Category: Global Warming

Indian Government Scientists Fight Global Warming by Reducing Cow Belches

(p. A10) Let no one say that India isn’t doing its bit to fight global climate change: Government scientists are working hard to reduce carbon emissions by making cows less flatulent.
Consider the numbers: India is home to more than 280 million cows, and 200 million more ruminant animals like sheep, goats, yaks and buffalo. According to an analysis of satellite data from the country’s space program, all those digestive tracts send 13 million tons of methane into the atmosphere every year — and pound for pound, methane traps 25 times as much heat as carbon dioxide does.
. . .
Scientists at the Cow Research Institute in Mathura, around 100 miles south of New Delhi, are tinkering with cattle feed, seeking a formula that will create less gas for the cows to belch out. (That is how most of it is released, by the way; scientists say much less comes from farting.)
But a team of researchers in the southern state of Kerala is working on a long-term answer.
. . .
. . . dwarf animals, which are about one-quarter the weight of crossbred cows, produce only one-seventh as much manure and one-tenth as much methane.

For the full story, see:
ELLEN BARRY. “What in the World; Cows: India’s Reply to Global Warming.” The New York Times (Thurs., MAY 5, 2016): A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 3, 2016, and has the title “What in the World; India’s Answer to Global Warming; Cows That Belch Less.”)

Former Goldman Sachs Banker Predicts “Green Bubble”

(p. R5) Sustainable investing and clean energy are hot topics, but one Danish financier is warning that people might be getting carried away.
Per Wimmer, a former Goldman Sachs banker and the founder of Wimmer Financial LLP, a London-based corporate-advisory firm specializing in natural resources, foresees a “green bubble” that could have similar consequences to the dot-com and housing bubbles.
. . .
WSJ: What are the main issues behind the so-called bubble you see forming in green energy?
MR. WIMMER: Very simply put, for green energy to be truly sustainable, it must be commercially sustainable. The reality today is that when it comes to politicians allocating subsidies, it seems like they are being allocated almost religiously across the board. As long as there is a green element, then [politicians believe] it is fine and deserves funding from tax dollars. I argue that is a little unsophisticated.
We have got to look at supporting and subsidizing the technologies that stand a chance at becoming commercially independent from subsidies within a reasonable time period–about seven to 10 years.
. . .
WSJ: In your book “The Green Bubble,” you highlight infrastructure problems involved in large-scale green-energy projects in the U.S. Tell us about those.
MR. WIMMER: There are a number of challenges that green energy faces, and one [involves] infrastructure, meaning that if you were to target, say, 20% green energy including wind farms in the U.S., you would have to build an awful lot of transmission grid, which is quite expensive.
Somebody is going to have to pay for it–the taxpayer, perhaps?

For the full interview, see:
TANZEEL AKHTAR. “Renewable Energy Is a ‘Bubble,’ Says Financier.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Jan. 11, 2016): R5.
(Note: bold and italics, in original; ellipses, added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 12 [sic], 2016,)

The book mentioned in the interview, is:
Wimmer, Per. The Green Bubble: Our Future Energy Needs and Why Alternative Energy Is Not the Answer. London, UK: Lid Publishing, 2015.

Defending Free Speech in Climate Research

(p. A17) The Climate Inquisition began with Michael Mann’s 2012 lawsuit against critics of his “hockey stick” research–a holy text to climate alarmists. The suggestion that Prof. Mann’s famous diagram showing rapid recent warming was an artifact of his statistical methods, rather than an accurate representation of historical reality, was too much for the Penn State climatologist and his acolytes to bear.
Among their targets (and our client in his lawsuit) was the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank prominent for its skeptical viewpoint in climate-policy debates. Mr. Mann’s lawsuit seeks to put it, along with National Review magazine, out of business. Four years on, the courts are still pondering the First Amendment values at stake. In the meantime, the lawsuit has had its intended effect, fostering legal uncertainty that chills speech challenging the “consensus” view.
. . .
That is why we are establishing the Free Speech in Science Project to defend the kind of open inquiry and debate that are central to scientific advancement and understanding. The project will fund legal advice and defense to those who need it, while executing an offense to turn the tables on abusive officials. Scientists, policy organizations and others should not have to fear that they will be the next victims of the Climate Inquisition–that they may face punishment and personal ruin for engaging in research and advocating their views.
The principle of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court recognized in Dennis v. United States (1951), is that “speech can rebut speech, propaganda will answer propaganda, free debate of ideas will result in the wisest governmental policies.” For that principle to prevail–in something less than the 350 years it took for the Catholic Church to acknowledge its mistake in persecuting Galileo–the inquisition of those breaking from the climate “consensus” must be stopped.

For the full commentary, see:
DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. and ANDREW M. GROSSMAN. “Punishing Climate-Change Skeptics; Some in Washington want to unleash government to harass heretics who don’t accept the ‘consensus.'” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., March 24, 2016): A17.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 23, 2016.)

Rates to Insure Against Global Warming Catastrophes Are FALLING

The “super-cat” insurance referred to below by Warren Buffett is the part of the reinsurance business that insures other insurance companies against the occurrence of very large (super) catastrophes (cat).

(p. A9) Up to now, climate change has not produced more frequent nor more costly hurricanes nor other weather-related events covered by insurance. As a consequence, U.S. super-cat rates have fallen steadily in recent years, which is why we have backed away from that business. If super-cats become costlier and more frequent, the likely–though far from certain–effect on Berkshire’s insurance business would be to make it larger and more profitable.

As a citizen, you may understandably find climate change keeping you up nights. As a homeowner in a low-lying area, you may wish to consider moving. But when you are thinking only as a shareholder of a major insurer, climate change should not be on your list of worries.

Source of quote from Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder letter:
“Notable & Quotable: Warren Buffett on Climate.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 1, 2016): A9.
(Note: the online version of the quotes from Buffett has the date Feb. 29, 2016.)

Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway stockholders can be found at:
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2015ar/2015ar.pdf

Electricity from Cow Manure Failing Despite Administration Support

(p. B1) Wisconsin dairy farmer Art Thelen was full of optimism a decade ago when he joined a growing group of U.S. farmers investing in technology that turns livestock manure into electricity.
The systems promised to curb air pollution from agriculture, generate extra revenue and–in no small feat–curtail odors that waft for miles in much of farm country.
“It was a great idea, and when it worked well, it was wonderful,” Mr. Thelen said.
Now the 61-year-old is among a group of farmers who recently have shut down their manure-to-energy systems–known as anaerobic digesters–or scrapped plans to build them because of the prolonged slump in natural-gas prices and higher-than-expected maintenance costs that made the systems less economical.

For the full story, see:
DAVID KESMODEL. “Energy Prices Steer Farmers Away From Manure Power.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Feb. 19, 2016): B1-B2.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 18, 2016, and has the title “F.D.A. Regulator, Widowed by Cancer, Helps Speed Drug Approval.”)

Ethanol Adds Carbon Dioxide to Atmosphere

(p. A9) Before long, it may be politically safe to take a wise step and eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).
. . .
Today, ethanol’s downsides have become clear.
First, it increases the cost of driving. Current ethanol blends provide fewer miles per gallon, so drivers pay more to travel the same distance. According to the Institute for Energy Research, American drivers have paid an additional $83 billion since 2007 because of the RFS.
Second, ethanol adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than it eliminates by replacing fossil fuels. The Environmental Working Group says that “corn ethanol is an environmental disaster.” The group explains: “The mandate to blend ethanol into gasoline has driven farmers to plow up land to plant corn–40 percent of the corn now grown in the U.S. is used to make ethanol. When farmers plow up grasslands and wetlands to grow corn, they release the carbon stored in the soil, contributing to climate-warming carbon emissions.” And then there is the carbon emitted in harvesting, transporting and processing the corn into ethanol.

For the full commentary, see:
MERRILL MATTHEWS. “The Corn-Fed Albatross Called Ethanol.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Jan. 6, 2016): A9.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 5, 2016.)

“Science Is Not a Body of Infallible Work, of Immutable Laws”

(p. 1) . . . , “Failure: Why Science Is So Successful” is a breath of contemplative fresh air. Stuart ­Fire­stein, a professor in the department of biological sciences at Columbia University, is best known for his work on ignorance, including inviting scientists to speak to his students about what they don’t know. In a tone reminiscent of Lewis Thomas’s “The Lives of a Cell,” the book is a collection of loosely interwoven meditations on failure and scientific method.
. . .
If we succeed by failing, then we should be freed from the monolithic road to academic tenure; science should be taught as an adventure in failure. With a delightful combination of feigned naïveté and keen eye for the messy ways that great discoveries occur, he goes so far as to suggest writing a grant proposal in which you promise to fail better. He knows this isn’t how the world works, but nevertheless argues that change will take place “when we cease, or at least reduce, our devotion to facts and collections of them, when we decide that science education is not a memorization marathon, when we — scientists and nonscientists — recognize that science is not a body of infallible work, of immutable laws of facts. . . . And that most of what there is to know is still unknown.”

For the full review, see:
ROBERT A. BURTON. “Error Messages.”The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., Jan. 3, 2016): 8.
(Note: first two ellipses added; third ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date DEC. 29, 2015, and has the title “‘Black Box Thinking’ and ‘Failure: Why Science Is So Successful’.”)

The book under review, is:
Firestein, Stuart. Failure: Why Science Is So Successful. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Arbitrary Two Degree Climate Threshold Is Not Backed by Research

(p. A1) Many researchers have argued that a rise in the planet’s average global air temperature of two degrees or more above preindustrial levels would usher in catastrophic climate change. But many others, while convinced the planet is warming, say two degrees is a somewhat arbitrary threshold based on tenuous research, and therefore an impractical spur to policy action.
“It emerged from a political agenda, not a scientific analysis,” said Mark Maslin, professor of climatology at University College London. “It’s not a sensible, rational target because the models give you a range of possibilities, not a single answer.”
Policy makers tend to assume the two-degree target expresses a solid scientific view, but it doesn’t. The exhaustive reports published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are considered to be the most comprehensive analysis of the science of global warming. Yet the two-degree limit isn’t mentioned in a single IPCC report.
. . .
(p. A12) William Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale University, appears to have been the first to mention the two-degree figure in a paper published in 1977. But rather than making a robust scientific calculation based on the physics of climate change, his paper argued that a rise of two or more degrees would put the earth’s climate outside the observable range of temperature over the last several hundred thousand years.
. . .
In October 2014, David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego, and Charles Kennel, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., wrote a sharp critique of the two-degree benchmark in the journal Nature.
They argued that the yardstick was scientifically weak because it captured only a tiny portion of the planet’s climate profile. More than 93% of the extra heat, they noted, ends up in the ocean and not in the atmosphere.

For the full story, see:
GAUTAM NAIK. “Scientists Dispute 2-Degree Model Guiding Climate Talks.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Nov. 30, 2015): A1 & A12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 29, 2015, and has the title “Scientists Dispute 2-Degree Model Guiding Climate Talks.”)

The Victor and Kennel critique mentioned above, is:
Victor, David G., and Charles F. Kennel. “Climate Policy: Ditch the 2 °C Warming Goal.” Nature 514, no. 7520 (Oct. 2, 2014): 30-31.

“Gleefully” Using Climate Change “as an Opportunity to Put an End to Capitalism”

(p. B9) . . . , Peter Victor of York University in Canada published a study titled “Growth, degrowth and climate change: A scenario analysis,” in which he compared Canadian carbon emissions under three economic paths to the year 2035.
Limiting growth to zero, he found, had a modest impact on carbon spewed into the air. Only the “de-growth” situation — in which Canadians’ income per person shrank to its level in 1976 and the average working hours of employed Canadians declined by 75 percent — managed to slash emissions in a big way.
. . .
Let’s examine what our fossil-fueled growth has provided us. It has delivered gains in living standards in even the poorest regions of the world.
But that’s only the beginning. Economic development was indispensable to end slavery. It was a critical precondition for the empowerment of women.
Indeed, democracy would not have survived without it. As Martin Wolf, the Financial Times commentator has noted, the option for everybody to become better off — where one person’s gain needn’t require another’s loss — was critical for the development and spread of the consensual politics that underpin democratic rule.
Zero growth gave us Genghis Khan and the Middle Ages, conquest and subjugation. It fostered an order in which the only mechanism to get ahead was to plunder one’s neighbor. Economic growth opened up a much better alternative: trade.
The Oxford economist Max Roser has some revealing charts that show the deadliness of war across the ages. It was a real killer in the era of no growth. Up to half of all deaths among hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists and other ancient cultures were caused by conflict.
. . .
Naomi Klein, a champion of the leftward fringe newly converted to the environmental cause, gleefully proposes climate change as an opportunity to put an end to capitalism. Were she right, I doubt it would bring about the workers’ utopia she appears to yearn for. In a world economy that does not grow, the powerless and vulnerable are the most likely to lose. Imagine “Blade Runner,” “Mad Max” and “The Hunger Games” brought to real life.

For the full commentary, see:
Porter, Eduardo. “Economic Scene; No Growth, No World? Think About It.” The New York Times (Weds., DEC. 2, 2015): B1 & B9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 1, 2015, and has the title “Economic Scene; Imagining a World Without Growth.”)

The Victor paper mentioned above, is:
Victor, Peter A. “Growth, Degrowth and Climate Change: A Scenario Analysis.” Ecological Economics 84, no. 1 (Dec. 2012): 206-12.

The Roser charts, mentioned above, can be found at:
Roser, Max. Ethnographic and Archaeological Evidence on Violent Deaths 2015 [accessed Fri., Jan. 22, 2016]. Available from http://ourworldindata.org/data/violence-rights/ethnographic-and-archaeological-evidence-on-violent-deaths/.

The Klein book seeking to end capitalism, is:
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The (sic) Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Cooking Over Indoor Wood Fires Kills Millions

(p. A13) Indoor air pollution, caused mainly by cooking over wood fires indoors, is the world’s biggest cause of environmental death. It kills an estimated four million people every year, as noted by the nonprofit science news website, SciDev.Net. Getting fossil-fueled electricity and gas to them is the cheapest and quickest way to save their lives. To argue that the increasingly small risk of dangerous climate change many decades hence is something they should be more worried about is positively obscene.

For the full commentary, see:
MATT RIDLEY. “The Green Scare Problem; Raising constant alarms–about fracking, pesticides, GMO food–in the name of safety is a dangerous game.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Aug. 13, 2015): A13.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 13, 2015.)