Cascajun

I’ve always thought it was egotistical to believe climate change is anthropogenic. This presentation by Professor Ian Plimer affirms it for me.

Human-induced Climate Change: A Load of Hot Air

Was Earth Headed for the Mother of All Ice Ages Before Global Warming?

Before we humans came along with our Industrial Revolution and our greenhouse gases, the earth was hurtling towards an intense ice age that could have covered much of the northern hemisphere with deep ice sheets as soon as 10,000 years from now, according to a tentative new study.

There’s quite a bit of commentary about climate change and ice ages on the NYT science blog.

The causes of the current financial crisis are complicated, just wait until we start trading carbon. Lawrence Solomon writes about risk in the carbon allowance trading markets:

The ‘marketplace’ for carbon allowances will be one in which both supply and demand are set by governments, in which intense corporate lobbying for changes to both supply and demand is all but certain, and in which moral hazard — in the form of an expectation of a government bailout — is an absolute certainty. Valuing the toxic instruments created by Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, that corrupted the pool of debt securities, will seem like child’s play in comparison.”

Hat tip: Belmont Club

Why are our tax dollars being used to divert US farmland from food production to growing crops for ethanol?

Congressman Ted Poe:

The New Scientist YouTube channel has video posted about pitcher plants.

The property where I grew up in Louisiana has pitcher plants on it, mostly growing in hillside seepage bogs.

Thomas Friedman writes about Imbalances of Power today and raises some important issues - specifically the need for a source of energy to replace fossil fuels and global shifts in power. These are things I’ve taken particular interest in and would like to share my thoughts on some specific points made by Tom.

It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles an hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from what he called our “addiction to oil.”

I don’t dispute the underlying facts that (1) we need a source of energy to replace fossil fuels and (2) the current administration hasn’t put forth a plan. However, improving fuel efficiency does not, necessarily, led to less fuel consumption. In fact, more frequently it contributes to an overall increase in fuel consumption. Likewise, taxes on fuel and/or emissions won’t, by themselves, reduce fuel consumption or our dependence on imported oil.

None of that, however, is news to anyone who has paid attention to energy policy over the last three decades. The appropriate place to lay blame is at the feet of the American electorate - not any single politician or even either of the two major political parties. When it comes to energy policy, we - as a nation - have been fooling ourselves for decades.

Mr. Zakaria’s central thesis is that while the U.S. still has many unique assets, “the rise of the rest” - the Chinas, the Indias, the Brazils and even smaller nonstate actors - is creating a world where many other countries are slowly moving up to America’s level of economic clout and self-assertion, in every realm. “Today, India has 18 all-news channels of its own,” notes Zakaria. “And the perspectives they provide are very different from those you will get in the Western media. The rest now has the confidence to present its own narrative, where it is at the center.”

For too long, argues Zakaria, America has taken its many natural assets - its research universities, free markets and diversity of human talent - and assumed that they will always compensate for our low savings rate or absence of a health care system or any strategic plan to improve our competitiveness.

“That was fine in a world when a lot of other countries were not performing,” argues Zakaria, but now the best of the rest are running fast, working hard, saving well and thinking long term. “They have adopted our lessons and are playing our game,” he said. If we don’t fix our political system and start thinking strategically about how to improve our competitiveness, he added, “the U.S. risks having its unique and advantageous position in the world erode as other countries rise.”

I don’t accept Zakaria’s implicit premise that the rising rest - China, India, and Brazil - are more competitive than America because our savings rate is lower and our health care system is comparatively absent. I’ll grant that these countries are ascending competitors in the global economy. However, it would be simplistic to believe their rise is the result of America’s low savings rate and poor health care system. Furthermore, while there are many methodologies for ranking the quality of health care systems, I’ve never seen one where the quality of those in China, Brazil, or India are ranked higher than the US.

I’ll grant that we don’t have a strategic plan to improve our competitiveness, but once again I wonder why that is perceives as a new problem. What previous administration had a “strategic plan to improve our competitiveness?”

Rather than falling competitiveness, I think a greater problem facing America and much of the developed world is the ongoing shift in global power. Tom quotes the author of “The Post-American World.”

“Today, India has 18 all-news channels of its own,” notes Zakaria. “And the perspectives they provide are very different from those you will get in the Western media. The rest now has the confidence to present its own narrative, where it is at the center.”

While he doesn’t state it explicitly, I believe Zakaria is talking about a the ability to project power. Not simply power in the kinetic sense, but in terms of culture. Historically, the greatest factors that enable the projection of cultural power are wealth and manpower. The “rising rest” are getting richer and more populous while the more developed nations are getting older, less populous, and drift toward economic stagnation. The “rising rest” will see their ability to project power around the globe grow as the ability of more developed countries to project power wanes.

Current world wide demographic trends are:

• Overall slowing rate of population world wide;
• Stable populations in more developed nations (< 1% growth); and
• Growing populations (> 2%) in less developed nations.

Currently, the US birth rate is right at the replacement rate. That means we are having about as many babies as there are people dying each year. However according to the RAND Corporation, birth rates in Europe are falling and family sizes are shrinking.

The total fertility rate is now less than two children per woman in every member nation in the European Union. As a result, European populations are either growing very slowly or beginning to decrease.

At the same time, low fertility is accelerating the ageing of European populations. As a region, Europe in 2000 had the highest percentage of people age 65 or older — 15 percent. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, this percentage is expected to nearly double by 2050.

These demographic trends portend difficult times ahead for European economies. For example, a shrinking workforce can reduce productivity. At the same time, the growing proportion of elderly individuals threatens the solvency of pension and social insurance systems. As household sizes decrease, the ability to care for the elderly diminishes. Meanwhile, elderly people face growing health care needs and costs. Taken together, these developments could pose significant barriers to achieving the European Union (EU) goals of full employment, economic growth, and social cohesion.

Thus, if we want to address the “rising rest” in a strategic manner, we should consider the loss in power facing many developed nations. They face a world where their wealth & populations will diminish. Cultures are not static and don’t exist in a vacuum. They evolve, battle against competitors, and sometimes go extinct - just as species do. Historically, three of the most influential factors behind cultural survival are the will to procreate, the will to defend itself, and the ability to create wealth. Given that, what do the demographic trends of today’s world say about the future of Europe and its culture?

Regarding energy, the problem isn’t simply America’s dependence on fossil fuels. The entire global economy depends on fossil fuels. As the populations of developing nations (i.e. the ‘rising rest’) like India, China, Brazil, and Pakistan increase, so to will world wide consumption of fossil fuels. The reality we face is that the rate of growth in those countries and, consequently world wide demand for fossil fuels, will exceed our ability to switch to an alternative source of energy. America could certainly lead the way in alternative energy R&D, but we are not anywhere close to finding a replacement for fossil fuel based energy.

As Tom notes further along, that another significant global trend is the waning influence of nation-states and international governing bodies. Consequently, the system for addressing global issues among nation-states is more ineffective than ever. We face a future where “Never Again” means only one or two…well, perhaps three genocides every decade. A world we will be forced to share with genocidal tyrants ‘contained’ by international sanctions that will starve a million children each year or, alternatively, where we must form alliances to fight wars of ‘liberation’.

If international governing bodies don’t have the influence to stop blatant episodes of genocide like Rwanda & Darfur, I have little confidence in their ability to address exponentially more complex issues like global climate change and the looming global energy crisis.

Michael Pollan: The omnivore’s next dilemma

What if human consciousness isn’t the end-all and be-all of Darwinism? What if we are all just pawns in corn’s clever strategy game, the ultimate prize of which is world domination? Author Michael Pollan asks us to see things from a plant’s-eye view — to consider the possibility that nature isn’t opposed to culture, that biochemistry rivals intellect as a survival tool. By merely shifting our perspective, he argues, we can heal the Earth. Who’s the more sophisticated species now?

Robert Bryce writes an excellent essay on the global warming debate in which he disregards the scientific and political arguments over the issue and simply asks, “If more CO2 is bad…then what?”

That is, if political leaders agree with Gore and others who believe too much carbon dioxide is bad, then what are we going to do? Fossil fuels now provide about 85% of the world’s total energy needs. Even more important is this corollary: Increasing energy consumption equals higher living standards. Always. Everywhere. Given that fact, how can we expect the people of the world–all 6.6 billion of them–to use less energy? The short answer: we can’t.

[…]

I no longer care about the left-right/liberal-conservative distinction. I’m tired of the political correctness game. When it comes to energy issues, I’m a liberal who’s been mugged by the laws of thermodynamics. And those laws have turned me into a realist about energy issues. For years, I ignored the immutable laws of thermodynamics. But in the course of writing my upcoming book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence,” I had to pay attention. And in doing so, I was forced to accept the fact that there are no silver bullets, no easy answers, when it comes to energy.

Thus, when it comes to global warming and energy consumption, there are three main issues to be addressed: technology, morality, and the scale of global energy use.

Bryce then goes on to detailed discussion of those three issues.

Technology – (1) we can’t simply rely on energy efficiency, as the Jevons Paradox states, “It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuels is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.” This paradox is illustrated by recent energy-consumption trends in the U.S. Since 1950, the amount of gross domestic product produced per unit of energy consumed has doubled–and yet during that same time span, energy consumption in the U.S. has risen threefold. (2) Alternative fuels will not be a vialble candidate to meet global energy demands in the foreseeable future. Additionally, biofuels like corn-ethanol and biodiesel may be more harmful for the environment than fossil fuels.

Morality – Today, 1.6 billion people do not have access to electricity in their homes. Some 2.5 billion people use wood, dung, or other biomass to meet their cooking energy needs. According to the World Health Organization, about 1.3 million people per year, most of them women and children, die because of the pollution caused by indoor biomass stoves. Only HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and lack of clean drinking water and sanitation are greater health threats than the problems of polluted indoor air. What the energy-poor need most are common fuels like kerosene, propane, and gasoline. And just like us, they want reliable electricity. The people in the industrialized countries have a moral obligation to help the energy-poor get cheap, reliable energy. And it is undeniable that the cheapest and most reliable forms of energy, for now, and for the foreseeable future, are fossil fuels.

The Scale of Global Energy Use - Energy consumption in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan (the Big Five, in terms of the worlds most populous contries) is soaring and will double over the next decade or two. The belief that the world can drastically cut global carbon-dioxide emissions at a time when about half of the people on the planet are still living in relative energy poverty borders on fantasy. Moreover, the industrialized countries in general, and the U.S. in particular, have no moral standing from which to tell the developing countries that they should slow the growth of their energy consumption.

Back to Robert’s question, ““If more CO2 is bad…then what?” Humans must adapt.

Bringing hundreds of millions of people out of energy poverty–and, thus, into higher standards of living–means providing them with access to cheap, plentiful energy. Like it or not, that largely means fossil fuels, and increased use of fossil fuels will mean further increases in carbon-dioxide emissions. And the hard truth is that the people of the world are going to have to adapt to whatever happens next with regard to the world’s climate–regardless of the causes of those changes.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran an article about two studies recently published in Science:

Greenhouse Affect

The ink is still moist on Capitol Hill’s latest energy bill and, as if on cue, a scientific avalanche is demolishing its assumptions. To wit, trendy climate-change policies like ethanol and other biofuels are actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Then again, Washington’s energy neuroses are more political than practical, so it’s easy for the Solons and greens to ignore what would usually be called evidence.

[…]

The researchers break new ground by exposing a kind of mega-accounting error: Prior studies had never credited the carbon-dioxide emissions that arise when virgin forests, grasslands and the like are cleared to grow biofuel feedstocks. About 2.7 times more carbon is stored in terrestrial soils and plant material than in the atmosphere, and this carbon is released when these areas are cleared (often by burning) and the soil is tilled. Compounding problems is the loss of “carbon sinks” that absorb atmospheric CO2 in the bargain. Previous projections had also ignored the second-order effects of transferring normal farm land to biofuels, which exerts world-wide pressure on land use.

So, incredibly, when the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol “pays back” the carbon released by land-use change. As they say, it’s not easy being green.

I’m not strictly opposed to biofuels, however it is becoming increasingly apparent that they are not the panacea that environmentalists or ‘green-thinking’ people make them out to be. We do need to reduce our dependency on imported petroleum. Burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment. However, we need to recognize the true costs of alternatives that, according to this research, may actually be worse than fossil fuels.