October 30th, 2009 · Comments Off on “If our children knew the facts …” Demonstration
If our children truly understand the hole that their grandparents and parents have been digging for them, what would they do?
Here, Moms Against Global Warming suggest that this would drive our children to a rage that would make adolescent rage look benign.
Now, this is a powerful video with a caveat.
It ends linking with a call to Take Action On Climate Change.COM. Now, perhaps you will realize that the site is “takeactiononclimatechange.com” or, perhaps, you will think (as I did at first) that “to take action” you should go to “Climate Change DOT com”. (If you wish to go there, well, type it in as I’m not adding to its links.) Interesting results when going there. THe site looks great as a shell but every link through goes to a page of sponsored links. Every time that I went to a link, the first one listed was either a denier/skeptic site or a fossil fuel corporation site. Hitting “what is climate change”, the first site was Shell, second Chevron, fourth natural gas group, seventh BP, tenth is Ford. “Information on global warming” provides a “sponsored link” to an outright denier (“Is There Global Warming DOT com”). Shell & Chevron were in that top ten as well.
Professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago Geosciences, has published An Open Letter to Steven Levitt, the nation’s Super Freakiest Economist. To put it simply, Pierrehumbert owns Levitt.
By now there have been many detailed dissections of everything that is wrong with the treatment of climate in Superfreakonomics , but what has been lost amidst all that extensive discussion is how really simple it would have been to get this stuff right. The problem wasn’t necessarily that you talked to the wrong experts or talked to too few of them. The problem was that you failed to do the most elementary thinking needed to see if what they were saying (or what you thought they were saying) in fact made any sense. If you were stupid, it wouldn’t be so bad to have messed up such elementary reasoning, but I don’t by any means think you are stupid. That makes the failure to do the thinking all the more disappointing.
Pierrehumbert then takes one specific point from the chapter to highlight this “failure to do the thinking”. Pierrehumbert’s examination of the issue of whether solar cells’ low albedo (high absorption of solar energy & thus heat) makes it senseless to pursue solar power provides a tour de force examination of the basics of research (using the web) and how Levitt seems to have totally flubbed.
The point here is that really simple arithmetic, which you could not be bothered to do, would have been enough to tell you that the claim that the blackness of solar cells makes solar energy pointless is complete and utter nonsense. I don’t think you would have accepted such laziness and sloppiness in a term paper from one of your students, so why do you accept it from yourself? What does the failure to do such basic thinking with numbers say about the extent to which anything you write can be trusted? How do you think it reflects on the profession of economics when a member of that profession — somebody who that profession seems to esteem highly — publicly and noisily shows that he cannot be bothered to do simple arithmetic and elementary background reading. Not even for a subject of such paramount importance as global warming.
Now, Steve Levitt has chosen to respond to Pierrehumbert, at least indirectly (Levitt does not, at this time, have a comment at RealClimate in response to Pierrehunt’s critique), with a comment to a Chris Mooney post:
Except that Myhrvold’s main argument was about the energy required to *make* the solar panels, not the radiated heat. The critique totally misses the point. See here.
As with much of what Levitt is saying and writing at this time (especially, but not solely, related to climate science and climate economics’ issues), there is truth and truthiness here.
1. Truth: The primary discussion in Superfreakonomics of Myhrvold re solar power (187-188) is on the lag time of catching up with the embedded carbon footprint of solar due to construction buildup/payback times. This is truthiness, however, since it is not compared to plans for coal, what implications would be if coal were shut down due to solar developments, and doesn’t address same issue when it comes to nuclear power / etc …
2. More importantly, Levitt is being disingenuous (crazy like a fox?) since the opening paragraph to “too optimistic” (p 187), leading into that discussion of the embedded carbon, reads:
“A lot of the things that people say would be a good thing probably aren’t,” Myhrvold says. As an example, he points to solar power. “The problem with solar cells is that they’re black because they are designed to absorb light from the sun. But only about 12 percent gets turned into electricity and the rest is reradiate as heat — which contributes to global warming.”
Hmmm … this is the point that Pierrehumbert addresses. It is hard to see how any fair reader would agree that he “totally misses the point”.
Levitt seems to to be refusing to engage Pierrehumbert’s devastating critique of that one paragraph by holding up a bright shiny object and saying “what about that other thing?” My question to Levitt: Why not deal with the critique at hand rather than trying to move on to that next thing?
However, if you want to move on to that next thing, do you have a response to the devastating critique of “that other thing by Brad Johnson at Wonkroom (Myhrvold’s Folly)?
The Commonwealth of Virginia has long embraced a tradition of:
Good governance (especially fiscal management)
Support for good public education (including a top public university system)
Protection of its historical legacy and landscape (such as Civil War battlefields and the Piedmont)
Business-friendly policy.
Looking at the economic and political landscape, the time seems ripe for taking actions (moving forward with tangible deeds) over the next four years to provide for the common wealth of the Commonwealth of Virginia through a reinforcing of these four core elements of Virginia’s governmental policy.
Central to such an approach would be a recognition (and embracing) of the reality that it not the economy versus the environment, but economy and environment. (For a draft speech on this, that could be used by any politician, at any political level, as a template for something that most Americans would embrace, see: E2 Solution for Energizing America Toward a Better Future.) Using a term that is gaining moment, in short: Clean Energy Works. And, it would work well within Virginia’s heritage.
Amid tight financial times where states are slashing budgets and laying off workers with reduced tax revenues (and swollen unemployed ranks), why should the Commonwealth embark on some form of massive ‘clean energy’ investment effort. In short,
Investing in energy efficiency and clean energy can save government entities (taxpayers) money, improve government worker productivity and improve educational performance, help protect the environment, and strengthen business (both in terms of opportunities and competitiveness).
Okay, that is a “why”, but what about a “how”? Let us provide just one example:
To promote the common wealth, the Commonwealth of Virginia should establish a major “Greening the Schools” initiative. This would have several elements:
A Tiger Team of state (Commonwealth) experts to audit school properties (working with local school systems) and develop investment/retrofit plans for ‘greening’ schools (with a major focus on improving energy and other resource efficiency);
The Commonwealth should seek a bond to pay for ‘greening schools’.
A key Tiger Team requirement: establish the program for 15+% annual return on investment, for the savings to then be split between the Commonwealth and the local school systems.
Reduced utility bills for school systems throughout the Commonwealth, making resources available for other educational requirements (teachers?) or enabling reduced tax loads;
Creating jobs throughout the state (those retrofits) while sparking business opportunities (those retrofits) and fostering citizen’s and business ability to have energy efficiency improvements done in the home/business due to increased local capacity for (and knowledge of the value of) such retrofits;
Improved school performance (through more comfortable educational spaces (better lighting, better temperature control, fewer pollutants in the air), reduced illnesses/absences (both teachers and students), etc …)
And …
This program, likely to merit a bond program of over $500 million, would enhancing the Commonwealth’s reputation for good governance, focused on win-win-win solutions, through adroit partnerships of the private and public sectors, with the ability to track results and performance.
Consider approaching the economic challenges faced by the Commonwealth of Virginia (and the rest of the nation) through the path of such win-win-win-win efforts. This would be truly praiseworthy acts … in other words, deeds for the Common Wealth of the Commonwealth.
Sadly, the abysmally weak Superfreakonomics is getting worldwide attention and its authors plenty of opportunities to continue to mislead on climate issues. Here is a guest post from Josh at Enviroknow providing a critical (highly footnoted) analytical eye to the Super Freaky Economist‘s oped in USA Today.
After a stunningly non-confrontational chat with Jon Stewart [see Greenfyre re The Daily Show] the other night, the authors of Superfreakonomics have now taken to the USA Today Opinion blog to continue pushing their nonsense. While they deliberately cited increasing global temperatures — as well as legitimate concerns such as oil wars and ocean acidification — the fact remains: they have gone way too far off the beaten path to successfully walk this one back. As has been the case throughout this episode, they continue to grossly oversimplify and commit numerous logical fallacies in order to make their seemingly-compelling contrarian argument.
Follow me, after fold, for a look at these 22 flaws. [Editor’s note: This represents a flaw every 42 words. Flaws per word is an interesting metric for opinion pieces (and, well, anti-science syndrome suffering ‘studies’) that could merit future and further use.]
Writ large, these governmental institutions focus solely on seeking an accounting of the first quadrant, in narrowly defined economic terms. Thus, for example, that reducing fossil fuel pollution will reduce the negative health impacts on the American public is not part of the analysis of climate and clean-energy legislation. (Note that the National Academy of sciences just released a study showing, in 2005 terms, that these health impacts cost the economy at least $120 billion per year.)
In essence, these “externalities” are priced into analyses. Everything that does not get monetized essentially does get monetized, just at $0. Thus, what are some of the things that are monetized with a $0 value in the economic analysis of climate legislation?
Americans’ health
Value of beach front property
Agricultural productivity
Biodiversity
New Orleans and other American ports potentially threatened by rising seas and stronger storms
There are other gap arenas in the analysis. If there is a some form of carbon pricing (whether via a Cap & Trade or some form of Carbon Fee (inappropriately called a “carbon tax”), then “energy prices” in terms of unit costs will go up. This, of course, is a misrepresentation because the real question is the cost of energy services, not the unit price of energy. With serious focus on efficiency, an element of both the Markey-Waxman bill that passed the House and the Kerry-Boxer bill under consideration in the Senate, total energy costs will fall. (This is without even considering conservation driven by awareness and, yes, unit costs of energy.)
If the US drops its demand for oil by 5 million barrels / day (25% or about 6% of global demand) by 2020 (no matter what other countries do), how much lower will oil prices be due to that reduced demand against supply? If it were as low as $5 barrel? That would be savings to US economy of $75 million day if usage (at 15 million barrels / day) and over $27 billion per year. (And, that would be $27 billion of dollars staying the US rather than sent overseas to buy imported oil.) If that demand destruction reduces prices by $10? By $20 barrel?
In other words, the increased “taxes” (or, better term, carbon FEES) could very well be offset by the reduced commodity prices due to reduced demand. This is quite difficult to model with any great confidence and there is the serious question of ‘proving a negative’ (‘oil prices would be lower if the US had only continued to strengthen the CAFE standards rather than standing still for 20 years’ — boy, almost certainly true, quite difficult to “prove” to support policy-making). While difficult to “prove” in a model, there is more substance and confidence that can be ascribed to this than screams of job loss (coming from people who helped facilitate the export of US heavy industry to China over the past decade or so …)
Supporters of acting to mitigate Global Warming and avert catastrophic climate change often take ‘conservative’ approaches, seeking to maintain credibility with what they know are understated estimates of the benefits of action. For example, Mckinsey & Company has done some of the most cited work related to the costs and benefits of energy efficiency and other actions to reduce US emission levels. They show that the US could move quite aggressively, with an aggregate cost of under $50 per CO2 to meet targets for emissions reductions. Their analysis, however, does not count the benefits of reduced health costs due to lowered pollution nor does it calculate systems of systems benefits (such as if a city’s buildings all have cool roofs, the benefits are not just for each building, but the reduced heat island impact reduces the cooling energy demands for all buildings). And, perhaps surprisingly for a business consulting form, they do not calculate the productivity improvements that come from greening work spaces (nor the educational benefits from greening educational institutions.)
Thus, those opposing action on climate change are showing no hesitancy in putting out truthiness-laden misrepresentations of the implications of acting to mitigate catastrophic climate change while those advocating action are, near uniformly, understating the case for action.
So this is what 352 parts per million looks like. If you want to see 350 parts per million, our natural state, then you have to get your politicians to act now.
Okay, a small caveat is in order.
Who ever said that 350 parts per million is our “natural state”? After all, the past million years or so has CO2 levels see-sawed between about 180 and 285 parts per million. The 350 is a ‘best estimate’, best calculation as to the safe level of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere for a prosperous human civilization.
Right now, humanity is adding enough Co2 into the carbon cycle (mainly, but not solely, from burning fossil fuels) to add about 2 ppm per year. We need to drive down our emissions that drive increased CO2 levels and then continue the process so that we are actually reducing CO2 levels.
And, well, who is to quibble with these women as to what is their ‘natural state’?
And, ask yourself: Do you want to get to 350 as badly as these women?
Interviewing the driving force …
This video was the conception of model Cameron Russell who blogs at Funny & Interesting with whom I just finished an email interview. From that exchange:
Q: Was this easy to put together?
Well, in reality it took about 2 weeks and 300 phone calls to pull together. I was inspired by the 350 idea and effort of each community creating its own 350 photo and video opp. So this was a video my community could contribute.
Q: Any thoughts about next steps? (Take the same theme and get male models to do it?)
One thing we’d like to see is copycat videos. People around the world putting on 40 articles of clothing and doing their own count down to 352 or 351. It was incredibly fun and funny to do. We were waddling out onto the set. I think people could have a lot of fun with this.
Q The fact is that ‘super model’ translates into ‘super traveler’. Many would see that as one of the great ‘benefits’ of being a top model. Yet, such travel creates a significant carbon footprint. How should we balance that? What are your thoughts? [Please note, we all face the reality of challenges in our lives, whether created by work or otherwise …]
It is an incredible challenge and definitely something I think about. Right now, I’m not in charge of where shoots take place. Even with a carbon tax of some kind, advertising will still likely be shot in beautiful places around the world. The cost of traveling to the location is a very small part of the whole. The good news is that there aren’t that many models or teams doing this work. At home, in Manhattan, I walk and bike every where. I don’t have a driver’s license and don’t have a plan for getting one any time soon.
Let’s be honest, here, it is hard to see that “modeling”, the “fashion industry”, and the concept of buying that latest fashion to add into the bulging closet is core to a sustainable human civilization. And, not having a driver’s license doesn’t real negate (could we say “off set”) that impact. On the other hand, these models action to use their celebrity to promote discussion of 350.org certainly has more power of wide communication than (yet) another A Siegel blog post to be read by 3.5 people.
Some thoughts about the video …
When I saw this, I had a couple reactions that included: Why all white? Why no men? Isn’t this so ‘politically incorrect’? ….? Then, I reminded myself: not everyone hears or sees things in the same way; not everyone is open to the same messages; and, well, this video’s buzz might gain a little bit of attention.
Just over the weekend, my inbox was filled with a discussion attacking climate science with assertions that “none of the models predicted the current cooling period” and, therefore, the entire concept of Global Warming rests on very shaky grounds.
Sigh …
Those involved in that discussion have now received links to an excellent article by AP science reporter Seth Borenstein. That article, Impact: Statisticians reject global cooling, merits praise because it is an excellent of inventive investigative journalism on a very public issue.
In the face of claims of cooling appearing in multiple venues and gaining visibility (such as via the truthiness-laden pages of Superfreakonomics (see here and here and, well, tens of other sites/posts )), being a centerpiece of misrepresentations by George Will and others, Borenstein decided to put metereological data under the searing examination of statisticians unaware of the data stream that they were seeing.
Berenstein (okay, “the AP”) gave the data to four statisticians and asked them to analyze the data. The result:
the experts found no true temperature declines over time.
Without knowing what the data referred to, one statistician called it “cherry-picking” to assert that there was any sort of statistically meaningful ‘cooling trend’.
“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect,” said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.
The statisticians’ basic point: the starting date is key. If you play games and have 1998 as “the” starting point, there is a minor cooling in the intervening years. (Actually, not a cooling but a slight retreating, writ large, from very high temperatures.)
choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics’ satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a “mild downward trend,” But doing that is “deceptive.” The trend disappears if the analysis starts in 1997. And it trends upward if you begin in 1999
Borenstein almost certainly will receit hateful (vitriolic) notes from deniers, self-proclaimed skeptics, and other anti-science syndrome sufferers who are unhappy with the results of a scientifically-sound path toward testing a hypothesis. Their loudly proclaimed hypothesis of a cooling globe since 1998 has, yet again, been tested and found wanting of a substantive basis.
October 26th, 2009 · Comments Off on Senator Alexander “believes an inconvenient reality …”
Earlier this afternoon, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) held a press call to discuss climate legislation. There were those who were holding their breath, seeing Alexander as moving toward supporting the legislation if it met his desires when it came to nuclear power development. Based on this press event, it seems that they might be holding their breath in vain.
Alexander spent much of the time repeating truthiness-laden talking points about Cap & Trade that rely on misrepresentations of government analysis and/or fossil-foolish think tanks that misrepresent reality. Thus, Alexander repeatedly attacked Cap & Trade on carbon emissions as a ‘jobs killer’, asserted that government analysis showed that it would send jobs overseas (‘in search of cheap energy’), that it ‘will raise energy prices’, take money out of the pockets of struggling families, and won’t have any impact. Simply put, none of this is a true representation of either the Waxman-Markety American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) Act that passed the House earlier this year or the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act (CEJAPA) that is being consider in the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, with hearings on this week.
Some of Alexander’s concerns and criticisms had more solid basis, such as stating that it was difficult to fully understand a 900+ page bill (even without the issue of it having been released only over the weekend) and that the CBO / EPA analyses have many inadequacies.
Senator Alexander strongly asserted this four-point plan for dealing with what he termed as the ‘inconvenient reality’ of climate change (which he stated he believes is a real threat):
100 new nuclear power plants by 2030
Targeting no less than 50 percent of US vehicles as electric cars
Offshore drilling
Manhattan Project style research program for clean energy
Alexander stated that this program would mean that the United States would meet Kyoto targets by 2030 (that is, I think, the 2010 Kyoto targets 20 years late) and emphasized that we need “cheap, clean energy”.
Reporters challenged Alexander in multiple ways, along the lines of:
‘Why would utilities buy nuclear power plants if there isn’t a restriction or price on coal? [His argument, here, was basically a Clean Air Act argument: that between Mercury and other pollutants, there more than enough reasons to get off coal without considering carbon.]
‘If you say you believe in the science and many scientists say the situation is dire, how can you advocate a plan which, you yourself state, might require putting in a cap or similiar additional levers in 5-10 years?’
Many of the questions focused on politics (‘Would Alexander join Jim Inhofe in a boycott of Senate EPW activities to undermine the bill’s progress forward?). Amid these questions, Alexander emphasized (multiple references) that what was required for serious action was Presidential leadership. Implied was that, for Alexander, that Presidential leadership meant moving forward with Alexander’s four-point plan.
If I had had a chance to ask questions …
As fun as it might have been to ask Senator Alexander what he meant by calling for President leadership, in terms of whether Senator Alexander would lead Republicans in following President Obama, if given a chance to ask questions, here are the two tacts/foci that I would have taken:
Every single expert study and energy expert emphasizes that the cheapest new energy is the energy you don’t require. Coined by Amory Lovins as “negawatts”, analysis after analysis show opportunities to cut energy demand by 20+ percent over the coming decade at costs of just pennies a kilowatt hour equivalent. Senator, you called for an emphasis on “cheap, clean energy” yet made no comment about energy efficiency. Why is energy efficiency not a fifth leg in your “plan”?
Just last week, the National Academy of Sciences released a report documenting that fossil fuel use (not extraction and production) has a health impact in the United States of at least $120 billion / year. This is just one example of what is described as externalities of energy use, with how CO2 is acidifying the oceans and driving climate change an even larger example. In your comments, Senator, you expressed dissatisfaction with CBO and EPA analysis of climate legislation. The CBO and EPA analyses explicitly do not consider such externalities. You discussed, as well, the value of nuclear power plants for cleaning up the atmosphere. The value of cleaning up the air would not, as an externality, be scored by CBO and EPA. Would you support a change in guidance to the CBO (and EPA) so that such ‘externality’ benefits (and costs) would be including in their scoring of legislation.
Bottled Water: I call it one of the greatest “con job” of the preceding 3 or 4 decades and a marketing dream…aimed at the gullible. It is also my main pet hate. One of the biggest untruth in our world is the following line: “bottled water is safer than tap water.” It is not. It is…errr…the same.
Here are the simple and undisputed facts: roughly 40% of ALL bottled water sold is nothing more than yer ole municipal tap water put into a fancy plastic bottle which may cost an arm and a leg and will find a way, one day, to add to our polluted planet (sadly only 1, maybe 2 out of 10 plastic bottles get recycled.) On ayearly basis, bottled water needs some 320 billion plastic bottles to accommodate multinationals such as Pepsico, Coca-Cola and a slew of others in order to what I call “double-taxing” the unsuspecting consumers (since you pay water taxes and various levies to your local government to acquire the certainty of untainted & safe water – though in most instances you are paying for recycled, treated and purified water).
Much noise is made over varying calculations associated with climate legislation. There is the disinformation fed from fossil foolish interests misrepresenting the situation. And, there are official studies from government institutions like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that seek to do honest analysis but which are working within financial and policy analytical constraints that can create rather false pictures on the realities of complex systems-of-systems interactions.
Right now, the United States is amid the challenge of seeking paths forward toward something approaching sustainability in our financial systems/structure, health system, and, even more fundamentally, our energy system(s) and the impact of our entire society on the climate’s ability to support humanity.
While this has been greated as great news by many calling for passage of a climate bill, this excitement masks the fundamental flaws of the CBO, EPA, and, sadly, even many environmental organizations’ cost-benefit analyses related to action to mitigate climate change.
A simplified (al beit accurate) statement is that all cost-benefit analyses should have four basic quadrants which, together, provide the basis for meaningful understand of the totality of the result. When it comes to legislation, these could be stated as follows:
Cost of enacting bill
Benefits of bill
Costs of doing nothing
Benefits of doing nothing
Again, clearly, that four-grid description is a simplification of the situation (are there really just two options? costs to who?), but a useful simplification.
When it comes to climate legislation, quite simply, the CBO and, in this case, the EPA are solely operating in the first box: the costs of enacting the piece of legislation. This is a limitation that is put on the EPA by legislative mandate, but a serious limitation nonetheless.
For example, the EPA did not consider the health care implications of fossil fuel pollution and how moving forward with global warming mitigation will, as a necessary corollary, drive down the pollution that is so seriously costing American society. (According to a study recently released by the National Academy of Sciences, this is a $120 billion / year cost. Oh, by the way, that study limited its examination to the use of fossil fuels and did not count implications of its production.) Nor is there a valuing of the avoided risks of catastrophic climate change … Nor is there a valuing of the strengthened dollar due to reduced oil imports. Nor … The list of absent material is extensive enough to fill multiple books.
While this analysis doesn’t quantify the impacts of higher temperatures and other effects of increasing GHG concentrations, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (in its June 2009 report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States”) described the impacts that we are already seeing and that are likely to dramatically increase this century if we allow global warming to continue unchecked. In the report, it documents how communities throughout America would experience increased costs, including from more sustained droughts, increased heat stress on livestock, more frequent and intense spring floods, and more frequent and intense forest wildfires.
Thus, those involved in this mandated analysis to support Congressional decision-making explicitly acknowledge that their work does not provide an accurate window on costs and benefits of climate legislation. Even with the undue focus on “costs” (and absence of valuing of avoided / reduced risks), the EPA finds that the costs of action are minimal on individual and societal levels. When one starts to count the excluded items, however, it quickly becomes evident to all open to honest analysis that the appropriate discussion focuses not on costs, but on benefits.
in the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago Geosciences, has published 
them to analyze the data. The result: