Tag: "human emissions"

Hydropower has Renewable Energy Flaws

Out of all the renewable energy options, hydro powered dams have been a very popular option. Many see it as one of the cleanest options which produces lots of energy. However, dams and reservoirs are currently — and have been for a long time — caused all kinds of harm to the environment and water eco systems.

Some of the damage the hydropower effort have had includes:

Contributing four percent of all human emissions.
Pollute water ways.
Blocks the natural developments of the rivers, waterways and the eco systems.

Efforts are under way to remove dams and other water structures that are already having a positive effect on the water eco systems in those regions. There is no need to let government make the push for renewable energy, when there are already plenty of resources available, even in the United States.

Sep 10, 2014 | Leave a Comment | by Lloyd Bentsen

Calming Fears of Climate Change in Asia

Many climate studies have focused on South and Southeast Asia, as the region is considered uniquely vulnerable to the projected effects of climate change such as a reduction in crop yields, rising sea levels, flooding, a loss of biodiversity and drought. Many of these Asian countries are islands or are on peninsulas, with highly populated coastal cities; if climate change predictions come true, these countries would be highly vulnerable.

The five cities deemed at the most “extreme risk” for climate change by global risk analysis company Maplecroft are Dhaka, Mumbai, Kolkata, Manila and Bangkok — all of which are in South or Southeast Asia. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming poses a special risk to these two regions.

But while climate change alarmists have suggested that higher temperatures will increase food insecurity in Asia, food production has been increasing for the last half-century:

Since the 1990s, food production in Southeast Asia has increased substantially.
South Asia has kept a stable supply of arable land, and the amount of arable land in Southeast Asia has increased.
In fact, according to agronomist Craig Idso, increased levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased, not decreased, plant production.

Similarly, while many have raised concerns about sea level rise, there is no consensus on the amount of rise. According to the World Bank, were the sea level to rise by one meter, just 1 to 2 percent of land area, population and farmland in developing countries would be affected, and GDP would fall by 0.5 percent to 2 percent.

Mitigation seeks to combat climate change by embarking upon new projects or instituting measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to curb climate change. Adaptation, on the other hand, consists of strategies to deal with the effects of global warming, such as rehabilitating coral, engaging in water resource management and protecting wildlife.

As climate science is so uncertain and unsettled, adaptation is the more cost-effective approach to climate change.

Tanner Davis is a research associate at the National Center for Policy Analyis.

Sep 03, 2014 | 1 comment | by Lloyd Bentsen

Heavy Ozone Regulation Hurts

A recent study by the National Association of Manufacturers found that the new ozone regulation from the Obama Administration could have a very high cost in jobs and to the economy. The NERA Economic Consulting report found that a stricter new ozone regulation could:

Reduce U.S. GDP by $270 billion per year and $3.4 trillion from 2017 to 2040.
Result in 2.9 million fewer jobs per year on average through 2040.
Cost the average U.S. household $1,570 per year.
Increase natural gas and electricity costs for manufacturers and households across the country.

New oil and natural gas production could be significantly restricted in parts of the country classified as “nonattainment” areas, limiting supplies of critical energy resources and potentially driving up costs for manufacturers and households.

The study found that restrictions to new natural gas production from tighter ozone regulations, in combination with the costs to reduce emissions, could:

Reduce the present value of GDP by nearly $4.5 trillion through 2040, result in a loss of 4.3 million job equivalents per year and cost households $2,040 annually.
Increase industrial natural gas costs by an average of 52 percent and electricity costs by an average of 23 percent over what they would be if the ozone standard was unchanged.

Heavy regulations like this one, cost too many jobs and wrecks the economy. Businesses will choose to go to other countries with friendlier business environments. Further negatively impacting our economy in the long run. We must look at the bigger picture and see the other side of the issue and understand that more harm than good is achieved through many existing regulations like this new one.

Aug 18, 2014 | 3 comments | by Lloyd Bentsen

Has the EPA Hurt the Economy?

Last week, the EPA held public hearings on its “Clean Power Plan” proposal — a regulation that, unsurprisingly, sounds a lot better (who doesn’t want clean power?) than it actually is. The regulation won’t just cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants (with a miniscule temperature impact of just 0.018 degrees Celsius by 2100), it will cut jobs while raising energy prices for families across the country.

Over at the Daily Signal, Nicholas Loris of the Heritage Foundation pointed out that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has written a post on the EPA’s website about the public hearings. According to McCarthy: “We expect great feedback at these sessions. And unfortunately, we also expect a healthy dose of the same tired, false and worn out criticism that commonsense EPA action is bad for the economy.” So, it’s simply false that EPA action hurts the economy. Want proof? McCarthy offered up some slam-dunk evidence: “Just look at our history: since EPA has existed we’ve cut air pollution by more than 70 percent, while GDP has tripled.”

If that’s the same type of analytical rigor that the EPA uses when churning out regulations, no wonder the agency continues to label job-killing restrictions that hike consumer prices “commonsense.”

Never mind that a Chamber of Commerce report projects $51 billion in annual economic losses from the Clean Power Plan rule through 2030 — not to mention 224,000 annual job losses.

Or that the EPA’s analysis predicting that its rule will cause job gains largely anticipates those gains because power plants will have to purchase renewable energy equipment thanks to the EPA rule.
Or that the EPA’s analyses of employment impacts routinely use flawed models that only partially assess economic costs.
Or that more than 34 gigawatts of electric generating capacity are retiring due to just two EPA regulations, costing jobs and raising energy costs along the way.
Or that a moderate projection from the National Association of Manufacturers finds that just six EPA regulatory proposals from 2010 and 2011 could cost 2 million jobs and $100 billion annually.
Or that its energy regulations disproportionately hurt the poor, who spend more of their incomes on energy.

And these are just a handful of recent EPA rules. To most readers, that might sound like the agency is not exactly helping the economy — in fact, that the agency is doing quite the opposite. But never mind all of that. Because, according to the agency, the fact that the United States has grown since the EPA’s inception must be evidence that the EPA has done nothing but promulgate commonsense regulations; certainly, it cannot be the case that the economy has grown in spite of them.

If you read any of the EPA’s regulatory impact analyses, you’ll see that their regulatory benefits are often those of job creation by regulation (i.e. their rules impose costs on one industry by requiring that industry to spend money, thereby spurring growth in another industry) — hardly a solid growth principle. If government-mandated expenses and restrictions created jobs and economic growth, we’d have regulated ourselves into prosperity quite effortlessly over the last six years.

McCarthy’s logic makes just as much sense as saying that you’ve eaten Oreos for lunch every day for the last week while maintaining a healthy weight — therefore, Oreos have clearly had no negative impact on your health.

The fact that growth has occurred in the face of overreaching regulations is hardly evidence that those regulations haven’t hurt the economy.

According to a study published in the Journal of Economic Growth last year, federal regulation from 1949 to 2005 has cost the American economy an average of 2 percentage points of growth. Altogether, by year-end 2011, regulations since 1949 had reduced American GDP by $38.8 trillion.

Aug 06, 2014 | Leave a Comment | by Ann Norman

Homeland Security/EPA Seize Family’s Land Rover

Department of Homeland Security agents were required to seize a family Land Rover for violating EPA emission standards. The imported Land Rover Defender is on a list of vehicles that are being illegally imported to the United States because they do not meet very strict emission standards.

All vehicles entering the U.S. must meet both very strict safety and emissions standards.
A list of vehicles are to be seized from their owners because apparently, the VIN number for their cars have different owners listed.
Owners of the seized vehicles have 35 days to appeal the seizure.
If all VIN numbers on the vehicle match, then the vehicle should be returned to the owner.
DHS agents in this case are not telling the owner of the Defender where the vehicle is located so that the VIN numbers can be checked.

Aug 04, 2014 | 2 comments | by Lloyd Bentsen

Sniffing Out Bad Environmental Policies Is Much Like Culling Rotten Produce

When buying produce, we’ve found ways to discern which pieces are worthy to place in our basket. Each piece of fruit or stalk of vegetable must be of good quality to justify spending our hard-earned income on it. So we look, we sniff and we gently squeeze them in order to cull the unripe or rotten pieces and glean the good ones.

Perhaps we should use a similar approach when evaluating the competing environmental proposals proffered by various organizations. We should carefully sniff out the rotten assumptions and gently squeeze the reasoning of their justifications in order to glean which proposals might be worthy of our real sacrifice in national treasure and personal freedoms.

For example, consider the World Bank’s proposals for reducing man-made influences over global climate change. Like most other organizations, they stress the urgency for all nations to take immediate, coordinated actions to reduce carbon emissions. However, they stress that the needed sacrifices should not be shared equally among the nations.

Upon closer inspection, the World Bank’s policy recommendations reveal intellectually unripe assumptions that employ ethically rotten reasoning to justify them. For example, in the World Development Report 2010, the President of the World Bank stresses that,

Developed countries have produced most of the emissions of the past and have higher per-capita emissions. These countries should lead the way by significantly reducing their carbon footprints and stimulating research into green alternatives.

First, consider the intellectually unripe assumption that per-capita carbon emissions are an appropriate basis for determining relative global warming culpability across the nations, and to identify which nations should bear the brunt of costly remediation efforts.

Let’s remember that carbon emissions result from economic activity. All else equal, greater economic activity in a nation’s economy creates greater carbon emissions per capita, but also greater prosperity (output per capita) for its citizens enjoy.

Humanitarians should want the citizens of all nations to become prosperous, but to achieve their prosperity with the smallest environmental footprint possible. Therefore, would not an intellectually ripe indicator of culpability be carbon emissions per-dollar of economic output?

Using this perspective, we could identify the various institutional characteristics among the nations that tend to create a “greener” prosperity, which would then better inform the efforts of environmental policy makers. For example, I point out in an earlier blog post that countries pursuing prosperity through free markets rather than through centralized planning consistently produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, per dollar of GDP.

Second, consider the ethically rotten policy implications that this intellectually unripe measure would likely create: In order for a nation with heavy carbon emissions per capita to reduce its culpability in global warming crimes against humanity, it must make relatively greater sacrifices. It must decrease its economic activity using current technologies and divert significant portions of its national treasure towards developing “green” technologies. Nations with lower per-capita emissions would not be called upon to sacrifice as much.

This means a country like China, which has an economy similar in size to the U.S. but generates 43% more total carbon emissions, would be expected to sacrifice less than the U.S. Why? With its 2 billion citizens (6 times the 325 million U.S. citizens), Chinese carbon emissions per capita are still far lower than the U.S.

This ethically rotten perspective ignores the fact that China has produced far more carbon emissions per dollar GDP than the U.S. As a result, Chinese citizens bear a much lower level of prosperity (output per person) than U.S. citizens, despite having imposed a far larger total environmental footprint than the U.S.

Using per-capita carbon emissions as an indicator of climate change culpability? Hmm… I think I smell something rotten in Denmark.

Jul 28, 2014 | 3 comments | by Michael Stroup

Congressional Hearing on Biotechnology

The Subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology and Foreign Agriculture called a hearing to discuss the societal benefits of biotechnology and study the perception of it in domestic and international culture.

While media may display biotechnology in a different light, both republicans and democrats agreed that biotechnology was our future, and must remain relevant.
Democrats responded that by increasing yields, we can decrease the amount of land and water used to grow crops. This would in turn lower our carbon emissions.
Under the guise of trying to inform the public about biotechnology, it ends up being misinformation. Which is why labeling cannot take place.
A survey was done to ask consumers whether they enjoyed Biotech chicken which was resistant to diseases, or chicken fed antibiotics to counteract diseases — 85% said that they preferred Biotech chicken.
Corporations must begin to learn how to spread goodwill amongst its consumers. As of right now, Monsanto and the other corporations are doing a horrible job.
In order to inform the public better, a line of communication must be open between consumers and producers. Farmers understand the key benefits biotechnology has to offer, but consumers have not jumped on board yet.
One witness stated that increasing pressure on organics will actually put her out of business. Rising grain prices that are organic only cost more than twice the amount that biotech farming does.
A study was recently done that found the risk associated between conventionally farmed produce and biotech produce was exactly the same.
The reason that biotechnology is receiving such a bad name is because activists are misinformed and continue to spread lies about it.

Jul 21, 2014 | 3 comments | by David Weisser

Increased Human Emissions has its Benefits

Politically-funded and agenda-driven scientists who have built their careers on the theory that the exhaust from the burning of fossil fuels leads to a dramatic increase in temperatures and “the greenhouse effect” and who live well on the $2.6 billion dollars a year of Federal grants for global warming and climate change research cling to this theory and bend the data spread to support the glorified claims in their reports and papers. This is a well-informed, well-reasoned understanding of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) report, which is an exercise in political science, not climate science. Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute rightly called it “an alarmist document to scare people and build political support for unpopular policies such as carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, and EPA regulatory mandates,” in his May 6 analysis on FoxNews.com.

While the NCA (and Obama talking points), use the term carbon “pollution,” the “greenhouse gas” supposedly causing most of the trouble, carbon dioxide (CO2) is a natural substance essential for the survival of all life on the planet. Plants need CO2 to grow and conduct photosynthesis, the natural process that creates food for animals and fish at the bottom of the food chain.

In fact, the increased atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased agricultural output and production by $3.2 trillion between 1961 and 2011. Thus, the documented effects of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been positive so far.

Even with increasing human CO2 emissions, carbon dioxide is still a trace gas in the environment, constituting just 0.04 percent of the atmosphere Figure I shows that greenhouse gases compose 1-5 percent of the atmosphere, and Figure II demonstrates that CO2 composes only 3.62 percent of greenhouse gases. We still live in a world starving for carbon dioxide, especially given the crucial importance of CO2 to plant and animal life. Data shows that during the Pre-Cambrian period (about 550 million years ago) CO2 concentration levels were 15 times greater than today with no record of any catastrophic results, shown in Figure III. Human and natural emissions of CO2 are only 4-5 percent of total global emissions.

In addition, uncontested global temperature data shows there has been no global warming for 17 years and 8 months now, even as human global CO2 emissions have continued to accelerate to unprecedented levels. The Economist reported last year that from 2000 to 2010, human carbon dioxide emissions totaled roughly 100 billion tons of CO2, which equaled about one-fourth of all human emissions since the industrial revolution in 1750.

Jul 14, 2014 | 4 comments | by Lloyd Bentsen

EPA, I Shall Call You Sybil

This week, President Obama is formally proposing a new EPA regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent from existing U.S. power plants by 2030. After many attempts at passing carbon cap and trade legislation through the Congress over the last decade have failed, the President is now taking unilateral action to directly regulate greenhouse gas emissions. How did we get here?

The EPA receives its power to regulate those economic activities that impose environmental impacts from air pollution through the Clean Air Act of 1990. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had the ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, even though such emissions had not been considered air pollutants. However, this regulatory power was conditional on the EPA submitting an “endangerment finding,” in which a careful review of the existing science clearly indicates that greenhouse emissions directly endanger the health of Americans.

Marlo Lewis at the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out that section 202 of the Clean Air Act specifically requires the EPA to perform its own scientific assessment and to exercise its own independent judgment when finding evidence of endangering human health. This means the EPA cannot rely on the scientific assessment and judgment of outside organizations to find conclusive evidence of health endangerment to justify its regulatory powers.

The EPA entered its endangerment finding into the April, 2009 section of the Federal Register, which is the official log of all regulations proposed by federal agencies. However, this endangerment finding, and the EPA’s defense of this finding to its many critics, stretches the boundaries of logic.

Logical Inconsistency #1: Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) had a careful look at page 18,901 of the 2009 Federal Register. (BTW, does it bother anyone else that by April, the annual log book of proposed federal regulations had already reached over 18,000 pages?) Senator Inhofe is bothered by the fact that the EPA states:

To be clear, ambient concentrations of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases, whether at current levels or at projected ambient levels under scenarios of high emissions growth over time, do not cause direct adverse health effects such as respiratory or toxic effects.

The Senator sees this as a direct contradiction to the finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health.

Logical Inconsistency #2: Marlo Lewis points out that the U.S. Inspector General has issued a report that claims the EPA failed to perform its own scientific analysis to reach the conclusion that endangerment to human health existed. Page 23 of that report states that the EPA responded to this criticism by claiming that the documented analysis was “not a scientific assessment,” but merely a summary of findings by organizations, like the the recently discredited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. This statement makes it appears the EPA simply relied upon other organizations for both the scientific assessment and the conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions directly threaten human health. Even the Inspector General feels that this endangerment finding fails to meet the requirements specified in the Clean Air Act.

Have greenhouse gas emissions been proven to be an endangerment to human health? I guess it depends on which EPA you are talking to… Sybil? Is that you?

Jul 09, 2014 | 4 comments | by Michael Stroup

Creating Reliance on U.S. Energy

The world that exists today is one of open barriers, and intertwined economies that become necessary in foreign policy. The more entwined economies get the more resistance there is for justifying conflict with each other. It just gets too expensive. It is one of the reasons that a conflict with China is not very realistic despite what some media outlets may say. The best way to accomplish this is through trade of a good, and the U.S. is producing the most sought after good of all, energy. Many countries around the world are recognizing the need for U.S. energy, and Chile just became the latest.

Where many Latin American countries such as Brazil and Venezuela are rich in natural resources, Chile is actually the poorest boasting a measly 150 billion barrels of oil and 3.46 billion cubic feet of Light Natural Gas (LNG). In order to cover for the shortfall the country is turning to light natural gas, and the United States to fill the gap. In the 1990’s the primary provider of LNG for Chile was Argentina and was delivered through a pipeline. Due to domestic shortages in Argentina, Chile had to change its reliance to countries that were further away such as Qatar, Yemen, and Equatorial Guinea.

By creating lasting economic relationships with the Americas, the U.S can help meet their energy needs. In addition to energy requirements, Latin American Counties such as Chile are also making changes to its environmental regulation that resembles the policy of the United States.

LNG is proven to provide a tremendous amount of benefits when comparing to coal and oil. LNG is cheaper than oil, and produces little to no carbon dioxide emissions which have come under fire lately in the U.S. government. While the process of fracking does leak the greenhouse gas methane the amount of leakage varies from 2 to 8 percent. According to a study by the Recorder, if methane leakage is 2 percent then after 55 years the amount of carbon reduced compared to coal use is a staggering 55 percent! While 8 percent leakage of methane still produces a benefit of 17 percent reduction over a course of 100 years. This brings up an extremely interesting scenario; can the U.S. cut the reduction of the planet’s carbon dioxide levels from exporting LNG?

Many in the U.S. continue to go on and on about solar and wind energy, when the facts are simple. The technologies cost billions in research still, do not provide the power that existing energies do, and increase costs for consumers. Even worse to imagine is that these problems are in the U.S. Where we have the most advanced technology in the world, rational thinking would prove that other countries around the world will continue to use both coal and oil.

That is where natural gas exportation comes in. By allowing exports of natural gas, and increasing relations with several countries that have high carbon dioxide emissions, we can curb emissions through the free market. It is a fairly easy thing to accomplish within the government as well. The country would be able to sell cheap, affordable clean energy, and reduce emissions while increasing quality of life in developing countries. It is past the time of easing economic regulations; in order to create prosperity in these countries it must be done utilizing free trade.

The U.S. is at an amazing time in its history where unemployment has hit a 6 year low and 200,000 jobs are being created monthly due to our spur in energy innovation. Markets around have a pressing need for our own labor capital and energy resources. It is time to meet that need.

Jul 07, 2014 | 1 comment | by David Weisser

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