Integrated Man

Dueling Dogmas - Clim-Ergy

Two different agendas continue to evolve, but with increasing and disturbing convergence: Climate and Energy, which I have previously dubbed: Clim-Ergy.

Andrew Revkin's blog regarding last week's duel on Climate Change in the Wall Street Journal and a follow-up post discuss the ongoing debate within the scientific community regarding the merits of the Climate Change proposition. Finally, in a muted sense of desperation (I infer) Mr. Revkin added this post at the end of the week, seeking a path to some common ground on which consensus can evolve.

Mr. Revkin is a voice of reason among those who believe that Climate Change is real and serious. He has endeavored to hold true to the facts that he knows, to acknowledge what is not yet known and rightfully open to serious debate, and to respectfully challenge positions that are deficient in fact and logic.  The efforts of Mr. Revkin and like-minded advocates of Climate Change are, however, undermined by efforts by a self appointed truth squad comprised of the League of Conservation Voters, 360.org, and Forecast the Facts to hold meteorologists accountable in declaring their beliefs on climate change and duly reflecting them in their interpretation of weather events and trends.

I can appreciate the frustration of these groups to some small degree.  I've heard more than one 'weather personality' (can't always tell which ones are degreed meteorologists and which ones got their degrees out of a box of Fruit Loops with a magic decoder ring) take some patently stupid positions on climate change, using examples that a seventh grader could challenge. But the notion that meteorologists should submit to a litmus test on Climate Change, like prospective Supreme Court justices on abortion, is utterly absurd. 

There seems to be a turf battle between many in the meteorology and climatology communities that suggests that they are, above all else, humans sharing the same frailties as the rest of us.  Too often, the science seems to take a back seat to ego, or so it seems to this outsider.

I don't expect meteorologists to take a position on climate change, any more than I expect climatologists to predict the weather in Guilford for the next 10 days.  Neither is really capable of the other's work. This seems somewhat ironic because weather is climate on the instalment basis. But it is mere noise in a vastly complex and long cycle system.  While climatologists and meteorologists may share a data set, they look at it from very different perspectives, as appropriate to their specific purposes. 

To use an analogy, I look to Ben Bernanke to give me a sense of where the economy may go over the next ten years as an extrapolation of today's structural dynamics.  But I wouldn't look to him for advice in picking stocks when the exchanges open tomorrow.  That's not his skill set.  Nor would I look to a professional stock trader (the market equivalent of a meteorologist) to tell me what the scenarios for the economy are likely to be for the next ten years. Different skill set; different data set. But they both speak in dollars.

What I do expect of meteorologists, and get too rarely, is factual perspective on weather events to put them in meteorological perspective, not climatic perspective.  And I expect meteorologists to speak to what they know within their professional competence and the facts. Too many have gone off the ranch and deserve to be hit by bolts of lightning in the subject matter of climate.

But some in the Climate Community are no better.  To the East Anglia crowd we can now add the League of Conservation Voters, et al, in their truth squad campaign.  The silliness begins with the title 'Forecast Facts'.  You don't forecast facts.  You don't predict facts, unless you presume to be Nostradamus, which is a whole nother problem.  You forecast POSSIBILITIES and PROBABILITIES based on known historical facts, and inferred dynamics that suggest trends.

I share the frustration of the League of Conservation Voters that there is not a consensus on whether or not the planet is warming among a profession that should at least know that much, but their truth-squad-taking-names strategy is no answer. It is a form of intimidation, no better than the right wing attorney general who has investigated a climate scientist at a state university.

Getting back to Mr. Revkin's third post seeking common ground, I wish him luck.  On a much smaller scale, I have sought this within my own community by urging my government to adopt measurements of climatic factors as they relate specifically to Guilford that can establish a fact base that people can identify with through their own direct observations, and move the subject beyond conjecture on global predictions of little direct correlation to our specific circumstances.  We have only now begun, after seven years, to take tentative steps in that direction.  By the time the process bears fruit, I suspect that events will overtake it. We may arrive at the desired destination, but lost valuable time in the process. And once we have established the premise beyond reasonable doubt, the debate will begin around reasonable response with equal division and ferocity.

But it is Mr. Revkin's first blog that holds the true seed of common ground to Climate Change, except that it's in Energy. The solution to the Climate Change dilemma, as noted in a quote from economist Gary Yohe, is to deal with it through the idiom of the Constrained Energy Dilemma, recognizing energy as an exhaustible resource in the long term, and taxing it accordingly in the short term to accomplish the rationing that the capitalistic market mechanism are unwilling or incapable of doing. (See Clim-Ergy: It's About Time and The False Economics of Fossil Fuels ) Reducing the demand for energy will reduce the carbon footprint, and thus reduce the risk of the worst projections for climate change.  It will also create economic benefits that should be a motivator, unless your dividends are earned and you pay stub is punched in the fossil fuel industries.

And that's where the argument comes full circle, and even Dr. Yohe's perceptive solution hits the opposite side of the same brick wall confronting climate change.  The road to consensus on energy policy is no less strewn with dogmatic debris than the one on climate change.

Clim-Ergy. The two issues are inextricably linked. They must be dealt with as such, dealt with directly, and dealt with now. There are no shortcuts or detours on the road to our destiny.

Onward

20120205

Copyright 2012

 

 

 

 

The False Economics of Fossil Fuels

Reading Bernard Weinstein’s letter in the Time’s November 2 edition, I am reminded that we continue to fail to grasp the failure of our supposedly 'free market system' to effectively price key commodities, if that is in fact its intent, and not merely a philosophical mantra.  Let us begin with the first sentence of Mr. Weinstein's letter:

 “As “Future of Solar and Wind Power May Hinge on Federal Aid” (Energy, special section, Oct. 26) points out, the renewable power industry has become addicted to federal subsidies and probably can’t stand on its own without them.”

We can acknowledge that the renewable energy industry is addicted to federal subsidies at present and for the foreseeable future.  But let us apply Mr. Weinstein’s metaphor of addiction fairly.  Society is addicted to fossil fuel dependent energy.  If we are the junkies, Big Oil and Coal are the pushers.

 

Gates Gets Energy

Bill Gates gets energy, almost.

In today's Politico, he addresses the need for a concerted long term energy policy.  He comes closer to the speech that Obama has yet to give, and has possibly lost the opportunity to give.  But Bill, too, has yet to go the distance. He has yet to tell the public what it must know. In the face of dwindling long term supply of fossil fuels and increasing world demand, energy innovation and evolution is not an option but a necessity. Without it, economic and ultimately civil failure is not an option but a probability.

Are We on Frack?

I  read an article in the New York Times on the recent East Coast earthquake of 2011, August 23rd. You may remember that it didn't put the big numbers on the board (Magnitude 5.8) that the West Coast typically enjoys, but it had a much larger audience (like most of the eastern seaboard). Its damage was more symbolic than substantive.  It put cracks in the Washington Monument and National Cathedral, compromising structures we typically think of as enduring and eternal, perhaps more so than the underlying institutions they symbolize.

Strategic Reserves, Strategic Reservations

They pulled the trigger.  Was it a bang?  Or a Pop? More importantly, will the projectile of a joint release from the IEA members' strategic petroleum reserves prove to be a ricochet that produces a self-inflicted wound?

Much of the immediate commentary in the business press since yesterday's announcement has been superficial and unenlightening. 

Oil Prices: Blame it (and everything else) on the Algorithms

Those darned Algorithms! Turn your back and they'll raise unmitigated hell.  Take oil for example. CNBC on-line carries the article: "Algorithms, not demand, driving oil prices sky high?" 

My first question is: Why single out oil?  The equity markets seem to be on auto pilot as well.  Many reasonable analysts and economists without a stock to sell or an apparent axe to grind have argued that stocks are seriously inflated. The self-styled prophets of profits have ingeniously concocted a double barreled deceit, suggesting that:

-    oil prices are rising because of heightened market risks; but

-    stock prices are rising because they've already 'discounted the risks'.  That is, the stock market would be yet higher if not for those pesky energy risk scenarios in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Nigeria, Iraq, Japan, Australia,...

Energy: A Few Unanswered Questions

Context is everything.  Nothing exists in a vacuum. Yet many of the issues relating to energy options are discussed as absolutes, devoid of context. Many options are sold as virtues, un-netted by their offsetting potential liabilities.  This suggests either genuine ignorance by supposedly enlightened people, or self-serving disingenousness. Either way. It leads to bad policy, and worse consequences.

A few examples to illustrate:

Energy: The Vise Tightens

Australia floods sqeeze China's coal supply.

The Saudi peninsula errupts in Yemen, Bahrain and Oman, with speculation about intermediate term impacts among the Shia population in the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, and the probable hand of Iran in it all.

Libya errupts as a side show to the rest of Northern Africa, but taking its production capacity off-line raises questions about Saudi capacity to step in and fill the breach, and further reminds us that oil is not totally fungible.

North Africa is not all that rumbles. Louisiana mini earthquakes, tentatively associated with fracking activity in the area, brings to the fore the broader issue of fracking which is losing some of its glow as the no-brainer replacement for OPEC oil in our energy future.

And then there is the rumble on the far side of the Pacific, which did far more than damage Japan's coast--it put nuclear energy, that other silver bullet in our energy future, in the penalty box with deep-sea oil drilling.

Got Reality? Climate Change, Energy and Public Policy

And so it begins, the unraveling of 'concerted ignorance' by random pulses of reality.

Two interesting articles appeared in the online edition of The Economist last week. The first, Why Don't Americans Believe in Global Warming? sought to understand why the U.S. is persistent in failing to come to grips with the reality of Climate Change. 

The second, Are Economists Erring on Climate Change?  ,explored the discomfort of economists in coming to grips with an issue that defies the logic and comfort of their statistical foxholes.

SOTU: The speech I wish Obama had given

President Obama's State of the Union Speech had many promising elements, but ultimately failed when it desperately needed to succeed. It's primary failure was in obsessing on a future too vague. Its corollary failure was in presenting energy investment as a virtue rather than an existential necessity. He could have done better, because no doubt he knows better.  And in the context of SOTU, Carol Browner's departure seems hardly a surprise.

What follows is the speech I wish he had given: