Energy/Environment – Page 32 – artdiamondblog.com

Green Threats to Restrict Coal Creates Incentive to Extract More Coal Now

(Wang, p. 1146) The last chapter of the book advances the supply-side analysis and presents the “Green Paradox,” that “(t)he mere announcement of intentions to fight global warming made the world warm even faster” ([Sinn, p. ] 189). The key insight is that demand-reduction measures affect carbon supply through pressure on future prices. Since the existing “green” policies almost always involve increasing stringency and widening coverage over time, the increasing downward price pressure therefore induces resource owners to expedite extraction and thereby exacerbates the climate problem.

For the full review, see:
Wang, Tao. “The Green Paradox: A Supply-Side Approach to Global Warming.” Journal of Economic Literature 50, no. 4 (Dec. 2012): 1145-46.
(Note: bracketed information added.)

The book under review is:
Sinn, Hans-Werner. The Green Paradox: A Supply-Side Approach to Global Warming. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2012.

Fossil Fuels Are Making the Planet Greener

(p. C4) The latest and most detailed satellite data, which is yet to be published but was summarized in an online lecture last July by Ranga Myneni of Boston University, confirms that the greening of the Earth has now been going on for 30 years. Between 1982 and 2011, 20.5% of the world’s vegetated area got greener, while just 3% grew browner; the rest showed no change.

What explains this trend? Man-made nitrogen fertilizer causes crops to grow faster, but it is having little effect on forests. There are essentially two possibilities: climate and carbon dioxide itself. Warmer, wetter weather should cause more vegetation to grow. But even without warming, an increase in carbon dioxide should itself accelerate growth rates of plants. CO2 is a scarce resource that plants have trouble scavenging from the air, and plants grow faster with higher levels of CO2 to inhale.
Dr. Myneni reckons that it is now possible to distinguish between these two effects in the satellite data, and he concludes that 50% is due to “relaxation of climate constraints,” i.e., warming or rainfall, and roughly 50% is due to carbon dioxide fertilization itself. In practice, the two interact. A series of experiments has found that plants tolerate heat better when CO2 levels are higher.
The inescapable if unfashionable conclusion is that the human use of fossil fuels has been causing the greening of the planet in three separate ways: first, by displacing firewood as a fuel; second, by warming the climate; and third, by raising carbon dioxide levels, which raise plant growth rates.

For the full commentary, see:
MATT RIDLEY. “MIND & MATTER; “How Fossil Fuels Have Greened the Planet.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., January 5, 2013): C4.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 4, 2013.)

What Reagan Meant When He Said Trees Cause Pollution

Source of the book image: http://thecommentary.ca/images/books/Reagan2.jpg

(p. 10) For better or worse, Reagan’s ability to spin yarns out of everything that ever went into his mind is on display in ”Reagan’s Path to Victory,” the fourth volume in a series of collected speeches, letters and scripts published over the past four years. This one, edited like the others by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson and Martin Anderson, is a chronological compilation of the syndicated radio talks Reagan delivered from 1975 to 1979.
. . .
In 1980, as a reporter freshly hired by Time magazine, I was assigned to Reagan’s campaign plane. My first week on the road, while listening to him give a speech in which he talked about how trees cause pollution and other quirky notions, an aide turned to me and said, ”Where did he get those facts?” I wrote a story, parsing the misleading little factoids that studded his stump speeches; the headline was that quote. The afternoon the article appeared, I was invited to sit next to Reagan on his campaign plane. I was braced for a rough lecture, but none came. I realized that he was either smart enough not to have read the article, or smart enough to pretend he hadn’t — or merely smart enough to know it wouldn’t matter. I also learned, when I started to play the old journalistic gotcha game by questioning him on issues ranging from Taiwan to his affection for the gold standard, that he was able to flea-flick the subjects away by launching into some amusing but irrelevant anecdote. At first I thought he was a bit oblivious. Eventually, I realized I was the oblivious one. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Now, having read the collection of his radio addresses, I even know what he was thinking when he proclaimed that most pollution is caused by trees. In a rather convoluted talk, in which he identifies the main pollution problem as oxides of nitrogen, he grandly declares: ”Nature it seems also produces oxides of nitrogen. As a matter of fact, nature produces 97 percent of them. If we could successfully eliminate 100 percent of all the man-produced polluting oxides of nitrogen, we’d still have 97 percent of what we presently have.”
So we’re a little closer to knowing where Ronald Reagan got his facts, and even a bit closer to knowing where he got his beliefs. And that’s not a bad step toward understanding the deeper questions and mysteries about him.

For the full review, see:
Walter Isaacson. “The Reagan Evolution.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., October 31, 2004): 9-10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the title “‘The Tycoons’: Benefactors of Great Wealth.”)

Book discussed in passage quoted above:
Skinner, Kiron K., Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, eds. Reagan’s Path to Victory; the Shaping of Ronald Reagan’s Vision; Selected Writings. New York: Free Press, 2004.

ExxonMobil’s “Honorable If Rigid Corporate Culture”

Source of book image: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited way below.

(p. C12) From Indiana to Indonesia, ExxonMobil is the multinational corporation that people love to hate. John D. Rockefeller’s creation is famed and feared for its discipline, its disregard for public opinion and its ability, year after year, to pump out the largest profits of any corporation on the planet. In “Private Empire,” Steve Coll provides a rare exploration of what makes a modern corporate giant tick and shows why the world looks different to the executives in the “God Pod” at ExxonMobil’s Texas headquarters than it might to you or me.

For the full review essay, see:
Marc Levinson. “Boardroom Reading of 2012.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 15, 2012): C12.
(Note: the online version of the review essay has the date December 14, 2012.)

From another review of the same book:

“Private Empire” is meticulous, multi-angled and valuable. It is also, perhaps surprisingly, despite all the dark facts I have dumped above, impartial. Mr. Coll and his phlegmatic research assistants have interviewed more than 400 people, including Exxon Mobil’s longtime chief executive Lee R. Raymond, a legendarily hard character.

It’s among this book’s achievements that it attempts to view a dysfunctional energy world, as often as not, through Exxon Mobil’s eyes. The company is portrayed here, some egregious missteps aside, as possessing an honorable if rigid corporate culture that seeks to supply a product (unlike tobacco companies, to which it is often compared) that a functioning society actually must have.

For this full review, see:
DWIGHT GARNER. “Oil’s Dark Heart Pumps Strong.” The New York Times (Sat., April 27, 2012): C25 & C32(?).
(Note: the online version of the review essay has the date April 26, 2012 and has the title “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Oil’s Dark Heart Pumps Strong; ‘Private Empire,’ Steve Coll’s Book on Exxon Mobil.”)

The book under review, is:
Coll, Steve. Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power. New York: The Penguin Press, 2012.

Capitalism Would Bring Economic Growth to Bitouga, and Thereby Save the Elephants

“SEIZED AND DESTROYED; Gabon burned 10,000 pounds of ivory in June to show its commitment against poaching, but elephants are still being slaughtered.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A5) But as the price of ivory keeps going up, hitting levels too high for many people to resist, Gabon’s elephants are getting slaughtered by poachers from across the borders and within the rain forests, proof that just about nowhere in Africa are elephants safe.

In the past several years, 10,000 elephants in Gabon have been wiped out, some picked off by impoverished hunters creeping around the jungle with rusty shotguns and willing to be paid in sacks of salt, others mowed down en masse by criminal gangs that slice off the dead elephants’ faces with chain saws. Gabon’s jails are filling up with small-time poachers and ivory traffickers, destitute men and women like Therese Medza, a village hairdresser arrested a few months ago for selling 45 pounds of tusks.
“I had no idea it was illegal,” Ms. Medza said, almost convincingly, from the central jail here in Oyem, in the north. “I was told the tusks were found in the forest.”
She netted about $700, far more than she usually makes in a month, and the reason she did it was simple, she said. “I got seven kids.”
It seems that Gabon’s elephants are getting squeezed in a deadly vise between a seemingly insatiable lust for ivory in Asia, where some people pay as much as $1,000 a pound, and desperate hunters and traffickers in central Africa.
. . .
In June, Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo, defiantly lighted a pyramid of 10,000 pounds of ivory on fire to make the point that the ivory trade was reprehensible, a public display of resolve that Kenya has put on in years past. It took three days for all the ivory to burn, and even after the last tusks were reduced to glowing embers, policemen vigilantly guarded the ashes. Ivory powder is valued in Asia for its purported medicinal powers, and the officers were worried someone might try to sweep up the ashes and sell them.
Some African countries, like Zimbabwe and Tanzania, are sitting on million-dollar stockpiles of ivory (usually from law enforcement seizures or elephants that died naturally) that someday may be legal to sell.
. . .
(p. A10) The growing resentment of the government is undermining conservation efforts, too, with villagers grumbling about not seeing a trace of the oil money and saying Mr. Bongo should not lecture them about poaching for a living.
. . .
The children here eat thumb-size caterpillars, cooked in enormous vats, because there is little else to eat. Many men have bloodshot eyes and spend their mornings sitting on the ground, staring into space, reeking of sour, fermented home-brew.
. . .
International law enforcement officials say the illicit ivory trade is dominated by Mafia-like gangs that buy off local officials and organize huge, secretive shipments to move tusks from the farthest reaches of Africa to workshops in Beijing, Bangkok and Manila, where they are carved into bookmarks, earrings and figurines.
But often the first link in that chain is a threadbare hunter, someone like Mannick Emane, a young man in Bitouga. Adept in the forest, he was trained nearly from birth to follow tracks and stalk game, and was puffing idly on a cigarette he had just lighted with a burning log.
He conceded he would kill elephants, “for the right price.”
“Life is tough,” he said. “So if someone is going to give us an opportunity for big money, we’re going to take it.”
Big money, he said, was about $50.
His friend Vincent Biyogo, also a hunter, nodded in agreement.
“When I was born,” he said, “I dreamed of a better life, I dreamed of driving a car, going to school, living like a normal human being.”
“Not this,” he added quietly, staring at a pot of boiling caterpillars. “Not this.”

For the full story, see:
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN. “In Gabon, Lure of Ivory Is Hard for Many to Resist.” The New York Times (Thurs., December 27, 2012): A5 & A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 26, 2012.)

“A man in Bitouga, where people live in extreme poverty and say they resent the government’s telling them not to poach.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT story quoted and cited above.

“A Fairy Tale About a Lonely Candle that Wants to Be Lighted”

“A newly found manuscript of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, which has been located in Odense, is pictured in the State Archives in Copenhagen, Denmark, Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012. The story of ‘The Tallow Candle’ might have been written about 1823, when he was 18 year old.” Source of caption and photo: http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/new-found-tale-of-a-lonely-candle-could-be-early-work-of-hc-andersen-1.1077533#ixzz2GmTQNcFvhttp://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.1077539!/

(p. C2) A fairy tale about a lonely candle that wants to be lighted had been languishing in a box in Denmark’s National Archives for many years. In October it was discovered by a retired historian, who now believes it is one of the first fairy tales ever written by Hans Christian Andersen.
. . .
The six-page manuscript, called “Tallow Candle,” is dedicated to a vicar’s widow named Bunkeflod who lived across the street from Andersen’s home. Ejnar Stig Askgaard, a Hans Christian Andersen expert, said the work was probably one of Andersen’s earliest.

For the full story, see:
CAROL VOGEL. “Discovery of Story Is Like a Fairy Tale.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., December 14, 2012): C2.
(Note: ellipsis and underline added; bold in original.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 13, 2012, and has the title “Like a Fairy Tale: Hans Christian Andersen Story Is Found in a Box.”)
(Note: the words underlined by me above, were in the online, but not the print, version of the article.)

Unused Electric Car Chargers Multiply Due to Federal Subsidies

“Any takers?: Two EV chargers sit unused in White Plains, MD.” Source of photo: http://metablognews.com/wp-content/plugins/rss-poster/cache/d6fff_MK-BP785_CHARGE_G_20111016172708.jpg Source of caption: slightly edited from print version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) When McDonald’s franchisee Tom Wolf built his latest restaurant in Huntington, W. Va., late last year, he installed two chargers for all-electric cars so customers could juice their batteries while eating. So far, the charging station has been used a few times.
. . .
Across the U.S., such equipment is proliferating even though it is unclear whether plug-in cars will prove popular.
. . .
Fewer than 15,000 all-electric cars are on U.S. roads, says Plug In America, a group promoting the technology.
. . .
(p. B11) Charging equipment is popping up largely because of subsidies. As part of a $5 billion federal program to subsidize development of electric vehicles and battery technology, the U.S. Energy Department over the past two years provided about $130 million for two pilot projects that help pay for chargers at homes, offices and public locations.
. . .
Opinions vary on demand. J.D. Power & Associates expects all-electric vehicles will account for less than 1% of U.S. auto sales in 2018, or about 102,000 cars and light trucks. Including hybrids and plug-in hybrids the market share is forecast at 8%.
“The premiums associated with these products are still more than what the consumer is willing to bear,” says Mike VanNieuwkuyk, executive director of global vehicle research at J.D. Power.

For the full story, see:
JAMES R. HAGERTY And MIKE RAMSEY. “Charging Stations Multiply But Electric Cars Are Few.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., OCTOBER 17, 2011): B1 & B11.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Chernobyl May Have Caused No Long-Term Increase in Cancer

Source of book image: http://luxuryreading.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/9781605294452.jpg

(p. C11) . . . Andrew Blackwell, a journalist and self-described “sensitive, eco-friendly liberal,” deserves praise for producing an environmentalist book that avoids the usual hyperventilation, upending stubborn myths with prosaic facts.
. . .
His Geiger counter convulses on a visit to the abandoned areas around Chernobyl, but Mr. Blackwell reacts soberly. While the initial disaster provoked a justifiable public panic, it also inspired scare-mongering from groups like Greenpeace, which claimed that the fallout would cause 270,000 cancer cases. He points to a study commissioned by the United Nations concluding that, after an initial spike in thyroid cancer, “no measurable increase has yet been demonstrated in the region’s cancer rates.” The author is also sure to irritate certain readers with the claim that “paradoxically, perversely, the accident may have actually been good” for the local environment, since the evacuation created an accidentally verdant nature reserve.

For the full review, see:
MICHAEL C. MOYNIHAN. “A Guided Tour of Catastrophe” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 26, 2012): C11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 25, 2012.)

The book being reviewed, is:
Blackwell, Andrew. Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World’s Most Polluted Places. New York: Rodale Books, 2012.

Poor People Want Washing Machines

The wonderful clip above is from Hans Rosling’s TED talk entitled “The Magic Washing Machine.”
He clearly and strongly presents his central message that the washing machine has made life better.

What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading.

Source of video clip summary:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html

The version of the clip above is embedded from YouTube, where it was posted by TED: http://youtu.be/BZoKfap4g4w

It can also be viewed at the TED web site at:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html

(Note: I am grateful to Robin Kratina for telling me about Rosling’s TED talk,)
(Note: I do not agree with Rosling’s acceptance of the politically correct consensus view that the response to global warning should mainly be mitigation and green energy—to the extent that a response turns out to be necessary, I mainly support adaptation, as suggested in many previous entries on this blog.)

Garcia “Wanted to Get an Education and Get Out of” the “Sustainable” Life

“In a straightforward sense, Mr. García, 44, is a Mexican ecologist. More broadly, though, he is a self-appointed emissary from the land once known as Pimería Alta, an interpreter of its culture, plants and people.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D6) Over the weekend, Mr. García would be driving back to his family seat in the mission town of Magdalena de Kino, Mexico. In a way, his personal mission is to recreate the orchards he knew there. He has started with dozens of seedlings in the backyard of the small ranch house that he shares with his girlfriend, Dena Cowan, a Spanish-language interpreter and videographer. (The couple recently produced a documentary, in Spanish and English, about the Kino Heritage Fruit Trees Project called “Tasting History.”)

Yet he remembered the orchards with something other than simple nostalgia.
As a child, he packed boxes of fruit to load onto his uncle’s truck. “My father had this farm that he was renting, probably two acres,” Mr. García recalled. By necessity, “the only things we bought from the store were salt, sugar, coffee and kerosene,” he said. “Everything else we produced.”
“Our mother, she made our underwear out of the wheat sacks,” he continued. “My father used to make these homemade shoes for my brothers: leather, with used tires on the sole. They would hide them in the river on the way to school and then go to school barefooted.” Better that, he recalled, than let classmates see their privation.
By the time Mr. García reached junior high, his older sister has become a teacher and the family’s lot had improved. They installed indoor plumbing, for a start. There was nothing trendy about what he ironically calls their “sustainable” years. “I got the tail end,” Mr. García said. “But I got enough to realize how hard work it is. I learned enough to realize I wanted to get an education and get out of that life.”

For the full story, see:
MICHAEL TORTORELLO. “Seeds of an Era Long Gone.” The New York Times (Thurs., November 22, 2012): D1 & D6.
(Note: the online version of the article was dated November 21, 2012.)