A free-market energy blog

As projections of catastrophic climate changes are being beaten down by the far less than catastrophic actual climate response, other calamities that may result from our untoward use of fossil fuels are being offered up for our consideration. Besides the well-worn pitfalls of our failure to achieve energy independence, or to be the first to grasp green technologies, a new problem is being worked into the mix—ocean acidification.

Ocean acidification. Sounds bad doesn’t it. Much worse than say, “the oceans are becoming less basic” which is a more accurate, but less worrisome-sounding description. In either case, it is used to describe the situation in which the oceans absorb an increasing amount of carbon dioxide as the atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 increases. The dissolution of CO2 in the oceans has the net effect of increasing the hydrogen ion concentration which drives the ocean’s pH lower. The pH of the global oceans averages about 8.1 so it is considered a base rather than an acid (acids have pH values less than 7.0) and has perhaps dropped by 0.1pH units (a logarithmic scale) since the Industrial Revolution.

The reason we are being told that this is bad, is that it potentially disrupts some ocean ecosystems, primarily coral reefs and other calcifying organisms. The idea is that a lower pH interferes with the production of shells and/or causes the shells of some organisms to dissolve—leading to thinner, weaker defenses and other detrimental effects increasing the vulnerability of these organisms and jeopardizing the livelihood of other organisms that depend on them leading to a downward spiral of ever-increasing breadth.

Eager to bring this to the attention of the general public and shore up the public’s waning concerns about global warming (and rally them behind anti-greenhouse gas legislation), the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) produced a 21-minute movie titled “Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification” narrated by Sigourney Weaver. Here is taste of what is inside:

Carbon dioxide pollution is transforming the chemistry of the oceans, rapidly making the water more acidic. In decades, rising ocean acidity may challenge life on a scale that has not occurred for tens of millions of years. So we confront an urgent choice, to move beyond fossil fuels or to risk turning the ocean into a sea of weeds.

Scary scenario. But as with most good horror movies, the real world proves to be a much more benign locale. [Read more →]

A recent NYT article discussed a proposal by economist Ross McKitrick to tie CO2 taxes to global temperature increases. McKitrick’s overall aim is to offer a compromise that, he argues, should satisfy those who think the government needs to take drastic action and those who think carbon emissions pose no serious long-term threat. Although McKitrick’s idea is clever, it has theoretical difficulties and (in my opinion) would certainly not work in practice.

McKitrick’s Proposal to Tie CO2 Taxes to Temperature

The NYT story does a good job summarizing the idea:

[McKitrick] suggests imposing financial penalties on carbon emissions that would be set according to the temperature in the earth’s atmosphere. The penalties could start off small enough to be politically palatable to skeptical voters.

If the skeptics are right and the earth isn’t warming, then the penalties for burning carbon would stay small or maybe even disappear. But if the climate modelers and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are correct about the atmosphere heating up, then the penalties would quickly, and automatically, rise.…

Specifically, [McKitrick] proposes tying carbon penalties to the temperature of the lowest layer of the atmosphere (called the troposphere, which extends from the surface of the earth to a height of about 10 miles). He suggests using the readings near the equator because climate models forecast pronounced warming there.…

The carbon tax might start off at a rate that would raise the cost of a gallon of gasoline by a nickel — or, if there were political will, perhaps 10 or 15 cents. Those numbers are all too low to satisfy environmentalists worried about climate change. [Read more →]

The times are changing in the wake of Climategate. And more is to come as the polluted science embedded in the email exchanges gets reviewed by talented amateurs and pros alike on the blogosphere (see Climate Audit,  Roger Pielke Jr., and WattsUpWithThat, in particular).

Given time, the rethink will go mainstream. Scientists are truth seekers at heart, but an entrenched mainstream of climate scientists–so many of them friends and political allies–will need to be nudged out of their denialism.

Old voices are challenging their ‘mainstream’ colleagues, and new voices are coming forth. I have seen this clearly here in Houston (examples below), and I expect it is happening elsewhere.

Consider what Andy Revkin, the recently retired climate-change science writer at the New York Times, told the public editor at the Times regarding Climategate: “Our coverage, looked at in toto, has never bought the catastrophe conclusion and always aimed to examine the potential for both overstatement and understatement.”

Sounds like the Times will report both sides of the issue now, rather than just trumpet alarmism as it was prone to do in the past (remember William K. Stevens?). Joe Romm at Climate Progress (Center for American Progress) is furious at this development, but just maybe over-the-top Joe has himself to blame for getting Revkin and the like to want to report on both sides more than ever before. And Romm himself is now considered damaged goods by the Left, thanks to the four-part expose by the Breakthrough Institute.

Climategate, in short, is making quite a difference. But much more courage is needed.

Dr. Michelle Foss (University of Texas at Austin)

Consider Michelle Michot Foss, an internationally respected energy economist with the University of Texas at Austin who is past president of both the U.S. Association for Energy Economics (2001) and the International Association for Energy Economics (2003). Her December 8th letter to the New York Times read: [Read more →]

 [Editor Note: This piece originally appeared in the Calgary Herald on December 28th. It should be noted that a new website is devoted to Climategate.]

Responses to “Climategate”–the leaked e-mails from Britain’s University of East Anglia and its Climatic Research Unit — remind me of the line “Are your feet wet? Can you see the pyramids? That’s because you’re in denial.”

Climate catastrophists like Al Gore and the UN’s Rajendra Pachauri are downplaying Climategate: it’s only a few intemperate scientists; there’s no real evidence of wrongdoing; now let’s persecute the whistleblower. In Calgary, the latest fellow trying to use the Monty Python “nothing to see here, move along” routine is David Mayne Reid, who penned a column last week denying the importance of Climategate.

Unfortunately for Professor Reid, old saws won’t work in the Internet age: Climategate has blazed across the Internet, blogosphere, and social networking sites. Even environmentalist and writer George Monbiot has recognized that the public’s perception of climate science will be damaged extensively, calling for one of the Climategate ringleaders to resign.

What’s catastrophic about Climategate is that it reveals a science as broken as Michael Mann’s hockey stick, which despite Reid’s protestations, has been shown to be a misleading chart that erases a 400-year stretch of warm temperatures (called the Medieval Warm Period), and a more recent little ice-age that ended in the mid-1800s. No amount of hand-waving will restore the credibility of climate science while holding onto rubbish like that.

Climategate reveals skulduggery the general public can understand: that a tightly-linked clique of scientists were behaving as crusaders. Their letters reveal they were working in what they repeatedly labeled a “cause” to promote a political agenda.

That’s not science, that’s a crusade. [Read more →]

Best of MasterResource 2009: This post originally appeared on September 5th.

Julian Simon (1932–98) is an inspiration to those of us here at MasterResource and, indeed, the whole capitalist movement. Indeed, it was he who characterized energy as the master resource and human ingenuity as the ultimate resource.

In honor of Simon, I have reproduced some quotations from his works and invite readers to add their favorite in the comment section.

“The world’s problem is not too many people, but a lack of political and economic freedom.”

- Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 11.

“There is only one important resource which has shown a trend of increasing scarcity rather than increasing abundance. That resource is the most important of all—human beings. . . . [An] increase in the price of peoples’ services is a clear indication that people are becoming more scarce even though there are more of us.”

- Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 581.

“Human beings create more than they destroy.”

- Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 580.

“Progress toward a more abundant material life does not come like manna from heaven. . . . My message certainly is not one of complacency. In this I agree with the doomsayers: our world needs the best efforts of all humanity to improve our lot.”

- Julian Simon, “Introduction,” in Simon, ed., The State of Humanity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995), p. 27. [Read more →]

[Editor note: A previous iteration of this post was published on January 14th. Given the inaction of the Obama Administration on offshore drilling in the last year, part of a pervasive strategy to discourage carbon-based energy production and usage, this post, this question needs to be raised anew.]

From time to time, John Holdren has acknowledged that plentiful, affordable, reliable energy is vital to human well being. Indeed, there is no going back to an energy-poor world. (Remember: caveman energy was 100% renewable.)

America–and the world–need more carbon-based energy, not less. Wind and solar are inferior energies compared to the real thing that consumers choose and want more of–oil, gas, and coal.

Holdren on the Importance of Energy

When Holdren or Obama advocates policies that risk making energy artificially scarce or less reliable, these words can be used to argue for nonregulatory approaches to energy policy:

“Virtually all of the benefits that now seem necessary to the ‘American way’ have required vast amounts of energy. Energy, in short, has been our ultimate raw material, for our commitment to economic growth has also been a commitment to the use of steadily increasing amounts of energy necessary to the production of goods and services.”

   -  John Holdren and Philip Herrera, Energy (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1971), p. 10.

“When energy is scarce or expensive, people can suffer material deprivation and economic hardship.”

    -  John Holdren, “Population and the Energy Problem,” Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Spring 1991, p. 231.

“Energy is an indispensable ingredient of material prosperity. . . . Where and when energy is in short supply or too expensive, people suffer from lack of direct energy services (such as cooking, heating, lighting, and transport) and from inflation, unemployment, and reduced economic output.”

    -  John Holdren, Population and the Energy Problem,” Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Spring 1991, p. 232.

“Supplying energy to the economy contributes to the production of a stream of economic goods and services generally supportive of well-being.” [Read more →]

“The winds, turning more mills than ever before, pump water, grind grain, churn, and do a score of little tasks for a surviving domestic industry; but they list not to blow with enough regularity or violence to keep wheels spinning and mills going.”

- Walton Hamilton and Helen Wright, The Case of Bituminous Coal (New York: Institute of Economics/Macmillan, 1926), p. 3.

William Stanley Jevons’s The Coal Question (1865), the book that founded mineral economics, got it right on the limits of renewables for the machine age and the godsend of coal as a superabundant utilitarian energy source.

Previous posts at MasterResource have summarized Jevons’s 19th century wisdom on the primacy of coal (carbon-based energy); the limits of windpower; the limits of hydropower, biomass, and geothermal; and the paradox of energy efficiency.

Obama energy policy–and all of his smartest-guys-in-the-room energy advisors–would benefit from the insights contained in this 144-year-old book.

But Jevons was too pessimistic on the future of coal and petroleum, as detailed in chapter 7 of my book Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy. And Jevons scarcely knew about the other foundational fuel of the carbon-based energy age: natural gas.

The Case of Bituminous Coal (Hamilton and Wright)

The 1926 book published by the Institute of Economics by Macmillan, The Case of Bituminous Coal, by Walton Hamilton and Helen Wright, offers an interesting update of the Jevons worldview of energy. Like Jevons, they got it right on the limitations of renewables and primacy of fossil fuels, but they got it wrong on a coming depletion of oil and gas in particular.

For the record, here is an excerpt from pages 2–5 of the book: [Read more →]

Best of MasterResource: 2009
This post orginally appeared (with comments)
on March 4th

The disadvantage of windpower as a primary energy source has been long recognized. This 1838 textbook described the competitive situation of wind as follows:

 William Stanley Jevons also detailed the problems of windpower in his 1865 classic, The Coal Question, [Read more →]

Master Resource turned one year old on December 26th. We have gone from a few hundred daily views to more than a thousand per day on average, and the quality and variety of our energy-related fare continues to improve.

Of the 4,100 ‘green blogs’ listed by Technorati, MasterResource consistently ranks in the top 50 and has broken into the top twenty. MasterResource is the top free-market energy blog with an All-Star list of nine principals and distinguished guest bloggers, including Robert Bryce, Indur Goklany, Mary Hutzler, Jim Manzi, Randall O’Toole, and Vaclav Smil.

Suffice it to say that we have exceeded expectations, and 2010 should see continued high quality and expanded reach and influence. We hope to increase our international presence and invite new voices into the energy and energy-related climate debates.

Worldview

MasterResource has documented the superior intellectual and practical case for free energy markets, which rests on these foundations:

1. Energy, the master resource, is indispensable for modern society. Abundance, affordability, and reliability are necessary for the developed world to advance and paramount for the developing world to develop and prosper.
2. The master resource depends on the ultimate resource of human ingenuity, which thrives under conditions of economic and political freedom. [Read more →]

Matthew Curtin’s Heard on the Street in the December 22nd Wall Street Journal, Green Investments Are Being Clouded by Copenhagen, caught my eye. Copenhagen not so much failed as energy reality won. The 19th century British economist W. S. Jevons would have smiled as neo-Malthusian politics fell victim to old fashioned consumerism, economic growth, free trade, and energy economics 101.

Copenhagen also brings into review the risky political capitalism model where profit-making is tied to special political favor rather than underlying consumer demand. Enron’s core business model was tied to rent-seeking, part of the problems that brought down the company in spectacular fashion.

Here is what Mr. Curtin wrote:

The Copenhagen climate summit will do little to spur further investment in environmental technologies.

That is hardly surprising given the fundamental flaw at the heart of the process: Negotiations to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions were premised on how much of the gas nations produce, rather than what they consume.

Industrializing countries feared the emissions curbs being demanded of them were a protectionist ruse by the developed world. One country’s production cuts, if achieved by reducing local CO2 emissions by relying on imports, is another country’s production increase, with no gain for the world’s climate.

The nonbinding accord cooked up by the world’s biggest industrial nations looks like the lowest common denominator you would expect from countries skeptical of each others’ motives and increasingly mistrustful of the science that predicts global warming.

For investors and business leaders, there is no extra clarity on an international regulatory framework that might help them predict the cost of CO2. [Read more →]