Low-cost, flexible Megabus from the private sector vs. budget-busting, inflexible high-speed rail from the public sector

Michael Barone spots the winner.

It seems to me that two rarely-made comparisons work against high-speed rail:

1. Any kind of railroad is comparable to older telecom technology (landlines, dedicated circuits and the like), while cars and buses are comparable to newer telecom technology (cell phones, packet switching and so on).
2. The car-bus-and-road approach is more like modern distributed computing on the internet, while railroads are more like clunky mainframe technology.

"Big, centralized and inflexible" has worked OK at some times in the past. But "small, decentralized and flexible" usually wins out in the long run.

It also seems to me that high-speed rail proponents usually leave last mile considerations and other inconvenient numbers out of their analyses:

Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute notes that high-speed rail connects big-city downtowns, where only 7 percent of Americans work and 1 percent live. “The average intercity auto trip today uses less energy per passenger mile than the average Amtrak train.” And high speed will not displace enough cars to measurably reduce congestion. The Washington Post says China’s fast trains are priced beyond ordinary workers’ budgets, and that France, like Japan, has only one profitable line.

And, of course, railroads are less robust and more vulnerable than highway systems to terrorism, sabotage, and military attacks.

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.]

Are we addicted to oil?

The Munchkin Wrangler thinks that's the wrong question:

You know what I can’t stand to hear about anymore? That we Americans are addicted to oil. It’s a smarmy term that tries to couch an economic and environmental argument in pathological terms.
. . .
It does nobody any good to try and debate economic and logistical necessities while using terminology to imply people who disagree with your view are mentally ill.

I think he's right.

Via Glenn.

Everything you ever wanted to know about degree-days

My dad was into degree-days for some reason, so I've known about the concept since I was a kid. Here's an explanation from the folks at BizEE, and a tool that lets you calculate degree-day numbers for many locations and time periods using data from Weather Underground.

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.

Why Maryland wind power subsidies are a bad idea . . .

. . . and why legislative bodies -- inevitably ignorant of technology, business and markets -- should never try to pick energy technologies.

From Timothy P. Carney in the Washington Examiner:

Green-energy plant sucks up subsidies, then goes bust

To turn wood chips into ethanol fuel, George W. Bush's Department of Energy in February 2007 announced a $76 million grant to Range Fuels for a cutting-edge refinery. A few months later, the refinery opened in the piney woods of Treutlen County, Ga., as the taxpayers of Georgia piled on another $6 million. In 2008, the ethanol plant was the first beneficiary of the Biorefinery Assistance Program, pocketing a loan for $80 million guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayers.

Last month, the refinery closed down, having failed to squeeze even a drop of ethanol out of its pine chips.

The Soperton, Ga., ethanol plant is another blemish on ethanol's already tarnished image, but more broadly, it is cautionary tale about the elusive nature of "green jobs" and the folly of the government's efforts at "investing" -- as President Obama puts it -- in new technologies

Fuels used by BGE in 2008 to generate electricity for Maryland

Here are the numbers for 2008 by type of fuel (from my December 2009 BGE bill):

]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] coal = 51.2 %
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] nuclear = 33.2 %
]]] natural gas = 6.4 %
]] renewable* = 4.7 %
]] "system mix"
oil = 0.3 %

This is for the Pennsylvania-New Jersey- Maryland area which BGE calls "PJM".

*The renewable number breaks down like this:

] hydroelectric = 2.8%
] wood/biomass = 1.5%
captured methane gas = 0.3%
solid waste = 0.1%
geothermal = 0 %
wind = 0 %

Saving energy with hot water heaters

Ask Mr. Electricity has a concise page that compares installation and operating costs for different types of hot water heaters. It covers gas vs. electric and tank vs. tankless.

Installing timers can save energy in some cases, but not always:

A $40 timer can automatically turn off an electric heater . . . after you go to bed, and on again right before you get up. These don't save as much money as you'd expect, though. That's because a typical electric water heater only runs about three hours a day anyway, and modern energy-efficient water heaters run only 1.3 hours or so. . . . (In fact, if your heater was made after 1998, it's possibly not worth using a timer at all.) . . . A timer for an old (pre-1998) heater will save about 25kWh/mo. for a family of two using 40 gallons a day with the heater off four to six hours a day, but only 14kWh/mo. for a family of four using 80 gallons a day.

There's also a nice tidbit about health considerations when setting the temperature on your heater:

Bacteria fram Legionnaires Disease can grow in water up to 122°F, so many people set their heater tanks to at least 123°F.

The energy industry; what role should government play in it?

Much of Obama and McCain's energy rhetoric is blather. Especially the part about energy independence. As Megan McArdle points out, energy independence from foreign oil is a pipedream.

In contrast to the candidates, John Tierney does a nice job of laying out the proper role of government: it should impose a carbon tax, then promptly step aside*. It should then watch from the sidelines to see which technologies private industry chooses to invest in and build.

In the comments to Tierney's article, Amory Lovins chimes in:

“Nuclear power and all other ways to produce or save energy should be allowed to compete fairly, at honest prices, regardless of their type, technology, size, location, or ownership.”

Glenn Reynolds & Dr. Helen interview interviewed Lovins a few months ago.

* Note: Stepping aside means eliminating energy production subsidies for all types of energy: nuclear, oil, gas, coal, wind, solar, geothermanl, and so on. Note, however, that the federal government should fund basic scientific research and early stage R&D for a variety of energy technologies.