Megan McArdle is making lots of sense on AGW

The title of her latest piece: "Climate science shouldn't be religion for left or right."

Meta skepticism = skepticism about skepticism

Here's a website all about getting skeptical about global warming skepticism.

Cool!

via Skeptoid via Muck & Mystery

Science is just a distraction from Al Gore's biggest climate failure, policy

Walter Russell Mead on Al Gore's failure, part 2:

[The] entire green policy vision was so poorly conceived, so carelessly constructed, so unbalanced and so rife with contradictions that it could only thrive among activists and enthusiasts. Once the political power of the climate movement, aided by an indulgent and largely unquestioning press, had pushed the climate agenda into the realm of serious politics, failure was inevitable. …

… the global climate movement has become the kind of embarrassment intellectuals like to ignore.

[The aim of Gore and his movement was] to stampede the populace into embracing one of the most dubious and unworkable policy prescriptions ever presented to the public eye. . . .

To argue with these people about science is to miss the core point. Even if the science is exactly as Mr. Gore claims, his policies are still useless…

… The policy makers and the heads of state who only two years ago were ready to follow Gore up the mountain have softly and quietly tuned him out.

[UPDATE: Gary Jones has a related item on Mead here. The post also points to Quandrant Online, which claims that "renewables are not green." Well, duh! Gary has another good post that points to an AGW climate science skeptic with separate messages for friends on both the Left and the Right.]

The failure of Al Gore and "why the global green movement has tanked"

Part I from Walter Russell Mead

objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at [Al Gore's] touch. . . .

[his recent essay in Rolling Stone] illuminates his shortcomings more than his strengths and makes crystal clear that if global climate policy is going to change, then Al Gore must get out of the way. . . .

[Gore] speaks, he writes, he speaks again, and the [climate change] movement lies on the ground, crippled and inert.

A fawning establishment press spares the former vice president the vitriol and schadenfreude it pours over the preachers and priests whose personal conduct compromised the core tenets of their mission; Gore is not mocked as others have been. This gentle treatment hurts both Gore and the greens; he does not know just how disabling, how crippling the gap between conduct and message truly is. The greens do not know that his presence as the visible head of the movement helps ensure its political failure. . . .

I am not one of those who thinks him a hypocrite; I think rather that he shares an illusion common amongst the narcissistic glitterati of our time: that politically fashionable virtue cancels private vice. . . .

If Al Gore really wants to understand why the global green movement has tanked, he should start by taking a long hard look in the mirror.

Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski vote to continue ethanol subsidies that hurt the environment, raise food prices and warp energy policy

Here are their votes yesterday on Tom Coburn's amendment #436 to Senate bill S782, The Economic Development Revitalization Act of 2011.

Cardin and Mikulski talk the talk about cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay -- without accomplishing much -- but don't seem to care about the enormous nitrogen/nutrient damage that subsidized corn crops in the Midwest do to the Gulf of Mexico.

Not to mention the economic damage -- read harm to the poor -- caused by ethanol subsidies, including rising food prices.

A World Bank policy research working paper concluded that food prices have risen by 35 to 40 percent between 2002–2008, of which 70 to 75 percent is atributable to to biofuels [like corn-based ethanol].

"Back off the beaches . . . It's time to learn to live with the shoreline, not on it."

Orrin Pilkey of Duke University says it well:

Sooner or later our society must back off the beaches as concerns increase about beach quality and as preservation of major coastal cities becomes a higher priority. The first step will be to discourage beachfront urban renewal. That would mean moving or demolishing threatened buildings, prohibiting the rebuilding (and certainly the super-sizing) of destroyed buildings, and ending further subsidy of beachfront development, including tax-supported beach nourishment and federal flood insurance. It's time to learn to live with the shoreline, not on it.

Other things Pilkey doesn't like, US Army Corps of Engeering policies and seawalls.

Twenty-five years ago, when I began speaking and writing about seawalls and how they destroy beaches, I was shocked at the tenor of the response to this idea both from professional engineers and from developers and politicians. The attacks on me were often quite personal, and letters damning me were written to my university president and to the papers. As a scientist, I was unaccustomed to such personal attacks.

Environmental models as "useless arithmetic"

Here's another book I'd like to read: Useless arithmetic: Why environmental scientists can't predict the future. Great title*.

The authors sound like a cool pair:

Noted coastal geologist Orrin Pilkey and environmental scientist Linda Pilkey-Jarvis show that the quantitative mathematical models policy makers and government administrators use to form environmental policies are seriously flawed. Based on unrealistic and sometimes false assumptions, these models often yield answers that support unwise policies. . . .

The authors demonstrate how many modelers have been reckless, employing fudge factors to assure "correct" answers and caring little if their models actually worked.

I stumbled on the book after reading of Pilkey in a John Stossel piece on federally-subsidized flood insurance. Stossel says Pilkey "has been one of the most persistent critics of the government's [flood insurance] policies."


*It sounds like one of Gary Jones's headlines at Muck & Mystery

The election must be near! Barack "Drill baby drill" Obama copies another page from the GOP playbook

He wants more oil drilling in Alaska now. And announces it at the quietest part of the news cycle.

Required reading for holier-than-thou environmentalists

In his excellent book, Whole Earth Discipine: An Eco-Pragmatist Manifesto, Stewart Brand puts into words what I've been thinking (less articulately) for a long time:

The long-evolved Green agenda is suddenly outdated -- too negative, too tradition-bound, too specialized, too politically one-sided for the scale of the climate problem.

He follows with a trenchant observation that had not occurred to me:

Far from taking a new dominant role, environmentalists risk being marginalized more than ever, with many of their deep goals and well-honed strategies irrelevant to the new tasks. Accustomed to saving natural systems from civilization, Greens now have the unfamiliar task of saving civilization from a natural system -- climate dynamics.

He also talks about

a plethora of environmental newsletters that purport to be scientific but actually [have] more in common with hardball politics

Yes. And more:

The real story of Prince William Sound is how resilient many natural systems are and how rapidly they bounce back when human pressure backs off even a little.

This part really resonated with me:

Scientists freely criticize each other ... but they are weirdly polite with environmentalists. It smells of condescension.

One last bit:

When environmentalists are wrong, it is frequently technology that they are wrong about, and they wind up supporting parochial Green goals at the cost of comprehensive ones.

Okay, this is really the last one:

The charismatic expert who exudes confidence and has a great story to tell is probably wrong about what is going to happen. The boring expert who afflicts you with a cloud of howevers is probably right.

These quotes all come from Chapter 7 titled "Romantics, Scientists, Engineers." Read the whole chapter. Better yet, the whole book.

Fracking FAQ from Popular Mechanics

Here's PM's take on environmental impacts (via Glenn):

Are the fluids used in fracking toxic?

Often, companies that perform fracking operations don't publicly reveal what compounds they use to facilitate the gas extraction process. (Halliburton may prove an exception to the rule; it has agreed to give the government data about the fracking chemicals it uses by January 2011.) When Farnham & Associates, an environmental engineering firm, tested a well near a hydraulic fracturing zone in Pennsylvania, it found a range of contaminants in the water, including ethylene glycol and toluene, both of which can be toxic to humans. They appear on a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection list of compounds known to be used in hydraulic fracturing, but Cabot Oil and Gas, the company that conducted the drilling, claimed it had not used the chemicals.

What impact does fracking have on drinking water?

Some people living near fracking sites have reported abnormalities in their tap water, including dark-colored grease, sediments and floating debris. The EPA has revealed plans to conduct a large-scale study to look into the problem further. "There are serious concerns about whether the process of hydraulic fracturing impacts drinking water. Further study is warranted," the agency announced in a statement released earlier this year. The investigation is slated to begin in January 2011.

The Bay Journal has been writing a lot about fracking in the past year, including:

• Fracking in Canada.
• The upcoming EPA study.
• A fracking timeline (mostly Pennsylvania)
• A longish piece on Marcellus shale by Rona Kobell from December 2009
  

A significant majority of key environmental legislation since WWII was passed during Republican administrations (Part 6 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

Matt Dernoga writes:

Four more years of O’Malley will allow advocates in the state the opportunity to pass environmental laws […] Electing Ehrlich will mean no opportunity for progress

He is flat out wrong here.

He’s wrong at the federal level and Bob Ehrlich proved him wrong at the state level with the Bay Restoration Act, which the Chesapeake Bay Foundation described as one of the best things to happen for the bay in decades.

Significant environmental legislation happens more often when control is split and the two parties must confer and compromise.

When Democrats control all the levers of power, landmark environmental legislation is less likely to pass. Sometimes it’s because Democrats take environmentalists for granted and sometimes it’s because they push legislation that oversteps and fails to pass.

This is the last post in a series of six.

Dave Greene has worked as energy/environmental policy analyst in DC, helped build a large waste treatment plan in Boston, sat on a Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategies Team and served on the board of a local watershed group in Baltimore County. He also supports Bob Ehrlich for governor of Maryland.

Republicans look more closely at the effects of environmental legislation on business and the economy (Part 5 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

I don’t think many will argue with me on this one.

But there is some subtlety here that most people don’t consider.

Tom Horton used to write a column in the Baltimore Sun called On the Bay. About five or six years ago he wrote a piece about the legislative scorecards put out by business groups and environmental groups.

He concluded that it is virtually impossible for a legislator to score highly on both types of scorecards.

As a voter and free-market environmentalist, I want my legislators to consider both business issues and environmental issues and find a reasonable balance. Any legislator who scores 90% to 100% on either type of scorecard is probably not getting that balance right.

And they probably won’t get my vote.

In Maryland, too many Democratic legislators seem to vote for any bill with an environment-friendly title without considering how much it will cost or how effective it will be.

From what I can see, legislators who consider both business and environmental concerns -- and find a sensible balance between the two -- are just as likely to be Republicans as Democrats.

Republicans are less likely to impose technology mandates because they know government has a terrible track record (Part 4 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

Two examples of ill-considered tech mandates come from the Carter administration: the failed Synfuels Corporation initiative (a big waste of money) and corn-based ethanol subsidies (harmful to the environment and a big waste of money).

The difference between the parties is this: when Republicans impose technology mandates –as George W. Bush unfortunately did when he increased Carter's ethanol subsidy – they are swimming upstream against their core principles. But when Democrats do it they’re going with the flow of their party, which is biased toward government intervention.

Dernoga cites several technology mandates enthusiastically supported by Martin O’Malley. Here’s one:

the Renewable Electricity Standard - [in] which [O'Malley] pledged that 20 percent of the state's energy would come from renewable energy sources by 2022.

“Renewable energy” sounds at first like a wonderful, win-win kind of thing. I would bet my 401(k) that voter focus groups love the term.

Nevertheless, many people are beginning to point out problems with renewable energy. Matt Ridley writes in his recent book, The Rational Optimist:

It is an undeniable if surprising fact, often overlooked, that fossil fuels have spared much of the landscape from industrialization. . . To get an idea of just how landscape-eating the renewable alternatives are, consider that to supply just the current 300 million inhabitants of the United states with their current power demand of roughly 10,000 watts each would require:

• solar panels the size of Spain
• or wind farms the size of Kazaakhstan . . .

To label the land-devouring monsters of renewable energy ‘green’, virtuous or clean strikes me as bizarre.

Here we go again with the unintended consequences.

This is one of the biggest sins of green Democrats: using peer pressure and faith-based marketing techniques to hurry us into supporting poorly thought-out technology mandates.

Such mandates are strait-jackets. They don’t encourage innovation. They strap down the innovators.

Republicans are more skeptical of the environmentalist agenda. Democrats often accept it as an article of faith (part 3 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series, and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

Matt Dernoga writes approvingly of a long list of concepts and programs touted by Martin O’Malley such as “clean energy jobs” and Smart Growth.

In my view, the concept of clean energy jobs (a.k.a. “green jobs”) is useful to Democratic speechwriters and hardly anyone else. PERC makes this case convincingly in its pamphlet The 7 myths about green jobs. If anyone can poke holes in their work, I’d love to hear about it.

As for Smart Growth, I’ve found that when you question these folks about their programs, they talk hazily about fighting “sprawl.” It soon becomes clear that they can’t define sprawl except to say that they know it when they see it. Nor are they clear about the practical details of their “smart” solutions.

So they can’t explain, but they sure do believe.

Which is why people like Michael Crichton, Joel Garreau and Alfonzo Rachel keep talking about “environmentalism as religion.”

Republicans are right to be skeptical. Environmental policy should be based on facts, not faith.

Research, analysis and reporting done by green Democrats is often shallow and misleading (part 2 of 6)

[For the first entry in this series and pointers to the five follow-up posts, go here.]

Matt Dernoga exemplifies my charge of "shallow and misleading" when he writes:

Ehrlich … appointed inexperienced industry insiders […] An auto-industry lawyer was head of the state Department of the Environment!

First, Lynn Buhl (the “auto-industry lawyer”) was never confirmed as head of MDE. Second, Buhl spent years working for both the US EPA and Michigan’s version of MDE. But green Democrats like Dernoga didn’t seem to consider her job description or accomplishments at Chrysler. They just clobbered her because she worked there.

When progressives take career paths like Buhl’s, they are often lionized by fellow Democrats as noble “sector switchers.” But conservatives with long records of public service are commonly demonized by the left as evil corporate tools.

My experience contradicts this stereotype. I’ve worked in all three sectors, and know that you can find good, ethical people in all of them. But when I think about the most talented and ethical people I’ve worked with, the list is dominated by folks from the private sector.

Many of them have worked at places like Chrysler.

John McPhee illustrates this in his environmental classic Encounters with the Archdruid. In it, the most competent, likable and ethical person was not the environmentalist David Brower but the corporate mineral engineer Charles Park. As I remember the book, Park had logged more time in the wilderness and understood it better. He revered nature as much or more than Brower, and was meticulous about protecting it.

Brower, on the other hand, was abrasive and admittedly dishonest.

I think it’s about time green Democrats like Matt Dernoga stop auto-dumping on people just because they’ve worked in private industry.

5 reasons why a green Democrat's endorsement of Martin O’Malley is off-base

I recently published a piece on why environmentalists should vote Republican. Shortly after I wrote it, Matt Dernoga of the Diamondback endorsed O’Malley in an article titled, Voting green: the choice is obvious.

His article, though short, supports almost all of my points very nicely. Thanks Matt!

And by the way, it’s not as obvious as you think. Here are five reasons why:

1. Research, analysis and reporting done by green Democrats is often shallow and misleading.

2. Republicans are more skeptical of the environmentalist agenda. Democrats often accept it as an article of faith.

3. Republicans are less likely to impose technology mandates because they know government has a terrible track record.

4. Republicans look more closely at the effects of environmental legislation on business and the economy.

5. A significant majority of key environmental legislation since WWII was passed during Republican administrations.


Dave Greene has worked as energy/environmental policy analyst in DC, helped build a large waste treatment plan in Boston, sat on a Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategies Team and served on the board of a local watershed group in Baltimore County. He also supports Bob Ehrlich for governor of Maryland.

A thought-provoking analysis of the "diversity" and "sustainability" movements

You can count on Muck & Mystery to sniff out the good stuff, like Peter Wood's recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

I liked Gary's opening bit:

Two of the nastier [words] in the current lexicon are diversity and sustainability. I have argued for and against both of them depending on which definitions are used. They can both be used to mean just about everything.

Wood's whole piece is well done, but two parts stood out for me. First, his superb condensation of the argument against the "diversity movement":

Diversity authorizes double standards in admissions and hiring, breeds a campus culture of hypocrisy, mismatches students to educational opportunities, fosters ethnic resentments, elevates group identity over individual achievement, and trivializes the curriculum.

Next, Wood sums up his take on the "sustainability movement" in eight words:

sustainability is the triumph of hypothesis over evidence

Say what you will about his arguments, but the dude can write.

FWIW, one of the better discussions on sustainability that I've seen asks an excellent question: Can we afford sustainability?

The discussion starts with two useful definitions of sustainability. First Robert Mendelsohn's:

Economists have a very clear idea of what they mean by sustainability, but it's not always consistent with what you might see in the natural sciences. For an issue like pollution, a sustainable pollution control is one where the marginal cost of abatement is set equal to the marginal damage of pollution. It would be nice to get rid of all pollution, but it turns out it's very expensive to eliminate it entirely. So this idea of balancing the abatement costs against the damages is a critical way that economists would look at sustainability in trying to minimize the total cost to society.

Then Kevin Curtis's:

The definition of sustainable development has provided a big step forward. There are multiple definitions, but the version I like best is one that says economic growth, environmental protection, and social justice are all important — and sustainable development is about doing all three.

I like Curtis's three elements, but wish he had used a politically neutral term in place of "social justice."

Richard Kauffman had many good insights from a businessman's perspective including the problem of regulatory uncertainty.

Finally, there's this delicious bit, where Mendelsohn seems to leave Curtis speechless:

Mendelsohn: You can't just wait for everything to be perfectly clear. But some decisions have a lot more uncertainty around them than others. And I think climate change, with all the long-range implications to it, is probably one of the most uncertain things that I've seen. In the short run, it's pretty clear, but the long-run consequences of making different choices today isn't very clear at all.

Curtis: But the consequences seem to range between some negative impact to lots of negative impact.

Mendelsohn: No, I'd say they range from being beneficial to being very, very harmful. And that's a pretty big range.

[Emphasis added.]

I don't think I've ever heard a respected academic use the words "beneficial" and "climate change" in the same sentence. I don't think Curtis had either, as he had nothing to say in response.

I suspect that Mendelsohn is correct about the level of uncertainty and the huge range of possible outcomes. We just don't really know.

Landmark environmental legislation passed during Republican administrations

Here's what's happened under the GOP* in the last half-century:

1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
1970 Creation of EPA
1970 Clean Air Act extension
1972 Federal Water Pollution Control amendments to the Clean Water Act
1974 Safe Drinking Water Act
1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)
1986 Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA)
1990 Clean Air Act Amendments

In comparison, the list of major environmental legislation passed during Democratic administrations is short and unimpressive.

The lesson for environmentalists:

if you want to pass major environmental legislation, your odds are poor under Democrats and much much better under Republicans

*Don't get me wrong. I acknowledge that Democrats played key roles -- many many key roles -- in conceiving these laws and shepherding them through Congress.

Photo source: World in My View

6 reasons why Maryland Democrats and Martin O'Malley are overrated on the environment

1. The Maryland League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is wildly biased.
2. Democrats often take environmentalists for granted.
3. BayStat doesn’t have many environmental stats.
4. Neither did CityStat.
5. Democrats like to create complex programs which need enforcement resources that don’t exist.
6. The environmental agenda of Democrats tends to be a "hero sandwich of good intentions." But their results are often mediocre-to-poor.

7 reasons why environmentalists should vote Republican

1. Research, analysis and reporting done by green Democrats is often shallow and misleading.
2. Republicans are more skeptical of the environmentalist agenda. Democrats often accept it as an article of faith.
3. Republicans are less likely to impose technology mandates because they know government has a terrible track record.
4. Republicans look more closely at the effects of environmental legislation on business and the economy.
5. A significant majority of major environmental legislation since WWII was passed during Republican administrations.
6. Republicans tend to focus on results. Democrats tend to focus on effort and good intentions.
7. Republicans push harder for free market solutions that cost less and accomplish more.