EPA Goes Man-Hunting

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t’s little wonder why the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list doesn’t include anyone accused of breaking federal environmental laws. It’s hard to argue that a father-son team accused of illegally importing Alfa Romeo sports cars that don’t meet U.S. tailpipe emissions standards is the criminal equivalent of the likes of Usama bin Laden or the other hardened sociopaths for whom the FBI warns the public to remain on the lookout.

But the Environmental Protection Agency has now cured its apparent case of outlaw-envy with the launch of its own “Wanted” list last week. Hoping to “track down environmental fugitives,” the agency wants to “increase the number of ‘eyes’ looking for environmental fugitives.”
In addition to the Alfa Romeo Gang believed to be hiding out in Italy (so remain alert on your next visit to Tuscany), the EPA wants us to keep an eye out for Mauro Valenzuela, an airplane mechanic criminally charged for improperly loading oxygen canisters thought to have caused the tragic 1996 crash of ValuJet flight 592.

But converting the crash into an environmental crime seems a stretch. The EPA apparently views the canister loading as “illegal transportation of hazardous material.” In any event, Valenzuela’s boss and co-worker were eventually acquitted of the same criminal counts. The only reason Valenzuela also wasn’t acquitted was because he panicked and fled to parts unknown before trial. He is, in effect, a fugitive from his own innocence -- but he is wanted by the EPA nonetheless.

The rest of the EPA’s fugitives appear to be mostly hapless immigrants now believed to be “hiding” oversees in places like Syria, Mexico, India, Greece, Poland and China. They’re wanted for a variety of alleged infractions, including smuggling banned refrigerants, discharging waste into sewers, lying to the Coast Guard about a ship’s waste oil management system, transporting hazardous waste without a manifest, and creating false official documents.

While the EPA’s fugitives certainly appear to be a motley lot who may have broken a variety of environmental regulations, often unwittingly, one can’t help but wonder whether the EPA’s Wanted list is not only over-the-top, but where the agency is headed.

We, of course, don’t want people breaking environmental laws, however technical or trivial, but there’s hardly a moral equivalence between a food delivery man who, in a panic, drained 32 gallons of gasoline into a storm sewer and Islamic terrorists who have declared war on America.
The list’s creation seems a furtherance of the Greens’ larger campaign to plant the idea within the public’s mind that all environmental “transgressions” fall along a criminal continuum.
Unlike the FBI’s Wanted list, which spotlights a number of truly dangerous characters accused of causing actual harm to real people -- murder, kidnapping, rape, child molestation, armed robbery and the like -- the EPA’s fugitives are wanted for violations that seem to have caused little, if any, harm to anyone or the environment.

It’s too bad, however, that you can’t say the same thing about the EPA’s Enforcement Division.
In September 1988, the EPA had John Pozsgai indicted for removing more than 5,000 old tires from his property and spreading dirt where the tires had been. Although Pozsgai’s land was bordered by two major highways, a tire dealership and an automobile salvage yard, the EPA considered his land a federally protected “wetland” because of a drainage ditch running along the edge of his property. Though the ditch was mostly dry, it flooded during heavy rain, and the EPA considered it a stream. When Pozsgai filled the ditch without a permit, EPA undercover agents secretly filmed the dump trucks that delivered the topsoil. Though his actions didn’t create any pollution, endanger any species or water quality, Pozsgai was sentenced to three years in prison and fined more than $200,000.

In 1997, nearly two dozen federal agents, armed with semiautomatic pistols, showed up at James Knott’s wire-mesh manufacturing plant in Massachusetts. Knott was indicted on two counts of violating the Clean Water Act for allegedly pumping acidic water into the town sewer system. The EPA publicly condemned Knott and warned that his conviction could result in up to six years in prison and a $1.5 million fine. The case was subsequently dropped when it was discovered that the EPA had omitted vital information from the search warrant information indicating that Knott wasn’t violating the law.

What is the future of eco-crime? A man in the U.K. was fined $215 for leaving the lid of his trash can ajar by more than three inches. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed last July to deputize garbage men to fine people as much as $1,000 for mixing trash with recyclables. Garbage cops, however, pale in comparison to the call earlier this year by NASA’s global warming alarmist, James Hansen, to put the CEOs of oil and coal companies on trial for “high crimes against humanity and nature” -- a sentiment first broached in 2006 by a blogger for Grist magazine who called for a “climate Nuremburg” for those who have questioned the need for global warming regulation. Is this really the direction in which we want to go?

It could just be that the real threat to society comes not from a couple of guys selling a few European sports cars that don’t meet stringent U.S. tailpipe standards, but those who use the environment as an excuse to commit crime like, say, the elusive Earth Liberation Front (ELF) terrorists whose arson and vandalism targets have included homes, university buildings, a ski lodge, SUVs, SUV dealerships and more. What’s the EPA doing about ELF?
If the EPA needs a Wanted list, how about making it a “Help Wanted” list in search of Enforcement Division employees with some perspective?

Meet the New Climate Change Kid on the Block

Barack Obama announced his new energy team at a press conference Monday, sending a subtle slap down to President Bush by saying his administration would "value science" and "make decisions based on the facts."

The four appointments are a precursor to what will be the most enviro-activist administration in American history. Among others, Obama tapped Carol Browner, former EPA chief in the Clinton administration, to head up a new office in the White House designed to coordinate environmental policies. In a move that will please multiple facets of his leftist base, he also picked Nancy Sutley (an open lesbian and current deputy mayor in Los Angeles) to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The press conference underscored the Obama agenda for curbing so-called catastrophic climate change. That agenda will doubtless extend to supporting nonprofit organizations like the Climate Registry.

If you've never heard of it, don't worry. The California-based nonprofit has kept out of the headlines. But it has the potential to be a major player in the ongoing debate over climate-change policy. It's also a prime example of the snug relationship between environmentalist groups and state governments.

The Climate Registry's mission is simple: convince companies, organizations, state and local governments, and other entities to sign on and report their greenhouse gas emissions. There are several groups devoted to that cause around the country, but the registry, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, is the most far-reaching. Thirty-nine states, the District of Columbia, nine Canadian provinces, six Mexican states, and three Native American tribes have signed on as members.

Members are not required to report their emissions on a state-, province-, or tribe-wide basis. Instead, they serve as the registry's funding factory, appointing a board member, signing a statement of principles and goals, and paying a voluntary annual fee ranging from $20,000 to $50,000, depending on the state or region's population.

They also serve as a catalyst for recruiting entities within the state, province, or tribe as "reporters." For the privilege of tracking their own emissions, reporters are required to pay an annual membership fee ranging from $450 to $10,000. Nearly 300 entities have joined as reporters nationwide.

The registry has created what it calls a Climate Registry Information System that reporters use to input their greenhouse gas emissions data. The public then has access to the verified emissions reports. The "benefit" for companies is getting a leg up on tracking carbon dioxide emissions in preparation for Obama's inevitable cap-and-trade system.

That brings up the cozy relationship between the registry and state governments. The group's IRS Form 990 is not yet available, but a budget projection circulated by the group estimated $1 million in contributions from member states, provinces, or tribes for the 2008 fiscal year, well over half of the registry's estimated budget.

The funds, ostensibly, are "seed money" to get the registry up and running. Once enough reporters sign on and begin paying dues, the payments will no longer be necessary, supporters say. But stop and consider what that means: state governments across the country are serving as grantors to an out-of-state nonprofit without generating any tangible benefit for taxpayers, aside from (supposedly) fighting the giant boogieman of climate change.

Transmitting the juice POWER TO THE PEOPLE, FROM THE PEOPLE

--America's electricity infrastructure is bursting at the seams, as demand for juice outpaces the grid's capacity to accommodate the flow. Massive investment in new wires and transmission towers is necessary to avoid an increasing threat of system-wide failures of the sort that left 10 million in the Northeast without power during the summer of 2003, warns the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation, an industry watchdog.

Yet even if the investment were forthcoming, expansion of the grid is hindered by legal challenges from property owners who don't want to live next to humming power lines that mar their landscapes and decrease the value of their homes. Endless court battles waste the time and money of both parties, while America's system of transmission towers and distribution lines becomes more tenuous.

There is a better way. To meet our electricity needs without forcing citizens to live near unsightly electricity infrastructure, we must end the government's stranglehold on the electricity industry.

The provision of electricity is one of the most regulated businesses in America. Government controls virtually every step of the process: Electricity generation is burdened by onerous permitting; utilities are bestowed government-mandated monopolies to transmit and distribute the juice; and prices for electricity must be approved by state commissions.

In this regulatory model, conspicuous waste and inefficiencies persist because there is no mechanism for change. Absent competition in a real market, there is no incentive for the industry to alter its business model.

LOGIC OF MARKET FORCES

For example, in many areas of the country, electricity costs consumers the same amount of money whether they use it at 4 p.m. or 4 a.m., even though the cost of generation is much greater in the afternoon, when demand is higher.

This defies logic. If electricity were priced in accordance with market forces, rather than government mandates, demand would decrease during peak hours when electricity was more expensive. Decreased peak demand, in turn, would diminish the need for new transmission towers and distribution poles.

In some markets, government is trying to correct this pricing paradox by implementing a state-controlled pricing scheme known as "demand-side management." But why should government continue to manage the price of electricity? What is so difficult about pricing electricity according to what it actually costs? Demand-side management is just another way in which bureaucrats and regulators can keep the energy industry under their thumb.

Government-granted monopolies for the transmission and distribution of electricity undermine the entrepreneurial incentives to embrace innovations that could transcend the grid--and thus render obsolete the legal battles between utilities and property owners.

The status-quo regulatory regime provides no motive for electricity entrepreneurs to emulate the sort of private partnerships that have been instrumental to the growth of the next-generation, fiber-optic telecommunications infrastructure.

SHARING THE COSTS

In a truly competitive market, independent power producers might find it worthwhile to team up with telecom firms and property developers to share the cost of building new underground networks to provide both electricity and communications to consumers.

As long as government preserves local monopolies in the transmission of electricity, growing the existing grid is the only way to accommodate increased demand for electricity, which ensures that utilities will butt heads with property owners. True competition, on the other hand, would allow distributed generation to evolve in a way that could allow consumers to power their homes and businesses independently of the grid. That would reduce demand for new transmission towers and distribution poles.

New technologies have the potential to revolutionize the electricity industry. For instance, microturbines--small-scale power plants that run on natural gas--already exist in a range of sizes that could electrify a house or a community. Their proximity to end-users means that energy given off during the generation process can be recycled for space heating, drastically increasing energy efficiency.

So, instead of stringing power lines hundreds of miles from a huge generating plant to consumers, it is possible, and increasingly cost-effective, to install a custom-made microturbine near a residential development or business park, and bypass the grid altogether.

Yet in most regions, this would constitute a violation of a local distribution franchise, and therefore would be illegal. Similarly, government-backed distribution monopolies could stand in the way of localized exploitation of alternative energy by entrepreneurs.

It is impossible to know how an unregulated, truly competitive industry would look. The only certainty is, the industry won't change as long as the government chokes competition.

Yet change is precisely what the industry needs if it is to accommodate America's ever-growing demand for electricity while preserving the beauty of residential neighborhoods and bucolic countryside.

Dominic Lawson: Kyoto is worthless (and you don't have to be a sceptic to believe that now)

Seldom has a politician's call to action been so rapidly answered. Mr Ed Miliband gives a newspaper interview in which he demands "popular mobilisation" to force the world's governments to push through an agreement to limit carbon emissions. Within hours, members of the Plane Stupid campaign occupy the runway at Stansted Airport, causing arriving planes to circle for hours before being diverted. Well done, Ed!

In fact the Secretary of State for the Environment's demand for a "countervailing force" to be applied to the carbon foot-draggers was anticipated: last week, "climate protesters" broke into one of Britain's biggest power stations, managing to cut almost two per cent of the nation's power supplies. I imagine that the Secretary of State for Energy will be having stern words with Ed Miliband. This, though, would mean Mr Miliband shouting at himself, like a lunatic on a street-corner, since he is the Secretary of State for Energy, as well. Who says we don't have joined-up government?

Both of these "mobilisations" were presumably designed, à la Miliband, to put pressure on the world's environment ministers who are now gathering in the Polish city of Poznan to come up with the outlines of a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Accord, which expires in 2012. The truth, however, is that Kyoto, as a means to reduce carbon emissions, has been like Monty Python's parrot, long dead, despite all the protestations to the contrary by its salesmen.

You don't have to be a "climate change sceptic" to assert this unwelcome fact. Professor Gwyn Prins, Director of the LSE's Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events, has been advocating measures to reduce what he sees as man-made climate change since 1986. He was a lead author on the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and on the Advisory Board of Friends of the Earth UK. For some years now, Prof Prins has been warning that the Kyoto approach is hopelessly flawed – and his unpopularity in the environment ministries of Europe has grown, precisely as his criticisms of their approach have been vindicated.

His basic critique was originally outlined in a paper entitled "The Wrong Trousers" (after the Wallace and Gromit film): "The Kyoto Protocol seeks to square a circle. It seeks to articulate a market-driven trading mechanism, with a top-down detailed specification of how it will work. It is an example of a form of output target-setting that seeks to prevail by institutional fiat, based on over-confident assertion of fragile knowledge, through the sanction of tax and associated punishment. It has been applied to an entirely novel, indeed, a fabricated market."

This fabricated market in carbon has at its heart the UN's Clean Development Mechanism. This is how the EU, which had an obligation under Kyoto to reduce its emissions by two per cent by 2012, has managed to claim success while actually increasing its emissions by 13 per cent. By purchasing so called "offsets" from countries such as China, Britain, for example, proclaims itself a "leader in the fight against climate change".

Most of this is entirely fraudulent, in the sense that the Chinese have been paid billions to destroy particular atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which have actually been manufactured in order to be destroyed – and for no other purpose. This is hardly surprising: if something is accorded a price (especially a fixed one) then companies will queue up to produce it.

The EU is inordinately proud of its Emissions Trading Scheme – which it calls "the world's first carbon market" – and it is this scheme which has created the creative accounting scam known as "offsets". Even mortgage-backed securities, the financial instrument at the heart of the credit crunch, at least had something useful – houses – at the bottom of the pile of junk. Some people have described offsets as the carbon market equivalent of the mediaeval sale of Indulgences by the Catholic Church; but as Prof Prins points out, the Church sold them only as a means of atoning for the sins of the past – "carbon offsets" are sold to absolve us from sins in the future, an even more preposterous transaction.

Now that the EU is attempting at Poznan to set up a scheme which will make its industries buy carbon allocations via an auction, rather than simply receiving them free of charge, reality is finally intruding on the madness. Angela Merkel, as environment minister in Helmut Kohl's administration, was noted for her promotion of policies solely designed to reduce Germany's carbon emissions. As Chancellor, however, she has become better acquainted with the arguments of her country's industrial base. Thus last week in Berlin Merkel declared: "We must ensure that our energy-intensive industry, which is driven by exports, is of course excluded from the emissions quotas. We cannot stand by while jobs in the chemicals, steel and other industries move to regions of the world where climate protection is less stringent than here."

Similar remarks have been made in the run-up to Poznan by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister. It is not thought that Signor Berlusconi had read the Kyoto treaty, when he signed it during his previous term of office-but then the most convincing fraudulent documents have real signatures.

As for the host nation Poland, it produces 94 per cent of its energy from its own supplies of coal – the devil's fuel, according to the Kyoto process. Other European countries have, in effect, attempted to bribe the Poles to agree to take Russian gas instead of using their own coal to keep the country going. If they understood anything about the history of Poland, they would surely realise that there is not a chance that the Poles would voluntarily make themselves reliant on Russia to keep the lights on. I wonder if the hosts might suddenly arrange to have the delegates' hotel heating turned off in freezing Poznan, just to get the point across.

I tuned in to the BBC's Today programme yesterday morning to hear someone expostulating passionately on this general issue. He exclaimed: "I really can not believe that the EU will not come up with a deal [in Poznan]. The EU can not afford to fail on this. Our credibility will be absolutely nil." I wondered which member of Plane Stupid was talking; but then the presenter said: "Thank you, Roger Harrabin," and I realised that I had been listening to the BBC's "Environment Analyst".

Mr Harrabin's evident panic at the idea that the EU might appear to fail to keep the "Kyoto process" alive is, in a way, understandable: the Corporation's coverage of this issue has been at all times based on the idea that the Kyoto Treaty is A Good Thing: as that rare subversive, Jeremy Paxman, said last year, "The BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago." This is why you won't be hearing Prof Prins being interviewed by Mr Harrabin.

Never mind. As with Monty Python's rigid Norwegian Blue, it doesn't matter how desperately convincing the salesman is: in the end, the public knows a dead parrot when it sees one.

California Called Out on Bogus Economic Analysis

California Called Out on Bogus Economic Analysis

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is the world’s biggest proponent of a ridiculous school of economics that posits “doing something” about climate change is going to make everyone rich.

As proof of this claim, Schwarzenegger references an economic impact study released in September by the California Air Resources Board. The study claims that California’s landmark climate change bill, AB 32, would simultaneously grow the economy while it reduced emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The study was open to peer review, and yesterday those the peer review comments were published. I have yet to read them, but Debra Kahn of Climate Wire reports that they are a powerful indictment of CARB’s economic voo-doo.

A few quotes will suffice:

"Unfortunately, the Economic Analysis Supplement, in its current form, gives the appearance of justifying the chosen package of regulatory measures rather than evaluating it or looking at policy options," wrote Janet Peace and Liwayway Adkins of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Harvard’s Robert Stavins wrote, "I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the economic analysis is terribly deficient in critical ways and should not be used by the state government or the public for the purpose of assessing the likely costs of CARB's plans."

Matthew Kahn, an economics professor at UCLA wrote, "While I support the governor's broad AB 32 goals, I am troubled by the economic modeling analysis that I have been asked to read. AB32 is presented as a riskless 'free lunch' for Californians."

Solutions

Global warming may or may not be a problem. Man may or may not be driving it. Given the uncertainties, a significant amount of global regret may apply if we divert too much of our global wealth to solving what may be a non-existent or trivial problem, especially if that diversion mires billions in poverty. On the other hand, we may also regret not doing anything if man-made global warming does turn out to be a problem. It is therefore prudent to examine what steps we can take that would prove beneficial whether or not anthropogenic global warming turns out to be a problem. These steps can be termed "no regrets" policies.

What makes a No Regrets Global Warming Policy? A global warming policy can be termed "no regrets" as long as it
Reduces the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere, or
Mitigates, prevents or reduces a harm associated with global warming, or
Provides greater capacity for dealing with problems associated with global warming
Without imposing significant cost or diverting economic activity.

Top Five “No Regrets” Policies

1.) Eliminate all subsidies to fuel use.
Subsidies to energy R&D cost taxpayers millions of dollars while producing minimal benefits. While these programs may be relatively small given the size of domestic energy markets, they serve little, if any, useful purpose while subsidizing large corporations at taxpayer expense. The potential threat of global warming, whether it is real or not, is simply one more reason to eliminate these subsidy programs. An international agreement aimed at ending energy subsidy with binding targets would be a significant victory for emissions reduction. Unlike Kyoto, which forces an energy starvation diet on its participants, such a treaty would be a move to combat energy obesity.

2.) Repeal the Federal Flood Insurance Program.
Much of the concern over global warming's potential for harm in the US relates to sea level rise and the flooding that will result. However, much of the investment in potentially vulnerable areas is a result of the Federal flood Insurance Program. This program encourages building in vulnerable areas by acting as a moral hazard: people take greater risks because the government has said it will help bear that risk. Reform would reduce the moral hazard connected with building on vulnerable land, transferring the risk from the taxpayer to the private sector, which is likely to take a more realistic view of the issue.

3.) Reform Air Traffic Control Systems.
Greater demand for air travel means more flights, which means greater fuel use and increased emissions. Yet, the current government-operated system of air traffic control, based on a 1920s-era system of beacons, may hinder innovations that could reduce fuel use and emissions. As a general rule, the shorter the flight, the less fuel will be consumed. Yet neither airlines nor pilots have the freedom to choose the most direct and economical route. Giving pilots freedom to map their own course is an attractive and desirable change in the eyes of the industry, and the impact on the environment would be tremendous. As well as saving considerable amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, the policy will deliver significant benefits in terms of time and expense to the US economy. By obviating significant reductions in service levels associated with more routine applications of emissions reduction policy, it is to be preferred to that approach.

4.) Facilitate Electricity Competition.
By rejecting the model of central regulation and allowing suppliers to meet their customers' needs more exactly while relying on distributed generation, energy waste and the associated emissions will reduce considerably. This reduction in waste will prove economically beneficial even if emissions themselves do not cause problems.

5.) Reduce Regulatory Barriers to New Nuclear Build.
There is no other technology than nuclear that is proven to be capable of providing emissions-free energy at the scale required to make significant reductions in carbon emissions. The problem is that thanks to anti-nuclear activism by environmentalists in the 1970s, it takes a very long time to build a nuclear plant. This pushes development and construction costs up to the level where it is not economically competitive with higher-emitting forms of electricity generation like coal and natural gas. According to the nuclear energy institute, it takes 10 years from concept to operation to build a nuclear plant, and only four of those are construction, the rest is permit application development (2 years) and decision-making by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (4 years).

Global Warming 101: The Costs

Leading climate alarmists claim that global greenhouse gas emissions need to decrease to 60 percent below present levels by 2050 if humans are to avoid catastrophic climate change. But such a drastic emissions reduction is at odds with the world’s energy needs. Economists predict that an 80 percent increase in global energy demand will cause global greenhouse gas emissions to grow by 70 percent by mid-century.

Almost all the increase in energy demand and emissions will come from developing countries, where a quarter of the global population lacks any access to electricity. Indeed, almost half of the world’s people have to rely on traditional biomass, agricultural residues, and dung for cooking and heating. These countries will require tremendous amounts of energy if they are to grow their economies and escape poverty.

Given the reality of increasing energy demand in the developing world, the only way to reduce emissions is de-carbonize energy production. Yet fossil fuels account for 85 percent of the world’s primary energy for a very simple reason: They are the world’s least expensive source of energy. Therefore, a carbon-free energy future is an expensive energy future.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, annual global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by 30.3 gigatons a year by 2050 to reduce emissions by 50 percent by 2050. To get an idea of the costs of de-carbonizing energy production, consider the chart below, which depicts actions that would “save” 1 gigaton of CO2-equivalent per year:


Actions that Provide One Gigaton CO2 per Year of Mitigation or Offsets
Someone would have to pay for all those new nuclear power plants and wind turbines. The International Energy Agency estimates that halving global emissions by 2050 would cost $45 trillion. That is $45 trillion above the cost of fossil fuel energy that would not be spent to create wealth. That would take a big bite out of global prosperity. Much is said about the so-called “consensus” on climate science, but the economic consensus is that reducing emissions reduces economic growth.

Making energy more expensive would be catastrophic for the developing world, for which access to affordable energy is a precondition for economic growth, the most important driver of human well-being. Costly emissions reductions policies would rob the world’s poorest people of opportunities to escape poverty.

Alarmists claim that rising temperatures threaten human welfare—but reducing emissions from energy production also threatens human welfare, especially in the developing world, since doing so limits economic growth. So what is worse, the warming or the policy?

The question we have to ask is, "What's Worse? Climate change or climate policy?"
In a Cato Institute study, Indur Goklany suggests that climate change is unlikely to be the world’s most important environmental problem during the 21st century, because a richer but warmer world is better for human welfare than a colder but poorer world would be.


The Cost of Global Warming
In his book Cool It, Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg applies a cost/benefit analysis to climate change mitigation measures like the Kyoto Protocol, and finds that they are a tragic waste of money. According to his research, we could spend a fraction of the cost of climate policies on immediate problems, like HIV or malaria, and save millions more lives than global warming would take.

Dr. William Nordhaus of Yale University estimates that 3°C of global warming would cost the world $22 trillion this century. Al Gore’s package of measures, which calls on the U.S. to “join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy Earth,” would reduce warming costs to $10 trillion, at a cost of $34 trillion.

Climate change might harm human welfare, but so would climate change policy. Policy makers should assess and weigh both sets of risks before deciding on a course of action.

Business, the Environment and … Coffee Machines

It seems the business of making coffee is becoming increasingly elaborate. One manifestation of this is the global success of the Nespresso brand of coffee and coffee makers.

Fans of Nespresso love the convenience and neatness, and they say the disposable capsules deliver a superior taste. Detractors say the packaging creates waste and that keeping the coffee machines warm is a further drain on the electricity grid.

Now it seems that there may be other concerns about high-end coffee machines.

Water in the reservoir of 17 deluxe machines made by Cimbali, an Italian company, has been found by European Union officials and other experts to contain elevated levels of lead and nickel.

I wrote today about the apparent contamination, which was found by an archivist in the cabinet of a senior E.U. official, Danuta Hubner.


The archivist, Alexander Just, said he and his colleagues had found the coffee tasted funny. Just, who has a background in biology, sent the water for testing in his native Austria. There the water was found to contain much greater levels of nickel and higher levels of lead than usually allowed. The commission has performed a study of its own, confirming some of Just’s findings.

In the meantime, Cimbali said its machines are not to blame and has managed to overturn an E.U.-wide warning, filed by Belgian authorities, concerning complaints about the metals. “We confirm that our products are in compliance with all the international required standards,” said Luca Dussi, the operational marketing and communications director for Gruppo Cimbali. He declined to comment on whether machines made by Cimbali contained nickel or lead in their manufacture.

(The action by the Belgian authorities may have resulted from complaints from other users of Cimbali machines besides E.U. officials, which would suggest that that problem is more widespread.)

One question is whether the apparent contamination comes from the water supply or from the coffee machines. The commission appears to believe the machines are to blame, but the company now is likely to perform its own tests.

Yet another question concerns our increasing reliance on industrial-style catering devices — and the carbon footprint they produce — for our daily brew and for other food and drink. Of course, it’s possible that machines like those by Cimbali and Nespresso use less energy than constantly boiling a kettle to prepare coffee in a press pot or — perish the thought — to enjoy a cup of instant.

Will $1.81 Gas or Russia Save the Hummer?

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I saw a television ad for the Hummer. It was kind of shocking, given the amazing gyrations of oil prices and the economy. The vehicle’s fate looks as though it will be determined by a tug of war between the financial implosion and plummeting gas prices.
Click on the image to see a graphic of gas prices in 2008 (red) and 2007. (Credit: Energy Information Administration.)

The latest word from G.M. is that the company may dump the Hummer brand as part of a government rescue package. But in Russia, sales remain strong. “In Russia, the road for the Hummer is bright,” Artyom Frolov, a dealership manager, was quoted as saying at a luxury goods fair in Moscow.

With the national average price for regular unnleaded gasoline now around $1.80 a gallon, it’s hard to envision long lines waiting to buy the Volt plug-in hybrid that G.M. plans to market. (See earlier post on gas prices and driving patterns.) But of course, the World Energy Outlook and other studies say that higher fuel prices are inevitable as fossil fuel deposits are depleted and the world heads toward having 9 billion people seeking a decent life.

But you don’t have to go to Moscow to find passionate, persistent Hummer fans, as I learned last night when I belatedly caught up with the recent Colbert Report video (above) on the National Hummer Club. (I know, I know. You’re wondering how I can pretend to be on top of things if I’m not tracking world events day by day via Comedy Central . . . . Now I’m wondering about the same thing.) If you haven’t seen the video, you owe yourself the five minutes.

Will low gasoline prices put America (and the world) in another fossil-fuel “trance” — as President-elect Barack Obama cautioned — and make us forget the long-term energy and climate challenges ahead?

Carbon Detectives Are Tracking Gases in Colorado

BOULDER, Colo. — As she squeezed herself into a telephone-booth-size elevator to ascend a 984-foot tower in Colorado’s eastern plains, Arlyn Andrews said with a grin, “This makes me want to go rock climbing.”

It’s a good thing she loves climbing tall structures. Dr. Andrews, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, climbs the tower periodically to make sure the narrow tubes running from the tower to analyzers nearby are properly taking continuous samples of carbon dioxide, methane and a cocktail of other greenhouse gases.

The elevator grumbled to a halt about five minutes later at an 820-foot perch, where the tower’s slender shadow stretched into a neighboring sunflower field in the early morning sunlight. “We’re able to detect the whole mix of emissions here — what comes from automobile traffic, from industry, from residential development and from agriculture,” Dr. Andrews said.

She is one of many carbon sleuths, scientists who track and analyze where greenhouse gases come from and where they go over time. Think of it like personal finances. To plan for a sound financial future, it helps to create a budget and keep track of how one is spending money. Similarly, atmospheric scientists need to develop a “budget” for greenhouse gases.

But the atmosphere delivers no monthly statement on greenhouse gas dynamics, so scientists have to tease out the information from disparate and often contradictory sources. The key task is measuring the sources, or emissions, of these planet-warming gases, and the “sinks” — forests, cropland and oceans that absorb carbon. This budget can then inform intelligent climate-control policy, whether it be managing one forest or shaping national emissions regulations.

The quest to track carbon began 50 years ago when an atmospheric scientist, David Keeling, cranked up an analyzer and started running the world’s first carbon dioxide-measuring observatory, at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Now, thanks to an expanding combination of atmospheric and land-based measuring techniques, scientists can quantify more precisely the sources and sinks of CO2. They also better understand how heat-trapping gases vary over time and space, not just globally but on continental and even regional scales.

By applying the various methods and checking them against each other and against computer models, scientists are also more accurately distinguishing certain human-caused greenhouse gases from those that stem from natural fluctuations in terrestrial and ocean ecosystems.

The stakes are much higher now than they were 50 years ago. Globally, carbon sinks are being outpaced by rising emissions. Atmospheric instruments like the NOAA-financed network of eight tall towers offer climate scientists a window into processes that control greenhouse gas emissions and sinks.

But uncertainty remains high — often as high as estimates themselves. For instance, researchers think about half of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere gets absorbed by oceans and land, but they do not know precisely where the gases come from and where they end up. This knowledge gap has serious policy implications; until it becomes clear where emissions are going, it will remain difficult to have verifiable credits for sequestering carbon.

“We need to make sure that carbon markets are affecting climate change, not just putting money in the hands of some companies and people,” said Lisa Dilling, an assistant professor of environmental science at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

A vexing challenge is that surface inventory assessments — based on measuring forests, agricultural fields and smokestack emissions, for instance — generally do not agree with atmospheric measurements.

“We’ve got to close the carbon budget to know precisely what’s going where,” said Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University in Indiana.

Toward that goal, last April, Dr. Gurney started the Vulcan Project. Named after the Roman god of fire, Vulcan is a massive database and a graphic map that shows hourly changes of CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in every locale by every source, including vehicles, power plants and factories.

Another carbon budget-mapping tool for atmospheric scientists is called CarbonTracker, a data analysis system begun last year by Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory and his colleagues at NOAA. The online system shows how CO2 ebbs and flows across continents and how that varies year to year.

Dr. Tans started the tall tower network in 1992. He hopes to expand it to 30 structures from the current eight. The most advanced instruments were introduced last year in California — one in San Francisco and the other in the San Joaquin Valley, near Sacramento.

This summer, a continuing study at a tall tower located on corn and soybean fields in West Branch, Iowa, revealed that the crops sucked a surprisingly large amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere during the summer growing season — as much as 55 parts per million out of a background CO2-equivalent level of 380 parts per million.

Any farmer knows that corn grows fast and soaks up lots of carbon in the process, and later respires CO2 when it is harvested or left to decay. But this was the first time that scientists detected such a large reduction of CO2 inventory over a specific region during growing season. The study also showed a large drop in CO2 concentration from the previous summer, probably because floods delayed the growing season this year, Dr. Andrews said.

The network of tall towers has drastically improved on air samples taken from small airplanes. And the towers cover a broader area than shorter, land-based instruments like so-called flux towers that measure how many tons of CO2 flow in and out of a specific plot of land, roughly within a square kilometer.

In January, the next frontier of atmospheric CO2 measuring instruments will begin when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launches the first carbon-scanning satellite, called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.

Each day, the satellite will orbit Earth 15 times, taking nearly 500,000 measurements of the “fingerprint” that CO2 leaves in the air between the satellite and Earth’s surface. The data will be used to create a map of CO2 concentrations that will help scientists determine precisely where the sources and sinks are — showing differences in trace gases down to a 1 part per million precision against a background of 380 parts per million CO2 equivalent.

Ultimately, many scientists hope their discoveries will inform climate policies, like mandatory limits on emissions that many expect Congress will eventually impose.

“It’s a national priority to understand the carbon budget so people can make smart, good policy,” said Dr. Gurney of Purdue, adding that many scientists feel pressured to push the boundaries of knowledge in this field in their effort to slow global warming. “It’s what motivates us to wake up in the morning.”

GLOBAL WARMING

Global warming is the increase in the average measured temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century, and its projected continuation.

Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the 100 years ending in 2005.[1][2] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that most of the increase since the mid-twentieth century is "very likely" due to the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.[3][2] Natural phenomena such as solar variation and volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward.[4][5] These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science,[6] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[7][8][9] While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with these findings,[10] the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.[11][12]

Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century.[3] This range of values results from differing estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions and from the use of models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a thousand years even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. This results from the large heat capacity of the oceans.[3]

Increasing global temperature is expected to cause sea levels to rise, an increase in the intensity of extreme weather events, and significant changes to the amount and pattern of precipitation, likely including an expanse of the subtropical desert regions.[13]. Other expected effects of global warming include changes in agricultural yields, modifications of trade routes, glacier retreat, mass species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.

Remaining scientific uncertainties include the amount of warming expected in the future, and how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Political and public debate continues regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences.