Global Warming – Page 26 – artdiamondblog.com

Retreat of Ice Is “Opening Up New Possibilities”

Source of map: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. R12) The Arctic summers have grown longer, raising concerns among scientists and environmentalists that the polar ice cap is melting and that carbon emissions from oil and other fossil fuels are to blame. But for players in the energy industry, the longer summers and the retreat of the permanent ice cover are opening up new possibilities.
. . .
Energy companies already are seeing a “dramatic difference” in the amount of time they can work in the far north, says Mike Watts, exploration director at Cairn Energy PLC, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based company. On Jan. 9 it acquired licenses to explore off the west coast of Greenland, which is a self-governed province of Denmark. Greenland is also considering a sale of east-coast rights in 2012. For the moment, those waters remain choked with ice year-round, but four years from now “that might have changed,” says Mr. Watts.
. . .
Efforts by GustoMSC and other offshore-drilling experts represent the first significant research push into Arctic drilling technology in 20 years. At present, only around five rigs are capable of drilling in Arctic waters more than 300 feet deep, where energy companies are increasingly turning their focus, and even those tend to operate in 2,000 feet of water or less. Rigs now under construction will be able to search for oil in waters up to 12,000 feet. But Bob Long, chief executive at Transocean Inc., the world’s largest offshore driller, estimates it will be 15 years before the supply of deep-water Arctic rigs catches up with demand.
. . .
To create Bully No. 1, GustoMSC took the standard design for its latest generation drillship — which looks like an oil tanker with a derrick on top — and set about winterizing it. The Bully will feature the bow of an icebreaker and be constructed from an ultra-flexible grade of steel to protect the hull from shattering in extreme cold. Heating systems will be installed along every inch of piping. Special heating units will also protect ballast tanks, which use seawater to stabilize the rig and can freeze in extreme cold. Engine vents will be widened and warmed to keep ice from building up.

For the full story, see:
BRIAN BASKIN. “Producers; Northern Exposure; As the Arctic gets warmer, oil and gas producers see the chance for a big expansion. But plenty of technological hurdles remain.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., February 11, 2008): R12. & R14.
(Note: ellipses added.)

“ARCTIC EXPLORER. The Bully No. 1 drillship, now being built in Shanghai, will start work in 2010.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

Rejecting Environmentalism’s “Politics of Limits”

Source of book image: http://a1055.g.akamai.net/f/1055/1401/5h/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/13180000/13180098.JPG

(p. D5) In survey after survey, American voters say that they care about global warming, but the subject ranks quite low when compared with other concerns (e.g., the economy, health care, the war on terror). Even when Mr. Gore’s Oscar-winning film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was at the height of its popularity, it did not increase the importance of global warming in the public mind or mobilize greater support for Mr. Gore’s favored remedies–e.g., reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by government fiat. Mr. Gore may seek to make environmental protection civilization’s “central organizing principle,” as he puts it, but there is no constituency for such a regime. Hence even the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates, in their debates, give global warming only cursory treatment, with lofty rhetoric and vague policy proposals.
There is a reason for this political freeze-up. In “Break Through,” Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger argue that Mr. Gore and the broader environmental movement–in which Mr. Gore plays an almost messianic part–remain wedded to an outmoded vision, seeing global warming as “a problem of pollution to be fixed by a politics of limits.” Such a vision may have worked in the early days of environmentalism, when the first clear-air and clean-water regulations were pushed through Congress, but today it cannot mobilize enough public support for dramatic political change.
What is to be done? Messrs. Nordhaus and Shellenberger want to replace the pollution paradigm with a progressive one. They broached this idea in “The Death of Environmentalism,” a controversial 2004 monograph that ricocheted around the Internet. “Break Through” gives the idea a fuller exposition and even greater urgency. The authors contend that the environmental movement must throw out its “unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts, and exhausted strategies” in favor of something “imaginative, aspirational, and future-oriented.”

For the full review, see:
JONATHAN H. ADLER. “BOOKSHELF; The Lowdown on Doomsday.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, November 27, 2007): D5.

Lomborg Shows How Kyoto Protocol Wastes Money

Source of book image:
http://images.tdaxp.com/tdaxp_upload/cool_it_md.jpg

(p. D7) Standing in the practical middle is Bjorn Lomborg, the free-thinking Dane who, in “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (2001), challenged the belief that the environment is going to pieces. Mr. Lomborg is now back with “Cool It,” a book brimming with useful facts and common sense.
Mr. Lomborg–“liberal, vegetarian, a former member of Greenpeace,” as he describes himself–is hard to fit into any pigeonhole. He believes that global warming is happening, that man has caused it, and that national governments need to act. Yet he also believes that Al Gore is bordering on hysteria, that some global-warming science has been distorted and hyped, and that the Kyoto Protocol and other carbon-reduction schemes are a terrible waste of money. The world needs to think more rationally, he says, about how to tackle this challenge.
. . .
Mr. Lomborg cites studies showing that by implementing Kyoto–at a cost of trillions of dollars–we might be able to achieve a 3% reduction in fluvial and coastal flooding damages. If we instead adopted smart flood policies–e.g., an end to public subsidies that encourage people to settle in flood plains, a shrewder use of levees–we could achieve a 91% reduction in damages at a fraction of the Kyoto cost.

For the full review, see:
KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL. “BOOKSHELF; A Calm Voice in a Heated Debate.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, September 13, 2007): D7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Recent Years Were Not as Hot as Thought

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 19) Never underestimate the power of the blogosphere and a quarter of a degree to inflame the fight over global warming.

A quarter-degree Fahrenheit is roughly the downward adjustment NASA scientists made earlier this month in their annual estimates of the average temperature in the contiguous 48 states since 2000. They corrected the numbers after an error in meshing two sets of temperature data was discovered by Stephen McIntyre, a blogger and retired business executive in Toronto. Smaller adjustments were made to some readings for some preceding years.

All of this would most likely have passed unremarkably if Mr. McIntyre had not blogged that the adjustments changed the rankings of warmest years for the contiguous states since 1895, when record-keeping began.

Suddenly, 1934 appeared to vault ahead of 1998 as the warmest year on record (by a statistically meaningless 0.036 degrees Fahrenheit). In NASA’s most recent data set, 1934 had followed 1998 by a statistically meaningless 0.018 degrees. Conservative bloggers, columnists and radio hosts pounced. “We have proof of man-made global warming,” Rush Limbaughtold his radio audience. “The man-made global warming is inside NASA.”

Mr. McIntyre, who has spent years seeking flaws in studies pointing to human-driven climate change, traded broadsides on the Web with James E. Hansen, the NASA team’s leader. Dr. Hansen said he would not “joust with court jesters” and Mr. McIntyre posited that Dr. Hansen might have a “Jor-El complex” — a reference to Superman’s father, who foresaw the destruction of his planet and sent his son packing.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW C. REVKIN. "Quarter-Degree Fix Fuels Climate Fight." The New York Times, Main Section (Sunday, August 26, 2007): 19.

Global Warming May Give U.S. Access to Big Deposits of Oil, Gas and Minerals

The icebreaker Healy finished a new survey of the seafloor off the northern coast of Alaska. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A16) A new survey by American oceanographers of the seafloor north of Alaska, completed last month aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, provides fresh evidence that the United States has much at stake in the region. The sonar studies found hints that thousands of square miles of additional seafloor could potentially be under American control. That floor might yield important deposits of oil, gas or minerals in coming decades, government studies have concluded.

So far did the sea ice pull back this summer that the expedition was able to scan the bottom several hundred miles farther north than in previous surveys, said the project’s director, Larry Mayer, an oceanographer at the University of New Hampshire. The team found long sloping extensions 200 miles beyond previous estimates.

Though more surveys will be needed to firm up any American claim, countries have a right to expand their control of seabed resources well beyond the continental shelves bordering their coasts if they can find such sloping extensions.

For the full story, see:

MATTHEW L. WALD and ANDREW C. REVKIN. "New Task for Coast Guard In Arctic’s Warming Seas." The New York Times (Fri., October 19, 2007): A16.

Newfoundland Benefits from Global Warming

"An iceberg as seen off the coast of Twillingate in Newfoundland." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Up and down the rock-ribbed coast of Newfoundland in centuries-old fishing villages like this one, Americans and Europeans are taking advantage of a warming climate and a struggling regional economy to buy seaside summer homes for the price of a used SUV.

. . .

In Twillingate, at least 17 inns and bed-and-breakfasts regularly book Americans and Europeans, up from just two a decade ago. The tourists come to watch the shimmering procession of icebergs the size of city blocks that calve off the coast of Greenland and ride the Labrador Current past town between May and July. After the icebergs are gone, the waters fill with humpback, right and fin whales that spend summer feeding offshore.

. . .

Climate change is attracting some of the tourism. The average temperature during the summers in Newfoundland and Labrador has increased by nearly four degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, says David Phillips, the Canadian government’s senior climatologist. From 2001 through 2005, there were an average of 123 days when the weather was 77 degrees or warmer. In 1991-1995, it averaged just 63 days. Over the last 50 years the growing season — the gap between winter’s last frost and autumn’s first — has widened by three weeks.

. . .

Some Americans have begun to try to flip properties. New York artist Brian Byrne (sic) and his business partner bought a waterfront, six-bedroom home two years ago for $72,000. Now they’re asking $170,000. "There’s a lot of potential up there for tourism," Mr. Byrne (sic) says.

For the full story, see:

Douglas Belkin. "Property Report; More Americans Warm Up To Homes in Newfoundland." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., August 8, 2007): B1.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Brian Bryne (sic), a New York City artist, along with a partner, bought this Newfoundland house as a speculative investment. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

“Global Warming Provides Opportunities”

(p. C3) In the short term, global warming provides opportunities, . . . , especially in temperate zones. Warming trends have lengthened the golfing season in Antalya, Turkey, by over a month, said Ugur Budak, golf coordinator of Akkanat Holdings there.

Golfing used to begin in March. But tourists from Britain and Germany are now coming to Antalya in February.

“Winters are milder, so the effect on us for now is good,” Mr. Budak said. So far there had not been problems like water shortages that are experienced in other parts of the world, he said, “but we know we could be vulnerable in the future.”

For the full story, see:

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. "How Do You Ski if There Is No Snow?" The New York Times (Thurs., November 1, 2007): C3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

X Prize Foundation “Encourages Entrepreneurship”

"From left, Bob Weiss of the X Prize Foundation; Larry Page of Google; Peter Diamandis of X Prize; Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 33) THE quests are monumental: end global warming; build a private spaceship; cure diseases; develop a car that can go 100 miles on a gallon of gas.

But the prizes are also monumental: millions and millions of dollars.

Such extreme public interest projects have been taken up by foundations, most prominently the X Prize Foundation, an 11-year-old group in Santa Monica, Calif., that rewards innovation on an entirely new scale.

“The world faces difficult problems — bigger than government, business and nonprofits can handle,” said Tom Vander Ark, president of the X Prize Foundation. The foundation encourages entrepreneurship, he said, and “competitions can create and reshape markets.”

In 1996, the foundation offered a $10 million prize, called the Ansari X, for someone to invent a private passenger rocket ship able to fly nearly 70 miles up and back again. A team led by the aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, and paid for with more than $20 million from Paul G. Allen, a founder of Microsoft, collected the $10 million in 2004.

The X Prize Foundation is not alone in its ambitious ventures: Google.org, the nearly two-year-old philanthropic arm of Google, has kicked off a $10 million competition to inspire production of plug-in hybrid vehicles so energy efficient they can sell excess electricity back to the utility.

. . .

“It’s a new kind of grant-making,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, an entrepreneur who sold his company, Ethos Water, to Starbucks and became a senior adviser to the X Prize Foundation. “It’s a mode that encourages experimentation rather than prescribing solutions. It sets the stage for innovation and dynamism that the grantor can’t anticipate.”

. . .

Cash prizes to induce innovation are not new. Peter Diamandis, the 46-year-old aeronautical engineer and physician who founded the X Prize Foundation, said he was inspired by the $25,000 aviation prize offered in 1919 by a New York hotelier, Raymond Orteig, to the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. The prize went, of course, to Charles Lindbergh, whose grandson, Erik Lindbergh, is on the X Prize Foundation board.

In the same spirit, “We asked ourselves, how do we demonstrate the technology and stimulate market interest?” said Dan Reicher, director of climate and energy initiatives at Google.org. “How do we advance the technology around plug-ins? The usual way is to quietly go about looking at investment opportunities, make investments and have some impact. We decided to take a different route, a public request for investment proposals. We wanted to look beyond the usual players, bring attention to a critical area and catalyze competition and innovation.”

. . .

The X Prize Foundation announced the new competitions at the Clinton Global Initiative, a conference organized by former President Bill Clinton and held in September in New York.

“Think of this,” Mr. Clinton said at the time. “Twelve prizes in areas designed to break barriers to human health, have children live longer, solve all these education problems and do it in the most cost-effective way. This is the most amazing idea to me, trying to unleash entrepreneurship in the public interest.”

For the full story, see:

KEITH SCHNEIDER. "Win Fabulous Prizes, All in the Name of Innovation." The New York Times, Giving Special Section (Sun., November 12, 2007): 33.

(Note: ellipses added.)

“Merchant Generator” Leads Nuclear Renaissance

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted, and cited, below.

(p. B1) In a move that could mark the beginning of a nuclear-power revival, a New Jersey-based energy company today plans to submit an application to build and operate two new reactors. The request, the first submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 31 years, comes from an unlikely source: NRG Energy Inc., a company that has never before built a nuclear plant.

The application — for a two-reactor addition to the company’s existing South Texas nuclear station — could offer the first full test of the nuclear agency’s new licensing process, which has been under development since the 1980s. The new process allows companies to submit a single application for a construction permit and conditional operating license, eliminating the risk that a firm could build a plant but not be allowed to run it.

. . .

(p. B2) . . . , the industry has regained momentum, partly because other forms of power generation have continued to show significant flaws. Coal-fired plants undermine efforts to combat global warming. Many natural-gas-fired plants rely on a fuel with volatile prices. And renewable energy mostly comes from intermittent forces like wind, rain and sunlight.

This first application comes from a somewhat unlikely source; NRG is a so-called "merchant generator," a company that makes electricity and sells it on the open market. NRG has never built a nuclear plant, and because it doesn’t own a utility, has no ratepayers to whom it could bill the estimated $5.5 billion to $6 billion expense.

"We’re like the uncola," says David Crane, NRG chief executive in Princeton, N.J.

. . .

So far, it appears merchant generators think Texas provides the most promising market. Deregulation in that state has resulted in a sharp run up in wholesale power prices since 2004. A recent decision by Dallas-based TXU to abandon efforts to build eight coal-fired plants could result in shrinking electricity reserves in the coming years, creating an environment receptive to operators looking to bring large units online and sell such units’ full output.

For the full story, see:

REBECCA SMITH. "Nuclear Energy’s Second Act? Bid to Build Two New Reactors In Texas May Mark Resurgence; NRC Gears Up for Many More." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., September 25, 2007): B1 & B2.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Entrepreneur Venter Advances Toward Useful Control of Cells

Source of graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Scientists at the institute directed by J. Craig Venter, a pioneer in sequencing the human genome, are reporting that they have successfully transplanted the genome of one species of bacteria into another, an achievement they see as a major step toward creating synthetic forms of life.

Other scientists who did not participate in the research praised the achievement, published yesterday on the Web site of the journal Science. But some expressed skepticism that it was as significant as Dr. Venter said.

His goal is to make cells that might take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and produce methane, used as a feedstock for other fuels. Such an achievement might reduce dependency on fossil fuels and strike a blow at global warming.

“We look forward to having the first fuels from synthetic biology certainly within the decade and possibly in half that time,” he said.

Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, said the transplantation technique, which leads to the transferred genome’s taking over the host cell, was “a landmark accomplishment.”

“It represents the complete reprogramming of an organism using only a chemical entity,” Dr. Ebright said.

Leroy Hood, a pioneer of the closely related field of systems biology, said Dr. Venter’s report was “a really marvelous kind of technical feat” but just one of a long series of steps required before synthetic chromosomes could be put to use in living cells.

For the full story, see:

NICHOLAS WADE. "Pursuing Synthetic Life, Scientists Transplant Genome of Bacteria." The New York Times (Fri., June 29, 2007): A1 & A18.

J. Craig Venter. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.