Monthly Archives: January 2008

The Climate Isn’t Cooperating with the Climate Alarmists

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At the beginning of 2007 many news organizations reported that “experts” were claiming that 2007 was going to be the hottest year on record. But this didn’t turn out to be the case (apparently the Nobel Prize committee doesn’t have much sway over the climate).

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe writes about some anecdotal information about climate in 2007:

Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn’t turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007′s global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 – and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate – it’s up about 4 percent since 1998 – the global mean temperature has remained flat.

 Climate science isn’t a religion, and those who dispute its leading theory are not heretics. Much remains to be learned about how and why climate changes, and there is neither virtue nor wisdom in an emotional rush to counter global warming – especially if what’s coming is a global Big Chill.

Lubos Motl has written a better post about temperatures in 2007 complete with statistics and reference to the different groups that measure global temperature:

However, the greenhouse gases are not too important and El Nino was replaced by La Nina. As a consequence, RSS MSU data for the lower troposphere (graph, more graphs) show that 2007 was the coldest year in this century so far. In alarmist jargon, it was the ninth hottest year on record: the most recent year was cooler than all other years in this century as well as 1998 (by a whopping 0.41 °C) and even 1995 (do you remember Summer Nights 95?). According to different datasets (HadCRUT3, UAH MSU, NOAA), the year is going to be approximately the 8th (HadCRUT3) or 7th (NOAA) or 6th warmest year. UAH reports 2007 as the 4th warmest year (on 1/7/2008: final, just by 1 millikelvin warmer than 2006). GISS became a kind of exception (1/8/2008: final) because the 2007 temperatures exactly matched those of 1998, their 2nd or 3rd warmest year (as James Hansen said a few weeks ago, with 2005 being their hot king) – but it is still very far from the hype about the hottest year. Your humble correspondent is not the only one who believes that the satellite measurements such as RSS, UAH are more accurate than GISS, HadCRUT3. It just happens that HadCRUT3 is closer to RSS than UAH to RSS, as far as the recent rankings go.

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The RSS MSU linear trend extracted from the 1998-2007 interval is -0.48 °C per century of cooling! Numerically, it’s almost the same trend that we assign to the 20th century but with the opposite sign. The RSS MSU data imply that 2007 was 0.12 °C cooler than the already cool year 2006. Other teams will generate qualitatively compatible results but substantially different numbers, raising doubts about the reliability of the temperature measurement even in the modern era.

Lubos argues that you could argue global cooling is occurring–it all depends on which year you pick as your start year. If you start at 1998, then we are cooling. If you start in 1970, the earth is warming. His point is that you should be careful about which year is the first year on the chart.

Biofuel Makes the World Go Hungry

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That headline is hyperbole, but biofuels are helping to drive up the costs of food around the world.

 KUANTAN, Malaysia — Rising prices for cooking oil are forcing residents of Asia’s largest slum, in Mumbai, India, to ration every drop. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw material.

This is the other oil shock. From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the latest, most striking example of a developing global problem: costly food.

The food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, based on export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs, climbed 37 percent last year. That was on top of a 14 percent increase in 2006, and the trend has accelerated this winter.

In some poor countries, desperation is taking hold. Just in the last week, protests have erupted in Pakistan over wheat shortages, and in Indonesia over soybean shortages. Egypt has banned rice exports to keep food at home, and China has put price controls on cooking oil, grain, meat, milk and eggs.

Alcopops–What the Research Says

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On Jeremy’s blog I noticed this story about the Utah legislature weighing whether or not to move so-called “alcopops” out of grocery and convenience stores and only sell them in state liquor stores. Alcopops include Smirnoff Ice, Seagram’s Coolers, Bacardi Silver, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and other similar drinks. My church has also come out in favor of this move:

“To allow the sale of distilled spirits in grocery and convenience stores promotes underage drinking and undermines the state system of alcohol control,” said Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Utah’s leading religion.

This made we wonder–is this another knee jerk reaction to the evils of alcohol or are there studies that show that alcopops promote underage or problem drinking? In other words, what does the evidence say?

The best and most recent study I could find was a literature review published in October 2007 in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism. The literature review surveyed all of the published studies on these type of drinks and concluded that there was no evidence that alcopops themselves led to negative consequences such as encouraging young people to drink alcohol, increasing the quantity of alcohol consumed, the consumption of drugs, or other risky behaviors. What mattered was not alcopop consumption, but the quantity of alcohol consumed.

There’s also this study, “Is alcopop consumption in Switzerland associated with riskier drinking patterns and more alcohol-related problems?” The researchers conclude:

Alcopops in Switzerland do not seem to be linked to specific riskier drinking patterns or consequences per se. Like all alcoholic beverages, they add to the problems caused by drinking and seem to be consumed in addition to conventional alcoholic beverages without replacing them. As the alcohol industry will continue to launch new beverages, prevention targeting alcohol consumption in general might be more effective than focusing on new beverages only.

These studies undermine the case for moving alcopops out of convenience stores and only to state liquor stores. According the best research available, alcopops do not promote underage drinking or “undermine the state system of alcohol control.”

I don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t drink alcohol and I don’t live in Utah. But it frustrates me when people and organizations make comments that aren’t supported by research or facts.

Alcopops are alcoholic. Alcohol abuse can lead to problem, but there isn’t sufficient evidence to inconvenience responsible adults from enjoying these beverages.

Cooking By Numbers

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Next month my wife is going on a two-week trip to Azerbaijan and somewhere else exotic for work. When she does, I’m going to try out this website–cooking by numbers. You tell the website what’s in your fridge and cupboard and the website gives you recipe options.

An Apollo Program for Alternative Energy?

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Many people have called for an “Apollo program” to speed the development of alternatives sources of energy. This is a better analogy than people realize.

The goal of the Apollo program was to put a man on the moon. That goal was achieved on July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on lunar surface. The price tag for the feat was about $25 billion in 1960′s dollars–about $135 billion in 2005 dollars.  In all, six missions landed men on the moon. It was truly an awesome achievement.

The program created a number of ancillary technological advancements that make our lives better. The Apollo program, however, didn’t make human space travel affordable or commercial. This is the lesson we should learn from the Apollo program. We can spend a lot of money and achieve a one-shot goal, but that doesn’t mean that our goal will be commercially viable.

Last month’s energy bill requires us to produce 35 billion gallons of biofuel. If we spend enough money we can indeed achieve that goal, but it is unlikely that an “Apollo program” would make ethanol commercially viable. If ethanol really competes with petroleum 15 years down the road it will because there is an incredible profit opportunity, not because a few billion were spent on subsidies.

Consider this–in 2006 Exxon Mobil had profits of $39.5 billion, Chevron had profits of $17.1 billion, and ConocoPhillips had profits of $15.5.  To achieve these profits these companies had gross revenues in excess of $600 billion. These profits and revenues are what ethanol producers are trying to capture. It might help to get a few billion in subsidies, but they have hundreds of billions in incentives if they can produce commercial quantities of ethanol at affordable prices.

Most likely, an “Apollo program” won’t work. When politics is involved, money will get doled out through political patronage and not necessarily to the most deserving projects. When we move beyond petroleum it will be because someone responded to market demand and created an economical product.

The Politics of Rail–Taking Advantage of the Poor to Improve Transportation Options for the More Affluent

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I’m not a fan of most urban rail projects in America. Light rail and subway are very expensive and they are not nearly as efficient or flexible as buses. Buses, not rail, serves poorer people who have limited transportation options. Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is pouring money into rail and neglecting bus service. James Moore and Tom Rubin write in the LA Times:

MTA has spent more than $11 billion since 1986 to build its rail network, and the effect has been to reduce total transit ridership on the system by more than 3 billion boardings. That’s a bizarre result.

And transit service is certain to get worse. MTA data show that the median household income of its riders is less than $15,000 annually. Their transit choices are very sensitive to fares. But to help pay for its continued rail expansion, the MTA will have to raise fares as high as politically possible, then cut service and routes if ridership drops in response to the increases. Freed from federal court oversight in October 2006, the agency increased bus fares in July. Since then, ridership has dropped by 5%. More fare increases are scheduled for July 2009.

The politicians who sit on the MTA board should be held accountable for this cynical strategy of pursuing rail lines at the expense of overall public-transit use and on the backs of low-income, bus-dependent riders. Bus fares and transit investments should promote not discourage transit use.

Americans Must Be Happy with $90+ a Barrel Oil

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production perception, originally uploaded by pbo31.

 

The only way we can truly judge other people’s beliefs is through their actions. Through this lens it really appears that Americans aren’t much bothered by $90+ a barrel oil. How else can you explain that people are clamoring to use more domestic petroleum resources? There is a lot of oil on the North Slope of Alaska, but where’s the support to extract that oil–especially since we can do it in less-environmentally impacting ways than ever before. There’s oil on America’s outer continental shelf, and yet people are not clamoring to extract that.

While American’s don’t seem to be very bothered about $90+ a barrel oil, OPEC loves Americans attitudes toward oil. American love to use oil, but we don’t want to produce more domestically. This op-ed from Investor’s Business Daily makes these points and argues that increasing domestic production would bring prices down. It is true that increased domestic production will help bring prices down, it would take a few years. It takes time to drill new wells and install new production infrastructure.

There are a few reasons about why Americans do not seem to be much bothered by the price of oil. The most likely possibility is that we don’t spend a large percentage of our incomes on gasoline. A second possibility is that people think the recently-passed energy bill will do anything. Jerry Flint in Forbes throws some cold water on the energy bill:

Solving the energy problem is easy if you pay no attention to the laws of physics. That’s the wonder of our Congress. To pass is easy; to achieve is something else. This is where I break your green heart. You know that Congress passed a law ordering all cars and trucks to average 35 miles to the gallon by 2020. It won’t happen.

Another part of that law mandates the production of 36 billion gallons a year of biofuels by 2022. That won’t happen either.

It’s not that automakers from Detroit to Tokyo to Stuttgart are just mean and don’t want to do it. They don’t know how. Of course, they don’t dare complain or criticize the law. We must all be green and happy about it.

Physics is the biggest reason that the 35 miles to the gallon standard won’t be met. People want more from their cars than in the past. The 1987 Honda Civic CRX HF would get 52 mpg under today’s fuel efficiency rules. But today’s cars have more safety features and more amenities. These amenities make cars heavier and less fuel efficient.

As for 35 billion gallons of biofuel, this is very unlikely to happen at a price that people want to pay. The reason is simple–the technology to make 21 billion gallons of ethanol from cellulosic sources is not commercially viable today. It is difficult to go from 0 to 21 billion gallons in a few years. It is possible this will happen, but it is highly implausible.

When oil is as expensive as it has been of the last few years, this creates incredible incentives for people to figure out new sources of energy. Someday we will be using different sources of energy, but we don’t know what those are going to be today.

We can’t predict how technology will improve over time, so let’s let investors and people in the market make their best guesses for the future of energy, instead of Congress picking a technology that lobbyists have convinced them will work. I’ll take the judgements of investors over Congress or the President any day. The investors are frequently wrong, but there is far less downside to investors making bad decisions than Congress.

How Do You Spell Schadenfreude?

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For me you spell schadenfreude–Citibank. Citibank lost nearly $10 billion in the 4th quarter of 2007 alone. I might feel sad if I hadn’t gone with rounds with Citibank a year ago when they allowed an unauthorized withdrawal from my checking account. The problem should have been resolved quickly, but they lost the paperwork so I had to fill out two different affidavits and I had to make 6 different trips to the bank so straighten things out. It was ridiculous.

Apparently that kind of sloppy work was widespread. You have to work hard to lose $10 billion in a quarter.