of renewable energy, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said: "But none of this (renewable energy use) is possible if the forces of climate change scepticism are allowed to undermine the prospect of global (carbon dioxide emissions) agreement." So Rudd wants a political agreement no matter what the scientific truth may be.

Emma Brindal, the climate justice campaigner for the green organisation Friends of the Earth, put the NGO in the same camp when she said: "A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources."

If you google "henrik svensmark sun" you will come up with a number of hits, such as this Discover interview with Mr. Svensmark discussing his theories and how he has been blacklisted by the AGW cabal. Isn't that a surprise. Here is an excerpt:

If the scientists at CLOUD are able to prove that cosmic rays can change Earth’s cloud cover, would that force climate scientists to reevaluate their ideas about global warming?

Definitely, because in the standard view of climate change, you think of clouds as a result of the climate that you have. Our idea reverses that, turns things completely upside down, saying that the climate is a result of how the clouds are.

How do you see your work fitting into the grand debates about the causes of global warming and the considerations of what ought to be done about it?

I think—no, I believe—that the sun has had an influence in the past and is changing climate at the present, and it most certainly will do so in the future. We live in a unique time in history, because this period has the highest solar activity we have had in 1,000 years, and maybe even in 8,000 years. And we know that changes in solar activity have made significant changes in climate. For instance, we had the little ice age about 300 years ago. You had very few sunspots [markings on the face of the sun that indicate heightened solar activity] between 1650 and 1715, and for example, in Sweden in 1696, it caused the harvest to go wrong. People were starving—100,000 people died—and it was very desperate times, all coinciding with this very low solar activity. The last time we had high solar activity was during the medieval warming, which was when all of the cathedrals were built in Europe. And if you go 1,000 years back, you also had high solar activity, and that was when Rome was at its height. So I think there’s good evidence that these are significant changes that are happening naturally. If we are talking about the next century, there might be a human effect on climate change on top of that, but the natural effect from solar effect will be important. This should be recognized in the models and calculations that are being used to make predictions.

Why is there such resistance to doing that? Is the science that conflicted or confusing? Or is politics intervening?

I think it’s the latter, and I think it’s both. And I think there’s a fear that it will turn out, or that it would be suggested, that the man-made contribution is smaller than what you would expect if you look at CO2 alone.

Interestingly, while Mr. Svensmark's theories and work have been blacklisted by the AGW cabal, there is the below e-mail, appended as part of a larger e-mail dated 2 Oct. 2009 that was among the CRU tranche of e-mails made public two weeks ago:

Rodney Chilton maberrd@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Dear Benny:

Recently, there has been considerable discussion concerning the slight cooling of the earth's overall climate since about 2005. The result of the cooling has brought some scientists into the forefront to be openly critical of the still prominent view that climate changes over the century or so have predominately been man caused. The proponents of human initiated climate changes are of the opinion that the recent cooling is but a temporary interruption in what soon again will be a rapid climate warming.

I think one of the keys to alleviate some of this discussion is to attempt to determine the triggers for two other climate shifts in earlier times. The first of these, the "Little Ice Age" is generally regarded by most scientists as resulting from a reduced output of energy from the sun. Coinciding as it did with an interval of very little to almost no sunspot activity, a time known as the "Maunder Minimum", many solar scientists suggest that as little as 0.25% decrease in solar output initiated this cold climate period. Similarily, during the mid 20th Century during the years from the end of the 1940's to about the mid 1970's, the sun was in one of its quiet modes (very few sunspots).

The cause for what was a slightly cooler interval could logically be linked to decreased energy from the sun. However, the quite recent thirty year period is more commonly linked to increased dust in the earth's atmosphere. Consistent with this view is the idea that perhaps the Little Ice Age too, was forced not by a decrease in the sun's output, but by an increase in dust, not that produced by man, but by extraterrestrial dust from a comet encounter. More details of this particular scenario can be seen at the following website:

http://www.bcclimate.com

All of this raises the questions, what drove both the Little Ice Age and the thirty year interval in the middle of the last century? It is possible that they were driven by the two different causes outlined. It is vital I think that the reason(s) for the two climate shifts be determined. This would go along way to settle the recent debate as to the importance of solar minima in initiating climate changes over more than just a few years. Further to this, the picture of the future will be clarified. If for example, decreases in solar output is proven to be of less importance during the past, then surely the present climate downturn will be likely only a temporary respite from the inexorable upward trend in temperatures worldwide. If on the other hand the solar cycles accompanied by low sun activity over decades and even longer can be proven as significant, then I believe we must re-examine the increased carbon dioxide scenario.

Rodney Chilton

Monday, November 30, 2009

Posts of Interest

Some posts of interest that I don't have time to blog about:

AG Eric Holder engages in questionable legal reasoning to ignore Congressional intent and instead rule that ACORN is entitled to be paid under existing contracts. Powerline has the story.

The Cato Institute looks under the knickers of Obamacare and finds the actual price tag to be in the neighborhood of $6,000,000,000,000.00

The trials facing America that are being ignored by Obama could dwarf the problems seen so far. V. D. Hanson has the list. Topping both his - and my - concern is the price of oil.

The Weekly Standard has more on the boondoggle that are ethanol mandates.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Politicized Science

. . . The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public. To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking. . . .

President Barack Obama, Memorandum, Subject: Scientific Integrity, 9 March 2009

****************************************************************

Obama strikes the highest of moral poses, yet scratch the surface and you will find no morality underneath. As has regularly been the case with Obama and the far left, the statists at the UN included, the gulf between words and deeds is a yawning chasm. In terms of politicized science, we have been treated over the past two months to:

- Obama's EPA making repeated claims that the science of global warming is "settled" and that regulation of CO2 is the only way to stave off disaster, yet suppressing its own internal study critical of the underlying science and that calls these conclusions into doubt. (H/T What Bubba Knows)

Update: This from CNET News:

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message (PDF) to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward...and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision

The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be an independent review process inside a federal agency--and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document

Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, said in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. "It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else," Carlin said. "That was obviously coming from higher levels." . . .

(H/T Memorandum)

- Last week, Team Obama released a 196 page report, "Global Climate Change Impacts In The United States" that contains so many inaccuracies and false claims that, as one climate scientist has stated, it would "make Pravda blush." And indeed, one of the major scientists whose data is relied upon in the report, Roger Pielke Jr., has taken the authors to task for wholly misrepresenting his work.

- Several weeks ago, during the House Energy Committee's truncated hearings on cap and trade, Democrats trotted out Al Gore, yet shielded him from testifying alongside Lord Christopher Monckton. Gore, who has long explicitly advocated suppressing dissenting voices on global warming, regularly ducks debates on the topic. There is probably no greater measure of how politicized the science of global warming actually is than the fact that its foremost proponent is unwilling to engage in public debate on the topic.

- The UN International Panel On Climate Change, an organization notorious for its suppression of dissenting voices and for presenting twisted and sometimes outright false data, is preparing for the next round of talks in Copenhagen. A subcommittee on polar bears is meeting now to prepare their report for the conference - but absent is one of the leading polar bear experts, Dr. Mitchell Taylor. He was disinvited because he does not believe carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming. Further, his own findings are that "global warming" is not harming the polar bears, with their numbers at optimum or growing - a truly inconvenient truth that we will not hear at the Copenhagen Conference. (H/T Crusader Rabbit)

When it comes to politicization of science, Obama and the left are bathing in it. They are pushing it to promote the vast expansion of government into, as Speaker Pelosi said, "every aspect of our lives."

The problems of politicized science are obvious. One is that, if acted upon, it will result in the massive misallocation of resources. A person need look no further in that regard than the House vote on Friday to enact a massive carbon tax. The plan will have negligible impact on global temperatures yet will have a huge negative impact on our lives. If enacted, it will drive substantial resources away from productive areas of the economy while, as Doug Ross notes, providing the engine for massive social engineering. Another example has been the disastrous push into bio-fuels. That push has critically lessened world agricultural production and, last year, drove food prices rocketing upwards to a level from which they have not returned.

The second effect of politicized science is more subtle, but equally as destructive. It is that scientific theories and observations that do not fit the politicized paradigm get ignored.

One example of that concerns the growing problem of droughts. According to the global warming crowed, carbon dioxide is the culprit. This from Peter Schwerdtfeger, emeritus professor of meteorology at Flinders University, writing in the Australian:

. . . Two decades ago, I pored over the spectral properties of the infra-red radiation of [carbon dioxide], which is essential to plant life, and found that it was almost completely overshadowed by the radiative properties of water vapour, which is vital to all forms of life on earth.

Repeatedly in science we are reminded that happenings in nature can rarely be ascribed to a single phenomenon. For example, sea levels on our coasts are dependent on winds and astronomical forces as well as atmospheric pressure and, on a different time scale, the temperature profile of the ocean. Now, with complete abandon, a vociferous body of claimants is insisting that CO2 alone is the root of climatic evil. . . .

. . . I do not believe for one moment that undisciplined burning of fossil fuels is harmless, but the most awful consequence of the burning of carboniferous fuels is not the release of CO2 but the large-scale injection of minute particulate pollutants into the atmosphere.

Detailed studies led by internationally acclaimed cloud physicist Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have revealed that the minute water vapour droplets that form around some carbon particles are so small as to be almost incapable of being subsequently coalesced into larger precipitable drops. In short, the particulates prevent rainfall.

Rosenfeld's research group has shown that humans are changing the climate in a much more direct way than through the release of CO2. Rather, pollution is seriously inhibiting rain over mountains in semi-arid regions, a phenomenon with dire consequences for water resources in the Middle East and many other parts of the world, including China and Australia.

Rosenfeld is no snake-oil salesman. As an American Meteorological Society medallist, he has an internationally endorsed research record in cloud physics that no living Australian can claim to emulate. . . .

If Rosenfeld's scientific interpretations are correct, then southern Australia would greatly benefit from the application of his discoveries. At the very least, Rosenfeld's conclusions should be accorded appropriate evaluation and testing by an unprejudiced panel of peers.

Yet his work so far has been ignored in Australia because it does not fit in with the dominant paradigm that holds CO2 responsible for reduced rainfall in semi-arid regions. . . .

(H/T EU Referendum)

Yet a second example of this same evil could well prove the most disastrous of all. Those who fully embrace global warming are ignoring the signs of a cooling earth and actual cold-weather related drops in agricultural production. See here and here.

I had to laugh in March when Obama excoriated Bush for supposedly "politicizing science," particularly on the stem cell issue - an issue, as Charles Krauthammer pointed out, on which Bush had taken an ethical stand that had nothing to do with politicization. Nothing Bush did begins to compare with how Obama, the UN and the green left have politicized the science of global warming. Indeed, one would have to go back to the Catholic Church of medieval times to find anything comparable. They get away with it because a corrupt media utterly ignores their mammoth hypocrisy. Thus, as Dr. North at EU Referendum notes, the debate is rigged:

This is a broader point that deserves more attention, touching on an effect we see in defence and elsewhere. The media – as a collective – has its own narratives and as long as an utterance fits with those narratives, it is given an airing. That which goes against the grain is buried.

Currently, the media narrative on climate change is that global warming is real and represents a major threat to the planet and humankind. Similarly, all the woes in the military stem from "under-resourcing" and all problems in Afghanistan will be solved by more "boots on the ground". Thus is the debate rigged, through which means our decline into obscurity, poverty and impotence is managed.

Welcome, Doug Ross readers.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Reason To Be Concerned About Food Supplies

I blogged in the post "Fiddling While Rome Freezes . . . And Crop Production Falls," on the reality of that we have seen seven years of cooling, that we are seeing unusual cold and snow across the globe, that none of IPCC computer models forecast this, and that this weather is having an appreciable negative effect on agricultural production. This was in part based on an earlier post by Dr. North of EU Referendum.

Dr. North has another post on this topic today. As he points out, a combination of factors, the most important of which is cold weather, are effecting agricultural production world-wide, with demand outstripping production. Another major factor is the use of agricultural products for bio-fuel, with all of this "exacerbated by the stresses in the energy, financial and currency markets, which makes food commodities 'increasingly vulnerable to external shocks.'" And as he concludes:

Against this obvious fragility of the global food production and supply system, a continuation of the current cooling trend could have catastrophic effects. We are very much on the brink, and only the slightest lurch will send us hurtling over the precipice.

A very worrying note indeed. Do see his entire post.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Part I: The Economics of Alternative Energy (Updated)

Alternative energy forms are coming closer to being economically viable, but all still have a ways to go and some, such as wind power, have unique problems that make large scale reliance on that energy form problematic. Indeed, none of the alternative energy forms are at the point where they can substitute cost effectively and without unintended consequences for oil and gas.
______________________________________________________

This is Part I of what is planned to be a series of four posts on our energy alternatives.

Part II - Oil & The Hostile Domestic Regulatory Environment

Part III - Why Exploit Our Domestic Oil Resources

This from Rebecca Smith writing in the WSJ in February, 2007 provides an excellent overview of the status of alternative energy forms at that time. There have been advances and, in some cases, observation of unintended consequences that I address at the end of her article:

. . . For years, the big criticism of alternative energy was cost: It was too expensive compared with energy based on traditional fuels like coal and natural gas.

Even though the fuel was often free -- such as wind or the sun's rays -- alternative-energy producers had to plow lots of money into finding the best way to capture that energy and convert it into electricity.

. . . Alternative energy still can't compete with fossil fuels on price. But the margins are narrowing, particularly since oil and gas prices have been rising. . . .

Alternative energy still faces obstacles to mainstream success. Many projects need government or utility subsidies and incentives to be viable. Generating costs have risen recently for some types of renewable resources, pushed by higher materials prices, labor costs and demand. Supply chains are prone to hiccups, and wind and solar-energy resources need backup sources of power to compensate on windless or cloudy days.

For all its promise, relatively little electricity currently comes from renewable sources, other than hydropower. According to the Energy Information Administration, renewable resources produced 2.3% of the U.S. electricity supply in 2005. Bio-mass was responsible for 1.5%, wind for 0.44%, geothermal for 0.36% and solar power for a scant 0.01%.

In contrast, coal-fired generation produced 49.7% of U.S. electricity supplies in 2005, followed by nuclear power at 19.3%, natural gas at 19.1%, hydropower at 6.5% and oil-fired generation at 3%.

. . . Here's a look at the economics of the various alternative-energy sources -- how much they cost now and what developments could make them more competitive.

WIND

Wind power stands out as one of the splashiest success stories in renewable energy. Over the past 10 years, as wind farms sprouted around the world, the cost of generating electricity from wind has fallen dramatically.

In 1980, wind-power electricity cost 80 cents per kilowatt hour; by 1991 it cost 10 cents, according to the International Energy Agency.

Today, production costs at the best on-shore sites have dropped as low as 3 cents to 4 cents per kilowatt hour, but are more typically 6 cents to 9 cents, not counting subsidies -- getting closer to the cost of generating electricity from burning coal. In fact, costs are approaching the point where wind power may be able to prosper without subsidies -- currently 1.9 cents a kilowatt hour in the U.S. -- particularly if natural-gas prices stay high.

The Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration has concluded that there isn't much difference between the cost of new power plants using wind and other traditional fuels, such as nuclear, coal and natural gas, if you take into account a broad array of expenses. A plant entering service in 2015, the administration said in a 2006 report, could make electricity from wind for 5.58 cents a kilowatt hour -- versus 5.25 cents for natural gas, 5.31 cents for coal and 5.93 cents for nuclear. The report didn't quantify the differing environmental impacts.

A host of factors have brought down the cost of wind power. The materials used in wind turbines have improved, and the turbines are now much larger and more efficient: 125 meters in rotor diameter, compared with 10 meters in the 1970s. The cost of financing wind farms also has dropped as financial markets become more comfortable with the risks involved.

Governments have also given wind power a boost. In Germany, the largest wind-power producer, the government has been giving grants to builders of wind farms since the late 1980s, and requires utilities to buy electricity generated from renewable sources at premium rates. The extra cost is passed on to consumers.

In the U.S., the extension of the federal Production Tax Credit -- which gives tax credits to alternative-energy companies -- has spurred record development over the past two years, as have state renewable-procurement targets. The nation's wind-power generating capacity increased by 27% in 2006 to 11,603 megawatts, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Only gas-fired generators added more megawatts of capacity in the U.S. . . .

. . . By the end of 2005, there were about 59,000 megawatts of total installed capacity of wind power world-wide, enough for the needs of roughly 20 million homes. Two-thirds of that capacity is in Europe; Germany, Spain, the U.S., India and Denmark are the top five producers of wind power.

Wind power faces hurdles. Factors like location, wind speeds and capital costs have a big impact on the cost of generating wind power. The price of 3 cents to 4 cents per kilowatt hour only holds at sites with the best wind conditions. In some places with less wind, costs can still be as high as 20 cents per kilowatt hour. Meanwhile, a shortage of turbines the past couple of years has pushed up construction costs in the U.S., as has a weak dollar. . . .

SOLAR

For decades, solar power has endured cycles of booms and busts as investors made big bets only to watch the technology fail to achieve its promise. Solar power still accounts for less than 1% of the world's power generation, with 5,400 megawatts of capacity on line, enough for the daytime needs of 2 million to 3 million homes. (Solar power doesn't generate electricity at night, meaning backup energy sources are needed.)

One reason there's relatively little solar electricity is that traditional solar panels aren't very efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. So most solar electricity is made and consumed at a single site -- and in many cases isn't even enough to meet the needs of a single house. A recent study by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities found that it cost about $77,500 to install a 10 kilowatt-capacity system on a house. Without subsidies, it would take 50 years to pay for itself. With subsidies, it dropped to 9.6 years.

In all, the cost of generating electricity with solar panels is 35 cents to 45 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the International Energy Agency. In the U.S., costs are typically less -- 26 cents to 35 cents -- because there's better sun, says the U.S. Solar Energy Industry Association.

Now, however, a new generation of solar plants is on the cusp of being able to produce electricity on an industrial scale at competitive rates. The new plants use a technology called concentrating solar power, or CSP, which is much more powerful than the classic photovoltaic panels, which use semiconductor chips to convert sunlight into electricity. CSP plants use huge arrays of mirrors or solar dishes to track the sun and collect its heat to make electricity. The plants can generate hundreds of megawatts of power, closer to what fossil-fueled plants make.

The major hurdle remains bringing generating costs in line with those of conventional power plants. It costs 9 cents to 12 cents to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity by CSP -- not counting any subsidies -- compared with about 3 cents to 5 cents to generate the same amount of electricity by burning coal.

Tom Mancini, CSP program manager at the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories, says three factors make CSP plants more expensive than a traditional coal plant even though the raw material -- the sun's rays -- is free. Because the technology is so new, the equipment is pricey in itself and costs more to operate and maintain. And financing such projects is costly because of the perceived risk. CSP is a young technology: Only 6% of solar energy is generated by CSP technology, with the lion's share still coming from traditional solar panels that typically are heavily subsidized by homeowners.

For now, CSP still needs government support to be viable, either in the form of tax breaks to builders of plants or subsidies to buyers of electricity. The industry scored a major coup in 2006 with the creation of a U.S. tax credit that equals 30% of a solar project's cost. A growing system of state-sponsored renewable-energy credits also gives developers a valuable revenue stream. The credits are bought and sold by businesses and utilities trying to meet greenhouse-gas reduction goals.

. . . Energy experts argue that as more CSP plants go into operation, the technology will improve and costs will come down. But with current costs high, few companies are willing to take the risk of building without significant government incentives. "It's a chicken-and-egg situation," says Mr. Mancini.

BIOMASS

Although it doesn't get much public attention, biomass is the biggest source of renewable electricity in the U.S. today -- producing more electricity than wind, solar and geothermal sources combined.

Biomass refers to the conversion of plant matter into a transportation fuel (biofuel) or electricity (biopower), usually by incinerating waste material or creating combustible gas through chemical processes. A significant amount of electricity also is made by gathering and burning landfill gas.

It's a growing area of interest because methane, created by decaying organic material, is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide -- so people are anxious to put it to use and keep it out of the atmosphere. Many cities also burn solid waste to cut down the volume destined for landfill sites, and they're eager to convert the garbage to something useful.

The biggest biomass power generators in the U.S. aren't utilities. They're forest-products companies with big sawmill and pulp operations, like International Paper Co., Weyerhaeuser Co. and Koch Industries' Georgia-Pacific Corp. Weyerhaeuser, for example, makes electricity by reusing waste heat and by burning hog fuel, or wood waste, and black liquor, a pulp-mill byproduct. It sells the power it produces -- equivalent to the annual energy needs of 140,000 homes -- to local utilities.

Because biomass plants typically are small -- usually less than 50 megwatts in capacity, or one-tenth the size of a conventional fossil-fuel power plant -- equipment costs are high relative to the amount of power produced. That, in turn, makes generating costs somewhat high -- currently, about 5 cents to 10 cents a kilowatt hour without subsidies.

Power costs are also related to the cost of fuel and the amount of heat embedded in it. As many homeowners know, there's more energy locked in an oak log than a pine log. The same holds true for biomass power generation -- some fuels make more heat and, thus, electricity. Better numbers can also be achieved by mixing plant matter with fossil fuels, like coal, and burning them together at large plants to capture the greater efficiencies.

Costs are expected to come down as technology improves and as more waste material gets redirected to electricity production, providing a cheap fuel stream. Many experts believe biomass will expand dramatically in coming years as more industries look for ways to make electricity out of their waste, diverting more material away from landfill sites.

A recent study by the California Biomass Collaborative, a government and industry group, concluded there are 80 million tons of plant material produced in California each year that could be diverted to biomass use. About 30 million tons are practically available. The study said those 30 million tons could be converted into 2,500 megawatts of electricity, equivalent to five large gas-fired plants, and 1.3 billion gallons of transportation fuel at competitive prices.

Biomass has gotten a jolt from renewable-portfolio standards embraced by nearly half the states, which require utilities to get electricity from renewable resources. In California, for instance, the state's energy agencies have set a rough goal of having biomass sources generate 4% of the state's power by 2010.

GEOTHERMAL

Geothermal energy -- tapping heat deep in the Earth to generate power -- may have more potential, at less impact to society, than any of the other alternative resources. A new study on geothermal energy, produced by an interdisciplinary team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that geothermal energy could produce 10% of the nation's electricity by 2050 at prices that would be competitive with fossil fuels.

Geothermal heat is turned into electricity through a number of methods. In general, producers drill into the ground to release steam and water that have been naturally heated and, until then, trapped. These are used to power a turbine and generator, making electricity. Liquids are reinjected into the ground to keep the process running.

Currently, geothermal energy costs about 6 cents to 10 cents a kilowatt hour, without subsidies. The main expense is actually drilling the holes and building power plants on top of them. And expertise is needed to properly manage a site to make sure the right amount of liquid is cycled through the geothermal source to extract the heat.

The amount of electricity produced depends on many things, including the size of the geothermal field, water pressure and temperature and how quickly the field can heat and release water.

Geothermal energy is especially valuable because it makes electricity around the clock, unlike solar or wind power that require backup sources of generation. Also, unlike wind and solar installations, geothermal plants have a small footprint -- smaller, even, than many fossil-fuel power plants. Advancements in equipment are making it possible to generate electricity with lower-temperature geothermal resources, and new drilling techniques let producers plumb greater depths.

Today, there's about 8,000 megawatts of installed geothermal capacity globally, with 3,000 megawatts in the U.S., the top producer. Mostly, it has been developed where heat is easily accessed and is accompanied by water and porous rock. The biggest developed field in the U.S. lies 72 miles north of San Francisco at The Geysers. Nineteen of the 21 plants at the site are owned by Calpine Corp., which makes 725 megawatts of electricity there, equivalent to one and a half large conventional power plants.

The MIT study found that far more geothermal electricity could be generated if companies -- especially oil companies -- leveraged their knowledge of drilling techniques, geology and hydrology to tackle the problem. An investment of $800 million to $1 billion in research and development would be required, equivalent to the expense of a single coal-fired plant.

The initial units would make electricity for 10 cents or so a kilowatt hour but later plants would see costs fall to 5 cents a kilowatt hour, probably within a decade, as processes became more refined. That would make geothermal operations competitive with modern gas-fired plants. But backers say that for geothermal energy to thrive, supportive policies are needed, including loan guarantees, depletion allowances, tax credits and accelerated depreciation -- things oil, gas and minerals-extraction companies get.

Still, geothermal energy does come with a caveat: Heat sources can be depleted if not carefully managed. At The Geysers, for instance, operators have had to retire at least half a dozen generating units, even though the field was developed largely only in the 1970s and 1980s.

BIOFUELS

Interest in alternative transportation fuels -- mostly ethanol -- soared following President Bush's declaration a year ago that the U.S. is "addicted to oil." Many potential fuels are being discussed, from biodiesel to hydrogen. Most of the buzz is around what's already by far the biggest alternative transportation fuel in the U.S.: ethanol made from corn.

There's lots of talk about the possibility of using ethanol as a standalone fuel to power cars. But virtually all the ethanol consumed in the U.S. today is used in a less-sexy way: It's blended into normal gasoline.

That's done mostly in parts of the country with bad air-pollution problems, because adding ethanol to gasoline reduces smog-causing emissions from the cars that burn the fuel. Ethanol also is used as a gasoline "extender."

The cost of producing ethanol depends largely on the cost of corn, ethanol's main feedstock. It also depends on the cost of the energy -- typically natural gas -- used to power the process that turns the corn into ethanol. Keith Collins, chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, estimates that today it costs about $1.60 to produce a gallon of ethanol.

Ethanol producers sell their brew on a wholesale market -- sometimes to gasoline refiners and sometimes to middlemen who sell to those refiners. The price of ethanol typically rises and falls with that of gasoline, which itself is a function of the global oil price. Ethanol typically has sold for up to 51 cents per gallon more than gasoline, because the federal government gives ethanol blenders a 51-cent-per-gallon tax break to encourage production of the supplemental fuel.

. . . Ethanol's per-gallon price premium over gasoline widened to more than $1. Margins for ethanol producers ballooned. Yet by late last year, the ethanol boom was cooling. The sudden profitability of the ethanol business, combined with increasing federal requirements for the production of alternative fuels, sparked a rush of investment in new ethanol plants.

Meanwhile, gasoline prices, and thus ethanol prices, were falling from their mid-2006 highs. The production costs for ethanol were also rising, largely because the rush to produce more ethanol had driven up the price of the fuel's main feedstock, corn.

On Friday, the price of ethanol for March delivery closed at $2.06 a gallon on the Chicago Board of Trade, and the price of gasoline for March delivery closed at $1.61 a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Where ethanol prices will go from here is a matter of debate. President Bush, in his State of the Union speech last month, laid out an ambitious target for the U.S. to consume about 35 billion gallons of ethanol and other alternative transportation fuels by 2017. (The U.S. currently consumes about 5.2 billion gallons of ethanol per year.)

Reaching the numbers outlined by President Bush won't be easy. It probably would require significantly increasing the concentration of ethanol that's blended into gasoline. That, paradoxically, is a move that scientists say raises potential air-pollution problems of its own. Studies show that while ethanol added to gasoline in low concentrations helps reduce certain emissions, such as carbon monoxide, it tends to increase some other emissions.

Another option to meet the government mandate would be to increase the use of ethanol as a standalone fuel. That would require the installation of ethanol pumps at gas stations -- a move that could cost the oil industry billions of dollars.

Read the entire article.

Here are some updates to the information above:

Wind:

This is the centerpiece of T. Boone Pickens plan. He wants to see 20% or more of the countries electical generation capacity coming from wind power. As he writes:

Studies from around the world show that the Great Plains States are home to the greatest wind energy potential in the world — by far.

The Department of Energy reports that 20% of America's electricity can come from wind. North Dakota alone has the potential to provide power for more than a quarter of the country.

Today's wind turbines stand up to 410 feet tall, with blades that stretch 148 feet in length. The blades collect the wind's kinetic energy. In one year, a 3-megawatt wind turbine produces as much energy as 12,000 barrels of imported oil.

Wind power currently accounts for 48 billion kWh of electricity a year in the United States — enough to serve more than 4.5 million households. That is still only about 1% of current demand, but the potential of wind is much greater.

A 2005 Stanford University study found that there is enough wind power worldwide to satisfy global demand 7 times over — even if only 20% of wind power could be captured.

Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.

That's a lot of money, but it's a one-time cost. And compared to the $700 billion we spend on foreign oil every year, it's a bargain.

I have not seen any major criticisms of this plan yet to be able to start to judge its viability. I do know that wind generated power has proven problematic elsewhere when tried at large scale. For example, this is the criticism by Christopher Booker, a columnist for the Telegraph, of an equally ambitious plan in the UK and Europe:

. . . [B]ecause wind power is so unpredictable and needs other sources available at a moment's notice, it is generally accepted that any contribution above 10 per cent made by wind to a grid dangerously destabilises it.

Two years ago, much of western Europe blacked out after a rush of German windpower into the continental grid forced other power stations to close down. The head of Austria's grid warned that the system was becoming so unbalanced by the "excessive" building of wind turbines that Europe would soon be "confronted with massive connector problems". Yet Mr Hutton's turbines would require a system capable of withstanding power swings of up to 33GW, when the only outside backup on which our island grid can depend is a 2GW connector to France (which derives 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power).

Nothing better illustrates the fatuity of windpower than the fact that Denmark, with the highest concentration of turbines in the world, must export more than 80 per cent of its wind-generated electricity to Norway, to prevent its grid being swamped when the wind is blowing, while remaining heavily reliant the rest of the time on power from Sweden and Germany.

The Danes, who decided in 2002 to build no more turbines, have learnt their lesson. . . .

UPDATE: No Oil For Pacifists blogs on a National Review article that analyzes the Pickens plan and finds it wanting for much the same reasons as Chris Booker articulates. Here is a part of the post:

. . . Electricity must be consumed the moment it is generated; there are no methods for storage on an industrial scale. This means that supply and demand must constantly match within about 5 percent. Otherwise there will be power “dips” or “surges,” which can cause brownouts, ruin electrical equipment, or even bring the whole system crashing down.

Traditionally, maintaining voltage balance has involved two things: (1) matching supply with demand through the normal daytime/nighttime fluctuations, with demand usually peaking around mid-afternoon, and (2) maintaining a “spinning reserve” against sudden losses of power, in case an overloaded transmission line brushes against a tree and shorts out, or a generator unexpectedly shuts down. Utilities generally build “peaking plants” to handle high daytime demand, then carry a “spinning reserve” of 20 percent of output to guard against shutdowns.

Now imagine introducing a power source that is constantly fluctuating. The output of a windmill varies with the cube of wind speed, so it can change greatly from minute to minute. Putting windmills on the grid is a little like the Flying Wallendas’ hiring a new crew member to shake the wire while they are doing their balancing act. Engineers who work on electrical grids have been quietly complaining for years, and over the last decade, grid operators in Denmark, Japan, and Ireland have all refused to accept more wind energy. In fact, Denmark — the world leader in wind generation — stopped building windmills altogether in 2007. After long discussions at numerous symposiums and in professional energy journals, a consensus has emerged that, even with very accurate weather forecasts and other improvements, a grid can at best tolerate a maximum of 20 percent wind energy. Above that, the fluctuations become too difficult to mask. That’s why DOE chose the 20 percent–by–2030 goal. . .

Oh, there’s one more rub. Bringing windmills online will require building a whole new cross-country transmission system. While wind energy is concentrated in the Midwest, consumer demand is mostly on the East and West Coasts. Normal transmission lines — of 138 kilovolts (kV) and 345 kV — lose about 10 to 15 percent of their wattage every 1,000 miles, which is not a problem when the power is generated close to the consumer. But transmitting electricity halfway across the country will require a completely new infrastructure of 765 kV lines that cover long distances without losing power. This could be an enormous problem, because utility executives now say the only thing more difficult than siting a power plant is building new transmission lines, since every property owner and municipal jurisdiction in the path gets to have a say. Ranchers who are as just as picky as Pickens about what they permit on their land could pose huge obstacles.

Solar:

There is good news on the solar energy front regarding CSP technology and other challenges. This from the blog Next Big Future:

EETimes reports that MIT has a new catalyst that makes electrolysis nearly 100% efficient in a cost effective way. This would make storage of intermittent power from solar and wind more cost effective.

CNET also has coverage MIT had recently developed special glass panels that concentrate light 40 times standard sunlight before delivery directly to the cell. They expect this technology to be commercialized in three years.

The system is so simple to manufacturer that the inventors expect it to be deployed within 3 years at little cost over standard window costs.

In other solar power news, from the New Scientist magazine, a new material could harness both visible and infrared photons, so it has a theoretical maximum efficiency of 63%, it creators say, and should give significantly better real-world performance. Current solar cells absorb visible light and have a maximum efficiency of about 40%. They add titanium and vanadium atoms into a conventional semiconductor, altering its electronic properties to create the intermediate energy level. It may prove challenging to insert enough titanium or vanadium to form a properly functioning intermediate energy level in the semiconductor.
The hard part of getting water to split is not the hydrogen -- platinum as a catalyst works fine for the hydrogen. But platinum works very poorly for oxygen, making you use much more energy," said MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera. "What we have done is made a catalyst work for the oxygen part without any extra energy. In fact, with our catalyst almost 100 percent of the current used for electrolysis goes into making oxygen and hydrogen."

MIT's patented formulation of cobalt phosphate was dissolved in water. When the electrical current is passed through it to initiate electrolysis, the catalyst attached itself to the oxygen electrode to increase its efficiency. When the electrical current was turned off, the cobalt phosphate dissolved back into water.

Nickel oxide catalysts are currently used to boost the efficiency of electrolyzers, and they worked equally well in MIT's formulation, Nocera acknowledged. He added that the toxicity of nickel oxide forces the use of expensive, hermetically-sealed water containers. MIT's patented catalyst formulation is "green," Nocera said, and can be used in inexpensive open containers.

Biomass:

The embrace of first generation bio-fuels has been an utter disaster in terms of food prices and environmental damage. Second generation biofuels, such as switch grass, still present the problem of using arable land for something other than food crops. There is some promising work being done, however, with bug dung and sea weed that would not require any arable land or fresh water resources.

Nuclear:

The problems with nuclear power plants are storage of the nuclear waste and construction costs. The latter are rising so fast that nuclear plants may no longer be economically viable in the U.S. according to the WSJ.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

The Wages Of Green

We are paying dearly for the green agenda. We are paying for it with out of control energy prices that set new records seemingly daily. And we are paying for it as part of the insane biofuel agenda. As to the latter, according to the Guardian, an unreleased World Bank report cites biofuels as being the cause of a 75% increase in world food prices.
_______________________________________________________

This from the Guardian:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

. . . The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.

. . . Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation".

. . . [P]roduction of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

. . . [T]he report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.

. . . "It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."

Read the article.

The rush to biofuels taking agricultural land out of food production has been one a huge boon for select special interests and an utter disaster for the world. Yet with all of the accumulating information and with the price of staples seeming to rise daily, nothing is being done to stop the madness.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Biofuel Insanity

The amount of grain, be it corn in the U.S. or wheat in the EU, that it takes to create enough biofuel to fill up one tank of gas is substantial. And of course, this is grain diverted from food and feed stocks. Thus, it should have been obvious to a casual observer that setting massive targets for biofuel production would have serious repercussions for the world food supply. And in a text book demonstration of the law of supply and demand, it has sent food prices skyrocketing. Now we learn that this is a surprise to many of our legislators. One can only marvel at their utter vacuity.

_______________________________________________________

This from an exceptional post by Dr. North writing at his blog, EU Referendum:

. . . CNN . . . blandly tells us: "Those battling global warming by promoting biofuels may unintentionally be adding to skyrocketing world food prices …".

Er … to meet the ten percent biofuels quota for the UK would require, according to our estimate, 14 million tons of wheat, against a total production of 11 million, all but one of which is used for food production.

And, as we pointed out last year, the conversion of European grain lands to growing wheat for petrol is going to raise its cost of food.

Multiply that world-wide and you have, in broad terms, the best part of 130 percent of global grain production devoted to producing ten percent of the global demand for automotive fuel. And these people didn't realise that it would raise food prices?

Did these people actually think you could siphon off the greater part of global agricultural production and it would have no effect on food prices? These people promoted such a policy without realising it would have that effect? What did they think … that they could just go to the supermarket and buy some more food to make up for the shortage?

What do these people do for brains? Do they keep them in glass jars in their bathrooms, for occasional use . . .

Read the entire post. And on our side of the pond, while there are some things that Bush has gotten right, his economic policies - inclusive of his embrace of biofuels - have just been horrendous.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

A Lame Duck Quacks (Updated)

I just watched President Bush’s State of the Union Speech. All in all, I thought it was one of the strongest speeches I have ever heard him give. Bush spoke with a rare gravitas and clarity on all of the major issues. You can find the text of his speech here, as well as video and audio.

There is clearly a lot that Bush mentioned that just is not going to happen with the Democrats in control of Congress. That said, the best line of the night came when Bush tweaked the Democrats about making his tax cuts permanent:

Others have said they would personally be happy to pay higher taxes. I welcome their enthusiasm, and I am pleased to report that the IRS accepts both checks and money orders.

Even Nancy Pelosi cracked a smile on camera for that one.

And Bush was singing sweet music to the conservative base, calling for balanced budgets, limitations on spending, and most importantly, a real cut back on earmarks. Admittedly, Bush's new found fiscal conservatism could qualify as the topic of an example sentence in Webster's Dictionary for the definition of "hypocrisy." Conservatives will not care.

Republicans spending the tax dollars of America like drunken Democrats and the scent of corruption associated with earmarks like the "bridge to nowhere" cost Republicans the election in 2006. Now Bush, if not all Republican lawmakers, has found religion on this issue. Bush just reclaimed the mantle of fiscal conservativism and helped out his party in the coming elections immensely.

As to the earmarks, Bush promised to veto spending bills that did not cut by half the number and cost of earmarks, and he promised to "issue an Executive Order that directs Federal agencies to ignore any future earmark that is not voted on by the Congress." What he is referring to is the habit of slipping earmarks into committee reports that then are treated as law despite the fact they have never been subject to a vote.

I was highly unimpressed with Bush's discussion of energy. You will recall that he signed into law last month a "bipartisan" energy bill that emphasized, in part, biofuels. What we are seeing around the world now, in large measure because of the biofuel program, is a steep rise in food prices that only portends to get only worse. This is bad for the economy and particularly hard on the poor. Moreover, biofuels are significantly less environmentally friendly than oil and gas. See here and here. Yet, in his speech, Bush seemed to be indicating his continued support for biofuels. I think that a huge mistake.

Another major theme in Bush's speech concerned the Protect America Act (PAA) which will sunset on Friday if the Congress does not act. The PAA closes the loopholes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act so that we can monitor communications between people on foreign soil without the necessity of a warrant. But it also contains a grant of immunity to private companies that assisted the government post 9-11 with intelligence gathering. The Democrats postponed a vote on that bill today because they did not want Bush to be able to say in his speech that the Democratic Congress voted down the bill.

The real problem for Democrats is that one of their constituencies, the tort lawyers, are eyeing a huge payday by suing the communications companies that voluntarily cooperated with the Justice Department post 9-11 in domestic intelligence gathering. Once again, for Democrats, partisan politics trumps our national security.

The majority of Bush's speech was given over to discussing Iraq. Bush covered the surge, noting the tremendous success it has had in quelling the violence in Iraq that was, in large measure, driven by al Qaeda terrorists and Iran. Bush also spelled out the successes of the government of Iraq, noting the progress towards provincial elections, the equal sharing of oil revenue, and the recent passage of both a de-Baathification law and pension law. Those last two mark substantial progress towards reconciliation. Most important of all was Bush spelling out the potential fruits of victory and the consequences of failure in Iraq.

Any further drawdown of U.S. troops will be based on conditions in Iraq and the recommendations of our commanders. General Petraeus has warned that too fast a drawdown could result in the "disintegration of the Iraqi Security Forces, Al Qaeda-Iraq regaining lost ground, [and] a marked increase in violence." Members of Congress: Having come so far and achieved so much, we must not allow this to happen. . . .

The mission in Iraq has been difficult and trying for our Nation. But it is in the vital interest of the United States that we succeed. A free Iraq will deny Al Qaeda a safe haven. A free Iraq will show millions across the Middle East that a future of liberty is possible. And a free Iraq will be a friend of America, a partner in fighting terror, and a source of stability in a dangerous part of the world.

By contrast, a failed Iraq would embolden extremists, strengthen Iran, and give terrorists a base from which to launch new attacks on our friends, our allies, and our homeland. The enemy has made its intentions clear. At a time when the momentum seemed to favor them, Al Qaeda's top commander in Iraq declared that they will not rest until they have attacked us here in Washington. My fellow Americans: We will not rest either. We will not rest until this enemy has been defeated. We must do the difficult work today, so that years from now people will look back and say that this generation rose to the moment, prevailed in a tough fight, and left behind a more hopeful region and a safer America.

Bush also touched on Iran, but only in relative passing. The NIE on Iran neutered our ability to hold out the threat of force to coerce the mad mullahs into ending ever quickening march towards a nuclear weapon, and it showed in the speech. Bush all but announced our capitulation on that issue tonight. Further – and maddeningly – he took note that Iran is responsible for the death of our soldiers in Iraq, and then just let the topic drop there. Although Bush tried to sound bellicose, the words "act of war" were left unsaid. It was all very hollow - and in the end, I think may only encourage further acts of deadly meddling by Iran's theocrats.

Bush's speech was wide ranging, but those were the highs and lows as I saw them. You can find the WaPo spin here, and an ironic bit of "fact checking" here. What an incredibly disingenuous bit that WaPo fact checking is. And you will find some stomach churning spin from the NYT here. You can also find Fred Barnes take on the speech here.

And unless I am really reading the signals wrong, open season was just declared in Demland for Hillary hunting. First there was the Kennedy clan endorsing Obama today. Then there was what occurred tonight.

Hillary Clinton's name did not come up in the State of the Union Speech by the President. Nor did it explicitly come up when Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius gave the Democratic Respone. But read this portion of Sebelius's speech:

And so I want to take a slight detour from tradition on this State of the Union night. In this time, normally reserved for a partisan response, I hope to offer something more: An American response. A national call to action on behalf of the struggling families in the heartland and across this great country. A wake-up call to Washington, on behalf of a new American majority, . . .

You can find the full speech here. Wow. What does it say when the official response of the Democratic Party adopts the themes of Obama and reads like one of his stump speechs? Obama just got a huge DNC embrace . . . and it would appear that Hillary has fallen from grace in a very big way.

As an aside, Sebelius was even more wooden reading from a teleprompter than Gore at his worst. And as to the substance of the speech, it was a typical call for the President to put aside partisanship and just, by golly, show your true support for America -- by agreeing to every socialist program the Democrats can dream up. In other words, it really was an Obama stump speech.

Final Score:

President Bush – 7

Obama – 3

Fox News - 0 and need to give Major Garrat a crash course on professional journalism.

Hillary Clinton - 0 and feeling hunted.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Slouching Towards Brussels & Economic Oppression

And what rough beast,
its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Brussels
to be born?''

My apologies to Yeats, from whom I request some indulgence for the minor rewording of the final stanza of his poem, The Second Coming.

The rough beast to which I refer is the European Union, now about to emerge from the treaty of Lisbon as a super-state and the central government for all its subordinate members. And from the vantage point of the average middle class person in Britain, the EU can only be seen as a rough beast indeed. The economic costs of this beast are only beginning to be felt. They portend to get much worse.

The average per capita GDP in the UK is estimated at £23,500 and is rising at about 2.9% annually. Enter the EU.

Food Costs –

The most basic expense for all people is food. And here, the EU is doing no one any favors. Their insane insistence on biofuel production is taking arable land and world wide agriculture out of the food business and into the energy business. Supplies of food are decreasing while demand is rising world wide. The outcome does not require a degree in economics to figure out. According to a recent Telegraph article, "food prices are accelerating at their fastest rate since records began, fuelling a rise in the average family's shopping bill of £750 a year." And to add insult to injury, we now know that biofuels are far less environmentally friendly than fossil fuels. The global warming enthusiasts at the EU who have politicized the science of climate change for their own ends still have not yet come to grips with that last bit.

Energy Costs –

Get ready for energy costs to make a real rise in the coming decade, compliments of the EU. The estimate right now from Open Europe is that households will have to pay up to £730 a year to fund plans to tackle climate change." That is assuming all goes as planned. The fact is that the numbers might only rise more as the brilliant plans hatched to meet EU targets for renewable energy appear to be boondoggles waiting to happen.

The cleanest source of renewable energy is atomic power which, right now, provides almost 20% of Britain’s energy needs. But aging plants will almost all be decommissioned before 2023, and while plans exist to build some replacement plants, the projection today is that atomic energy will be providing only 7% of Britain’s energy by 2020.

What is planned instead are a series of two very ambitious – and highly questionable – projects to meet the EU targets. The first is Severn Barrage Tidal project which is hoped to provide 5% Britain’s energy needs when built prior to 2020.

The cost of the 10 mile barrage is estimated at a minimum of 15 billion and would be the largest world wide. . . [T]he barrage could . . . provide up to 5% of UK electricity . . . The Renewable Energy Centre released a cautionary statement highlighting its concern that the Government, in its urgency to meet its carbon targets has "plumped for a project which will cost billions of pounds, take over ten years to construct and which may prove in the long term, not to be a cost effective or sustainable solution."

. . . The Barrage relies on the ebb tide and so produces energy only at these times in the tide cycle. Bearing in mind the fundamental principle that electricity can not be stored, this in effect creates supply spikes to the National Grid. In order to keep the power supply constant, the barrage will need to be supported by several gas fired power stations which in turn will produce carbon emissions. This will not only affect the cost effectiveness of the barrage but contradict the aim of finding other energy alternatives to fossil fuels.

Read the entire article. Other problems involve the impact on wildlife and sustainability of the barrage in light of silt build-up.

But then there is the real boondoggle - the insane plan hatched by Labour to turn Britain and its coastline into a giant wind turbine farm. Current plans are to generate 30% of Britain’s energy by wind turbines by the Year 2020.

The problem is that wind turbines are far from effective – and indeed, indications are that relying on wind power for anything over 10% of electricity needs destabilizes the power grid. That said, the one place that wind turbines have been tried in serious numbers – Denmark, which built enough wind turbines to generate 19% of their power needs- there have been all sorts of problems associated with them to the point where all further wind turbine construction has been halted. There is a good essay of the massive negatives associated with wind turbines here, and an excellent essay by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph not long ago. The bottom line is, between the insanity of the Labour government and the hubris of the EU, the middle class Brit is going to be taking it in the shorts on energy costs in the coming decade.

Immigration related costs -

The first thing to understand about immigration is that, for all practical purposes, it is the EU and not Britain which controls Britain’s borders. EU Treaties dating back to the 1957 Treaty of Rome require that Britain open its borders to all people from EU countries. Further, EU law plays the majority role in requiring Britain to allow in people from outside the EU – and than prevents Britain from getting rid of the worst of them.

And immigration into Britain is now at record levels, exceeding half a million foreign nationals each year – with corresponding record levels of British nationals emigrating. Beyond that, "a migrant baby boom is fuelling the fastest growth in the UK's population since the 1960s - with one in every five children now born to foreign mothers." The rate of immigration into the UK and the immigrant baby boom pose to add 50 per cent to today's population" in four decades. Indeed, the number of immigrants is so significant as to threaten the Central Banks controls on inflation. With that in mind, do recall that in 2004, the Home Office was telling Britain that immigration from the new EU states "would be no more than 13,000 a year."

One ramification of this is that now, "in a total of 1,338 primary and secondary schools - more than one in 20 of all schools in England - children with English as their first language are in the minority." This is putting a severe strain on school funding. And not surprisingly, it is putting a severe strain on all aspects of Britain’s infrastructure. Another aspect is the loss of jobs for Brits in their own country. "More than half a million British-born employees have vanished from the UK workforce since the influx of Eastern European immigrants." Gordon Brown made a pledge in September to "create British jobs for British workers" – but has since had to quietly bury the plan because it would be an illegal practice under EU law. One would think the Prime Minister might know how EU law effects his country and his ability to govern – particularly before signing away Britain’s sovereignty to the EU.

The increase in immigration is also driving a corresponding above inflation increase in local council taxes to meet the increasing demands on local infrastructure. The average local council tax is now up to £1,145. The average rise in council taxes is 4%. As an aside, the problems here are being compounded as Labour is redistributing council tax revenues from the strapped south to Labour electoral strongholds in the north.

And lastly, there has been an explosion – in some areas by more than nine-fold - in crime associated with the vast increase in immigrants, particularly those from Romania. They are lured by Britain’s "generous benefits system" and do appear to be making the most of it.

Dane geld to the EU -

Parliament which just approved a massive transfer of wealth to the EU after only a bit more than 3 hours of debate. As the EU Referendum calculates, that works out to a transfer of British tax dollars at a rate of "£481 million a minute." As it stands now, the UK’s "net contributions to the EU will increase from an already horrendously large £4.7 billion" to £10 to £11 billion in 2011. A warning to the UK citizenry – gird your loins and keep your hands on your wallets. The tax man cometh.

EU Regulation of the Economy -

The EU is still in its nascent stages – with its full powers far from reaching their zenith. Yet even now it is apparent that the EU is making "a tireless effort to regulate everything." And of course, all new regulations inevitably impose some financial cost to implement and enforce – and in the EU’s case, to decipher. In addition, many regulations impose additional burdens by raising the price of existing goods and services or making less costly options unavailable. For example, see here, here, here and here.

Then there is the other not quite salutary effects of regulation – making it difficult for new businesses to enter into and compete in highly regulated markets. It would seem the EU excels at that.

Update: See this humorous application of EU regulation. It falls into the category of "you just can't make this stuff up."

Summary:

So how much, in toto, is all of this going to cost the average Brit, today and a decade from now? If I had a supercomputer and a year to analyze direct and indirect costs, perhaps I might be able to find an answer. In any event, it is fair to say that the costs are already significant and will only rise based on all of the above. Given all the above, the cost of the EU for the average Brit portends to become oppressive over the next decade. The EU is seen by those on its gravy train as a socialist utopia. I doubt that vision will be shared by anyone not on that train, even today. Which is why Europe is in the midst of a coup, with the EU slouching towards Brussels to be born while the people of the UK and Europe are denied any say in its birth.