Our energy and environment deserve better in South Africa and Qatar
By Kelvin Kemm
A few weeks ago, perhaps as a prologue to the “global warming disaster” convention in Doha, Qatar, South Africa’s Department of Environment Affairs took out a full-page advertisement in our country’s newspapers, promoting National Marine Week.
The ad showed a map of the Antarctic continent, from above the pole, surrounded by the vast blue Southern Ocean. It also promoted South Africa’s new Antarctic research vessel, SA Agulhas II.
The advertisement’s text mentioned the massive Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which is responsible for distributing vital nutrients to the world’s oceans. It noted that the truly massive quantities of phytoplankton found in the ocean are vital marine building blocks in ocean processes. All that is true, and I certainly applaud efforts to protect the environment and promote National Marine Week and our country’s research efforts.
But then, sadly, the ad’s discussion of physics content went off the rails. Referring to phytoplankton, it said “these microscopic creatures also use carbon to create energy.” Wrong!
The most basic law of thermodynamics says energy is neither created nor destroyed, but merely converted from one form to another. The only way to “create” energy is via a nuclear process, whereby matter is converted to energy in a nuclear reaction, as Einstein famously postulated over a century ago. Nuclear processes operate outside the laws of thermodynamics, but there is certainly no nuclear process going on in phytoplankton.
I could have lived with that slip up in the physics. But it got worse - much worse. The ad went on to blame global warming for upsetting the phytoplankton. In a declaration straight out of Alice in Wonderland, it asserted: “The increase in surface temperature over Antarctica from climate change is having a catastrophic knock-on effect, depleting phytoplankton stocks, melting the Antarctic ice sheet and causing an alarming reduction in all marine life.”
First, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no “alarming reduction in all marine life.” None of my colleagues are aware of it. Second, the surface temperature over Antarctica is not increasing.
In fact, a new record has just been attained. Antarctic sea ice has just reached an all-time record for total acreage. Day 265 of the year 2012 set an all time record, and then on day 266 that record was broken. The days 265 to 270 were the six highest Antarctic sea ice extent days of all time.
The environment department then compounded these errors by committing the unforgivable scientific sin of claiming a supposed increase in surface air temperature over Antarctica “is having a catastrophic knock-on effect” then providing no evidence to back up its assertion and not telling readers what the alleged knockon effect is.
I cannot even begin to imagine how this knockon is supposed to alter the Circumpolar Current, which in turn is somehow supposed to affect the “energy creation” capabilities of phytoplankton. Come off it, folks.
There is so much good Antarctic science to be proud of and, for that matter, really fine South African scientific achievements in the Antarctic to brag about. That the DEA would feel compelled to celebrate National Maritime Week by resorting to phytoplankton scares supposedly related to nonexistent Antarctic heating is beyond mystifying.
Meanwhile, over the last few months, newspaper stories have told of reduced sea ice extent at our planet’s other pole, the Arctic. Terms like “alarming rate” of ice depletion were bandied about casually. Yes, there were reductions in Arctic sea ice cover.
However, on September 18, a video posted by NASA on its website showed that a large and long lasting Arctic cyclone “wreaked havoc on the Arctic sea ice cover,” by “breaking up sea ice.” The unusual reduction in Arctic sea ice cover was due to high winds not to any warming of the Arctic or global warming in general. NASA’s belated analysis demonstrated that a large section of ice north of the Chukchi Sea was cut off by the churning storm, broken up and pushed south into warmer waters, where it melted.
The storm also broke up other ice, accelerating drifting and melting elsewhere. Reuters finally reported that “NASA says a powerful cyclone formed off the coast of Alaska in early August and moved toward the centre of the Arctic Ocean, weakening the already thin sea ice as it went.”
NASA noted that this was an “uncommon event” and that there have been only about eight storms of similar strength during August in 34 years of satellite records. However, a major storm every four years is not all that “uncommon.” Paul A. Newman, Chief Scientist for Atmospheric Sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, added that such wind disturbances produce many effects and can also lift warmer water from the depths of the Arctic Ocean up to the surface to accelerate melting.
For some reason probably having to do with its regular promotion of “dangerous manmade global warming” claims - the storm story was barely mentioned in the mainstream popular media. By contrast, the “alarming ice cover reduction” narrative was covered extensively.
Now jump back in time five years, to December 12, 2007. On that date Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein distributed an article that stated: “An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer a sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One scientist even speculated that summer sea ice could be gone in five years.”
Well, five years have come and gone. Borenstein was dead wrong. Does anyone suppose the AP will now publish an apology, admitting that its “science writer” was on thin ice when he made this outlandish statement, and saying he should not have tried to scare the public like that?
Perhaps the answer can be found in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
“There’s no use trying,” Alice said. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Especially with the Doha climate change confab in full swing, taxpayers, newspaper readers and anyone dreaming of a better life through reliable, affordable energy deserves more honest reporting and more science-based energy and environmental policies than they have been getting.
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Dr Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and business strategy consultant in Pretoria, South Africa. He is a member of the International Board of Advisors of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), based in Washington, DC (www.CFACT.org). Dr. Kemm received the prestigious Lifetime Achievers Award of the National Science and Technology Forum of South Africa.
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By Steve Goreham
Photo: Abandoned Wind Farms Hawaii tonyaardvark.com
CHICAGO, November 26, 2012 - The U.S. wind industry is in despair. The Production Tax Credit (PTC), a subsidy of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour to producers of electricity from wind turbines, is set to expire at the end of this year. The American Wind Energy Association cites a study by Navigant Consulting, claiming that, “...37,000 Americans stand to lose their jobs by the end of the first quarter of 2013 if Congress does not extend the PTC.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and other environmental groups have rushed to the defense of the PTC. The Sierra Club states, “At a time when we need clean energy more than ever, we simply cannot afford to let the PTC expire.” The PTC is the cornerstone of President Obama’s green energy program and a key measure supported by environmental efforts to fight global warming.
The Production Tax Credit was established by the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to support the nascent wind industry. But twenty years later, is this subsidy still needed? By the end of 2011, 39,000 wind turbine towers were operating in the United States and about 185,000 turbines were in operation worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency. This is no longer an infant industry. Despite the large number of wind towers, wind provides less than one percent of U.S. energy and less than one percent of global energy. A one-year extension of the PTC would cost American taxpayers over $12 billion.
In September, 19 companies sent a letter to the leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives, urging extension of the PTC. Why would Johnson & Johnson, Sprint, Starbucks, and other signers of the letter support subsidies for another industry? They voiced concern that “Failure to extend the PTC for wind would tax our companies and thousands of others like us that purchase significant amounts of renewable energy...”
Never has corporate America been so misguided. Foolish policies like the PTC and proactive company programs to buy “green” renewable energy are based on Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate. An increasing body of science shows that climate change is natural and that human emissions are insignificant. Nevertheless, Johnson & Johnson’s web site claims a reduction of 23 percent in carbon dioxide emissions from 1990‒2010. That emissions reduction and two bucks might get you a cup of Starbuck’s coffee.
While many people would like to power the world with zephyrs, the intermittency of the wind means that wind turbines cannot replace conventional nuclear, natural gas, or coal power plants. The 39,000 U.S. wind turbines generated only 29% of their rated output during 2011. When the wind doesn’t blow, conventional power plants must provide backup power if continuity of electrical supply is to be maintained.
In fact, electricity sourced from wind turbines does not cut CO2 emissions from a power system. Because of the rapid variation in the wind, backup coal or natural gas power plants must frequently and inefficiently cycle on and off to support demand. Studies from electrical power systems in Netherlands, Colorado, and Texas show that combined wind-conventional systems emit more CO2 and use more fuel than conventional systems alone.
Wind is also more costly than conventional systems. Analysis from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) shows that electricity from both coal and natural gas is much less expensive than from wind power, without requiring subsidies for operation. The DOE estimates the world has 200 years of technically recoverable reserves of natural gas, thanks to the hydraulic fracturing revolution. If the theory of man-made global warming is wrong, why subsidize another wind turbine?
The government can always provide subsidies to create jobs or to sustain jobs, but this may not be the best public policy. Thomas Jefferson was correct when he said, “It is error alone which requires the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” Suppose we let the wind industry compete on its own merit?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
Reprinted with this request from author:
Please consider to post the article at the link below (and enclosed) on Icecap. The article questions the value of extending the expiring Production Tax Credit for wind energy. If you do post, please provide a link to the original article at The Washington Times.
Such a levy can’t be justified on basis of altering climate; real goal is a revenue stream to fund European-style government.
By CHRISTOPHER HORNER / For the Register
Recently, a leaked agenda laid bare a strategy session among a virtual Who’s Who of left-leaning big-government activist groups, hosted by a generally conservative policy group, the American Enterprise Institute. By the agenda’s title, this fifth in a series was part of a “Lame Duck Initiative” to strategize enactment of a “carbon” tax, or federal energy tax on oil, coal and gas, in the post-election session of Congress that began this week.
AEI thereby joined former Republican politicians and advisers seeking to rebrand, as a conservative idea, the latest incarnation of what the political Left has long pined for, only to be told it was a dead letter given the political debacle of the Clinton administration’s 1993 “BTU tax.”
The headings and justifications for the new effort were equally as incongruent as conservatives falling for this call to bail out opponents of abundant, affordable reliable energy. These reflected diametrically opposed sales pitches apparently foretelling different audiences what they want to hear.
Specifically, AEI and the other groups are preparing to sell the carbon tax both as “revenue neutral” and as a “deficit hawk” measure. But this new energy tax can’t actually be both.
Revenue neutrality means it would be offset by reducing other taxes - this is the sales pitch for conservatives and swing voters. One rumored target is the 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gasoline tax. This strategy would further illuminate the campaign’s confusion, given that the purpose of a carbon tax, as a “sin” tax, is to make activities deemed undesirable (energy use) more expensive.
Alternately, the new energy tax is supposedly targeted for deficit reduction - which in Washington means directed to new spending.
However absurd on its face, this is politics, and saying both just might work. The key thing is simply to get the new energy tax enacted, by whatever means necessary.
This is only the beginning of the muddled sales pitch. The new tax would be sold as a response to man-made climate change. The biggest problem here, outside of the political baggage of myriad climate-science scandals, is that it is universally agreed that such a tax would be a meaningless gesture.
Specifically, under no scenario, even accepting every assumption proffered by global warming activists, would any strategy ever proposed actually detectably impact climate. This includes the “global” Kyoto Protocol treaty, which within days of being agreed upon in 1997 was footnoted by proponents as actually being just the first of 30 such treaties needed to impact climate.
So much for a “climate” rationale for a U.S.-only carbon tax, which seeks unilateral, marginal reductions in carbon dioxide. CO2 is a marginal greenhouse gas, all of which gases, together, still amount to a marginal climate “forcing” (major forcings being the sun, oceans, clouds). A fraction of a fraction does not climatic impact bring.
The temperature after imposition of cap-and-trade, the Kyoto Protocol or a carbon tax will be whatever it would have been without any of them. So, while a new energy tax may be chicken soup for the wealthy world’s environmental guilt, as a substantive matter, it is a futile gesture.
There are few opportune times for such things, but now certainly is not one of them.
So let’s have an open, honest debate, which requires first acknowledging that a “carbon” tax is less likely being proposed for things it would not do, like impact climate, than for what it would do.
A proposed carbon tax is actually about finding a new, massive and ultimately expanding revenue source, an ATM machine, a European-style revenue gusher to fund a European-style government.
When the carbon tax’s proponents can acknowledge these things, or demonstrate that they are not true, we can have a useful debate over their new energy tax.
Christopher C. Horner is a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and author of “The Liberal War on Transparency: Confessions of a Freedom of Information ‘Criminal’” (Threshold Editions).
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DRIESSEN: Global warming hysteria will kill jobs
By Paul Diessen, Washington Times
Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have boosted shale gas production from zero a few years ago to 10 percent of all U.S. energy supplies in 2012, observes energy analyst Daniel Yergin. It has increased U.S. oil production 25 percent since 2008, in the face of more federal land and resource withdrawals, permitting delays and declining public land production.
In the process, the fracking revolution created 1.7 million jobs in oil fields, equipment manufacturing, legal and information technology services, and other sectors. It will generate over $60 billion this year in state and federal tax and royalty revenues, reduce America’s oil import bill by $75 billion, and save us $100 billion in imported liquefied natural gas, concludes a new IMF Global Insight analysis.
A resurgent American petroleum industry could add “as many as 3.6 million jobs by 2020, and increase the US gross domestic product by as much as 3 percent,” says Citigroup’s “Energy 2020” report. Fracking could make North America energy independent and turn the United States into the world’s number one oil producer in a few more years.
For people still concerned about “catastrophic manmade global warming” (despite 16 years of stable global temperatures), hydraulic fracturing helps cut carbon dioxide emissions, using clean-burning natural gas that costs a third less than oil per BTU.
Common sense says hydraulic fracturing should garner widespread public, political and even environmentalist support. Several states have banned it, however, and the Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Land Management are poised to unleash new rules that could usurp state control and restrict or hyper-regulate fracking on federal, state and private lands.
They justify the bans and regulations by citing public anxiety over fracking but fail to mention that this anxiety has been nurtured and orchestrated by environmental pressure groups whose fractured fairy tales about this technology would be as funny as the Rocky and Bullwinkle tales if the economic, employment, national security and environmental consequences weren’t so serious.
Some of these “fairy tales” include:
Burning tap water. You could ignite methane at your kitchen faucet if your water well was drilled through gas-bearing rock formations and not properly sealed to keep gas out. Fracking zones are thousands of feet below groundwater supplies, though. Production wells use cement and steel casing that extends hundreds of feet below the surface, and sensitive instruments monitor downhole activity to ensure that valuable gas does not escape into near-surface formations or the atmosphere.
Groundwater contamination. Fracking fluids are 99.5 percent water and sand. The other 0.5 percent are chemicals that fight bacterial growth, keep sand particles suspended and improve production. The vast majority of these chemicals can be found in household items that Americans use safely every day including cheese, beer, canned fish, dairy desserts, shampoo and cosmetic products. In addition, heavy plastic liners are now common under drilling rigs, storage tanks and containment pits. Along with modern drilling and well casing methods, these liners help make chemical or salt contamination of groundwater far less likely than from winter salting of icy roads.
Wastewater and water depletion. In addition to changing the composition of fracking fluids to address concerns about water use and wastewater disposal, drilling companies increasingly recycle the water they use. Today, far less water is used in fracking than to grow corn and process it into ethanol.
Earthquakes. Fracturing rocks does cause cracking that can be measured with ultra-sensitive equipment. But these micro-seismic events measure around 0.8 on the Richter Scale, about what is caused by a passing car. Even loaded dump trucks register only 3 (the minimum that can be felt by humans), and property damage does not begin until level 5. Deep injection of water for geothermal energy development, enhanced oil recovery operations, or disposal of petroleum, municipal or industrial wastewater have caused detectable seismic activity. Yet of more than 800,000 injection wells nationwide, only about 40 were felt at the surface.
Fracking is subject to multiple regulations. State and local regulation and cooperation with industry, constant refinements and improvements in rules and practices, and accommodation to public concerns about water, fracking fluids, road congestion, community impacts and other issues have been ongoing for decades. That is part of the reason why 2.5 million instances of fracking worldwide (over 1 million in the U.S.) since 1949 have not caused any serious harm.
Unfortunately, environmentalist fairy tales about fracking cost us energy, jobs, revenue and prosperity for no ecological benefit. The ultimate irony is Europe, where opposition to fracking (and nuclear power) is causing Germany and other central EU countries to build 10,600 megawatts of new coal-fired electrical power plants during the next four years.
Meanwhile, green power mandates have pushed Germany’s electricity prices to the second highest in Europe (32 cents per kWh, compared to an average of 10 cents in the U.S.) putting countless jobs at risk and leaving German households staring at another big rate hike next year.
America needs access to its oil and gas deposits under rational regulations that reflect reality, instead of eco fairy tales. The White House, Congress and government bureaucracies need to distinguish between fact and fiction, understand how to produce real energy, jobs and revenues, and stop trying to “fundamentally transform” our nation.
Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and author of “Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death” (Merril Press, 2012).