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Republicans Block Renewable Energy Legislation

Byoliveridley

3 people stand between the US and a sensible energy policy, the radical notion that subsidies should support up and coming, good for the environment renewable energy instead of the oil industry.

Wired News – AP News

But Republicans complained that it was too harsh on the oil industry and could lead to oil companies reducing investments in new oil refineries and production. They also said that it could lead to higher prices for consumers.

“When you put a tax on a business it gets passed on to consumers,” argued Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz. “Instead of reducing gasoline prices, this bill is going to add to the cost of gasoline.”

Kyl had earlier sought to sidetrack the tax measure, but that effort failed.

The bill’s supporters dismissed suggestions that the new taxes on an industry that has had record profits in recent years would cause either less oil production or lead to higher prices at the pump.

Oil companies earned $111 billion in profits last year and at that rate stand to earn $1 trillion over the 10 years covered by the tax package, said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., rejecting suggestions that “this is an undue burden” on oil companies.

Kyl claims that the point of energy legislation is to reduce the cost of gasoline to consumers. Really? I thought the point was to come up with a coherent policy that maximizes the efficiency of energy use and minimizes its impacts.

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    Environmental Racism, Global Warming Edition

    Byoliveridley

    As armchair critics debate endlessly on the virtues and vices of carbon trading versus carbon taxes, they are in no danger of losing their armchairs (or their homes, or their money, or their livelihood). Africa and Asia, not so lucky.

    Poor Nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms – New York Times

    Two-thirds of the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas that can persist in the air for centuries, has come in nearly equal proportions from the United States and Western European countries. Those and other wealthy nations are investing in windmill-powered plants that turn seawater to drinking water, in flood barriers and floatable homes, and in grains and soybeans genetically altered to flourish even in a drought. In contrast, Africa accounts for less than 3 percent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning since 1900, yet its 840 million people face some of the biggest risks from drought and disrupted water supplies, according to new scientific assessments. As the oceans swell with water from melting ice sheets, it is the crowded river deltas in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island nations, that are most at risk.

    I read another story about Bangladesh recently, apparently in Bangladesh, there will be both flooding and drought due to cimate change!

    We are fighting climate change on the front line,” Professor Nishat
    told The Independent earlier this year. “But the battle has to be
    integrated across all countries.”

    Bangladesh has good reason to feel aggrieved at global warming. Its
    annual carbon emissions only 0.172 tons per capita, compared to 21 tons
    in the US.

    If the rivers dry up, it would leave Bangladesh completely at the mercy of the rains.

    What is to be done? There are no simple answers, but this is a global issue that requires a global solution. There needs to be a relentless push for efficiency and conservation, with technologies being made available sans intellectual property and patent protection to help India and China control emissions. Efficiency is where the low hanging fruit are. This wikipedia article is a decent compendium of options.

    Europe has started on the control path already. The U.S has to act, will it do anything this year? Or do we have to wait for this? I am very cynical about the West’s ability and willingness to act in this regard. When the prime contributors and benefiters of a harmful action are not the same as the ones who will face the worst consequences, where’s the will? As life in the third world becomes more miserable, the rich countries can always build more walls.

    No fun and games here!

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    Ethanol significantly worse than gasoline for air pollution

    Byoliveridley

    So, Mark Jacobson from Stanford, an accomplished atmospheric chemist and modeler from Stanford, puts ethanol into his modeling mix as an automobile fuel and comes up with increased ozone, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN, an ozone precursor) and acetaldehyde, leading to a possible increase in mortality. Without reading his paper, I cannot comment on the assumptions used, but this is an additional issue to be concerned about as our politicians continue to binge on alcohol. It’s weird, almost as if there’s something intoxicating and addictive about this fuel :-;

    Effects of Ethanol E85 versus Gasoline Vehicles on Cancer and Mortality in the United States

    Ethanol use in vehicle fuel is increasing worldwide, but the potential cancer risk and ozone-related health consequences of a large-scale conversion from gasoline to ethanol have not been examined. Here, a nested global-through-urban air pollution/weather forecast model is combined with high-resolution future emission inventories, population data, and health effects data to examine the effect of converting from gasoline to E85 on cancer, mortality, and hospitalization in the United States as a whole and Los Angeles in particular. Under the base-case emission scenario derived, which accounted for projected improvements in gasoline and E85 vehicle emission controls, it was found that E85 (85% ethanol fuel, 15% gasoline) may increase ozone-related mortality, hospitalization, and asthma by about 9% in Los Angeles and 4% in the United States as a whole relative to 100% gasoline. Ozone increases in Los Angeles and the northeast were partially offset by decreases in the southeast. E85 also increased peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) in the U.S. but was estimated to cause little change in cancer risk. Due to its ozone effects, future E85 may be a greater overall public health risk than gasoline. However, because of the uncertainty in future emission regulations, it can be concluded with confidence only that E85 is unlikely to improve air quality over future gasoline vehicles. Unburned ethanol emissions from E85 may result in a global-scale source of acetaldehyde larger than that of direct emissions.

  • NY Times uses football columnist to diss Al Gore on global warming

    Byoliveridley

    Ok, I exaggerate a wee bit, he’s also a scholar at Brookings.

    Al Gore’s Outsourcing Solution – New York Times
    Shorter Gregg Easterbrook

    1. Al Gore is a big fat phony, so let’s not listen to him
    2. China and India will emit a lot of greenhouse gases, so it is useless for the US to control itself

    This guy should stick to writing about football, simple fact, the country that is the so called “leader of the free world” and that is currently the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has to take the lead, or at least participate in the discussion.

    As my favorite economist Dean Baker points out, he even gets his facts misleading on China’s GDP using gross unadjusted GDP instead of numbers adjusted for purchasing power parity.

    To be fair, he makes the valid point that a lot of gains are to be had by investing in India and China to make processes more efficient and hence reduce energy needs and emissions, but it’s not an either-or scenario. Even if India and China pass the U.S in emissions at some point in time, that still makes the U.S the third largest emitter, and if you look at both per-capita and aggregate consumption together, the U.S has to take major steps in addition to helping China and India with offsets and tech transfers. But you have to play the game!

    Is Easterbrook saying the U.S can’t walk and chew gum at the same time? C’Mon!

  • Tar sands smog seen worsening

    Byoliveridley

    Pollution will continue to plague Alberta’s oil sands despite plans to pipe harmful greenhouse gases deep underground, according to documents obtained by the Toronto Star.

    Part of the task of cleaning up the oil sands involves capturing carbon dioxide emissions and storing them in geological reservoirs in western Canada.

    But chemicals linked to acid rain, respiratory problems and ozone depletion could escape into the atmosphere at an even faster rate, thanks to an estimated tripling of production from one million barrels a day in 2007 to 3.4 million barrels a day in 2017. That could occur despite proposed national caps on air contaminants.

    By capturing about 200 megatonnes a year of carbon dioxide, sequestration as carbon dioxide storage is known is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by almost 80 per cent in 2017, says an Environment Canada study obtained under the Access to Information Act.

    But, the study notes, “there are emissions of CO2 and air contaminants resulting from the generation of the energy required by carbon capture and storage facilities. The CO2 emissions offset the volumes captured by the facilities, while the air contaminant emissions add to the load on the environment.

    Note that two out of the three main political parties in Canada (The Conservatives and the Liberals) support the expansion of this environmental disaster. Also, resource exploitation is controlled by the individual provinces and Alberta is almost united in support for its prime bread winner. So nothing will happen unless there is external (Read American) pressure. Harper is making a lot of noise about working with Obama on energy and climate policy in an effort to get ahead of this pressure, so we shall see what happens. If the US moves ahead aggressively on policy, the Tar Sands could lose its biggest customer and that would be all she wrote.

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    Glass baby bottles making comeback

    Byoliveridley

    More Bisphenol A blowback, apparently, SF parents are switching to glass.

    Glass baby bottles making comeback / Stores selling out after health alarms raised about plastics

    Glass baby bottles, replaced decades ago by unbreakable plastic, are making such a comeback that parents can’t get their hands on them.

    Online and brick-and-mortar retailers report a run on glass baby bottles in recent weeks that they say was spurred by reports that the most common type of plastic in baby bottles may leach a toxic chemical.

    San Francisco resident Sean Mullins said he decided to switch his 6-month-old son, Mickey, from plastic to glass bottles last month despite manufacturers’ insistence that plastic bottles are safe.

    Independent tests done for The Chronicle and reported in November found bisphenol A, a chemical that mimics estrogen, in a baby bottle and several toys. Bisphenol A is also found in the lining of food cans, some anti-cavity sealants for teeth, and electronics.

    Watch for plastics manufacturers to fight back, this study ought to provide some ammo.

    Comparison of six samples of each of three brands of water available in both glass and polyethyelene terephthalate (PET(E)) showed that the waters bottled in glass contained approximately 57, 30, and 26 times more Pb due to leaching from the containers. Our study includes 25 brands of bottled water from Canada, and the median Pb concentration in these samples was 15.9 ng/L (n = 25), with a range from 2.1 to 268 ng/L. For comparison with the bottled waters, pristine groundwater from six artesian flows in southern Ontario, Canada, where some of the bottled waters originate, yielded a median concentration of 5.1 ng/L Pb (n = 18). In fact, all of the waters tested were well below the maximum allowable concentration established by the EU, Health Canada, and the WHO for Pb in drinking water (10000 ng/L).

    It all depends on which bolded sentence you chose to emphasize! So, glass bottles do leach some lead out, but nowhere near the amount needed to cause any effects whatsoever. I guess this is all the American Chemistry Council can come up with as a problem with glass.

    It’s irrefutable that glass can shatter, Hentges said. But there is “no scientific basis to conclude that BPA is something to be concerned about … at the extremely low levels that people might be exposed to from use of consumer products.”

    There is plenty of scientific basis to conclude that Bisphenol A has some very subtle effects at ambient doses. But science has never stopped the American Chemistry Council!

  • Movement on Texas Coal Fired Power Plants.

    Byoliveridley

    There’s been some progress on the coal fired power plants I had railed on about recently.
    In Big Buyout, Utility to Limit New Coal Plants – New York Times

    Under a proposed $45 billion buyout by a team of private equity firms, the TXU Corporation, a Texas utility that has long been the bane of environmental groups, will abandon plans to build 8 of 11 coal plants and commit to a broad menu of environmental measures, according to people involved in the negotiations. The roster of commitments came through an unusual process in which the equity firms asked two prominent environmental groups what measures could be taken to win their support. The result is an about-face from the company’s earlier approach to climate-change issues, and includes a goal of returning the carbon-dioxide emissions by TXU to 1990 levels by 2020. Environmental groups said yesterday that they had never known of a financial deal with such an ambitious built-in environmental component.

    Better than nothing. This is good news for sure. But as I mentioned previously, the Sanders (Good ol’ socialist!) Bill calls for an 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050. This is required to cap CO2 levels at 450 ppm and avoid the worst effects of global warming. So, while reducing CO2 to 1990 levels sounds impressive in a breathlessly written NY Times article. It is not nearly enough. This is exactly what I was afraid of when I mentioned the moratorium word! In the absence of regulation, or a clear policy, private equity companies, power plants, and other plutocrats are setting the US global warming agenda. They are establishing the floor plan, meaning, we’ll set the bar near the floor and not budge. Yes, I know, the NRDC and Environmental Defense were involved, and this part is definitely good…

    TXU will discard plans to build eight of 11 proposed new coal plants, which would have been major new sources of emissions. Those plants — which would have added more than 9,000 megawatts of new capacity, the equivalent of 3.5 percent of the nation’s current coal-fired power — had been part of a planned $10 billion expansion of coal-fired electricity.

    TXU, which is based in Dallas, also intends to expand the renewable energy portion of its portfolio and reduce or offset its emissions significantly, said people who were familiar with the plans.

    All very good, but as I talked about previously (man, way too much self reference, not a good thing!), a book called Reality Check just out assesses voluntary actions by various companies in the US, Europe and Japan and comes to the following conclusion:

    Most of the programs it studies have positive results, but they are
    small compared with business-as-usual trends and the impact of other
    forces–such as higher energy prices. Importantly, potential gains may
    be quickly exhausted as the “low-hanging fruit” is picked up by
    voluntary programs.

    Now tell me that this agreement does not fit this frame!