Category: Energy

Posted on

Stephane Dion’s Carbon Tax

Stephane Dion’s carbon tax proposals may well be the most sensible policy yet proposed on the issue of the environment– but are voters sophisticated enough to accept that there is a need for structural change in our economy to reflect the new realities of global energy use? Are they smart enough to not think they can continue to live in a world of cheap oil when China and India are both increasing demand at astounding rates?

One anchor asked the reporter in the field, “and how are we going to get those gasoline prices to go down again”. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Even people who should know better can be heard muttering about bad timing– gas prices are already up to record levels and here he wants to raises taxes on it.

What is happening is this. Gas prices are going up because expected consumption exceeds supply. It sounds like most people want to increase consumption (by lowering prices), which, of course, will reduce supply even faster, which, of course, will inevitably result in even higher prices.

Dion’s proposals actually shift the tax burden so that consumers are rewarded for reducing consumption and for using alternative fuels. Even better– it rewards clean energies and punishes energy consumption that contributes to climate change. You’ll notice that this took more than one “quip” to explain. That might– sigh– means it’s doomed as a political move.

“No new taxes” sounds much more appealing on your doorstep or in a 30-second radio ad.

Posted on

Obama’s Next Compromise

Barack Obama supported and voted in favor of the recent wiretapping bill that grants immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the Administration’s illegal requests for wiretaps on Americans receiving or making foreign telephone calls.

The so-called liberal media has completely dropped the ball on this one. Why is this not a scandal? George Bush refuses to admit that his Administration acted illegally when they requested the wiretaps. He continues to assert that the requests were legal. If they were legal, there is no need for immunity. The courts, as is their role in a constitutional democracy, have the authority and right to decide the lawsuits filed by plaintiffs against those Telcos. This law circumvents the constitution by providing retroactive immunity for crimes the government refuses to admit were crimes. This is insane. This is impeachable. This is obscene.

This is an out and out betrayal of all the bullshit platitudes about constitutions and freedoms and due process that America constantly foists on the world as justification for all the lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Barack Obama also supports the ethanol industry in its Disney-esque fantasy of replacing foreign oil with domestic plants. Everyone can already see what the results of this policy will be: oil will continue to cost more, and ethanol will have an absolutely negligible impact on domestic consumption while driving up food prices in the poorest parts of the globe. Even worse, Obama does not support dropping tariffs on imported Brazilian sugarcane ethanol which at least provides a far better return on the energy conversion (8-1, vs. ethanol’s 2-1). Why?

Because Iowa.

Because he wants the support of the Midwestern farmers who stand to benefit enormously from the ridiculous government subsidy of ethanol prices.

Put it this way: the oil industry is not worried about ethanol.

Think about that a lot. Think carefully about it: the oil industry LOVES ethanol. The oil industry’s stooges in the White House are pushing ethanol enthusiastically. The oil industry’s stooges in the White House have, so far, successfully torpedoed a bill that continues giving tax incentives to other alternative forms of energy like wind and solar power.

For those who think Obama will bring a sprig of fresh ideas to the White House, these two issues are bad omens. The first is a classic political compromise, an opportunistic sell-out to the enduring Democrat fear that they won’t appear to be tough enough to take on all those zillions of terrorists out there blowing up buildings in Des Moines, Iowa, or Cedar Rapids, or Flint, or Greensboro, and so on. Oh my God– we can’t let them think that John McCain will be more willing to undermine the constitution than we are!

The second is the classic trade-off of special interests against the genuine interests of the American people. There are numerous lobbyists or other agents associated with the ethanol industry working with Obama’s campaign. That’s disappointing.

The optimist hopes that Obama is making these compromises to get into office, so that once he gets into office he can resume his principled leadership and persuade Americans to support the right course of action. I tend to think it is more likely that once he gets into office, he will make the same compromises that most politicians usually make and things will not be so different after all.

It’s all relative. So we have here the shocking realization that Obama is human after all, and capable of making the same kind of moral and ethical compromises that most politicians make… it is still probable that the election of Obama will improve the U.S. government by a huge margin for the simple reason that we are more likely to have competent people in charge of government policy for the first time in 8 years.

Just how perverted is this generation of voters? McCain feels no need to hide the fact that he would allow the CIA to continue to use torture. TORTURE. On human beings. As if we were not morally superior to terrorists and murderers and torturers.

No candidate in this coming election– wait, is Ralph Nader running?– has proposed to return the U.S. to democratic constitutional greatness and honor and decency. There are no Christian candidates in this election. There is no god in this election.

Torturing the New York Times: Why, in this article, does the New York Times– supposed bastion of liberal dissent– refer to torture as “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Who the hell told them to use this phrase instead of the word “torture”? Is this because they are giving McCain and Bush the benefit of the doubt? Well, it might not be torture, after all? It might be the euphemism? Geez, where are the real liberals when you want one!

Posted on

Global Warming

For the past few years, I have been playing a little game with myself on the issue of global warming. I would read whatever I could about it, from any source at all, and then try to find out if the writer was funded, in any way, directly or indirectly, by the oil industry.

This was an easy task, for the most part. Virtually every scientist who denied global warming was employed by Exxon, Mobil, or another oil or coal company, or a foundation or Institute funded by them.

Conservatives will tell you that the people who believe in global warming, like Al Gore, are funded by the “climate-change industry”. I leave it to you decide if a voluntary group of concerned citizens is more “self-interested” and more likely to lie about the subject than Exxon and Mobil and the coal companies. It’s a clever approach, though, I give you that. A little earlier in history, they might have tried to convince you that Mother Theresa was running an “industry” of vagrant nuns looking for a handout and that poverty in India doesn’t really exist. It’s all just a scam to provide for Mother Theresa’s lavish memorials.

For the past year or so, I thought the game was over. Seemed to me that a tight consensus had grown up in the field, that global warming was real, that it was caused by humans, and that it was going to cause some severe environmental problems. Not so. Or so. I don’t know. But one has to be amazed at the capacity for humans of all political and social stripes to delude themselves into believing that any particular piece of knowledge is a “slam-dunk”.

In an article in Discover Magazine, a scientist not employed by the oil industry, named John Christy, of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, asserts that all the scientists who say the globe is warming are wrong. I wish I could give you a number of how many exactly are wrong, and how many are for and how many are against, and how many don’t know but wish everyone else would make up their minds….

Wouldn’t it be nice if facts could be decided by a majority.

Anyway, they are wrong and he is right, because he looked at temperatures in a different way, and got data from different sources, and his data shows that, in fact, there is a bit of cooling going on– not warming. And the Arctic is actually freezing, so forget all those images you saw on TV and in National Geographic. It’s all the result of sun spots, and a Danish scientist named Henrik Svensmark has proven it.

Okay– that last part is my deductive conclusion based on Mr. Christy’s reasoning. If we are not warming, I’m not sure why the ice is melting. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it just a fluke, an inversion of some kind. Who knows?

We have always known that hot summers are not the result, directly, of global warming. Weather in any particular location on any particular day is not cut and dried and linear. We know there will be oddities and anomalies, so Christy should stop pretending that people noticed the hot weather and immediately jumped to the conclusion that the entire globe was heating up.

Christy thinks that Africa could be saved from dire poverty if only every hut had an electric light bulb and microwave. And there was a Walmart in the neighborhood. Okay– I’m making up the Walmart part. But surely Christy is making up the microwave part. He believes America is a grand force for good in the world– we export “freedom”, you see.

Not sure why the people in Darfur haven’t lined up to buy it yet.

Conservatives have been very clever at leveraging dissent:

If 1000 scientists say that global warming is real and 1 scientist says it’s not, they announce that there is no consensus and Public Television is now obliged to present “both sides” of the issue.

I believe this ratio could also be used to justify presenting “both sides” on the issue of witchcraft. After all, a fair number of people really believe in witches.

Please— please Mr. Christy, give us all one tiny little insignificant little break and don’t take a job with the coal or gas or oil companies. Be the only light, the soul beacon of potential unconflicted evidence on the subject of global warming– at least from the skeptic side.

(Sorry Mr. Christy: I don’t regard foundations that raise money from people concerned about climate change to be as “interested” as the oil industry, even as the oil industry keeps trying to convince us that those greedy environmentalists will stop at nothing to continue to have an excuse to protest….)

Christy, by the way, is a Baptist. So, just because he is not employed directly by the oil industry, does not mean he doesn’t belong to a group that has an axe to grind: Baptists in the Southern U.S. are overwhelming politically and socially conservative. Climate change is a liberal, European issue.

Christy’s social and religious background are not helpful in determining whether he is telling the truth or not. As a Christian, you might hope that he would tell what he believes to be the truth, but that he also might express some distaste for some of the character assassination and oil industry lobbying that is going on behind the scenes.

No such luck.  Did he say he was a Christian?

We do know that the Republicans– who hate the idea of reducing carbon emissions– have carefully cultivated the support of Evangelical Christians since the 1970’s.  Unfortunately, the fact that Christy is a Christian makes it more likely that he is more loyal to the Republican Party than he is to independent research.

It is more likely that he is just a partisan hack and a liar.

Does that seem crude and judgmental?  I don’t ask that Christy agree with 99% of the climate scientists that the earth warming and it is due to human activity and carbon emissions.  I just ask that he show that he has principles, and, if he has principles, that he disagrees with Exxon’s blatant advocacy of fake science in order to protect their fossil fuel business investments.

Details From Discover Magazine

Christy’s Testimony to Congress on the Impact of CO2 Emissions that might come from More Coal-fired Plants

Just in– apparently Christy now acknowledges that climate change is real. His earlier data was flawed. Okay. That is a bit of a shock. I thought I’d found that hold-out independent scientist…. but no. BUT…. Christy believes that global warming will be a good thing for the planet. You can’t keep a good man down! Tune in again in five years…

Christy further undermines his own credibility by attacking “extremists”. If Christy is acting like a scientist, he wants you to know that his information is accurate and unbiased. But Christy is not being asked for his emotional judgment of a dissenting movement in politics. He has no expertise on what “extremism” is. He should only have addressed any particular facts and figures presented by any group– including those who are tools of the oil industry.

Author Michael Crichton has chimed in with his own propaganda on behalf of the skeptics. He has also testified to congress and given several public speeches on the global warming “scam”. Once again, it is odd that a skeptic seems more interested in political attacks on the climate change lobby than on disputing the facts. Most of us feel a speaker or writer is most credible when he is the least emotionally involved, and when it is clear that he isn’t just out to try to humiliate or insult or marginalize people he just doesn’t seem to like very much. It would have done wonders for Crichton’s credibility if he would acknowledge that the science is being “corrupted” by oil companies as well as by scientists who crave peer approval and don’t think for themselves.

Think about it– if you have a fire department with 12 members and they are sitting in the fire hall waiting around and a garbled message suddenly came through on the telephone and half the men thought it said there was a fire at city hall and the other half said they heard no such thing. What would anyone with common sense do? They’d drive the fire truck out to city hall with a crew to find out for sure. But the climate change skeptics, including Crichton and Christie, are trying to take away the keys to prevent the other six firemen from going anywhere. When that fails, they slash the tires. They accuse the other six firemen of being in the pocket of the Fire Prevention Industry.

The only explanation that could account for this behavior? The six skeptics are allied with the people who have set fire to city hall.

Mr. Crichton and company would be far more believable if they would merely take the trouble to point out that the skeptic “industry” is far more lavishly funded and “interested” than Al Gore and the majority of climatologists. If they really believe that the fact that many people make a living advocating reductions in carbon emissions invalidates their “science”, they would be quick to admit that the “science” of the skeptics is even more compromised. (At least the believers have an overtly beneficial purpose: to save mankind from immense suffering and economic hardship.) Then they might get back to the point: what are the facts? How can we find out more about what is really going on?

Crichton talks about the “religion” of environmentalism. All fair and good– there’s some truth to that. But it is absolutely ridiculous of him to ignore the “religion” of economic growth and capitalism which, like environmentalism, bears an irrational, unscientific adherence to a set of values and assumptions that colour it’s “scientific” conclusions about a global warming. The motive of the skeptic “industry” is increased consumption, bigger profits for corporations, and more pollution.

Posted on

The Scam of Ethanol

From the New York Times, May 15, 2006: A. David Pimentel, a professor at Cornell University, published a paper in 2005 with Tad W. Patzek of the University of California, Berkeley stating that the corn-to-ethanol process powered by fossil fuels consumes 29 percent more energy than it produces. The results for switchgrass were even worse, the paper said, with a 50 percent net energy deficit. “I’m sympathetic, and I wish that ethanol production was a net positive and a help to this nation,” Dr. Pimentel said in an interview. “But I’m a scientist first and an agriculturalist second. I don’t think the U.S. will meet its goals with biofuels.” He also said the United States did not have enough agricultural land to displace gasoline with biofuels. “Even if we committed 100 percent of the corn crop to making ethanol, it would only replace 7 percent of U.S. vehicle fossil fuel use,” he said.

I had read something like this years ago, so I was surprised to see and hear numerous articles and news stories praising the idea of ethanol as a gas substitute for North America, and, just maybe, the long-dreamed-of solution to our dependence on foreign oil. I started thinking– am I crazy? Did I dream that ethanol actually takes more energy to produce than it creates?

No.

Even “60 Minutes” recently rhapsodized about the possibility of filling America’s freeways, long after the Saud’s are depleted, with biomass-fuelled cars, without once mentioning that corn is produced with the help of fertilizers, pesticides, tractors, machinery, and transport, all of which consume vast quantities of…. fuel. In fact, if you had to use ethanol to produce ethanol instead of fossil fuels, the absurdity would become clear: it would take 1.5 gallons of ethanol to produce one gallon of ethanol.

In short, ethanol is not cheap, not sustainable, and solves nothing. There is no way America could ever produce enough corn to produce enough ethanol to even begin to replace fossil fuels.

Think that particular study by Pimentel is biased? You would think, then, that defenders of ethanol would be happy to show you different studies that show different results. On the contrary, they tend to damn with faint praise, admitting that corn-based ethanol may never be able to replace, at best, more than 1/3 of our current fossil fuel requirements.

In all fairness, some scientists claim that ethanol can be more efficiently produced. In all fairness, the scientists who say that appear to be employed by ethanol manufacturers. Archer Daniels Midland is the largest manufacturer of ethanol. According to the Cato institute, it costs taxpayers about $30 for every $1 of ethanol produced.

Except one thing: it gives the American government an excuse to bribe farmers in Iowa to support a particular candidate in the early caucuses come election year, as “West Wing” dramatized (Republican candidate Arnold Vinick refused to endorse ethanol and, in this fantasy drama, still won the nomination).

Ethanol is a scam.

Ethanol

The News Gets Worse.

From Cornell University:   An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre, according to Pimentel’s analysis. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol.

Some critics point out that, technically, it takes more than one gallon of gas to produce a gallon of gas too.  Sort of.  It appears that the amount of energy required to extract and process the oil used to make the gasoline is greater than the yield.  Like ethanol.  So what we have here is that we are paying a premium to make the fuel portable and usable by cars.  Point taken.  However, that doesn’t change the fact that using corn to make ethanol is not the economic or environmental solution it’s proponents claim, and, even more to the point, even if you used all of the corn crops in the U.S. for ethanol, it still wouldn’t be enough to replace even 1/3 of American  requirements.  (“1/3” is generous– some experts say it is much less.)

The farmer is America’s sacred cow. Literally. So when people say they support ethanol because they would rather give their money to American farmers than Arab sheiks, they have a point, right? Only if you also believe that the RIAA wants to stop piracy of music so it can pay it’s artists and composers. The fact this that most of the ethanol subsidies go to the corporations– like Archer Daniels Midland– that sustain this scam, not farmers who grow the corn, though they undoubtedly benefit from higher prices. Oh– the higher prices…

Posted on

The Irvings Sink a Ship

There is a myth out there that a lot of your tax money goes to welfare cheats. True. Here’s one of them:

About 30 years ago, the Irving Corporation (a big Maritime oil company owned by the Irving family) accidentally sunk a barge loaded with PCBs in the St. Laurence River. When government scientists discovered that it was leaking deadly PCBs, the Irvings said, “surely you don’t expect us to pay for it?”.

The government raised the vessel for $45 million, cleaned up the PCB’s, then gave it back to the Irvings for a pittance, $5 million.

Why has no one been arrested? Why aren’t the Irvings sitting in jail? Why haven’t the RCMP seized the Irvings’ assets in order to sell them to pay the bill?

Because the Irvings are not like you or me, my friend. They are rich. They know politicians on a first-name basis.

Now that’s the way to do business! Thank you Mr. Chretien, now we’ll just resume our profiteering, if you don’t mind…

Posted on

The Clampetts are Here

Oil Man

Who owns oil? Oil comes from living material in marshlands and swamps that has been squeezed deep into the earth for millions of years. Some of this material becomes coal. Some of it becomes oil.

So who owns it? The oil companies find this oil, buy some land on top of it, and then suck it dry, like giant mechanical vampires. But oil does not exist in a straight vertical column. It is spread out way down there. It spreads under land that does not belong to oil companies. But our governments have agreed to allow oil companies to suck the oil out from wherever they want, as long as they have the “rights” to a surface area nearby. It is sort of “finders keepers”.

Capitalists think this is great. They think that since the oil company had the initiative and risk-taking bravado to go out there and find the oil, that they should have the right to sell it. What they are really selling is millions of years of organic and geological processes. All of these took place before we walked upon this earth. They belong to everyone, including future generations, and they should be treated more that way. The next time the oil companies holler about “deregulation”, think about that.

In the poor half of the world, corrupt politicians and generals sell their nations’ lifeblood to the West for a mere pittance. We consume most of it and fill the earth with our pollution. We are destroying the ozone. Oil tankers run aground destroying wild-life habitats. Our cities are so infested with automobiles that rush hour now extends from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm.

The Americans are also thinking a lot about water lately. They will need a lot of it in the coming century. There are thousands of golf-courses in California alone. Where is it going to come from? Hey, there’s a bunch of big lakes up here! Let’s just stick a nozzle in one end and pipe it all down to Arizona! You Canadians don’t need to worry: we’ll only take the water that’s on our side.

Posted on

Ontario Hydro Tarts

Ontario Hydro Tarts Up

I don’t know about you, but I have to work for my wages. I actually have to show up at an office and do something useful. It is very clear to me that if I don’t produce anything of value to my employer, I will be fired.

On the other hand, there is Paul Rhodes. Paul Rhodes is a consultant to Ontario Hydro. Ontario Hydro was worried that people might think that just because hydro costs have increased every year since time immemorial, and just because our nuclear power plants break down occasionally, people might think that Ontario Hydro doesn’t care about the environment.

Well, what’s the solution? Ontario Hydro could actually care about the environment. Ontario Hydro could develop some internal policies about preventing damage to the environment. They could allocate a few million dollars to a department responsible for ensuring compliance with environmental protection laws. They could even work on new ways of running cables that would be less disruptive to the migratory habits of the creatures the live in the forests of Ontario.

But, hey, consultants don’t get big bucks for stating the obvious!

Or, they could just spend a few million dollars on an advertising campaign.

“If Ontario Hydro is to successfully present a more proactive positioning on environmental protection it should be prepared to commit adequate resources to a paid media/advertising campaign.” Wow! That’s what Paul Rhodes recommended. Gee. How did Ontario Hydro manage find a great thinker like Paul Rhodes? Well, it turns out that Paul Rhodes is a friend of Ontario Premier Mike Harris.

Paul Rhodes was paid $255,000 for a 10-page report. The report recommended that Ontario Hydro spend more money on advertising to convince the public that they care about the environment.

I wish I had a job like that. I wish Mike Harris would be my friend. Mike Harris wants to cut taxes and save the Ontario taxpayer lots of money. Here I am, Mike: I would have been quite willing to work for a mere $100,000, to create a report of the same breath-taking simplicity, elegance, and intelligence. Here it is: spend more money on advertising. Done. You can pay me now. Not only did I give you good advice, but I saved you the trouble of reading through the entire 10 pages of Paul Rhodes’ report.