May 19, 2008
Obama's "Global Test"?
Now Senator Obama wants to hand over our energy and environmental policies to other nations.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said."That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.
So... it's "leadership" to ask other countries to approve the temperature we set our thermostats at, or what size cars we buy and how often we drive them?
Talk about nanny-state government.
And to think that this is coming from a guy who's party accuses the right of wanting to "impose your values" on everybody.
These liberals want to tell you where to set your thermostat. Don't think it can happen? They proposed just that in California last year. Regulators wanted to mandate installation of a radio-controlled thermostat in everybody's house that they could control. Yes I know it didn't pass, but one thing's for certain, these liberals are nothing if not determined. And it looks like Obama may have bought into their plan as well.
Posted by Tom at 9:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 2, 2008
Throwing Cold Water on Flex Fuels?
It is my position that the West in general, and the United States in particular, needs to find some way or ways to reduce our dependence on oil from states that mean us ill. By sending money to Saudi Arabia and other gulf states, we are literally funding their attempt to destroy us through a sort of "creeping sharia" motivated by a jihadist ideology. Because petroleum is, to some extent, a fungible commodity, we don't even have to directly import from a country for our consumption to help them. High U.S. demand keeps the price of petroleum on the world market high, helping Iran and Venezuela.
As such, one of the options I have investigated is "flex fuels", by which a car might run on a combination of gasoline biofuels(go here and scroll down for posts). "Biofuels refer alcohol fuels such as ethanol (E85) and methanol (E95). The former can be made from a variety of plant products, such as corn or sugar cane. Methanol can be made from wood products or
The biggest proponent of these fuels is Dr Robert Zubrin, who last year published a book called Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil. Dr Zubrin makes a powerful case, and is someone to be taken seriously. I haven't actually read his book, but saw some articles about it that made me look into biofuels as an alternative.
However, he has his detractors. Michael Grunwald (and presumably the editors) of Time are among them. The cover story on the current edition is "The Clean Energy Scam" and it is a direct attack on biofuels.
To set the stage, here are a few charts which show U.S. energy consumption that I got from the Heritage Foundation (click to enlarge)
So what do they have to say over at Time?
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.
I think that "global warming" is a scam itself, so I don't buy into that argument. But the other arguments are more serious. The damage caused by using so much land to grow crops for fuel cannot be overlooked. Increasing demand without a corresponding increase in supply always drives up price, so unless there is an acre added to food production for every acre devoted to biofuel production, we will be hurting the most vulnerable on the planet. And while I'm no environmentalist, much preferring the term "conservationist", I do not want to see any more land than necessary be taken away from pure natural growth.
One of the leaders in biofuels has been Brazil, where they grow sugar cane which is turned into ethanol. Ethanol provides an impressive 45% of the country's fuel on only 1% of its land. Further, some think they can double their production of sugar cane by 2015 with no more effects on the Amazon. If we could achieve these numbers we would not only reduce the amount of money we give to the Saudi Wahhabists to fund our own destruction, we could reduce the price of petroleum worldwide and thus defund Iran and Venezuela.
The question is, can we?
the problem in Brazil, Grunwald says, is that so much of the Amazon jungle rainforest has been cut down to make way for cropland that it stands a chance of becoming a "savanna or even a desert". Whether this is accurate or environmentalist hype I don't know, but it is something that cannot be dismissed.
Another question is that producing biofuels isn't free. It takes about a gallon of gasoline to get a gallon and a quarter of corn ethanol (a 1:1.3 ratio), so that's not very efficient. The ratio for sugar cane ethanol is better at 1:8, the fuel produces more energy per unit, and burns much cleaner to boot (for ratios and more see this National Geographic interactive).
Right now the American taxpayer is paying some $8 billion in subsidies to farmers to grow corn for ethanol. This seems rather silly given the poor return of corn ethanol. The problem is that once a subsidy is in place, it becomes very hard if not impossible to take it away. People base their lives around the product the subsidy is meant to produce, and will take their political vengeance on any politician who threatens to reduce it.
If not Corn then Sugar?
Can or should we produce sugar cane ethanol? The Time article doesn't address the issue, so I had to go elsewhere.
In July 2006 the USDA released a study titled: "The Economic Feasibility of Ethanol Production from Sugar in the United States" I don't have time to go through the whole thing, but here's a summary by James Jacobs, an Agricultural Economist at the USDA (and on who's page I found the link to the study)
The report found that at the current market prices for ethanol, converting sugarcane, sugar beets and molasses to ethanol would be profitable. "At this summer's unusually high price, I can conclude that it's economically feasible to produce ethanol from sugarcane and sugar beets," USDA Chief Economist Keith Collins said. However, there is not a clear-cut case that U.S. sugar will be commercially converted to ethanol anytime soon.
The study (and Jacob's article) point out that sugar ethanol can be obtained not just from sugar cane, but from sugar beets as well. This is important because the latter can be grown in northern states such as the Dakotas and Minnesota.
However, it costs about twice as much to convert either of these sugar crops to ethanol as it does corn. The economic break even point for sugar ethanol is when gasoline is at $2.35 per gallon or higher. Given current realities, it would seem that we're going to stay well above that price for the foreseeable future.
I don't have time right now to go through the whole article to see how much cropland it would take to produce how much ethanol, or what the effects may be of not growing other things on the land instead of sugar beets or sugar cane. These and other things must be taken into account.
My Conclusion
I think that we should end corn ethanol as soon as possible. The negatives of such production vastly outweigh the benefits. The longer we wait the harder it will be politically to pull the plug.
However we should look into sugar crops as a basis for ethanol. I don't have time to go through the entire USDA report, but it would seem that we might be able to make headway in reducing our petroleum consumption by pursuing such a course.
Remember also that technology is not static. Technologies that look inefficient today may not be so tomorrow. Surely if we put our heads together and put our best scientists on the job we can come up with something better than what we have today.
In the end, it probably won't be any one magic technology or fuel that rids us of the national security vulnerability caused by so much petroleum consumption, but rather a combination of things. As such we should not put all of our eggs in any one basket, but spread out our research into a number of areas. One promising area, however, is sugar based ethanol.
Commenter Mike's America map is here
Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
February 20, 2008
Flex Fuels Revisited
There is a certain type of conservative who delights in using massive quantities of gasoline. They intentionally buy big vehicles like Hummers and put bumper stickers on them like "My SUV and I Do our Part for Global Warming".
All very entertaining, and no doubt most of it is simply a reaction to the nanny-state libs who buy into the global warming hype and want us to drive Mini-Coopers and hand our home thermostat over to the government. I can understand this sentiment, and for the record don't buy into Al Gore's "the earth has a fever" nonsense either.
I do however think that we need to cut back on our gasoline useage, but for altogether different reasons that the tree-huggers: much of the petroleum that we import comes from countries that are trying to destroy us. I'm speaking primarily of Saudi Arabia and other Wahhabist gulf states . And even though we do not directly import the stuff from Iran and Venezuela, our demand drives up the price, so they benefit from our consumption. Further, those who think that this is inherently a "liberal" issue don't get out much, because many conservatives (many of the writers at National Review come to mind). I'm not going to restate my entire case here, so interested readers can read an earlier post in which I explain my reasoning.
Last month I wrote a post on Robert Zubrin's new book, Energy Independence, in which he made the case for "flex fuels" as a way to break our dependence on Saudi oil.
Last week Dr Zubrin made his case in an article posted on National Review, and on a National Reviewblog on the same site Henry Payne wrote a post in which he criticized Dr Zubrin. Let's take a look at their arguments.
First up is Robert Zubrin. From his article "Breaking OPEC's Grip"
Consider the following: In 1972, the U.S. paid out $4 billion for oil imports, an amount equal to 1.2 percent of our defense budget at that time. In 2006, we paid $260 billion -- about half of what we paid for national defense. Over the same period, Saudi oil revenues have grown in direct parallel: from $2.7 billion in 1972 to $200 billion in 2006 -- which will likely exceed $300 billion this year. Much of that money is being used to fund an international network of front organizations and Wahhabist madrassas devoted to spreading terrorist ideology. Meanwhile, Iran is using its share of the take to fund its nuclear bomb program, as well as terrorist groups like Hezbollah.If something isn't done to break the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) -- the cartel that dominates and manipulates the global oil market -- the situation is likely to get much worse....
However, there is now a way to break OPEC, a surprisingly simple one. What is needed is for Congress to pass a law requiring that all new cars sold (not just made, but sold) in the U.S. be flex-fueled -- that is, be able to run on any combination of gasoline or alcohol fuels. Such cars already exist -- two dozen different models of flex-fuel vehicles (FFVs) are being produced by Detroit's Big Three this year -- and they only cost about $100 more than identical models that can run on gasoline only. (The switch to FFV requires only two minor upgrades: in the materials used in the fuel line and in the software controlling the electronic fuel injector.)
FFVs currently command only about 3 percent of the new-car market. After all, there is little upside for consumers to own one, with alcohol-fuel pumps being nearly as rare as unicorns. Little wonder: Why should gas-station owners dedicate one of their pumps to alcohol fuels (like E85 -- a mix of 85-percent ethanol and 15-percent gasoline -- or M50 -- a mix of half methanol and half gasoline) when only a tiny percentage of cars can use them? But, within three years of the enactment of an FFV mandate, there would be 50 million cars on American roads capable of running on high-alcohol fuels. Under those conditions, fuel pumps dispensing E85 and M50 would be everywhere -- creating, for the first time, an effectively open market in vehicle fuels, and competition for OPEC oil.
...By mandating that all new cars sold in the U.S. have flex-fuel capacity, we would induce all foreign automakers who want access to the American car market to switch their lines to flex fuel as well, effectively making flex fuel the international standard. In addition to the 50 million FFVs we'd see in the U.S. in three years, there would be hundreds of millions more worldwide that could be powered by any number of alternative fuels derived from numerous sources around the globe, forcing gasoline to compete everywhere. This would effectively break the vertical monopoly that the oil cartel currently holds on the world's fuel supply, constraining prices to the $50-per-barrel range (where alcohol fuels become competitive).
Such a development would also create a market that would mobilize tens of billions of dollars of private investment into techniques for the production of cellulosic ethanol and other advanced alcohol fuels. Those investments will further reduce the price of alcohol fuels and will radically expand America's and our allies' potential resource base (although methanol already can be produced from any kind of biomass, without exception, as well as coal, natural gas, and urban trash).
After last month's post on Zubrin's idea, commenter jason wrote that a similar program had been tried in Brazil and was in his opinion successful:
The last time I heard people get excited over flex-fuel vehicles was when a group of my friends returned from Brazil. They were impressed with the flex fuel system system in Brazil, most cars were flex fuel and both types of fuel were readily available. The story of how this 'emerging market' country is quickly on the way to energy independence is worth further research. After a little online searching, I was amazed to find that this change in Brazil was started in earnest after the 1970 oil crisis. The Brazilian government poured money into research and development.---Researchers "developed alloys to protect the internal parts of gasoline-powered engines and fuel tanks from corrosion by ethanol. At the program's peak in 1986-89, 90% of all new vehicles sold in the domestic market were ethanol-fueled.
...Today, Brazil is the second biggest producer of ethanol in the world (20 billion liters) after the United States (24 billion liters). Close to 80% of this is for the domestic market - the fuel used in 45% of Brazilian vehicles is ethanol.---
With Brazil's booming economy, Ford has decided to gain some of the market and has unveiled a flex fuel car in Brazil.
Sure, Brazil has a natural advantage because they grow so much sugar cane. But the story of their path to energy independence is a good rebuttal to those who say there are too many obstacles (it rusts gas tanks, etc) in having the government actively encourage this conversion. Look what government intervention has done for Brazil, imagine if we had 45% of fuel in our cars from ethanol. Would our president still be holding hands with the Sauds?
All very fascinating and exciting. But are these advantages all they're pumped up to be? Henry Payne thinks not. In a post on National Review's Planet Gore blog, he writes that
Brazil, in fact, has followed just the path Zubrin subscribes. But it took that country -- led by a military dictatorship -- much more than just a flex-fuel mandate to get it to an energy market where home-grown ethanol is currently 40 percent of its transportation fuel.Heavily dependent on OPEC oil, Brazil embarked on a national plan of oil independence during the last oil price panic in the 1970s. Dubbed "Proalcool," the central government nationalized its largest energy company to goose ethanol production, massively subsidized sugar ethanol, mandated the production of ethanol cars, and mandated at least a 25 percent mix of ethanol in gasoline. In effect, government took over its domestic energy sector in the name of national security.
A one would expect from government decrees, there were unintended consequences. Inflation soared thanks to government spending and an agricultural economy now skewed towards fuel -- not food -- production. Brazil suffered widespread environmental degradation with the rush to convert cropland to fuel, and ultimately -- with the collapse of oil prices a mere decade later -- the program failed because ethanol is fundamentally an uncompetitive fuel source relative to oil.
Why? Because ethanol -- whether corn, sugar, or cellulosic (the current U.S. fad) -- contains just 70 percent of the energy content of a gallon of gasoline -- a fact Zubrin blithely ignores. A recent EPA test of 31 flex-fuel cars (FFVs) found they averaged 26 percent fewer miles per gallon when filled with E85 ethanol. For example, the fuel economy of a gas-powered Chevy Tahoe SUV (17 mpg) plunged to 13 mpg on ethanol. Methanol (another so-called alcohol fuel) is even worse, with just 60 percent of gasoline's energy content.
With the rise of democracy in Brazil in the 1990s, much of Brazils' ethanol program was dismantled and pure E100 ethanol use evaporated. But the mandated 25 percent (E25) ethanol mix in gas remained. So as oil prices rose again this decade, the temptation to utilize Brazil's unique sugar resource (the most efficient crop for ethanol) returned and the government has once again intervened in the name of energy independence.
Let me state right here that I am not wedded to "flex fuels" or any other alternative fuel. My goal is to reduce our petroleum consumption because we have to stop funding those who want to destroy us. I'll consider any method that works towards that goal.
So what of it? Zubrin's idea is certainly intriguing. Payne, however, makes some good points that cannot be ignored. Further, I haven't read Zubrin's entire book (and don't have time to) so must recognize that he can't make all his arguments in a short article. Further, I have to think that current ethanol and methanol production techniques can be very much improved if we put our minds to it. I understand how growing corn for ethanol inflates food prices. But as the article commenter jason linked to shows, the Brazilians get a lot of their ethanol from sugarcane and even straw. From what I can tell these fuels can be processed from any number of biological sources, so surely again if we put our minds to it we can vastly improve upon the current process.
The bottom line though is that I really don't have the expertise to say who is right.
I've debated all this with conservatives on a few websites, and I get three lines of objections. One is the "free market" objection. They say that the free market will resolve all of our difficulties if only we'd reduce government regulation. The model they have in mind is Reagan's deregulation of Carter's energy schemes. While I am certainly sympathetic to this line of reasoning, I think it faulty for two reasons. One, the free market hasn't done us any good in this area so far, and two the only way it would produce alternative sources of energy is if prices got higher; usually just the opposite of what consumers want.
The other argument I run into is the "personal freedom" argument. My libertarian side is sympathetic to this as well. I don't like the government telling me what size house I can live in or what size car I can drive either. And this is where I think flex fuels look good; unlike CAFE standards it does not mandate what size car you drive, only what type engine it should have.
The third is a combination of increasing production by opening up ANWR and increasing our refining capacity. Unfortunately, from what I can tell but a bit of google research ANWR would supply maybe 5% or less of our daily consumption. This will have a negligible effect. Increasing refining capacity might be a good thing but I've not seen numbers that convince me that this either would have much effect.
Whether flex fuels are the solution or not, we've got to find some way of reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy.
Posted by Tom at 8:09 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 2, 2008
Flexible Fuel Vehicles: A New Way to Energy Independence?
In my search for something to help us break free of Middle Eastern oil, I've run across something worth considering: Flexible Fuel Vehicles. From an editorial by Cliff May over at National Review
We are financing a war against ourselves,” writes Robert Zubrin, nuclear engineer and author of a new book responding to the distressing fact that Americans and Europeans are sending trillions of dollars to militant Islamists whose goal is our destruction.But in his new book, Energy Victory, Dr. Zubrin does not just complain. He proposes a way to break free of dependence on a resource controlled by those who have declared themselves our mortal enemies. The technology already exists. It’s not expensive. All that is lacking is for voters to make this a priority — and to communicate that to the political class.
Right now, 97 percent of the cars on America's roads run on gasoline. Only three percent are Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) — automobiles that can be powered by either gasoline or alcohol fuels, or any mixture of the two. The additional cost to make a new car an FFV is only about $100 per vehicle
The "war against ourselves" he refers to is emphatically not just against al Qaeda. It is against what Walid Phares calls "the jihad" against the West. While primarily a "War of Ideas", he says, there are also military and economic aspects. The military aspect is being fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. The economic part is our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, in particular, that of the Saudi Wahhabists, who make up one of three branches of the jihad, and who are using the money we send them to undermine us.
Continuing on with May's piece:
For the sake of individual security, the government mandates that all cars have seat belts. For the sake of national security, Dr. Zubrin proposes, the government should mandate that all new cars be FFVs.In three years, the change would put 50 million FFVs on the road. The free market would then mobilize to do what it does best: Entrepreneurs would compete to produce alternative, non-petroleum fuels for these potential customers.
Dr. Zubrin expects those fuels to be made from alcohol: ethanol and methanol. Ethanol is made from agricultural products, from plants of all kinds. Methanol can be made from biomass — even biodegradable garbage — as well as from natural gas or coal.
Ethanol can be produced right now for $1.50 a gallon; methanol for 93 cents a gallon. Dr. Zubrin expects the first generation of alternative fuels would be high alcohol-to-gasoline mixtures. These would provide better mileage while still dramatically reducing dependence on petroleum.
The key is you'd be free to choose: You could buy gasoline as you do now or you could buy fuels made mostly of alcohol, giving less money — and hence less power — to Iranian mullahs, Saudi clerics, and Venezuelan despots.
That's the gist of it; read the whole thing for details.
Robert Zubrin's website for the book has some additional information. Here's how it says we should get started
Zubrin's plan is straightforward and practical. He argues that if Congress passed a law requiring that all new cars sold in the USA be flex-fueled — that is, able to run on any combination of gasoline or alcohol fuels — this one action would destroy the monopoly that the oil cartel has maintained on the globe's transportation fuel supply, opening it up to competition from alcohol fuels produced by farmers worldwide. According to Zubrin's estimates, within three years of enactment, such a regulation would put 50 million cars on the road in the USA capable of running on high-alcohol fuels, and at least an equal number overseas.
What I like best is that the plan doesn't directly force you to buy or use alternative fuels. My big question is how much more FFV's would cost. If consumers have to spend a significant amount of money on them, this takes money from other sectors of the economy and thus has a cascading effect that would be economically harmful. But if the cost is only marginally more, then the economic effect would be negligible.
Frank Gaffney, writing in the Washington Times last month, also likes the Zubrin's FFV's
If every car sold in America were a Flexible Fuel Vehicle, within three years, 50 million cars here would be able to run on alcohol instead of gasoline. Perhaps another 100 million to 150 million such cars sold elsewhere would have that option. With that sort of potential demand, at current prices for gasoline (nearly $3 per gallon), ethanol (at comparable energy values as much as $2.25 per gallon) and methanol (at comparable energy density, $1.70 per gallon), the free market would provide these (and perhaps other) alternative fuels in large quantities.Particularly important, such demand would far exceed the ethanol that could be supplied by American corn farmers. They should, therefore, be willing to allow importation of ethanol from other sources without the current tariff that amounts to a crippling $29 per barrel surcharge. With roughly 100 countries around the world enjoying climates that could allow them to grow sugar cane or other biomass they could use to power their own vehicles and help power ours, the world would cease to be dependent on oil-exporting nations, most of whom wish us ill.
I'm not wedded to this or any other proposal. Last summer I even suggested a $3 or $4 per gallon tax on gasoline as a way of encouraging research into althernative fuels and/or vehicles.
My bottom line is that as a national security imperative we have to lessen the amount of money we pay to other countries for oil, especially since as Frank Gaffney says most of them wish us ill. Every dollar we send them is one more that they use to undermine us. Let's find a way to change this.
Posted by Tom at 8:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 16, 2007
A Tale of Two Houses
The following is an email that's been making the rounds
Status at Snopes: True
House #1A 20 room mansion ( not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400/mo. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern "snow belt" area. It's in the South.
Now let's look at house #2
House #2Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F. ) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from
showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.
HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the "environmentalist" Al Gore.HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas; it is the residence
of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.An "inconvenient truth".
Yes I am aware that just because Algore is a hypocrite of monumental proportions does not automatically make him wrong on his global warming theories, or that just because President Bush lives in an enviromentally friendly house makes him right, so please don't anyone waste time leaving comments along those lines.
But that said my reaction to the email is
BRAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Posted by Tom at 9:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 8, 2007
Rethinking Fuel Consumption
In June I wrote a piece called "Reducing Our Dependence on Foreign Oil", the gist of which was that if we could cut back our consumption of petroleum, we could reduce the money the Saudis take in from oil revenues, and thus deny them they money they use to spread their Wahhabist ideology. As former Director of the CIA James Woolsey said in testimony to Congress in November of 2005, "On all points except allegiance to the Saudi state Wahhabi and al Qaeda beliefs are essentially the same."
Now along comes Mark Steyn to spoil my thesis. In today's NRO he wrote
First: American demand would have to fall precipitously to put a dent in the rise in global demand due to Asian industrialization. In 1990 China consumed 2.4 million bpd. Fifteen years later, it was 7 million bpd.
Second: Saudi oil is cheaply extractable oil. That's why King Abdullah gets the romantic hand-holding Presidential photo ops at Crawford and the Premier of Alberta doesn't. A reduction in global demand would hurt Canadians and other non-jihadist producers long before it hurts the Saudis.Bottom line: Until we are in the post-oil era, the Saudis will always be oil-rich. The only way to change that is to turn oil into as valuable a commodity as a liquid buggy whip. That will take time and money and great innovation. Until it happens, we have to find other ways to throttle Wahhabist ideology, which is Saudi Arabia's real principal export.
Rats.
I'll have to look into this more and rethink matters.
Posted by Tom at 9:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 7, 2007
The Crux of the Matter on "Global Warming"
So Newsweek now instructs us that anyone who denies what our betters tell us about global warming is on a par with 9/11 truthers and UFO chasers.
Ok, they don't actually come out and say that but it's the clear implication. It's this sort of article that made me cancel my subscription to Time and steer clear of newsmagazines in general over 20 years ago. There's simply no line between what's an editorial and what's a news story.
The real truth is that it doesn't really matter whether the earth is warming or not. If it is, there's nothing we can do about it.
Why, you ask? Mario Lewis sums it up
In 1998, Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a key climate adviser to Vice President Al Gore, published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters assessing Kyoto’s potential impacts on global temperatures and sea level rise. Wigley calculated that even if all industrial countries, including the United States, limit their emissions to the Kyoto target (roughly 5 percent below 1990 levels), and do so in perpetuity (no mean feat, since global energy demand, driven by economic and population growth, is growing rapidly), this would avert only 0.07C of global warming and only 1 centimeter of sea level rise by 2050. Such minuscule results would be too small for scientists to detect.Also in 1998, the Energy Information Administration published a study of Kyoto’s potential impacts on U.S. energy markets and the economy. EIA concluded that Kyoto could lower GDP by tens to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, depending on the extent of emissions trading and other variables.
In short, the leading scientific and economic assessments published in 1998 revealed that Kyoto was all pain for no gain.
Exactly.
Posted by Tom at 7:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 6, 2007
Not Al Gore!
Edgar Allen Poe might roll over in his grave if he saw this parody, but it's just too funny to pass up.
Once upon a midnight dreary, as I wondered weak and weary
Why the Goreacle is such a tedious, monumental bore.
Surely in the loads of drivel, tripe to make a man’s brain shrivel,
Interspersed with jibes uncivil, there’d be something to explore?
Could that whole ungodly slideshow be but lies and nothing more?
Would that someone had kept score!Frantically in search of answers to Al Gore’s extravaganzas,
Mine eyes did light upon a paper lying on my office floor.
‘Fore my eyes two words were forming, words that looked like “global warming”,
Soon I found myself a-storming, straight across my office floor
To snatch up that hopeful beacon like a ship in search of shore.
Wanting badly to learn more.There, within its brittle pages, words of scientific sages
Summarized the essence of the Gorebot’s claims of yore.
Are the mountains’ snowy summits shrinking as the coolness plummets,
Or, as some say, due to forests fewer than there were before?
Who is right and free of folly with a hand on wisdom’s door?
Quoth the experts: “Not Al Gore.”
What about the winds a-blowing, are their forces ever growing Caused by global heating’s menace, doomed to rise forevermore? Or is the real truth quite another? Is there no rise in windy bother? Is it true our Earthly mother has less storms than e’er before? Who is using facts to silence his opponent’s witless roar? Quoth the experts: “Not Al Gore.”Are the deserts getting bigger with unheard of vim and vigor
Leaving naught but arid wastelands as we watch the tempr’ture soar?
Or perhaps the sand’s retreating while poor farmers now are meeting
Ends on green land that was nothing but a sea of sand before?
One of the two sides is telling nothing but the truth; no more.
Quoth the experts: “Not Al Gore.”Are the tundras really melting, caused by warming’s heavy welting
While the ursine ice floe dwellers float on ice cubes far from shore?
Or, perhaps, they’re getting colder, leaving nary an ice-free boulder
While the ice sheets cover more land than it did the year before?
Who had nailed this vital question with real science true and sure?
Quoth the experts: “Not Al Gore.”I put the paper down and wondered where humanity had blundered
Putting faith in mindless cretins that sane people should ignore.
“There is one born every minute, with the brains G-d gave a linnet.”
I thought and saw the gospel in it, “thus it will be evermore.”
To whom should one turn for advice for what the future has in store?
Quoth the experts: “NOT AL GORE!”
Note: I changed some of the links from what Emperor Misha I had in "not Al Gore"
Posted by Tom at 8:25 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 12, 2007
Reducing Our Dependence on Foreign Oil
Commenter jason raised some interesting issues regarding oil consumption in a comment this past April. For whatever technical reason he wasn't able to post it in it's entirety, but I was intrigued by his analysis so I promised that I'd address the issues he raised in a post. My apologies to him that it has taken me so long to get around to it.
Below I have excerpted his email.
The essential problem we face is not simply dependence on foreign oil, but that much of it comes from Saudi Arabia, which was described by Walid Phares as the "mother ship of the jihad". Commenter jason and I both agree with Phares that the Wahabbists of Saudi Arabia are using oil money to subvert the West. But you don't have to have detailed knowledge of the jihadist threat to know that it is not good when we are economically dependent on exports from the Middle East; a notoriously unstable part of the world.
To be clear, it's not just Saudi Arabia, but dependence on oil from a multitude of countries, from Nigeria to Venezuela to the various gulf states. It might surprise some readers to learn that our biggest supplier of foreign oil is Canada (DOE source). Mexico is number two, and Saudi Arabia comes in third.
Some quick facts and figures (DOE source)
60.3% of the oil we consume is imported
44% comes from OPEC
18% comes from the Persian Gulf region
16% comes from Canada
11% comes from Mexico
3% comes from the UK
3% comes from Russia
40% of our total energy consumption is met by petroleum
2% of our electical needs are met by petroleum(wikipedia)
(I am not able to find what percentage of petroleum is turned into gasoline, if you know please leave it and your source in the comments)
The question, then, is how to reduce gasoline consumption? Here is jason's idea
The math (in a very aggregated sense) is fairly simple from public data:1. The National Household Travel Survey states in 2001 the average
American
household drove 21,000 miles per year (most recent data I could quickly
find).2. The 2006 Census estimate has a total US pop. of approximately 300
million
(299,398,484). The 2006 average household size was 2.6, so we can
extrapolate approximately 115 million households in the US:21,000 miles per year/household x 115 million households = 2.4 trillion
vehicle miles travelled per year.2006 Hummer (H3): 16/20 mpg, city/hwy = 150/120 billion gallons per
year2006 Base Cooper: 28/36 mpg = 86/66 billion gallons per year
2006 Prius Hybrid: 60/51 mpg = 40/47 billion gallons per year
Hybrids would use 25 to 29% of the fuel used by Hummers, and Coopers
would use 57 to 55 % of the fuel used by Hummers. Basically, if everyone
drove a Mini Cooper, we would hypothetically use almost ½ less fuel per year for
household annual travel. Hybrids would result in even greater savings.
Note that the Prius gets worse gas mileage on the hwy, so if all City
drivers used Hybrids, urban people (who don’t need to drive Hummers)
would use 1/4 to 1/3 of the fuel required by a city full of blockhead Hummer
drivers. Would you rather give the Saudis $25 or $100 to fund
madrassas? Decry the left for urging greater fuel economy, but paste
that American flag on your Hummer, knowing full well that you help fund oil
rich despots and their pet causes (including jihad) at a rate 4 times
greater than hybrid drivers.Sources:
Good points all. While jason goes after the Hummer vehicle, he may as well have said "SUV", or any vehicle that get's less than, say, 20 miles per gallon.
And while at the other end of the spectrum he uses the Mini Cooper and Prius as examples of fuel efficient vehicles, he may as well have mentioned any vehicle that gets, say, more than 25 miles to the gallon. The simple fact is that the majority of people in this country have vehicles larger than they can justify by family or work needs.
Getting people to drive more fuel-efficient vehicles would reduce our consumption of oil from Persian Gulf countries and OPEC members such as Nigeria Venezuela. How to do this?
There are three ways we can achiueve this goal. One way is to increase CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. CAFE standards are basically a series of federal laws that mandate the average fuel economy per car per manufacturer. If the government increases the standards, auto manufacturers must make more fuel efficient cars and trucks.
The second method is through tax incentives. Right now we're going the wrong way, with tax breaks effectively given to drivers of SUVs (source from jason). This could be reversed by simple legislation, so that anyone who buys a car that gets, say over 25 mpg gets a tax break, with the amount of the break going up with the fuel economy of the vehicle.
The last method is simple persuasion through various educational campaigns. While I'm not terribly optimistic about this approach, it has reduced smoking.
Ideas by James Woolsey
jason also sent three articles by or about the ideas of James Woolsey, who is perhaps best known as a former director of the CIA.
The first is an interview of Woolsey by Grist, in which he discusses his ideas on energy independence and work with the Energy Future Coalition. As with all three articles, read the whole thing, but here is a sample of what he has to say
We want substantially better fuel efficiency from vehicles and alternative fuels that can be used in the current infrastructure. As for cars, we are advocating modern diesels, flexible-fuel vehicles, hybrids, and a plug-in adaptation for hybrids. We're also pushing for the development of cellulosic ethanol and biofuels. Almost all of these are here and now, compatible with the existing infrastructure, and can be worked on by your average mechanic. It's not like trying to put hydrogen reformers into every filling station in the country.High-grade diesel technologies have just now caught up with our emissions standards. Flexible-fuel vehicles can use any mixture of gasoline and ethanol -- up to 85 percent ethanol. The cars most of us drive now use a maximum of 10 percent ethanol. It's a simple conversion -- just a slightly different kind of plastic in the fuel line and a differently programmed computer chip.
Plug-in hybrids would be a simple adaptation of existing hybrid technology by adding a battery that can recharge from the grid. You'd charge your hybrid at night and drive about 10 to 30 miles on the overnight power before you start using liquid gas, which means your 50-mpg Prius now becomes a 100- to 150-mpg Prius. Based on current electricity prices, you would get the functional equivalent of 50-cent-a-gallon gasoline.
...'m not deeply involved in the policy side -- I focus on technology. I tend to think tax credits are the simplest, but whether it's production tax benefits or credits to purchasers or CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards or all three, I don't really care that much. I just believe strongly in the technologies and want them in play using whatever method works.
A fairly pragmatic fellow, then, not wedded to any one policy. An ideologue he's not.
The second is his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on November 16, 2005. This one is the longest of the three, and he touches on everything from the vulnerability of our petroleum infrastructure to terrorism, to the amount of money the Wahabbis are spending to subvert our societies, to policy prescriptions. Since we presented his views on the latter above, we'll quote is statement on how oil money funds terrorism
Estimates of the amount spent by the Saudis in the last 30 years spreading Wahhabi beliefs throughout the world vary from $70 billion to $100 billion. Furthermore, some oil-rich families of the Greater Middle East fund terrorist groups directly. The spread of Wahhabi doctrine � fanatically hostile to Shi�ite and Suffi Muslims, Jews, Christians, women, modernity, and much else � plays a major role with respect to Islamist terrorist groups: a role similar to that played by angry German nationalism with respect to Nazism in the decades after World War I. Not all angry German nationalists became Nazis and not all those schooled in Wahhabi beliefs become terrorists, but in each case the broader doctrine of hatred has provided the soil in which the particular totalitarian movement has grown. Whether in lectures in the madrassas of Pakistan, in textbooks printed by Wahhabis for Indonesian schoolchildren, or on bookshelves of mosques in the US, the hatred spread by Wahhabis and funded by oil is evident and influential.On all points except allegiance to the Saudi state Wahhabi and al Qaeda beliefs are essentially the same.
"Saudi state Wahhabi and al Qaeda beliefs are essentially the same." Just what Walid Phares said in Future Jihad.
The final piece is an editorial Woolsey wrote for the Wall Street Journal which appeared on January 1, 2007. As with the interview cited at top, he reiterates his belief that we should avoid putting all of our eggs in one basket. After reviewing several technologies and policies, he concludes that
Subsidizing expensive substitutes for petroleum, ignoring the massive infrastructure costs needed to fuel family cars with hydrogen, searching for a single elegant solution--none of this has worked, nor will it. Instead we should encourage a portfolio of inexpensive fuels, including electricity, that requires very little infrastructure change and let its components work together: A 50 mpg hybrid, once it becomes a plug-in, will likely get solidly over 100 mpg of gasoline (call it "mpgg"); if it is also a flexible fuel vehicle using 85% ethanol, E-85, its mpgg rises to around 500.
Much as I hate giving our money to the Saudis or any of the OPEC countries, my libertarian side is wary of government mandates. Who are they to say what size car I can buy, or for that matter what size house I can live in (something the more radical environmentalists would regulate). On the other hand I look around me on the way to work and see SUV after SUV with one person in them. To be sure many of these vehicles are used to transport the kids evenings and weekends. But surely we can cut back on size.
We do have to cut back on petroleum consumption. It is a strategic imperative, even a military one, that we do so. Too much money goes to countries who sponsor or tolerate Islamist ideologies. Too much of our time and energy - and perhaps blood - goes into securing a supply of this natural resource from unstable and hostile parts of the world.
Perhaps like Woolsey, though, I'm not committed to any one method, and am open to ideas. I'm keeping an open mind on this one.
Update - Market Economics
Silly me, I'd thought of this before I did the post and then completely forgot to include it. Fortunately, Henry Payne at Planet Gore jogged my memory.
Payne wrote that Sen Reid was complaining that Detroit wasn't making cars that were fuel efficient enough, and as such wanted to increast CAFE standards by forty percent, to 35 mpg by 2020 and then 52 mpg by 2030. Payne points out that
...auto industry sales of SUVs (including gas-guzzling Japanese models) have skyrocketed because gas is cheap and Americans demand them. If Reid and his colleagues really wanted to effect fuel consumption, they would tax gas to $7 a gallon as European nations have done. But Democrats are spineless, and prefer to enact backdoor mandates on industry to deflect their political pain.
Two points. One, whether Payne is right concerning the price of gasoline depends on your timeline. If you adjust for inflation, and ignore sharp peaks, the price of gasoline has not really increased since 1919, and in fact has gone down somewhat. Take a look at this chart
This May 2005 article in USA Today makes the same point by comparing the price of gasoline to disposable income.
We can compare gas prices over time by calculating the cost of 1,000 gallons of gas purchased at the average price in a given year, as a percentage of per-capita disposable income in that year. For example, in 1935, when gas prices were 17 cents per gallon and annual disposable income was $466, the cost of 1,000 gallons of gas was 36% of average disposable income. Today, it takes less than 7% of our disposable income to buy 1,000 gallons of gas at the current $2.10 a gallon. The "cheap" gas of the '60s and '70s cost about 12% as a share of income.
That said, prices have risen sharply this past year, and are now at record highs, as is discussed in this May 2007 CNN article
Gasoline prices have soared to levels never seen before as even the inflation-adjusted price for a gallon of unleaded topped the 1981 record spike in price that had stood for 26 years.
But this said, is Payne right that the best way to effect fuel economy is to raise taxes on gasoline to the point where it costs $6 or $7 per gallon?
I think so.
Yes I know I've just ended any chance I've got of running for political office by saying that. But it's true. If you really want to get people out of their SUVs and Hummers and into economy cars use market economics.
Now, it's easy to say that but another thing to put it into practice. Any politician who does such a thing kills their chance for reelection. But Payne is right that politicians should not at once complain that we're using too much gasoline and that the price is too high. If Reid did have courage, he would support high gas prices, not high CAFE standards. And I'd support him.
Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
February 8, 2007
The Bad Side of Environmentalism
There is a good and bad side to many or most movements. More on the good side of environmentalism below.
In the meantime, watch this
I first heard about this film, Mine Your Own Business, over at Michelle Malkin's Hot Air (I think that's where I saw it). Today Peter Suderman wrote an article about it over at NRO, and in a comment on The Corner linked to Mary Katharine Ham's video above.
Here are two excerpts from Suderman's review
Mine Your Own Business looks primarily at ongoing efforts to stop Canadian company Gabriel Resources from building a gold mine in Rosia Montana, Romania. The region is poor, with many people still residing in tiny, Communist-era block apartments and forced to use outhouses in a place in which freezing temperatures are common. Most anti-mine activists, of course, live far away, surrounded by modern comforts. But despite this, they claim to know what the locals want.
...Environmentalists, of course, talk endlessly about preserving traditional ways of life, but locals don’t want to preserve poverty and hardship. They want a chance to provide a more comfortable existence for themselves and their families. McAleer catches Francoise Heidebroek, who works with an anti-mining NGO, claiming that Rosia Montana residents would “prefer to ride a horse than drive a car.” When McAleer asks locals if they’d prefer to clop about in freezing temperatures on a horse, they just laugh at him. Heidebroek, it's useful to note, sequesters herself away in the modernized capitol city of Bucharest. If she wants to saddle up every morning, well, I say good luck. But there’s no reason that her equestrian whimsy should force actual Rosia Montana residents to do the same.
The point should be clear by now; a mining company wants to start a mine in Romania, the locals are thrilled with the idea of real jobs, and some Western environmentalists want to stop the mine.
The Good Side of Environmentalism
Let's get this part out of the way right now so you wont' think I'm a troglodyte.
In June of 1993 I went to Russia for about 10 days with my parents. We spent most of our time in Moscow, taking the night train to St Petersburg where we spent two days. I'd say it was a vacation, but given the near third-world status of the place, more an adventure than anything else.
Every fourth car, it seemed, spewed visible black or blue smoke. The entire city of Moscow stank of pollution. Trash seemed everywhere. We were told before going not to drink the water. You get the point.
It was enough to make even the most hard right capitalist into an environmentalist. It certainly made me appreciate the air-quality standards we have here in the United States.
This to me is good environmentalism. Clean water, clean air. Emissions control on cars and factory smokestacks. Recycling. Not dumping your motor oil into the sewer. Regulating the use of fertilizer so that we don't have so much of it in water runoff that goes into our streams and rivers. I buy into all this.
Yes I know that surface ("strip") mines can harm the environment unless there are serious reclamation efforts. Rainwater can mix with minerals turned up in the mining process, and the resulting runoff can be toxic. I get it.
Bad Environmentalism
I'm not going to get into it here, but obsessing over global warming is bad environmentalism. Environmentalists hurt their own cause when they tell us the world will end unless we adopt the Kyoto Protocols.
I do not buy into the notion that all surface mines are bad and must be stopped. I do get it that in Romania they don't have our laws, and that the company that does the mining might well get away with things that wouldn't be allowed here. And from what I understand much pollution actually comes from third-world countries precisely because of a lack of strict laws regarding the environment.
But I also think that we can have our cake and eat it to. The people of Romania need jobs. Their life as it is now stinks. It's a question of trade-offs; improving the lives of the people in Romania versus risking some environmental problems. The question, I suppose, is whether the proposed mine would actually harm the environment as much as the environmentalists say it would. I don't know, and I don't know if the film Mine Your Own Business addresses the issue.
In short, bad environmentalism is when it devolves into bananna thinking; Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.
I would not be unsympathetic to the environmentalists as much if they concentrated on ways to build(?) good mines and factories that had a minimum footprint on nature. My perception is that they're often mindlessly opposed to just about everything. This mine is probably something they ought to let through.
Posted by Tom at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
