Category: Air Problems

Reality Smacks Down Ethanol

In recent days, the EPA has decided to cut the amount of cellulosic (non-corn based) ethanol refiners are required to blend into gasoline.  After fighting and ignoring court rulings limiting the amount of ethanol to what could actually be produced, the EPA has finally given into reality.  It cut the required use of cellulosic ethanol to 6 million gallons, less than half of the previously required 14 million gallons.  The EPA is also decided to reduce the overall amount of ethanol used from the 18.15 billion gallon target previously established.  How much the overall cut would be and how this will effect mandated levels beyond 2014 is still undetermined.

This goes to show just because you mandate something, doesn’t mean it will come to pass.  The limits on cellulosic use stem from the fact that despite government mandates, the technology still doesn’t exist to make cellulosic ethanol easily produced.  The second limit is a result of the fact that American’s have determined, and fuel stations reflect, that they just won’t take that much damaging ethanol in their fuel.  Gas stations it cities aren’t widely moving to an E-15 blend from the current E-10.  And gas stations in more suburban and rural areas aren’t buying ethanol tainted fuels at all.  Why?  Ethanol can damage automobiles and fuel tanks and lines at stations and reduces fuel economy. 

Now would be a perfect time to end the ethanol mandate and subsidies entirely.

Aug 07, 2013 | 20 comments | by

Cleaner Air, Stormier World?

It seems we’ve discovered one more confounding factor to an accurate appraisal of climate change. As reported in the NCPA’s Daily Policy Digest, researchers at the Met Office Hadley Centre in England believe that efforts in the U.S. and around the globe to improve air quality are contributing to greater numbers of tropical storms. Climate simulations (that is historical backcasting using climate models) indicate that as aerosols have decreased due to technological innovation and clean air laws, has increased tropical storm activity.

This is a bit curious since actual storm counts show no increase outside of the natural range of variability. Could this be another instance of model bias ― the bias of climate models to predict bad results whatever the change in inputs?

Hurricane graphic.

The more we know, the clearer it becomes that we don’t know that much about the climate.

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Aug 02, 2013 | 13 comments | by

President Obama’s Climate Plan makes Mayberry look Modern

It was not that long ago, that many of the modern electrical and/or electronic appliances and conveniences that the present generation takes for granted either did not exist at all or, if they did exist, that had yet to receive widespread adoption by the public either due to high prices or lack of familiarity.

There were no desk top computers, no color TV’s (much less big screen, 3d TV’s ), no ipads, ipods, iphones or any of Apple, Inc.’s, Android or Google based competitors, no server stations, cell-phones, no micro-waves, no X-Box’s, Nintendo’s or Sony play stations, no remote controls, no cd or dvd players, no electronic fuel injection, no dish washers, no electric or gasoline hedge clippers or weed-wackers — all of this any many other power hungry devices that have become common place, even vital to the modern world, simply did not exist in the 1950’s to early 1960’s.  In addition, many of the devices that we use today, did exist in during the 1950’s but they weren’t common place.  Most families only had a single car, there was a single phone in the house, clothes were dried on clothes lines, not dryers – which were rare –, central air was also rare and many homes and offices didn’t even have window units – theaters advertised having air conditioning as an additional attraction to go to the movie.   Black and white televisions were just beginning to make inroads into the average household, but there was only one and it was in the main room.  Lawn mowers were transitioning from manual push mowers to early gasoline powered models.

Watch an old episode of the Andy Griffith show, Leave it to Beaver or I Love Lucy and you’ll get a feel all the things that were absent or uncommon from the average home in the middle of the 20th Century.

This was all brought to mind when President Obama unveiled his grand climate agenda last week in a speech at Georgetown.  Obama, unable to convince a skeptical Congress that the benefits of fighting purported global warming outweigh the costs, has decided to circumvent them altogether and issue administrative edicts from on high.

Many analysts have focused their critiques of the President’s climate change initiatives on the high costs that will imposed upon the economy:  millions of jobs lost, much higher energy prices, jobs shipped overseas, etc…  Often, however, when the numbers get this high, people’s eyes glaze over and they can’t personalize the real impact.  That’s where this note comes in.

A couple of years ago, a bill was offered by Democratic Representatives Ed Markey (MA) and Henry Waxman (CA) that would have cut greenhouse gas emissions primarily generated by energy use by 16 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent  below 2005 levels by 2050.  While the President’s plan, so far, doesn’t  try to impose stricter standards out to 2050, his short term standard, at 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is actually a little more stringent than the Markey-Waxman standard.  This standard, accounting for population growth, would cut CO2 per capita to levels not seen since the mid-1950’s.

waxman-markey per capita

Remember one car, one landline phone, no computers, cell phones or electronic gaming systems – so tell me, which will you live without?

Jul 02, 2013 | 13 comments | by

The Left’s War on, well, Everything! Science, the economy and humans

I don’t know if it is serendipity or what, but during the last week several articles have popped up on my computer with similar theme:  How liberals are increasingly shedding their humanist pretentions and showing (their true) misanthropic nature.

The Scientific American brings us a story, “The Left’s War on Science,” in which Michael Shermer details a few of the ways in which he thinks the left has abandoned science – especially on environmental issues.  Mr. Shermer and I disagree on the question of climate change and whether it is still reasonable to be a skeptic; however, we agree that for liberal environmentalists, questions of science and science policy have come to take on the tone of religious zealotry.  On issues, of climate change (in my view), genetically modified foods and energy (views we share), environmentalists have cast aside science, and adopted an “everything natural is good,” “everything unnatural is bad,” religion.

A second story is, by contrast, rather mundane by today’s standards.  Just another tale of the government, which claims it wants to create jobs (“creating jobs is job one!”), killing high paying jobs in the energy industry by enacting  a variety of unnecessary rules – rules which will do nothing to protect human health or the environment.  For example, environmental regulations have raised the cost of building a new power plant in Texas, which economists had estimated would create 3,900 jobs.

Finally, two stories from widely different locations across the globe, but with the same theme.  It seems that politicians and wooly headed academics/media personalities are finally being honest about their feelings concerning the human race.  In one story, Sir David Attenborough stated that: “Humans are a plague on the Earth that need to be controlled by limiting population growth.”  The racist, eugenicists from the late 19th through the mid-20th century who routinely sterilized and/or exterminated “undesirables,” would be proud, as would the communist dictators in China.  To the very enlightened Mr. Attenborough – may I suggest that you and others like you take the first step by volunteering for sterilization?  In the second story, the Japan’s finance minister suggested that 25 – 40% of the Japan’s population, elderly retirees and those soon to be so, “. . .should  just hurry up and die.”  Logan’s Run anyone?  It seems the minister objects to older Japanese actually using the socialized health care and social welfare system they’ve paid into all their lives.  He complains that elderly Japanese citizens’ health care is being paid for by the government and it’s just costing too much.  Ignoring the fact that the money used to pay the bills is not the government’s but the taxpayers in the first place and that the government has forced them into the social welfare system he is complaining about.  It may be a Ponzi scheme, but it is the government’s Ponzi scheme and it is responsible for the payouts.

So let’s sum up, the left routinely attacks sound science and replaces it with a pseudo-green religion that undermines progress.  It enacts regulations that kill jobs which make people poorer and worse off.  Finally, it attacks people themselves stating that their rights to procreate and even continue to live be limited by government.  Back to the Pleistocene, indeed!

 

Jan 29, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Does Moneyball work for the EPA?: New EPA Particulant Regs Puffery?

Back in 2003, Michael Lewis wrote “Money Ball,” a book about how an Oakland, CA baseball team under head coach Billy Beane used player statistics to hire team members that gave them the greatest chance of a championship season at the lowest cost.
So by 2009 it was pretty clear what was coming when President Obama’s chief regulator, Cass Sunstein, began talking about how federal regulators should act less than green eye-shade bean counters and more like Billy Beane. Sunstein was going to base regulatory philosophy on statistics and cost/benefit analysis. On its face, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing.
But pointing out the difficultities of this approach is Susan Dudley, head of regulatory studies at George Washington University and Sunstein’s predecessor under President Bush. In her view, the new ‘statistics’ can be fudged to justify almost any kind of regulation. She uses recent EPA regs as an example
Dudley says that the bulk of “benefits” from Obama’s regulatory effort comes from new EPA limits on air particulates of 2.5 micrometers or less. Ask any electric power company executive and they will confirm that this has been the biggest expense for power producers in the last decade as they install expensive smoke stack scrubbers in their coal-burning plants.
Together, these regulations account for about 50% of the monetized cost of all new government regulations, according to Dudley. And they account for even more of the purported “benefits.”
The joke is in the calculation of the ‘benefits.’
According to Dudley the bulk of the benefit comes from extending the life expectacy of a certain group of citizens by 6 months.
Who are these lucky few? Says Dudley,’the beneficiaries of these life saving regulations is around 80-years-old.” Obviously, extending the life of 80-year-olds is a good thing to do. But there are also a lot of doubts about how much effect small particulants have on anybody’s health. Additionally, people in their 80s tend to have one or more other health conditions that may account for changes in mortality.
EPA adds to the accounting a claim that reducing air particulates also cuts back on fish exposure to heavy metals like Mercury that are contained in microscopic particulants. Whether or not these savings have been double-counted against other EPA interventions aimed at reducing Mercury, Dudley does not say.

Dudley, Susan, “Perpetuating Puffery: An Analysis of the Composition of OMB’s Reported Benefits of Regulation,” Business Economics, July 2012, Vol. 47 No. 3, pp 165-176
Lewis, M.M., 2004. Moneyball: The art of winning an unfair game, WW Norton. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=oIYNBodW-ZEC&oi=fnd&pg=PR12&dq=%22I+was+inclined+to+concede+the+point.+The+people+with+the+most+money+often+win.%22+%22you+looked+at+what+actually+had+happened+over+the+past+few+years,+you+had%22+&ots=pcH3mzoxGM&sig=LtRBCL53W3-oazf2PxvVAnU8enY [Accessed September 26, 2012].

Sep 26, 2012 | 7 comments | by

America’s Love Affair with the Refrigerator

An article by Dan Neil in The Wall Street Journal takes the issue of driverless cars a bit further and concludes that it would make the nation more productive economically.

 The one brilliant part of the U.S. economic profile is productivity. It turns out, Americans are a little nutty when it comes to work.

 If autonomy were fully implemented today, there would be roughly 100 million Americans sitting in their cars and trucks tomorrow, by themselves, with time on their hands. It would be, from an economist’s point of view, the Pennsylvania oil fields of man-hours, a beautiful gusher, a bonanza of reverie washing upon our shores.

 The self-driving car is the next step in this process and promises to make our metropolitan areas even more productive by reducing traffic congestion, freeing more time for productive activity, reducing public expenditures on urban transport and improving safety.

Perhaps most importantly, Neil goes out of his way to put to rest the so-called American  “love affair with the automobile.” Americans and virtually all peoples around the world have similar love affairs — with convenience and better lives. Yet, we do not hear of their love affairs with refrigerators or televisions or smart phones. That’s because, among the plethora of modern conveniences that have enriched the lives of billions, the automobile has a special place as the Great Satan among those who believe they are anointed to be the the architects of other people’s lives.

For too long, superficial analysis has misled many to believe that there is a choice  not to drive. In fact, however, the automobile has been crucial in creating and supporting the huge and efficient labor markets that are large metropolitan areas. Access and mobility within them, and their attendant economic growth and poverty reduction, could have been achieved no other way with the technologies available. It is true that transit is unparalleled in the access it provides south of 59th street in Manhattan and in, at most, five other large central business districts (downtowns) in the United States. But for the 95 percent of work destinations outside these few places, the auto is usually the only alternative or takes half the time of any alternative (See: “Where Rail Works and Why, in The Road Less Understood). A similar story can be told about Paris, London, Toronto and the rest of Western Europe and Canada, where the automobile is king outside core areas that contain a minority of the metropolitan population.

The point was effectively made in a recent Washington Times editorial, entitled “A world without cars: The internal-combustion engine has freed mankind:”

 All it takes is a history book to envision the reality of a carless world, and it was a miserable time. Tailpipe emissions and the rumble of engines haven’t ruined modern city life; they’ve preserved it.

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Note: America’s Short Commute Times: One clarification is required. The Wall Street Journal article states that Americans have an average commute of 50 minutes. That is true. However, that is both ways combined. The average one-way work trip is about 25 minutes. This is an important point, since people ideologically opposed to the personal mobility and bereft of any understanding of its economic role have often talked as if average one-way commutes are much longer (one to two hours is not an unusual claim).

In fact, Americans have among the shortest commutes in the world. They spend less time going to and from work than people in Europe, affluent Asia and Canada. The data is in our Frontier Centre (Winnipeg) report on the competitiveness of metropolitan areas in Canada: http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/4195

 

Sep 25, 2012 | 3 comments | by

Obama’s EPA before the bar: People Two, EPA Zero

The EPA continues its terrible record in the federal courts this year.  On March 27, I noted a series of setbacks that the EPA suffered in the courts — instances where EPA zealotry led to insupportable overreach on the agency’s part.

For the EPA the hits keep on coming.  In August alone two more appeals courts have ruled against the EPA. On August 13, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected the EPA’s decision to throw out state of Texas’s flexibile permitting program.  The program, designed by then Governor Ann Richards administration, allowed for a facility to obtain a permit to install modifications without further review as long as the emissions increase did not exceed an aggregate limit specified in the permit.  Industry largely applauded the program because it streamlined their regulatory burden.  Yet, since 1994, when it was ennacted during the Clinton administration, while the EPA never challenged the rule, it also never formally accepted it.  Under this plan, Texas’s economy grew at a faster rate than the nation as a whole, while its emissions of regulated polloutants also fell faster than the nation as a whole.  A win-win right?

Not according to the Obama adminstration’s EPA which, on July 10, 2010 rejected the then 16 year old regulatory program — meaning , in theory, that plants operating under the program faced immediate fines and had to undergo a new permitting process (as yet undeveloped).

Fortunately, the court focused on the positive results.  Judge E. Grady Jolly said the agency’s disapproval violated its responsibilities under the Clean Air Act because, “We thus find that the EPA’s objections to the emissions caps of the Flexible Permit Program rely on standards not found in the [Clean Air Act] or its implementing regulations,” Jolly wrote. Going further Judge Jolly stated that the agency “acted arbitrarily and capriciously, and in excess of its statutory authority.”

Then on August 21, the second shoe fell, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out the EPA’s Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR).  The majority opinion held that that EPA overstepped its stauatory authority under the Clean Air Act.  First, the court found that EPA is granted authority to require a state to reduce the emissions it produces only by the amount that drifts into another state, causing it to obtain nonattainment status. But under Obama administration’s CSAPR, he said, EPA could require larger reductions.  In addition, the court found that CSAPR circumvents a state’s authority to develop its own plan to reduce emissions, choosing to implement a federal plan immediately — instead of initially deferring to states’ authority.

These court rulings are great for the economy, since, as I pointed out on April 27, a thorough analysis of these and other EPA regulations which have been struck down (and some are still pending or approved) undertaken by the Heartland Institute demonstrated that they would cost billions of dollar and millions of jobs over the life of the regulations and all for little or no environmental benefit.

Good rulings and good riddance!

 

 

 

 

Aug 23, 2012 | 8 comments | by

ALEC’s Economy Derailed is a Disturbing Eye-Opener

Presidential Administrations come and go, and one thing they all have in common, even the most parsimonious of them, is that they enact thousands of pages of costly regulations that do little or nothing to protect the public’s health or enhance its welfare. The Obama administration, however, has put this trait in hyperdrive: pushing enormously costly laws, enacting destructive executive orders and publishing one after the other of maddening, unnecessary regulations.

Among the most expensive, least beneficial, ill-thought out of these regulations are those promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency.  In this regard, the American Legislative Exchange Council has done the public, and public servants at the local, state and national level, a great service with its publication, Economy Derailed.  Which details the EPA’s regulatory train wreck.

Because I actually want you to read the report, I won’t divulge too much, but I will whet your appetite for more.

Things you will learn include:

The Utility MACT (MATS) Rule could require retrofits for up to 753 electricity-generating units, and up to 15 gigawatts of electricity – enough to power 15 million households —  could be forced into early retirement. The standards are so stringent that even recently permitted plants employing the best available technology cannot meet them, and no new coal plants are likely to be built. Although at odds with just about every independent cost estimate, the EPA’s estimate of annual cost is approximately $11 billion, and its estimate of annual health benefits from the reduction in mercury is only $6 million (though the benefits could be as small as $500,000).

The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule could threaten 7 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity with early retirement, which is roughly enough to power 7 million American households.

And this is just two of the regulations that the report examines.  How bad is it?  Bad enough to drive labor groups, trade organizations and management into each others’ arms to oppose these job killing rules.  Indeed, ALEC’s report details the fact that “a broad and diverse coalition opposes EPA overreach. In sum, 32 current and former governors and lieutenant governors, 27 groups of state and local officials, 16 labor unions, 17 state legislative bodies, 10 state agencies, and 57 trade associations have openly voiced opposition to the escalating EPA expansion. This coalition represents millions of workers, thousands of state officials, tens of thousands of companies, more than 3,000 counties, more than 19,000 cities, villages, and towns, and thousands of state legislators across the country.”

Wondering how the EPA’s regulations might affect your state, Economy Derailed provides an answer.  Indeed, among the most valuable portions of the report is its state by state breakdown of the cost of regulations and the job losses to be expected in each state.  Let’s just say, Wes Craven and John Carpenter combined couldn’t have written a script with so scary an outcome.

 

Apr 27, 2012 | 2 comments | by

Riverkeepers Play Sleight of Hand on Fracking Impacts

This week, the Wall Street Journal is hosting its ECO:nomics conference, discussing the state of green business. One panel featured an exchange between Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon and Paul Gallay of Riverkeepers. Gallay calls McClendon’s support of natural gas fracking “snake oil.” One particular claim stood out at me.

He first argues that the prevalence of benzene in the air around Dallas has increased. Then Gallay implies (at 2:30 in the video) that fracking has led to health problems for children, saying specifically “In the Dallas/Ft. Worth area the amount of childhood asthma is double the statewide average. These are the facts.” That may be a fact, but it has nothing to do with either fracking or air quality.

This is a common sleight of hand among environmentalists. Instead of citing air quality data, they cite surrogate data (like asthma rates), implying that the two are synonymous. They are not. Interestingly, asthma rates are climbing nationwide at the same time outdoor air quality has dramatically improved.

According to the EPA, in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, the number of days with “good” air quality has climbed from 124 in 2001 to 195 in 2011. The number of “unhealthy” days has fallen from 13 to 6 during that time period. The worst air quality, measured by the EPA’s Air Quality Index (AQI), has fallen from 204 to 169. Put simply, the air quality in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area is much better today than ten years ago. I don’t know when fracking around Dallas began, but the amount is certainly higher today than ten years ago, and yet air quality has improved. If asthma rates are climbing, it is due to some other factor. (NCPA has addressed this in the past, for example “Facts Not Fear on Air Pollution.”)

There is a real danger here. Rather than focus on the real causes of childhood asthma, such sleights of hand distract our efforts for political purposes, making it more difficult to solve the problem. This is a fundamentally dishonest game and it harms efforts to improve childhood health.

If fracking is the threat to the environment and human health that Riverkeepers claims, why not use real data? Gallay chose two “facts” to point to the damage fracking does to the environment. If one of the two examples he provides is deceptive, why should we believe the overall case against fracking is any stronger?

Mar 23, 2012 | 1 comment | by

How The Lorax Learned to Love Foresters

Tomorrow, the motion picture version of Dr. Seuss’s book “The Lorax” will hit the big screen and the reviews indicate it sticks to the original 1971 storyline. In “The Lorax,” a businessman, the “Once-ler,” moves into town, cuts down all the trees and destroys the forest, air and water in the process. A furry creature, the Lorax, appears and proclaims, “I speak for the trees” and scolds the Once-ler for being “crazed with greed.”

The story is a product of its times, when people like Paul Ehrlich were claiming that the planet’s time was short and that pollution and resource scarcity would soon overwhelm mankind. Time has not been kind to Ehrlich, demonstrating that his predictions and those of other early-1970s environmentalists, were not based in sound economics or science.

Forty years later, The Lorax also shows its age. Since it was published, a different story has been written in forests across the globe. Rather than being at odds, the Once-ler and the Lorax have found a common interest in making sure forests grow and expand – and many of the world’s forests have benefited. Three things stand out.

  • Last year was the International Year of the Forest, and the United Nations offered some good news. For the last two decades, total land area covered by forest in the Northern Hemisphere – where forestry is particularly active – has increased.
  • Wood is increasingly recognized as one of the most environmentally friendly building materials. At the University of Washington, researchers compared the environmental impact of building with either wood, concrete or steel. The hands-down winner for lower energy use, less waste and less water use was wood. While concrete and steel can only be mined once, trees are constantly replacing themselves.
  • In “The Lorax,” the Once-ler’s business collapses when all the trees are gone. Foresters understand this. Destroying a forest by cutting down every last tree makes no sense, so there are more trees in American forests today than there were just a few decades ago. Replanting isn’t just good for the environment, it’s good for business.

Forty years after he sprung from the imagination of Dr. Seuss, the Lorax would be happy to see that, far from disappearing, many forests today are thriving. They are there because the real story of the forests has not been about an unending battle between the fictional Lorax and the hard-hearted Once-ler, but of a friendship that understands that both benefit from healthy forests future generations can enjoy.

 

 

Mar 01, 2012 | 1 comment | by
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