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The Facts Behind EPA's Greenhouse Gas Regulations

Posted on April 3, 2012, 5:35pm | Adam Peshek

After the defeat of his carbon dioxide cap-and-trade legislation in 2009, President Obama told a room of reporters that there was “more than one way to skin a cat.” And in the new political era of regulation without legislation, the President’s EPA has released standards on carbon dioxide that do just that.

In perhaps its most sweeping regulatory approach to date, the EPA under Lisa Jackson recently released New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for carbon dioxide, which aim to cut greenhouse gases emitted by the U.S.

In today’s post, I will look at the logic behind the rule and its fundamental flaws. In later posts I will look at what’s next for carbon dioxide regulations and an examination of the very idea of regulating carbon.

How EPA Skins a Cat

The NSPS requires all newly constructed power plants to meet an emissions standard of 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour (MWh) regardless of the type of fuel. The average coal-fired power plant puts out 2,000 pounds of CO2 per MWh and newer, more efficient models emit about 1,800 pounds per MWh. Simple math shows that the future of coal-fired electricity in the U.S. looks bleak, even for the industry’s best facilities.

Advocates for the new rules (who apparently must portray themselves as pro-coal) say that the new rules will not hurt the coal industry. That is because the rule only calls for 1,000 pounds of CO2 per MWh over a 30 year average. So in theory, a coal plant could emit 1,800lbs of CO2 for the first 10 years of operation, so long as it implemented yet-to-exist technologies to cut its emissions to 600 pounds per MWh by year 11.

If only it were that simple.

EPA’s rationale for the feasibility of the regulation is two-fold: (1) technologies will be available in the next decade that allow the capture and storage of CO2 emissions from coal and (2) the abundance of cheap natural gas that has flooded the market in the past few years.

The (Un)available Best Technology

The section of the Clean Air Act (CAA) that details the NSPS directives requires EPA to create regulations based on the “best system of emission reduction” that “has been adequately demonstrated,” taking into account costs, environmental impacts, and energy requirements.

The technology EPA points to with this regulation is called "carbon capture and sequestration" (CCS). CCS involves the capture of carbon dioxide from power plants before it is emitted and then the storage of the captured gas underground. The problem with using CCS as a “best available technology” is that it is not in use anywhere in the U.S., and is only in use in experimental, highly expensive sites in a handful of sites in Europe. It is nowhere near the point of viability technologically or financially.

EPA’s own, typically bullish analysts themselves admit that CCS viability is at least a decade away. To make this pass muster, EPA applied the 30-year average requirement. In doing so, EPA is saying “yes, the technology is not available today, therefore, apply the best technology available and in a decade apply CCS when it is viable.” Government agencies are prone to the conceit that they can predict the future, but this is a stretch even by EPA standards.

Aside from the technological and financial problems involved with CCS, there is also the problem with citing plants in places that can eventually store CO2 underground. This leads to even larger permitting headaches. How can you predict permitting requirements for a technology that is not yet in use and thus has not been subject to federal, state, or local permitting requirements? It is not merely a matter of building a new, modern plant and hoping you chose a site that is adequate for CCS.

Gas, Naturally!

The second, seemingly more logical, rationale for the rule’s approach is the abundance of cheap natural gas that is making coal less economically appealing.

It is true that in the near term, low natural gas prices are already making coal uneconomical, with utilities rushing to refurbish or build new natural gas plants to take advantage of its record low prices. As I mentioned in a post two weeks ago:

A gold rush of shale gas plus the ability to get eight-times the amount of energy from one well has caused gas supplies to skyrocket, driving down prices. With low prices, companies are fleeing the historically inexpensive and dirty coal-fired plants and maximizing natural gas plants, which emit roughly half the greenhouse gases. According to the study, the U.S. emitted nearly 9% less CO2 (the chief greenhouse gas) in 2009 than it did in 2008, mostly because gas prices dropped from $12 per million British thermal units in June 2008 to less than $4 per MMBtu in September 2009. During that time, the cost of generating electricity from natural gas plants fell an average of about 4 cents per kilowatt. With average natural gas prices at $2.30 MMBtu today, it is safe to say this trend will continue. Utilities are shutting down coal-fired plants at record pace and replacing them with new or expanded gas-fired plants.

On average, coal supplies roughly 40 percent of U.S. electricity. But according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA), coal-fired electricity dropped below the 40 percent mark last December for the first time in over 30 years. Coal consumption will likely drop another 5 percent this year according to the EIA. The agency expects natural gas to pick up the slack, with a 9 percent increase this year, or a record high of 22.7 billion cubic feet a day.

However, it’s important to note that these have all been the economics of a struggling economy with a drop in electricity demand. But, as we know, energy needs fluctuate. During last summer’s heat wave, every single unit scheduled for retirement was running to meet increased demand, including coal. Had these facilities been taken off-line there would have been sweeping brown outs across the warmest areas of the U.S.

So, according to EPA’s own analysis, natural gas’s affordability makes NSPS rule unnecessary. Economic factors – not environmental concerns – are already giving utilities more than enough incentive to switch from coal to gas. As noted in my earlier post, this leads to cheaper energy and a cleaner environment. But the Agency is following its usual path of imagining what the future will look like today. With natural gas prices and energy demands locked at 2011 levels, an emissions standard of 1,000 pounds per MWh makes sense. But they refuse to note that maybe, just maybe, market conditions will change. If natural gas prices and electricity demand rise simultaneously, this rule will be enormously costly and may have an effect on keeping the lights on in certain regions.

A New Type of Regulation

From a regulatory standpoint, this is a first for EPA.

As noted above, NSPS requirements in the Clean Air Act require the Agency to create regulations based on the “best system of emission reduction” that “has been adequately demonstrated,” taking into account costs, environmental impacts, and energy requirements. The statute does not allow EPA to prescribe specific technologies, only an emissions level for the source to meet.

For 40 years, the EPA has regulated NSPS based on specific fuel types (oil, gas, coal, etc.), as laid out in statute. For this regulation, however, EPA has chosen not to distinguish between fuel types. Instead, it requires coal to meet the emissions level of natural gas, which can easily meet the requirement. In other words, it implicitly asks coal to meet the emissions levels of gas with a technology that has not been demonstrated as technically or financially viable. If you asked natural gas to reach the emission levels of nuclear, you would also effectively ban natural gas plants. This is not a game EPA has played before, and it is a dangerous precident to set without legislation to point to.

***

Unlike most EPA regulations, NSPS are binding once it is printed in the federal register. This is problematic for two reasons. First, it has effectively put a ban on the construction of new coal plants. Second, any legislative action to deal with this issue is hamstrung by the fact that the rules are not officially “final,” and thus could get around being subject to legislative review. It could easily be more than a year until EPA addresses all the comments and proposes a final rule.

Luckily for the coal industry, there is still a global market for coal. Metallurgic coal is in high demand in China where is used for steel making. Energy-dense bituminous coal is highly valued in places like India where it is burnt for power and heat. In fact, if you look at the countries across the globe who have growing economies, just about all of them are building new, state-of-the-art coal plants.

Electricity demand is flat thanks to a struggling economy, so the results may not be immediate. The question is its effects long term once the economy rebounds.

A big part of this will be whether or not EPA releases regulations on current coal facilities, as they have said they would do. Most observers believe that Obama will issue such regulations if he earns a second term in office.

My next post will look at the implications of a similar regulation on existing sources.

Fracking Cuts Greenhouse Gases

Posted on March 19, 2012, 9:49am | Adam Peshek

A decade ago, if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wanted to make realistic cuts to climate-changing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions they should have thought about pumping water, sand, and chemicals into deep, mile-wide wells to blast open supplies of oil and natural gas. The process, known as “fracking,” has had a direct impact on CO2 reductions in the U.S., according to a study in the Environmental Science & Technology Journal.

Advances in natural gas production have allowed drillers to produce eight-times the amount of gas from each well, causing prices to plummet. Low natural gas prices have incentivized electric utilities to switch from dirtier coal to cleaner-burning gas.

Prior to recent innovations, if producers wanted to extract natural gas they merely drilled down (vertically) to shallow pools of natural gas. But technological advances now allow companies to drill vertically and then horizontally to open up gas-rich shale formations over a mile wide. In other words, instead of drilling eight vertical wells, companies can now drill one well with the ability to hydraulically fracture (frack) long, horizontally drilled wells into otherwise difficult to access shale formations.

A gold rush of shale gas plus the ability to get eight-times the amount of energy from one well has caused gas supplies to skyrocket, driving down prices. With low prices, companies are fleeing the historically inexpensive and dirty coal-fired plants and maximizing natural gas plants, which emit roughly half the greenhouse gases. According to the study, the U.S. emitted nearly 9% less CO2 (the chief greenhouse gas) in 2009 than it did in 2008, mostly because gas prices dropped from $12 per million British thermal units in June 2008 to less than $4 per MMBtu in September 2009. During that time, the cost of generating electricity from natural gas plants fell an average of about 4 cents per kilowatt. With avarage natural gas prices at $2.30 MMBtu today, it is safe to say this trend will continue. Utilities are shutting down coal-fired plants at record pace and replacing them with new or expanded gas-fired plants.

If you told regulators and analysts a decade ago that the U.S. would be converting liquified natural gas (LNG) import plants into export plants by the end of the decade because of newly discovered vast supplies of natural gas they would have laughed at you. Likewise, if 100 years ago you told someone that scientists would create a substance called plutonium, figure out how to immerse it in water to create steam, and run turbines using that steam to create electricity to power our homes with essentially zero emissions you probably would have been checked into a facility. Or, if you told someone in 1970 that something called the internet would be created that would allow you to type a letter and send it across the world instantly without cutting down a tree to produce paper they most likely would have thought you were describing a Sci-Fi movie.

But this is what happens as technology improves. Why is this important? Regulators are usually concerned with environmental benefits but not that interested in cost. They are unable and unwilling to concede that good things can happen if energy markets operate unfettered. This is just another example of how government planners cannot predict how technological advancements bring about environmental benefits and make energy cheaper for everyone.

Germany's Green Energy Policies Are Shutting Down Industry

Posted on February 29, 2012, 1:45pm | Adam Peshek

President Obama often highlights the renewable energy policies of certain European countries, only to see those countries quickly abandon their policies shortly after. As I observed in my commentary last week:

Even as President Obama vowed he “would not walk away from the promise of clean energy” or “cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here,” German officials were debating whether to cap, reduce, or scrap the country’s subsidies to solar.

German taxpayers have backed more than $130 billion in solar subsidies to date, contriburting largely to rising electricity costs for households (second highest among European countries). But German businesses may be hit even harder.

Last year, following the panic from the nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, German officials voted to phase out all of the country’s nuclear power plants – even though Germany’s vast solar energy systems produce less electricity than two of the country’s remaining nine nuclear plants (8 plants were forced to close in 2011). Siemens recently estimated that the exit from nuclear power could cost German families more than $2 trillion by 2030, roughly two-thirds of the country’s GDP. German newspaper Spiegal reports how these policies are impacting the country’s industries:

Energy prices are rising and the risk of power outages is growing. But the urgently needed expansion of the grid, as well as the development of replacement power plants and renewable energy sources is progressing very slowly. A growing number of economic experts, business executives and union leaders are putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of Merkel’s coalition, which pairs her conservatives with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP). The government, they say, has expedited de-industrialization.

The energy supply is now “the top risk for Germany as a location for business,” says Hans Heinrich Driftmann, president of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK). “One has to be concerned in Germany about the cost of electricity,” warns European Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger. And Bernd Kalwa, a member of the general works council at ThyssenKrupp, says heatedly: “Some 5,000 jobs are in jeopardy within our company alone, because an irresponsible energy policy is being pursued in Düsseldorf and Berlin.”

As President Obama continues to espouse the investments of European countries into renewable energy, his administration would be wise to look at the effect these subsidies have had on businesses and households.

To read more about President Obama's European energy envy, read my commentary "Should We Double Down on Clean Energy?"

Can Environmental Advocacy Organizations be Good Stewards of the Environment?

Posted on February 5, 2012, 6:28pm | Samuel Staley

An interesting drama is playing out in the Mojave Desert where major national environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council among others, are on board with a plan to effectively destroy six-square miles of public lands. The project is a national energy pet project-a solar energy production facility. According to the Los Angeles Times (Feb 5, 2012),

"Even if only a few of the proposed projects are built, hundreds of square miles of wild land will be scraped clear. Several thousand miles of power transmission corridors will be created.

The desert will be scarred well beyond a human life span, and no amount of mitigation will repair it, according to scores of federal and state environmental reviews.

"The scale of impacts that we are facing, collectively across the desert, is phenomenal," said Dennis Schramm, former superintendent at neighboring Mojave National Preserve. "The reality of the Ivanpah project is that what it will look like on the ground is worse than any of the analyses predicted."

The organizations are justifying their action because they care more about climate change than the environment.  But the effectiveness of this project in making a meaningful dent in US greenhouse gas emissions is far from certain. The plant will provide peak power for just 140,000 users. Taxpayers are subsidizing up to 80 percent of the costs for the $2 billion project, according to the LA Times, and energy bills are still going to go up 50 percent if they use it.

The willingness of the national organizations to bargain away real-world, earth-bound enviornmental stewardship for abstract policy objectives such as climate change should be worrying. How much of the environment are they willing to trade off for climate change, particularly since virtually no meaingful metrics exist for judging the effectiveness of this plant in meeting climate change goals which are global in scale? And the vast majority of greenhouse gases that will be released into the atmosphere over the next 50 years will come from rapidly industrializing countries such as China and India, regardless of what the US can accomplish?

Some of these organizations, the Sierra Club in particular, have squelched local chapters interested in challenging the project. Again according to the Los Angeles Times:

"Mainstream environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have been largely mute, having traded the picket line for a seat at the table when development plans were drawn.

"The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the nation's most aggressively litigious environmental groups, has not challenged the Ivanpah project. It signed a confidential agreement not to oppose the project in exchange for concessions for the desert tortoise — mandating that BrightSource buy land elsewhere for conservation.

"Some 24 environmental groups signed statements largely supporting the aims of solar developers. National environmental groups joined BrightSource and other solar companies in a letter sent Dec. 14 to the White House, asking the president to continue a federal renewable-energy subsidy.

The national office of the Sierra Club has had to quash local chapters' opposition to some solar projects, sending out a 42-page directive making it clear that the club's national policy goals superseded the objections of a local group. Animosity bubbled over after a local Southern California chapter was told to refrain from opposing solar projects."

So, with the major groups at the bargaining table with the government, whose watching out for the environment in our own backyards?

Global Warming...Cooling...Or Just Climate Change?

Posted on January 29, 2012, 8:24pm | Samuel Staley

According to new data released without fanfare from the University of East Anglia's (England) Climate Research Center, the Earth is not warming. It hasn't experienced meaningful warming since 1997. In fact, it might be cooling. Apparently, the culprit in the Sun, at least according to one scientist quoted by the Daily Mail (29 January 2012): 

Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.

‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.

He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the  Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand."

So, if the Earth is not warming, and it might be cooling, but we really don't know, what's going on? Apparently, the only thing we really do know is that the Earth is changing. The policy implications are actually pretty straightforward in a climate change world, rather than a warming or cooling world: focus on mitigation and adaptation.

For more on Reason Foundation's work on climate change, check out our studies on transportation, innovation, and other related topics at our climate change page on reason.org.

Climated Gate(s) and the Ethics of Global Warming Science

Posted on December 14, 2011, 3:31pm | Samuel Staley

NCPA environmental policy analyst Sterling Burnett has an interesting and useful blog post over at the National Association of Scholars web site discussing recent attempts by mainstream global warming scholars to intentionally muddy the public debate and even hide data to prevent independent verification. It's worth a read for those (like me) who don't have time to follow the intricacies of the debate and need a quick update and thumbnail summary of the implications.

In addition, Sterling makes this interesting observation about the crucial role skepticism plays in scientific inquiry and how prominent global warming scholars have intentionally politicized science in fundamental ways:

The term skeptic has historically been a badge of honor proudly worn by scientists as indicating their commitment to the idea that in the pursuit of truth, nothing is beyond question, every bit of knowledge is open to improvement and/or refutation as new evidence or better theories emerge. However, in the topsy-turvy field of climate science, “skeptic” is a term of opprobrium and to be labeled a skeptic is akin to being a heretic in the Middle Ages – you may not be literally burned at the stake, but your reputation will be put to flames.

 

U.S. Geological Survey Finds No Link Between Greenhouse Gases and Floods

Posted on October 26, 2011, 10:56am | Adam Peshek

A study released this week by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) fails to find a link between greenhouse gas levels and flooding. E&E reports (subscription required):

That is puzzling because scientists have long anticipated that as greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere rise, so will the magnitude of floods. The logic went like this: As the amount of heat-trapping gases rose, the climate would warm. That warmer air would, in turn, evaporate and absorb more water, leading to more rain and less snow, among other things, and contributing to greater floods.

The ongoing problem with climate change reporting is the lack of understanding how adaptation plays a role in any changes in climate. The reason less Americans die from extreme weather events is not because there are less GHGs in the air than they were a century ago. It is because we found ways to adapt to our surroundings as we became wealthier and more innovative as a society.

Dr. Indur Goklany, author of a recent Reason Foundation study on extreme weather events over the past century, noted that “overall mortality around the world is increasing, while mortality from weather events is decreasing. Despite the intense media coverage of storms and climate change’s prominent role in political debates, humanity is coping far better with extreme weather events than it is with other much more important health and safety problems.”

Julian Morris explains:

“The number of reported extreme weather events is increasing, but the number of deaths and the risk of dying from those events have decreased. Economic development and technological improvements have enabled society to protect against these events and to cope better with them when they do occur.”

The E&E article makes note of this, but breezes by it as an anecdote, not fully grasping its significance:

Far more influential on the sizes of floods than greenhouse gases, the scientists observed, were other human activities such as dam and levee building, shifts in vegetation types, and drainage of soils and wetlands.

Exactly. As humans evolve we learn to adapt to our surroundings to better protect ourselves.

Click here to learn more about Reason's recent work on adaptation to extreme weather.

IG Finds EPA Greenhouse Gas Review Lacked Transparency

Posted on September 28, 2011, 3:45pm | Adam Peshek

In a report released today, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finds that the Agency violated executive peer-review requirements for the scientific assessment used to back their finding that greenhouse gases (GHG) endanger human welfare

The controversial and precedent setting “endangerment finding” was based on what’s called the technical support document (TSD), essentially the legal and scientific catalyst for EPA’s coming regulations of GHGs.

Specifically, Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins Jr. found that EPA violated neutrality rules by including an EPA employee in the panel of experts reviewing the TSD. It’s bad enough that the regulators are tasked with conjuring the evidence needed to expand their regulatory powers. But apparently now they’re tasked with reviewing their own work.

Perhaps even more unsettling is the finding that EPA did not make the results of the review public.

The report states:

EPA had the TSD reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. However, the panel’s findings and EPA’s disposition of the findings were not made available to the public as would be required for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments. Also, this panel did not fully meet the independence requirements for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments because one of the panelists was an EPA employee.

The report is not a review of the underlying science used to create the endangerment finding, only a review of the process involved in its creation.

Senator Inhofe, Ranking Member on the Environment and Public Works Committee and an outspoken critic of EPA’s regulation of GHG, quickly issued a statement asking for a hearing on the subject.  The Natural Resources Defense Council’s David Doniger dismissed the report, asking “what peer-review procedures Senator Inhofe uses before he posts things on his website… There's an absurdity here that deserves calling out.”

So the position is “if you can do it so can we”? 

Other environmentalists have been quick to dismiss the report (this time with substance), arguing that the TSD was not an original scientific assessment and therefore does not need to follow transparency and scientific requirements.  In an interview with E&E (subscription required) a representative from the Union of Concerned Scientists defending the document:

"The key difference here was that they didn't create new science," said Francesca Grifo, a scientist who heads the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "And typically, when you call something a highly influential scientific assessment, you actually added some other data, or used grey literature, or did something that hadn't already been fully reviewed."

"And they didn't in this case. Everything they used had been multiply peer-reviewed," she added.

So let me get this straight:  Once a scientific study has been peer-reviewed it should no longer be subject to review?  Does past research automatically pass muster if applied to new research? Or, in this case, do the findings logically lead to government intervention?  This is what lobbyists do in drafting one-pagers for Hill staffers, not what government regulators do when creating precedent-setting documents with wide ranging implications.  

The  IG responds:

In our opinion, the [technical support document] met the definition of a scientific assessment in that it evaluated a body of scientific knowledge and synthesized multiple factual inputs. While we agree that the primary information EPA relied upon were scientific assessments, these assessments were voluminous and numerous.

This was not merely an advocacy document or even a scientific review, this was the document that is the basis for an entirely new line of regulations. 

Maybe everything in the finding is correct.  Maybe everything Al Gore says is right.  At least this is what we hear constantly – that all scientists agree.  If this is truly the case, environmentalists and those advocating government interference in GHG emissions should go above-and-beyond even the minimum scientific standards to ensure there is no opportunity to cry foul on transparency claims. I won't hold my breath.

Deaths From Hurricanes, Floods, Droughts, and Other Weather Events Are Down 98 Percent Since 1920s

Posted on September 22, 2011, 12:30pm

Despite concerns about global warming and a large increase in the number of reported storms and droughts, the world’s death rate from extreme weather events was lower from 2000 to 2010 than it has been in any decade since 1900, according to a new Reason Foundation study. 

The Reason Foundation report chronicles the number of worldwide deaths caused by extreme weather events between 1900 and 2010 and finds global deaths caused by extreme weather events peaked in the decade running from 1920 to 1929, when there were 241 deaths a year per million people in the world. From 1930 to 1939 there were 208 deaths a year per million people. But from 2000 to 2010 there were just 5.4 deaths a year per million people in the world. That’s a 98 percent decline in the weather-related death rate since the 1920s. Extreme weather events were responsible for just .07% of the world’s deaths between 2000 and 2010.

The extreme weather categories studied in the Reason Foundation report include droughts, floods, wildfires, storms (hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, typhoons, etc.) and extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. 

Droughts were the most deadly extreme weather category between 1900 and 2010, responsible for over 60 percent of extreme weather deaths during that time. The worldwide death rate from droughts peaked in the 1920s when there were 235 deaths a year per million people. Since then, the death rate has fallen by 99.9 percent. The study finds that global food production advancements, such as new crops, improved fertilizer, irrigation, and pesticides, along with society’s better ability to move food and medical supplies, were responsible for reducing the number of deaths in times of severe drought.

Floods were to blame for 30 percent of the deaths during the timeframe studied, making them the second most deadly extreme weather category. The death rate for floods topped out in the 1930s at 204 deaths a year per million people. Deaths from floods have fallen by over 98 percent since then and there was an average of approximately one flood death per year per million people from 2000 to 2010.

Deaths from storms spiked as recently as the 1970s, when there were 10 deaths a year per million people. But the death rate has dropped by 75 percent since then, with storms being blamed for two deaths a year per million people from 2000 to 2010. 

The average number of extreme weather events recorded increased from 2.5 per year in the 1920s to 8.5 in the 1940s to 350 per year for the period 2000-2010. The study notes technological and telecommunication advances made it significantly easier to learn of and respond to weather events.  Broader news coverage and an increased tendency by authorities to declare natural disaster emergencies have also contributed to the large uptick in the number of storms recorded. 

“Overall mortality around the world is increasing, while mortality from weather events is decreasing,” said Dr. Indur Goklany, the author of the Reason Foundation study.  “Despite the intense media coverage of storms and climate change’s prominent role in political debates, humanity is coping far better with extreme weather events than it is with other much more important health and safety problems.”

“The number of reported extreme weather events is increasing, but the number of deaths and the risk of dying from those events have decreased,” said Julian Morris, the study’s project director and vice president of research at Reason Foundation. “Economic development and technological improvements have enabled society to protect against these events and to cope better with them when they do occur.”

Full Report Online

The full study is online here and here (.pdf).

Al Gore's 24 Hours of Climate Change "Reality"

Posted on September 15, 2011, 11:00am | Julian Morris

Last night, Al Gore launched a 24-hour online “reality” show. While we probably won’t see the former vice president engaging in any lewd acts, the show does have something in common with its more lurid reality TV counterparts: name calling and lies.

Gore claims that his, “24 Hours of Reality will focus the world’s attention on the full truth, scope, scale and impact of the climate crisis. To remove the doubt. Reveal the deniers. And catalyse urgency around an issue that affects every one of us.”

Really? Let’s consider the claims made in a trailer for the show:

“What can change in a day? A street can become a river. A mountain can become a mudslide. A forest can become kindling. Across the globe cataclysmic events are occurring with such regularity that it’s being called a ‘new normal’ But there is nothing normal about it. And there’s something else that lies destroyed beneath the rubble: the truth about climate change. Big oil and big coal are spending big money to spread doubt about climate change.”

So, Gore is asserting that (a) extreme weather events are becoming more frequent because of human-induced climate change and (b) this “truth” is being “destroyed” by energy interests who are funding “deniers” to spread “doubt.”

At a Yale University forum on extreme weather and global warming in June, world expert on extreme weather Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. noted, “the data on tornadoes, large-scale river floods (in unaltered river basins), and landfalling hurricanes shows no evidence of trends in the direction of more extreme events.” Well, that seems to be a flat contradiction of Gore’s assertion. And to my knowledge Professor Pielke is no shill for the fossil fuel lobby: the research organisation he works for seems to be largely funded by government grants and he has attacked subsidies to fossil fuels.

Also contrary to Gore’s liturgy of disaster, it turns out that deaths from weather related natural disasters have been falling for decades. The reasons are manifold but include the fact that computer models are now much better able to forecast extreme weather events. Combined with better communications, this means people have longer to prepare for any particular onslaught, be it a hurricane, a flood, or a tornado.
In addition, more efficient food production, combined with better transportation and storage means that droughts are far less likely to lead to starvation. (In spite of a doubling of the global population in the past fifty years, per capita food availability has risen more than a quarter and deaths from droughts are rare. In fact, pretty much the only reason anyone now dies from drought is that they are prevented from accessing food by politicians – as when President Mugabe’s henchmen in Zimbabwe prevented supporters of opposition parties from receiving food aid.)

Millions of other innovations, from air conditioning and central heating to new building materials and better storm-water drains have also reduced death and disease from extreme weather. And in combination technological innovation has resulted in the production of more and better goods of all kinds, which has led to increases in wealth and a reduction in the cost of things that wealth can buy, including safety.
Much of this technological innovation has been made possible by the use of inexpensive carbon based energy. Coal, oil and natural gas have lowered production costs and enabled us to consume goods (cars, fridges, TVs, computers, etc.) that were not even imaginable prior to the development of these cheap forms of energy.

Unfortunately, the use of these energy forms has resulted in the emission of carbon dioxide, which is probably contributing to a gradual warming of the climate. Whether or not this warming is leading to more extreme weather events remains a highly contentious matter. Professor Pielke argues that we do not have enough data to make a connection. Moreover, even the data we have is probably biased: the same communications technologies that have helped reduce death rates from extreme weather events have also ensured that we document a far higher proportion of those events, which at least partly explains why there are now more such events recorded.

But even if warming is leading to more extreme weather events, it is not obvious that cutting emissions of carbon dioxide is an appropriate solution. Many of the technologies we use to reduce the impact of extreme events rely on fossil fuels: heating and air conditioning for example enable us to limit the impact of extreme heat and cold. Any attempt to cut emissions of carbon dioxide will make energy more expensive, which will raise the cost of using heaters and air conditioners. As a result we will be more susceptible to extremes of heat and cold.

Restricting emissions of carbon dioxide will also make production in the US more expensive and less competitive. Since India, China and other low cost producers are unlikely to introduce similar measures, production will shift to those shores. Bottom line: the US economy will suffer and jobs will go. Since wealth generally enables us better to adapt to a wide range of natural disasters, restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions will make us more susceptible to those disasters compared with business as usual.

But Gore is right on one thing: cutting carbon emissions will reduce the value of losses from extreme weather events. That’s because the rapid increase in such losses in recent decades is almost entirely a consequence of increases in wealth, combined with an increasing tendency to locate valuable property in weather-prone areas. Since cutting carbon dioxide emissions would reduce the rate of wealth creation, it will also reduce the value of losses. However, I suspect that even Gore doesn’t think that destroying wealth is a good way to reduce losses from extreme weather events.

A much better way to reduce losses from extreme weather events would be to remove the perverse incentives our government has created that encourage people to locate in areas prone to weather related disasters. Take the National Flood Insurance Program, which bails out property owners when they are flooded, is currently responsible for over $18 billion in federal debt, and effectively encourages people to build on land subject to flooding. It’s difficult to imagine a more counterproductive policy. The NFIP is set to expire September 30^th. Let it.

The government could also remove swathes of unnecessary restrictions on economic activity that inhibit innovation and wealth creation, from environmental regulations to taxes to banking regulations. That way we would all be better able to address threats from weather related natural disasters – and everything else. 

Deregulation of Nuclear Power Saves Money and Reduces Pollution

Posted on August 3, 2011, 2:23pm | Adam Peshek

“Deregulation, Consolidation, and Efficiency: Evidence from U.S. Nuclear Power,” a working paper out of Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas, finds that the deregulation of the nuclear industry in the ‘90s created a 10% increase in efficiency, which led to approximately $2.5 billion in savings annually and a decrease of 40 million tons of carbon emissions in the atmosphere each year.

The efficiencies that resulted from deregulation are impressive. It’s even more impressive when you consider that this was entirely from gains in efficiencies, not increases in the number of plants or transmission lines.

Our results imply a substantial increase in electricity production. In 2009 U.S. nuclear reactors produced 800 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, about 20% of total U.S. electricity generation. We estimate that the increase in electricity production due to deregulation and consolidation exceeds 40 billion kilowatt hours annually. At current average wholesale prices, the value of the increased electricity production is approximately $2.5 billion annually.

Granted, economic improvements associated with deregulation may not impress those who are in favor of regulation. Well how about environmental improvements?

In addition, because the increased electricity production displaces mostly coal‐ and natural‐gas‐ fired power, these gains in efficiency also have substantial implications for the environment, implying an annual decrease of 38 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Using a conservative estimate for the social cost of carbon dioxide ($20 per ton) this is an additional $760 million in benefits annually. To put this into perspective, this is more carbon abatement than was achieved by all the U.S. wind and solar generation combined during the same period. Whereas there are explicit programs directed at promoting low‐carbon energy in the case of wind and solar, this decrease in carbon emissions is noteworthy because deregulation is not usually envisioned as a means for achieving environmental goals.

The study of the nuclear power industry is especially useful for discussions of energy deregulation because, unlike other industries, nuclear power is always used as a “baseload” generation. In other words, they are constantly running and do not respond to fluctuations in demand.

Another reason to study nuclear deregulation is that there is a very clear sample – of the 103 reactors in the U.S., 48 of them were sold by states to independent companies at a very rapid pace during the ‘90s.

Deregulation is certainly not one of the methods environmentalists and enviro-bureaucracies look to when trying to limit greenhouse gases in the U.S.  But, by opening up the industry to competition, states across the country provided incentives for firms to do what companies are created to do: increase efficiency and cut costs to create value for the consumer and increase their own profits.

That is what is seen.

What are often missed by those who favor of regulation are the unseen benefits of the competitive market.  In this case: profit-inspired efficiencies that reduced emissions more than the entire “green” energy industry in the country without a single government subsidy, political battle, or increased cost to the consumer. That’s a policy environmentalist, industries, and politicians should all get behind.

Governments Combat Flood and Environment Problems They Created

Posted on August 2, 2011, 2:37pm | Adam Peshek

The Climate Wire article “Slow Stirrings Among Conservatives on Adaption – Just Don’t Mention Climate Change” (July 28), discusses the growing trend among city planners to tip-toe around the word “global warming” to enact engineering plans to adapt to growing effects of climate change, namely floods and more-powerful hurricanes. 

The story contains the anecdote of a planner in League City,Texas, whose political ingenuity convinces elected city officials to approve “comprehensive plans limiting new development near wetlands and in flood plains that might be threatened in the future” and “it restricts development in places likely to flood.”

For taxpayers, the question is why are people building homes on flood plains and hurricane-prone land to begin with. The answer is simple – it is the direct consequence of government policies, the very government now scrambling to protect us from the policy they helped push.

Since it was established in 1968, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has made more homes susceptible to hurricane and flood destruction.  The program allows property owners in participating communities to purchase insurance protection from the government against losses from flooding. Before the program, there was considerably less development in flood and hurricane prone areas.  Not surprisingly, when the government decided to insure homes that the private sector wouldn’t, development in disaster-prone areas increased.

Residents of League City, the Galveston County town of 83,000 portrayed in the story, have filed over 3,000 NFIP claims worth over $41 million. 

Nationally, the government flood insurance program has paid nearly $39 billion in claims since 1978. As of 2010, the program was $20 billion in the hole and only collecting $2 billion in premiums each year.  That didn’t stop the supposedly fiscally conservative Republican-controlled House from overwhelmingly approving the program (406-22, with basically a portion of the Tea Party caucus voting “no”) in July for an additional five years.

The program not only incentivizes people to build their homes in perpetually disaster-prone areas, it pays them to do it twice.  “Repetitive Loss” homes – those who have been damaged and repaired more than once – currently only make up about one-percent of total homes in the program, yet they draw down 40 percent of the total claims in the program.

The government would be wise to leave housing insurance to the private sector and let those who wish to build a house on a flood plain weigh their costs and consequences of that decision against available options in insurance industry, which doesn’t have the luxury of printing money.

Reducing Automobile Use More Fancy Than Fact

Posted on June 21, 2011, 11:15am | Samuel Staley

Advocates of using public policy to reduce automobile use won't find much solace in a recebt review of more than 69 studies examining the effects of government intervention on a mode choice and travel behavior. The literature review titled "Can We Reduce Car Us, and, If So, How?" by several United Kingdom academics was published in the June 2011 issue of the leading professional journal Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice. Here's part of the abstract:

Sixty-nine reviews were considered and 47 primary evaluations found. These reported 77 intervention evaluations, including measures of car-use reduction. Evaluations of interventions varied widely in the methods they employed and the outcomes measures they reported. It was not possible to synthesise the findings using meta-analysis. Overall, the evidence base was found to be weak. Only 12 of the 77 evaluations were judged to be methodologically strong, and only half of these found that the intervention being evaluated reduced car use. A number of intervention approaches were identified as potentially effective but, given the small number of methodologically strong studies, it is difficult to draw robust conclusions from current evidence. More methodologically sound research is needed in this area.

 

Hybrid Cars are Great, But Conventional Vehicles are Catching Up

Posted on March 14, 2011, 8:27am | Adrian Moore

The headline in the Washington Post almost says it all: "Conventional gas-powered cars starting to match hybrids in fuel efficiency."

 

[W]hen fuel economy on a best-selling car is improved even incrementally, it can have much larger effects on the nation's oil consumption than an alternative technology model that doesn't sell well. Today, hybrid cars still represent only about 3 percent of U.S. car and truck sales. Electric plug-in vehicles from the major automakers just went on sale recently.

"When you take some of the most popular vehicles in the U.S. - say, the Ford F-150 pickup - and improve them by just a few mpg, the effects can add up very quickly," said John DeCicco, a faculty fellow at the University of Michigan's Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute. "Much more so than with a niche car."

 

Better Modeling Leads to Less Global Warming

Posted on January 11, 2011, 1:44pm | Samuel Staley

The uncertainty surrounding the science of global warming and forecasting, IMO, has rarely been adequately recognized. This is particularly troubling since many of the policies enacted at the city, state, and national levels often call for dramatic reductions in Greenhouse gases by 2050 even though the world has not experienced significant warming in more than a decade.

Now, a study published in the Journal of Climate (vol 23, 2010) has apparently found that accounting for cloud formation and coverage in climate forecasts might reduce forecasted increases in global temperatures by as much as 25 percent. Patrick J. Michaels at the Cato Institute has described more fully the implications for public policy and climate science, but I think the summary produced by the National Center for Policy Analysis does a good job of distilling the contents in its Daily Policy Digest (January 11, 2011):

"A newer, more sophisticated climate model has lost more than 25 percent of its predicted warming.  The change resulted from a more realistic simulation of the way clouds work, resulting in a major reduction in the model's "climate sensitivity," which is the amount of warming predicted for a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over what it was prior to the industrial revolution, says Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute.

"And to what do we owe this large decline in the modeled climate sensitivity?  According to a new paper by Masahiro Watanabe and colleagues in the current issue of the Journal of Climate:

• Avastly improved handling of cloud processes involving "a prognostic treatment for the cloud water and ice mixing ratio, as well as the cloud fraction, considering both warm and cold rain processes."
• In fact, the improved cloud scheme -- which produces clouds that compare more favorably with satellite observations -- projects that under a warming climate low altitude clouds become a negative feedback rather than acting as positive feedback, as the old version of the model projected.
• Instead of enhancing the carbon dioxide-induced warming, low clouds are now projected to retard it.

"Is the new model perfect?  Certainly not.  But is it better than the old one?  It seems quite likely.  And the net result of the model improvements is that the climate sensitivity, and therefore the warming projections (and resultant impacts), have been significantly lowered.  Much of this lowering comes as the handling of cloud processes -- still among the most uncertain of climate processes -- is improved upon.  No doubt such improvements will continue into the future as both our scientific understanding and our computational abilities increase, says Michaels.

Source:  Patrick J. Michaels, "Better Model, Less Warming," Cato-at-Liberty.org, January 6, 2011.

 

California's Prop 23 Offers Voters Choice: Green Lobby or Economic Activity

Posted on November 1, 2010, 4:29pm | Adam Summers

California's Proposition 23, to be decided by voters in tomorrow's election, has to do with environmental regulations, but it is the state's economic climate and prospects for recovery on which the measure could end up having the greatest impact. Prop 23 would suspend AB 32, a bill passed by the legislature four years ago also known as the "California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006," until the state's unemployment rate drops to 5.5% or less for four consecutive quarters. (As of last month, California's unemployment rate was 12.4%–significantly above the national average of 9.6%–and it has not been as low as 5.5% since September 2007.) California already had the strictest environmental regulations in the nation before AB 32 was passed, and all those regulations would remain in effect.

AB 32 requires that state greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by the year 2020, effectively imposing a significant energy tax on consumers while delivering negligible effects on the environment. As the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office noted in its analysis included in the Official Voter Information Guide, economic studies have concluded that AB 32 will result in a sizable hit to California's economy, as "such things as more expensive energy, new investment requirements, and costs of regulatory compliance combine to increase the costs of producing materials, goods, and services that consumers and businesses buy."

The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank based in Chicago, has put together a plethora of excellent research and commentary about Prop 23/AB 32 and climate change science. Below is a summary of some of Heartland's latest material on the issue.

Tomorrow, Californians will vote on Proposition 23, a ballot measure that would temporarily suspend costly energy regulations until the state's economy recovers.

We've sent you several emails over the past week about this important vote and sincerely appreciate the active interest you've taken in this issue.

We have more to share with you today. Below, we summarize new research on the economic effects of Prop 23 by analyst Chi Chow and colleagues at Macquarie Research; highlight recent comments by Silicon Valley's T.J. Rodgers, founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor; and reprint in its entirety an oped by Heartland policy advisor Wendell Cox.

For more information about Prop 23 and AB 32, visit CaliforniaProp23.com. To learn more about the science, economics, and politics of the global warming issue, visit Global Warming Facts and Environment & Climate News.

To talk to a Heartland Institute scholar about Prop 23, email Communications Director Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org, or call 312/377-4000.

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Macquarie Research: NO vote on Prop 23 could hurt California economy, consumers

Analyst Chi Chow and colleagues at Macquarie Research warn of potential long-term negative impacts from a NO vote on Prop 23.

"A ‘no' vote on Prop 23 ... could very well result in long-term negative impacts not only for refiners but potentially also the California economy itself," they write. "We believe a defeat of Prop 23 would result in higher refiner compliance costs to meet both emissions and low carbon fuel regulations, which would undoubtedly be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for gasoline and diesel. We suspect US$5.00/gal retail gasoline prices could very well become reality in California. In turn, the implicit fuels tax would hurt consumers, raise the cost of doing business in the state and potentially stall any rebound in the California economy with resulting expected job losses." (emphasis added)

Read the Macquarie Research report on Prop 23.

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T.J. Rodgers: YES vote on Prop 23 would save California jobs, stimulate economy

Writing in The Wall Street Journal on October 29, Silicon Valley entrepreneur T.J. Rodgers says Californians could protect a million or so jobs by voting YES on Prop 23, thereby suspending the state's self-imposed carbon dioxide limits.

"Californians have an opportunity to vote for Proposition 23, which will prevent implementation of the California law known as AB32. AB32 is yet another tax, this one on carbon dioxide, the substance that we exhale about 50,000 times per day, that comes from our cars when we drive to work, and from our Silicon Valley plants as we use power for our computers and air-conditioning."

"By supporting Prop. 23," Rodgers writes, "Californians can prevent another job-killing tax."

Read "Prop 23 and the Green Jobs Myth" by T.J. Rodgers.

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California Greenhouse Gas Emission Policy: Strutting to Nowhere
By Wendell Cox

California is in real trouble. Its governments, from the state to many local governments, have refused to deal with the rapidly deteriorating fiscal situation. California's regulatory burden is routinely rated as among the worst or even the worst in the nation.

And things are likely to get even worse. An already-weak economy could be further burdened by expanding regulations under California's climate change law (AB 32). Voters will have an opportunity on November 2 to suspend that law until the state's seriously high unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent.

It is no wonder that businesses are leaving or avoiding expansion within California. Business relocation expert Joseph Vranich (http://thebusinessrelocationcoach.blogspot.com/) reports there have been at least 158 "disinvestment" events, in which California firms have either left the state or expanded their operations elsewhere, in 2010. After only nine months, this is more than triple the entire 2009 pace. California's leading export may well be businesses and the jobs they take with them.

People are leaving, too. Between 2000 and 2009, a net 1.5 million people moved from California to other parts of the nation. This is as many people as live in Alameda County. It nearly equals the population of Idaho, one of the states to which Californians are fleeing.

The latest IRS data indicate that from 2000 to 2008, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas attracted the most people from California. But who would have thought the day would come that more people would move to Kansas, South Dakota or West Virginia from California than moved here? Yet that is the reality. In fact, California lost domestic migrants to 39 states and the District of Columbia, while gaining domestic migrants from only 10 states.

When people leave, they take their economic activity with them. Based upon IRS data, it is estimated that annual lost economic activity (from 2000) is more than $40 billion. This is a substantial amount, representing more than 2 percent of the state's gross domestic product. It is 1.5 times the gross domestic product of the Fresno metropolitan area, with its nearly 1,000,000 people. Indeed, the entire agriculture industry in California is one-third smaller than the annual lost economic activity from outward domestic migration.

This may be just the beginning. A report by economist Benjamin Zycher, formerly senior staff economist for the president's Council of Economic Advisors, indicates the climate change law could reduce employment by 1.3 million jobs in California by 2020. With their related economic activity, this could easily result in a further loss of from $100 billion to $150 billion in California's 2020 gross domestic product compared to the growth that could occur if Proposition 23 passes. This could have the same effect as exporting the entire economy of the San Jose metropolitan area to other states and nations.

With these dismal prospects, it might be thought that the state of California would be dedicated to resolute action not only to keep, but to start attracting both jobs and people. But the contrary is true. The climate change law, defended by much of the state's political establishment, could amplify the job destruction and business disinvestments that already have been intensified by California's taxation and over-regulation.

It also might be thought the state is seeking to reduce the cost of living, which according to a U.S. Department of Commerce report was third-highest in the nation in 2006 and higher than all but one of the states attracting people from California. Again, the opposite is true. The state's climate change law will raise the price of energy. The consequences will not be seen only on household utility bills. The price increases would extend to many products and services, because their production requires energy. Households that must spend more on energy will have less to spend on other needs, and the standard of living can be expected to suffer.

Those opposed to Proposition 23 claim California will prosper from the creation of "green jobs." But what is the incentive for investors to create green jobs (or any other jobs) in the worst business climate in the world? Why would California investors gamble their own billions to create a large number of green jobs in the state, when the potential for profits is so much greater in Austin, Sioux Falls, Bangalore, or Shenzhen?

A decade from now, citizens of a much-less-competitive California could wake up to the reality that has dawned in Spain, where the government's green jobs initiative was a net job-destroyer.

It is not as though California's tough greenhouse gas emissions standards will "save the planet." Not even close. China alone can be expected to increase its greenhouse gas emissions each year by 12 times California's target reduction.

The purpose of the AB 32 job-killing initiative seems to be nothing more than to set an example. But in a free country and a globalized world, neither people nor businesses must willingly submit to being the guinea pigs of social engineering. All of this is likely to erode California's competitiveness even further and to intensify the exodus of employers, jobs, and people.

Of course, California will always have good weather, and that appeals to many. But good weather cannot nullify the effects of policies that drive away people and jobs. California's catwalk-strutting could produce an even-more stuttering economy, while contributing virtually nothing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Proposition 23 could begin to restore economic opportunity to the state, and none too soon.

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Wendell Cox (wcox@heartland.org), a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute, is a native of Los Angeles and was appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. He is principal of Demographia, a St. Louis-based international public policy consultancy, and also serves as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris. He has a BA in government from California State University, Los Angeles and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

Electric Car Takes the Carbon Out of Driving

Posted on October 31, 2010, 11:23am | Samuel Staley

For anyone hoping that the crusade against global warming, the pursuit of universal reductions in carbon emissions, and faltering human ingenuity would finally send automobiles to the junkyards of fossil-fuel history, recent successes with electric cars in Germany may have dealt a fatal blow to their efforts. A startup German company has produced a four-door sedan (which full trunk space) capable of driving nearly 400 miles on one charge. Moreover, the batteries are fully recharged in just six minutes.

According to the web site Space Mart:

"An electric car developed by a German company Tuesday set what organizers said is a world record when it drove 375 miles without recharging its battery.

"Mirko Hannemann, 27, drove the yellow and purple all-electric Audi A2 in seven hours from Munich to Berlin, where he arrived Tuesday morning.

"German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle, who jumped inside for a quick drive in the courtyard of his ministry, called Hannemann's trip a technological quantum leap.

"No other electric car has gone to such a distance," he said.

"Japanese scientists drove a 1-person electric car more than 600 miles around a track, but that was at 25 miles per hour and with a vehicle that was basically all battery.

 

Some Cities Will Thrive in a Warmer Climate

Posted on October 5, 2010, 2:29pm | Samuel Staley

UCLA economist Matthew Kahn has a new book out that examines the economic implications for cities if global warming forecasts are accurate. Climatopolis: How Our Citie Will Thrive in the Hotter Future is the first attempt I know of that provides a readable and accessible analysis of how cities might fare if temperatures continue to rise.

Not surprisingly, some will do well and others will not. Cities like Los Angeles and New York will face significant challenges that will effect their economic competitiveness, but for different reasons: Los Angeless will get much hotter and face water shortages while Manhattan will face severe flooding. The good news is that they will likely have the ability to adapt. The bad news (for New York, Los Angeles, and other climate warming challenged cities) is that cities like Salt Lake City and Fargo (ND) are likely to perform much better simply because of their geography.

Thus, global warming will challenge the competitiveness ranking of cities. How they adapt and cope to the warmer climate will determine their ability to remain healthy and vital.

Climate skeptics might be dismayed by Kahn's acceptance of the global warming mantra, but alarmists will be equally unhappy because he recognizes that global warming is a mixed bag. Some cities will lose and others will win. Moreover, Kahn's book is firmly grounded in the reality that we are highly unlikely to reduce carbon emissions to the level many climate scientistis say is necessay to stablize world temperatures (if you put stock in these models). So, this is a refreshingly pragmatic view of cities and their future if temperatures continue to rise.

Top 20 California Bills to Veto List Released

Posted on September 16, 2010, 1:12pm | Adam Summers

California State Senator Mimi Walters (R-Laguna Niguel), Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine), and FlashReport publisher Jon Fleischman have compiled a list of the top 20 bills that are most deserving of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto. While the state is grappling with yet another staggering deficit of $19 billion, and most lawmakers appear to be in no hurry to plug the gap and produce a budget that is already two and a half months late, many in the legislature have nonetheless found the time to pass a number of harmful, ill-advised, and just plain frivolous bills. As Walters, DeVore, and Fleischman note,

When we go through hundreds and hundreds of bills to find the ones that we consider to be the most egregious, harmful or inappropriate, is our hope and expectation that a Republican Governor would veto all of them, frankly.  Remember, we're talking about the worst bills.  If the Governor signs any of the bills listed below, it is bad news for the people of California...  This is the fifth and final time we will be publishing this column during Governor Schwarzenegger's tenure...  He's hoping that the last go around we see him use his veto pen twenty times!

Below are a few highlights from the list.

Health Care

SB 900 (Alquist) and AB 1602 (John Perez) – (nearly identical to SB 900) – Prematurely enacts Obamacare provisions with overly broad and expansive governance and guidelines without oversight for the state health benefit exchange, which could lead to unnecessary cost increases and limited choice for employers.

AB 1825 (De La Torre) – Requires all individual health insurance plans to include maternity care – even those for men.  A Republican analysis estimates that this will cause nearly 10,000 Californians to lose coverage due to increased cost.

Nanny State

SB 880 (Yee) – Requires skiers/snowboarders under the age of 18 to wear an approved helmet and imposes a $25 fine for failure to do so.  Who will write the tickets?  For instance, do we really want or expect the Mammoth Lakes Police Department to assign officers to the slopes to enforce this law?

Taxes & Fees

AB 2032 (Davis) – From the Department of Redundancy Department—Requires underage actors, artists and other entertainers to pay a new fee, which the agency collecting the fee states is required to defray the costs of collecting the fee.

AB 2398 (John Perez), aka the “Carpet Product Stewardship Act,” imposes a $0.05 per square yard tax on carpets sold in California through 2013 (after which, the cost will likely climb) to fund a carpet recycling program.  Interestingly, California’s biggest carpet recycling company, Los Angeles Fiber Co., is in the district of the bill’s sponsor, Assembly Speaker Perez.
 
"Global Warming"

AB 1405 (De Leon) – Directs 10% of the fees generated by AB 32, estimated at nearly $1.3 billion, to an unaccountable bureaucracy with the intention being that the spending be directed at areas impacted by climate change.  Given that there is no adverse health impact to CO2 emissions, this bill is simply yet another attempt to take money from one group and give it to another under the guise of government power.

Anti-Business and Jobs

SB 933 (Oropeza) – Will eliminate thousands of Californian jobs by vastly increasing costs to small businesses for debit card transactions. The bill prohibits retailers from collecting fees for debit transactions, despite the fact that these cost businesses much higher transaction fees than credit cards.

SB 1272 (Wolk) – Creates a seven-year sunset for all future tax incentives for employers in California, as well as various other onerous requirements, leading to more uncertainty in the tax code which discourages investment in California.

Frivolous Spending and Lawsuits

AB 424 (Torres) – This bill spends nearly $4 million over the next three years to educate the public on the uses of the 911 system.

See the full list here.

Environmental Activist Groups Get Thumped

Posted on August 30, 2010, 4:21pm | Adrian Moore

The Washington Post dissects the beating environmental activists took on climate change legislation and the subsequent flailing.

Most Americans want a better environment. Alas, they don't look as closely as they should at the government imposed "solutions" proffered by environmental activists. But they clearly do recognize there there are significant costs to those proposals, and during a major economic downturn were not willing to abide the job losses that would come with proposed climate change legislation.

Why VMT Reduction Should Not Be A Climate Change Goal

Posted on August 23, 2010, 7:08am | Samuel Staley

Enivronmentalists have long argued that reducing vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, should be a core goal on climate change policy. The idea is that if we reduce the use of our cars, less gas will be consumed, and carbon dioxide emissions would fall. Adrian Moore, Bob Poole and I challenge these assertions in a new article in the academic journal Transportation Research A: Policy and Practice (October 2010, Vol. 44). Here's the abstract:

The Role of VMT Reduction in Meeting Climate Change Policy Goals

U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Down as White House Negotiates Caps

Posted on July 21, 2010, 1:47pm | Samuel Staley

One of the least publicized facts about domestic greenhouse gas emissions is that they have been falling in the U.S. for years. Now a study from the Netherlands Environmental Asessment Agency confirms this trend. As Wendell Cox notes in his report on newgeography.com:

"Per capita GHG emissions fell 16% in the United States from 2000 to 2009. This is half again as large as the 11% reduction in the highest income portion of the European Union (EU-15). Among EU-15 nations for which data was provided, per capita GHG emissions were down 14% in the United Kingdom, 12% in France and Italy, and 11% in Germany. Spain, where economic reality is forcing a reduction in support for its highly touted "green" energy program, reduced per capita GHG emissions by little more than one-third the US rate, at 6%. The Netherlands achieved a 3% reduction."

Of course, some of the issue here is scale: the U.S. consumes a huge amount of GHGs. But that makes the rate of decline all the more impressive. And the down economy helped as well. But, the U.S. saw a leveling off and slight decline in GHG's even before the recession.

On a global level, the NEAA notes that no improvement has been made in worldwide emissions because India and China have continued to grow, become wealthier, and consume larger quantities of just about everything (including oil and coal). According to the NEAA press release:

"Despite the continued economic crisis, global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, have remained constant in 2009, as strong increases in CO2 emissions from fast-growing developing countries, such as China and India, have completely nullified CO2 emission reductions in the industrialised world."

And the U.S. didn't even need the Kyoto Protocol to achieve these reductions.

That hasn't swayed the White House. Climate Czar Carol Browner was deep in negotiations with domestic utility representatives to craft a last minute deal that would save cap and trade legislation this year. While legislation may seem dead for now, don't count it out yet.

 

 

Montgomery County Ends Car Sharing Program

Posted on June 28, 2010, 11:35am | Samuel Staley

Montgomery County, Maryland established a car-sharing program for county employees in the hopes that it could reduce its carbon footprint and get its employees out of their cars. It didn't work, according to the Washington Examiner, and the program was closed down in April 2010.

According to the Examiner:

Under the program, the county paid $1,100 a month per car to Enterprise Rent-a-Car for hybrid vehicles, available for county employees to check out by the hour.

But each of the 30 cars rented by the county was used less than an hour per month by employees during the initial months of the program, making the per hour rate of using each vehicle about $1,300.

The county's goal was to reduce its carbon footprint and stock of cars.

Records obtained by The Washington Examiner, however,show the county phased out the program in recent months.

By the time the program was abandoned, the county was paying for only seven cars, and usage had started to pick up. Between January and late April, the county paid $33,954.32 for about 1,600 hours of car usage, or $21 an hour.

Even though usage had picked up, the program was too expensive to justify continuing it. At least the county recognized the error of its ways.

VMT Wrong Metric for Climate Change

Posted on May 5, 2010, 8:07am | Samuel Staley

I've spent the last several days at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America's 20th annual conference in Houston, and today I was on a panel on transportation and climate change with Deron Lovaas (Natural Resources Defense Council), Reid Ewing (University of Maryland), Wendell Cox (demographia.com) and Dick Mudge (Delcan Corp).

The U.S. Department of Transportation has made environmental sustainability one of its key strategic planning goals, and much of the talk was on reducing vehicle miles traveled, or VMT. But is this an appropriate metric? I don't think so.

The first slide in my powerpoint noted that climate change policy was really about reducing greenhouse gases, the most prominent of which is carbon dioxide. This has nothing to do (directly) with travel. It's not a big leap, for example, to think of someone conducting most of his or her travel in an electric car powered by hydroelectric or nuclear power, two carbon-free sources of energy.

The solution to climate change, interpreted as reducing greenhouse gases, is to stop burning fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels, mainly oil and coal, generate carbon dioxide. So, its not the travel that is the problem; it's the fuel we use to generate the energy needed to propel a vehicle from point A to point B. Thus, VMT is a very poor metric for evaluating progress toward climate goals.

The focus on VMT as a climate change strategy is actually quite telling. VMT reduction is a planning metric, not a climate change metric. VMT reduction is really just another way of attacking urban sprawl and low density housing.

That won't help reduce carbon dioxide production, however. The only solution to that is to stop using fossil fuels. That, in the end, requires a technical solution, not necessarily (or even primarily) behavioral change.

VMT Reduction Is the Wrong Goal for Transportation Policy

Posted on April 19, 2010, 7:50am | Samuel Staley

One of the leading academic transportation policy journals, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, invited Adrian Moore, Sam Staley, and Bob Poole to write an essay for a symposium on vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) reduction as a policy goal in battling climate change. Our essay, titled "The Role of VMT Reduction in Meeting Climate Change Policy Goals" is now available on-line; here is the abstract:

Abstract

This article evaluates the case for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction as a core policy goal for reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs), concluding the economic impacts and social consequences would be too severe given the modest potential environmental benefits. Attempts to reduce VMT typically rely on very blunt policy instruments, such as increasing urban densities, and run the risk of reducing mobility, reducing access to jobs, and narrowing the range of housing choice. VMT reduction, in fact, is an inherently blunt policy instrument because it relies almost exclusively on changing human behavior and settlement patterns to increase transit use and reduce automobile travel rather than directly target GHGs. It also uses long-term strategies with highly uncertain effects on GHGs based on current research. Not surprisingly, VMT reduction strategies often rank among the most costly and least efficient options. In contrast, less intrusive policy approaches such as improved fuel efficiency and traffic signal optimization are more likely to directly reduce GHGs than behavioral approaches such as increasing urban densities to promote higher public transit usage. As a general principle, policymakers should begin addressing policy concerns using the least intrusive and costly approaches first. Climate change policy should focus on directly targeting greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., through a carbon tax) rather than using the blunt instrument of VMT reduction to preserve the economic and social benefits of mobility in modern, service-based economies. Targeted responses are also more cost effective, implying that the social welfare costs of climate change policy will be smaller than using broad-brushed approaches that directly attempt to influence living patterns and travel behavior.