April 10th, 2012 · Comments Off on Did John Kasich just become untenable as the Republican VP nominee?
When it comes to choosing people for the VP slot on the ticket, there are many ‘rule sets’ that seem to be in play: does the candidate have dangerous baggage? (Read Sarah Palin.) Can they handle media scrutiny and interviews? (Again, Sarah …) Can they help deliver a battleground state? (Again, Sarah …) Do they move beyond the primary-important extremists to an appealing role for a broader range of the electorate? (Again, Sarah …)
“This isn’t popular to always say, but I believe there is a problem with climates, climate change in the atmosphere,” Kasich told a Ross County Republican function on Thursday. “I believe it. I don’t know how much there is, but I also know the good Lord wants us to be good stewards of his creation. And so, at the end of the day, if we can find these breakthroughs to help us have a cleaner environment, I’m all for it.”
Notably, Kasich made this Creation-Care comment to a room full of Republican donors. The reporting gives no indication of the reaction to his comments. Clearly, however, Kasich’s comments took him away from the anti-science extremism dominating Republican politics, outside of today’s ‘mainstream Republican primary voter’ and into the mainstream of reality-based thinking.
Truth be told, anyone with their eyes open is overwhelmed by the wealth of interesting, insightful, and high quality material out there — in soft (blogosphere) and hard (books, etc) copy. This drives us, all too often, into stovepiping our focus, gaining ever more knowledge about an ever narrower focus area.
Our challenges — as individuals, communities, nation — are, however, multifaceted, systems-of-systems issues that demand a more holistic look, with a willingness to explore linkages and to gain some insight as to (un)intended consequences.
Some institutions and organizations strive to provide the basis for taking that step, to provide a window on complex interactions and opportunities for confronting (and surmounting) the challenges we face.
Worldwatch Institute, in my experience, is one such institution. Their annual State of the World series tackles major issue areas, from multipe (and quite high-quality) perspectives to inform about challenges, options for dealing with them, and insights from real experience (”lessons identified”) about alternative paths. And, this year’s effort is most definitely a valued addition to this series.
And, just as with many of the years since, those words remain true: “this year’s effort [looks to be] most definitely a valued addition to this series”. “Looks to be” because I am just in the initial stages of reading a collected work which I plan, not necessarily in order, to read cover-to-cover.
While we struggle, in too many places, in last-ditch efforts against fossil-foolish intiatives (from vastly expanded fracking to Keystone XL pipeline to coal power plants around the world), it is critical to foster positive visions for the future. Recognizing the critical state we are in (and racing toward), Worldwatch’s 2012 “State of the World: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity” targets fostering such a positive vision. The question at the core of this work:
How will we move toward sustainable prosperity equitably shared among all even as our cities strain to provide decent jobs, housing, transportation, and social services, and as our ecological systems decline?
I will return, after a more robust look, to examine how well the book addresses this question. My expectation, based on past experience, is that there will be much to learn from and value in this publication.
Want to prod an anti-science syndrome sufferer into a vitriolic rampage, utter two words: “hockey stick”. And, want to see them turn red, add two more words: “Michael Mann”. Simply put, Dr. Michael Mann’s work on reconstructing temperature records using multiple sources provided a very telling demonstration of how (rapidly mounting) modern temperatures were entering ranges simply not seen over (at least) the past 1000 years. Legitimate climate skeptics had wondered whether modern temperatures were really out of whack with recent (past several thousand years or so) global temperatures, with the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) being the most prominent reason for questioning whether late 20th Century temperatures were really something unusual. Mann’s work showed that they were. And, that work has been reinforced and, well, confirmed by study after study since then. Honest skeptics, therefore, moved into realization that something significant was happening that humanity was having an impact on the climate — even if uncertain about how much. Simply put, this infuriates deniers, who are fighting tooth-and-nail to undermine honest scientific endeavors and weaken public understanding of science / scientific methods.
For a long time, Dr. Michael Mann has thus been a lightning rod for the climate denial machine. One part of that machine developed an innovatively abusive method for attack: leveraging control of a state government to use taxpayer resources on an anti-academic liberty crusade.
For two years now, Ken Cuccinelli, the Tea Party-darling Attorney General of Virginia, has been eating up tax-payer resources harassing Mann in a Court-rejected effort to drive the University of Virginia to violate academic privilege and do a data dump of all of Professor Mann’s email correspondence while he was at UVA.
WE KNEW Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) had declared war on reality. Now he has declared war on the freedom of academic inquiry as well. We hope that Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) and the University of Virginia have the spine to repudiate Mr. Cuccinelli’s abuse of the legal code. If they do not, the quality of Virginia’s universities will suffer for years to come.
In face of this legal assault, a simple reality: academic salaries don’t go too far when paying for lawyers and other legal expenses. And, a sad reality, the assaults on Professor Mann (and other scientists) creates (as desired) a chilling effect on other scientists who are worried about being bankrupted by anti-science suffering legal crusades funded by fossil fuel interests.
Recognizing this, the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) has been helping fund Dr. Mann’s legal defense as well as other scientists who face similar challenges. To be clear, a good deal of the ‘costs’ are actually deferred by lawyers willing to provide pro-bono assistance and/or greatly reduced charges serving to defend science and scientists. Even so, the costs mount.
$300 and you will have — as per this post’s title — your own Climate Hockey Stick … signed by Professor Michael Mann.
And, for those willing to put their check books truly behind defending science, $1000 will get you a signed print from Joshua Wolfe.
In truth, these “gifts” are really beside the fact. Donating to this fund provides you a much more serious gift: knowing that you are helping defend scientists and science against the full-throated assault of those seeking to undermine science.
And, when it comes to environmental regulation, polluting industry groups (and their astroturf groups and politicians) often scream about job impacts.
From 2007 to 2011 (pdf), the phrase “job-killing regulations” underwent a 17,550% increase in usage in U.S. newspapers (from just four appearances in 2007 to over seven hundred in 2011)
These “job killing” claims contrast with reports and studies that show significant economic (including job creation) impacts from action.
Reality: analysis of jobs impacts from a specific (major) project or regulation across the entire economy is difficult due to very serious systems-of-systems impacts. That analysis relies on models and, yet again, worthwhile to remember the old adage: all models are wrong although some models are useful.
In an advocacy context, job impact analyses can tell very different stories, often depending on the narrator. In one revealing example, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity estimated that two EPA rules on power plant emissions would trigger a 1.4 million job loss; meanwhile, using a different model and different assumptions, the Political Economy Research Institute predicted the same two rules would generate a 1.4 million job gain.
Honestly, what is the non-analyst / non-expert to do with such contrasting material? Simply split the situation in the middle and say ‘zero job impact’?
Sadly, the Policy Integrity analysis doesn’t really provide an answer. They didn’t provide a ‘peer review’ of these two (or other cited) studies to enable others to understand which is more accurate. (Although they would like this to occur.) What they emphasize, however, is the importance of disclosed assumptions and, in an implied suggestion, that journalists and policy-makers should discount any study being waved around in the air where key assumptions aren’t disclosed.
Along with not doing ‘peer review’ of specific studies, the Policy Integrity study does not provide illumination on a larger question:
When it comes to discussions of environmental regulations impact on employment, do opponents of action systematically overstate or understate job losses and/or do proponents of action systematically understate or overstate job gain implications?
On this, for example, the Economic Policy Institute concluded that “fears of job losses are overblown“. This is a truly significant issue to examine that can help illuminate such discussions. When it comes to ‘cost-benefit analysis‘, looking back over the years, the situation has been nearly uniform that opponents of environmental regulation drastically overstate costs of action while discounting (typically ignoring) benefits of action even while proponents of the regulations have overstated costs while understating the benefits. Whether the Clean Air Act (re Clean Air Act benefits) or the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, analytical bias and methodologies have skewed the discussion to an overstatement of cost and understatement of benefit. Writ large, more robust cost-benefit analysis would have shown much greater benefits from action than even the strongest proponents were laying out. It is reasonable to suspect that the same thing happens with jobs analysis. Sadly, the Policy Integrity work doesn’t provide insight on whether this is the case. An important point to consider is that retrospective reviews of jobs claims are incredibly endeavors for an analyst and that is perhaps the reason it is hard (to find anyone who has done a credible job on this. Perhaps Policy Integrity next study will change this.
The phrase “job-killing regulation” has become a standard part of the political lexicon this campaign season, most often used to disparage President Barack Obama’s energy and environmental policies.
But a new report suggests we ought to take claims of regulatory-related unemployment with a grain of salt.
In the past three years, the Environmental Protection Agency has been proposing an array of new rules on air pollution in the United States. In return, Congress has typically focused on what impact those regulations will have on jobs. In the first month of 2011, House Republicans held nearly two dozen hearings on the links between government regulations and unemployment. That’s understandable, given that the recovery’s still stumbling. But the actual, hard estimates of job impacts have been all over the place. …. In any case, it’s worth being cautious anytime a politician or lobbying group confidently declares that a new regulation will annihilate thousands of jobs (or create thousands of jobs, for that matter). Odds are, those numbers are giving a woefully incomplete picture of the rule in question.
John Broder, Environmental Regs: Job Killers or Job Creators? “It’s a rare day that you pick up a newspaper without encountering a reference to “job-killing regulations” from a pro-business Republican complaining about the burden of a new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency or other government office. Sometimes large and scary job loss numbers are attached to the assertion and attributed to a study, most often financed by the affected industry. … “It may seem optimistic to imagine that politicians are going to drop the rhetoric about jobs,” Mr. Livermore said in a conference call, “but our hope is to improve the broader discourse about environmental rule-making.” He noted that rules to limit exposure to harmful emissions are imposed to save lives and improve health, not to create jobs.
Seemingly absent from Mitt Romney’s discussion of his father’s, George Romney’s, business expertise is his passion and support for “sensible cars”. As George Romney put it in 1994,
I concluded way back then that you didn’t need a great big car for going to the market to get bobby pins.
Thus, the Rambler as the lowest cost convertible on the market … a ‘sensible car’.
In Romney’s perspective, failure to aggressively pursue the Rambler left American Motors Corporation without a future.
The Rambler [was] the car of the future. … He’s right who is most in league with the future. … The Rambler was the first successful economical compact car on the American market.
While the “Big Three” introduced ever-larger cars, AMC followed a “dinosaur-fighter” strategy. George W. Romney’s leadership focused the company on the compact car, a fuel-efficient vehicle 20 years before there was a real need for them. This gave Romney a high profile in the media. … A letter to shareholders in 1959 claimed that the introduction of new compact cars by AMC’s large domestic competitors (for the 1960 model year) “signals the end of big-car domination in the U.S.” and that AMC predicts small-car sales in the U.S. may reach 3 million units by 1963.
Jobs: About 6500 jobs years (1300 / year for five years) in manufacturing and construction for this facility with roughly 250 continuing jobs afterwards. (Also, by taking a leading role in offshore wind, Maryland would likely be exporting offshore wind systems and otherwise supporting other East Coast offshore wind projects.)
Homegrown Energy: Maryland currently imports 30 percent its electricity, this project will reduce that and reduce trandmission costs (and problems).
Healthier Economy: Due to reduced fossil fuel pollution, Maryland could save something between $27-$100 million per year.
Price Stability: From 1999 to 2009, Maryland’s electricity prices roughly doubled — once built, wind power prices are stable as operating costs are marginal compared to the capital costs. The price can be essentially fixed because the fuel cost is zero (beyond the fuel costs to support operations and maintenance).
Clean, renewable power: A 310 MW project would reduce Co2 emissions by 586,000 tons per year. (At a low Social Cost of Carbon value stream of $40 per ton, that would be over $23 million / year in value.)
Significant Economic Impact: The total economic impact, over five years, will be nearly $2 billion and will drive $8.7 million in additional state tax revenues.
While some might say “you had me at hello’ for a clean-energy project, this is a pretty substantial set of benefits without even talking about the reality of the thousands of gigawatt hours the project will generate through its lifecycle. What is intriguing, however, is that this laydown of project benefits might be leaving out one of the most significant benefit streams: the existence of fixed price electricity sources with minimal (to no) fuel price issues (like wind, solar, geothermal, and even nuclear power) will end up driving down total prices. This reality is somewhat counter-intuitive as these low Co2 power sources come onto the market at what seems to be much higher individual unit (kilowatt hour or megawatt hour prices). Even proponents will discuss how offshore wind costs more and its “high cost”.
For any economically viable offshore wind proposal, “there’s a massive subsidy from the ratepayers involved,” said David Wisowaty, CEO of Fenimore Partners, a New York-based consulting firm that specializes in wind energy. “It’s always the same issue — the very high cost of offshore power. It just requires some way of getting a high price per kilowatt hour” from consumers.
Wisowaty — as with so many others — is caught in a stove-piped discussion of “price per kilowatt hour” as contracted. While a systems-of-systems discussion will include the sort of items outlined by the Maryland Energy Administration (the bullets above) that are ‘co-benefits’ outside the utility bill, there is a significant co-benefit within the utility bill structure that seems utterly absent from the Maryland offshore wind discussion: the impact on peak pricing. Significant European experience has shown that those ‘high unit cost’ fixed-price electricity sources have ended up having a suppressing effect on peak hour prices, especially variable sources like wind. If high wind power periods coincide with periods of peak demand, the fixed wind prices put a ceiling on the cost of electricity. Writ large, the number of hours of prices peaking beyond the “FIT” (Feed-In-Tariff, that set price for electricity generated by the wind turbines) are reduced. The German experience, for example, is telling.
renewable energy (mostly wind, plus some solar) injections into the German electricity system caused, on average over the year, prices to be reduced by about 8 euros/MWh – about 15%. That translated into savings of 5 billion euros over the year for electricity buyers (utilities and other wholesale consumers), or 95 EUR/MWh of renewable energy injected. With a feed-in tariff of, on average, 103 EUR/MWh (which includes the high price for solar; wind tariffs are around 85EUR/MWh), the net cost of renewables is thus under 10 EUR/MWh, to be compared to a average wholesale price of 40-50 EUR/MWh. Thanks to the feed-in tariff, a wind MWH costs one fifth of a coal MWh! In other words, by guaranteeing a high price to wind generators, you ensure that they are around to bring prices down. And that trick can only work with low marginal cost producers, thus not with any fuel-based generator, which would need to pay for its fuel in any case, and might end up requiring a higher price than the guaranteed level to break even, if fuel prices increased (as they would if such a scheme came up and encouraged investment in such plants) . So we get an glimpse of the fact that there is value in wind power for consumers which is not reflected directly through electricity prices, and is only remotely related to the actual cost of wind.
By having fixed renewable enegy prices — even if seemingly higher than the average kilowatt hour price — the average wholesale price was driven down significantly. As Scarecrow John put it in an email to me,
The spot clearing price paid in these ISOs is set by the marginal cost — which is set by the units on the margin of the dispatch — the last units/increments of energy added to supply to balance demand (more or less). If you add wind to the dispatch, it’s marginal cost is at/near zero, so it goes in at/near the bottom of the dispatch supply curve. That pushes every more expensive unit to the right, up the curve, and eventually pushes the move expensive units off the dispatch, because they’re not needed now to meet demand. That lowers the marginal cost that sets the spot price, which is now set by some less expensive plant than the one displaced. Shorter: when you add wind, you displace something else that’s more expensive, e.g., push an old coal plant or inefficient gas plant off the dispatch, which lowers the spot price.
The developing Cape Wind offshore project in Massachusetts has looked at this value stream. As discussed by Tom Konrad at Forbes,
How much lower? A 2010 Study by Charles River Associates [pdf] found that Cape Wind would lower prices on the New England wholesale market by 0.122 cents on average. Since Cape Wind itself would be producing about 1% of all power on the New England market, the extra 14 cents per kWh on that power would be offset by a savings of .122 cents per kWh on all other power. By my calculations, the combination of price suppression and the increased direct price of power from Cape Wind, the net effect on the average price of power in New England of Cape Wind would be an increase of only $0.0002 (0.02 cents) per kWh, assuming the Charles River Associates study is accurate. Put another way, even if customers pay a 12.2 cent per kWh premium for power from Cape Wind, the net effect on utility bills would be zero because of price suppression.
That last sentence bears repeating: “the net effect on utility bills would be zero because of price suppression.” In other words, when it comes to Massachusetts and all the sorts of ‘co-benefits’ that are outlined for a Maryland offshore wind energy projects, those benefits might come at a net zero cost to the average consumer — even with the monthly bill surcharge — due to the suppression of peak pricing periods. A recent update suggests that the situation is even better than that, with the report concluding that “Cape Wind will reduce wholesale electric prices for the New England region by $7.2 billion over 25 years.” That is $286 million in savings, per year, for New England utility customers through the addition of one offshore wind project into the grid. All too often, proponents of clean energy action make a far too conservative case — underestimating the value of action — while opponents exaggerate costs and understate (ignore) benefits. Governor O’Malley and other proponents of offshore wind have done a good job in working to increase understanding of co-benefits. Even so, they just might have left out one of the most significant co-benefits that would ameliorate — if not eliminate — the difficult dilemma of seemingly paying for these co-benefits via increased utility bill costs. The European experience and analysis of other U.S. offshore projects suggests that offshore wind is one of those arenas where we can have our cake and eat it too.
Photo credits.
Thanet Offshore Wind Project. 23 September 2010: Vattenfall opened the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Thanet Offshore Wind Farm, off England’s south east coast. The wind farm has 100 turbines and will generate electricity equivalent to the annual consumption of over 200,000 British households.
Actress and eloquentactivistDaryl Hannah provided the star quality to the opening of the Affordable Comfort, Inc, annual trade show in Baltimore, MD (on why to attend ACI). On stage with ACI director, Amy Fazio, Hannah talked about the importance of home performance for confronting the crises (climate crisis, ocean acidification crisis, water crisis, economic crisis …). To an appreciative audience, Hannah finished her comments
On every level, we’re confronting crises and you [the Home Perfomance industry] are at the forefront of the solution.
Hannah spoke to the importance of clarity of communication about home energy issues, stating that her touchstone is a good friend who “is caught up in her daily life, dealing with the kids, and just doesn’t have the interest or energy to learn about home energy use.” Thus, the criticality of keeping the message simple.
What is best for your pocket book and health is also best for the planet.
Complicating that simple message:
We’ve been undermined by Fortune 500 companies that have co-opted labels like Green, Eco-, and sustainability.
People try something and find out that it doesn’t live up to promises, there is a lack of integrity and too often it is all marketing BS, and they give up.
Sustainability is a term that Hannah attacked: “Sustainability implies keeping things stagnant. That is better than the path we’re own, where we’re creating problems, but do we really want to stand still. I, we want to thrive — all things to thrive. We can do that with the right choices.”
As to those choices, Hannah stated a hope for a shifting American dream.
The American Dream has been bigger is better … Super-sizing of our meals, of our energy use, of our homes has gotten us in really serious trouble. Hopefully, we’re in a reimagining phase where we will move to quality over quantity.
Fazio asked Hannah her impression of the Obama Administration’s work on climate and energy issues. Sidestepping the question, Hannah emphasized that she looked to individuals rather than politicians for solutions.
I never put my faith in politicians, especially after Citizens United with politicians ever more captured by the money flowing in … I believe that change will never come from the top, but when people learn and begin to force change.
This is ridiculous. … Since when did science get so politicized. It isn’t like these scientists are pocketing money on climate science like political consultants are with Citizens United funds. Firemen don’t ask themselves whether a house is really burning when they see flames coming out the window and hear a child screaming. This is reality.
And, well, when asked directly about the Obama Administration’s lack of discussion of climate issues in the “All of the Above” energy discussion, Hannah had just two words:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced guidelines for new power plants for providing Americans electricity into the future. This move was required by a Supreme Court decision from five years ago. In short, these standards demand that new power plants be a bit less polluting, in carbon dioxide terms, than the average of current U.S. electricity generation. In 2006, the average US megawatt hour of electricity totaled 1363 pounds of CO2 (pdf). In 2010, electricity sources emitted 1,297 lbs CO2 per mWh. The proposed standard would be to set future power plants a bit better than today’s average (which, includes, after all, many over 50-year power plants).
Now, this rule set did not demand that new power plants meet the life-cycle carbon of nuclear power plants, wind turbines, or solar pv on the rooftop but set it within the range of existing fossil fuel (natural gas) power plant emissions.
For decades, the coal industry has been emphasizing “clean coal” and how continued (expanded) use of coal would meet the nation’s economic, energy, and environmental requirements.
The proposed Environmental Protection Agency ruleset has opened the door for the industry to show that their $10s of millions in advertising about clean coal have not just been power-point thin Potemkin Villages but represent reality.
NOTE: Putting in rules that comply with Supreme Court decisions and the law merit applauding, especially since they are being put in place in the face of a loud and determined machine that will falsely claim that these rules will raise electricity prices and cause electricity shortfalls. Not true … However, the question is when we will see rule sets — across the country — to address existing polluting plants.
“While we would have preferred that Congress enact legislation limiting greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA took an important step today in addressing the significant environmental threat posed by climate change.
“The Agency’s action establishes a logical and modest standard for new electric power plants and provides the industry with much needed regulatory certainty. The EPA provides a framework for the industry to confront this problem in a cost effective manner. “We understand that the EPA continues to evaluate regulatory options for already existing plants that may be affected by the Clean Air Act and we look forward to working with the Agency to evaluate the best approaches for achieving meaningful greenhouse gas reductions in as flexible and economic manner as possible.”
March 26th, 2012 · Comments Off on Naming Electric Vehicle Value Streams
When it comes to discussions of the value of moving toward transportation fuel efficiency, all too often, the “return on investment” (ROI) calculation devolves down to “how much extra to buy fuel efficiency versus how fast the gasoline savings will pay for the extra cost”. This sort of stove-piped calculation creates a misleading discussion and understanding — at the individual and societal level.
There are many value streams outside gasoline savings for electric vehicle (plug-in-hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEVs, such as the Volt), hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs, such as the Prius), and electric vehicles (EVs, such as the Leaf)). For example, no one asks what the ROI is for leather seats or that racing stripe on the side of the car. While there are many others, let’s look to four non-direct (but quite tangible) value streams that those selling and those buying EVs might consider in the purchase:
The Woolsey Effect
Gas Station Anxiety Relief
The Sound of Silence
Breath of Fresh Air
The Woolsey Effect:
James Woolsey, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and John McCain advisor, famously has (had?) a bumper sticker on his Prius (and then Plug-In Prius): “Bin Laden Hates This Car”.
Consumers buy EVs for many reasons beyond pure financials, including variations of self-identification and ‘statement to the world’ value streams. This can range from from status symbol to decision to be off oil to fulfilling techno-crazy gadget lover needs.
Gas Station Anxiety Relief
In part because of the high quality data providing strong information about fuel requirements but also due to much greater fuel efficiency, PHEV and HEV owners have to go to the gas station less often. This means less time wasted, less time breating fumes, …
Lets say an ‘average’ driver at 12,000 miles per year. With a 50 mpg car with 10 gallon tank, that is 240 gallons / year and thus 24 times to the gas station. (Yes, simplistic on multiple levels, such as refilling at full tank …) A 30 mpg vehicle with a 12 gallon tank would be 400 gallons and thus 33 times to the gas station. Let’s say 15 minutes, on average, the PHEV/HEV driver just saved 2 ¼ hours per year. How much do you value an hour of your time?
The Sound of Silence
Prior to driving the Prius for awhile, I had no idea how enjoyable the ‘sound of silence’ would be while behind the steering wheel. A neighbor waves and, well, I stop and there is zero car noise and we can talk. EV drivers are to listen to birds singing while driving because the gas engine isn’t kicked in. This is a ‘value stream’ that provides a real ROI.
A Breath of Fresh Air
Very simply, being in a garage or standing by an ‘idling’ car with traditional ICE or an EV is quite different. One can drive around a parking garage in an EV (any type) without pumping out fumes into enclosed spaces. How much does not putting pollutants into constrained spaces (that garage next to the kitchen?) matter to purchasers.
These are just four ‘named’ examples when there are a myriad of value streams for individual purchasers and societies from improved fuel efficiency and moves to electrify transportation from reduced oil dependency to reduced health impacts from burning fossil fuels to …
Our beautiful almost snowless winter, that has made morning commutes easy and eased the burden of towns snow removal budget, has taken a toll on maple syrup production. Most farmers have never seen anything like it and are sitting out the season. …
Consumers may have to make the choice between gas or pure maple syrup.
One columnist, in a piece entitled Good weather can be terrible, speculated that “the $50-a-gallon price for maple syrup purchased directly from the farm last year might prove a bargain in 2012”.
Hmmm …
Perhaps, if you truly enjoy maple syrup on your pancakes, it is time to head to the stores for a serious syrup supply before the price hikes hit the shelves?
And, well, how many years of supply can one buy? After all, climate science and study of maple syrup doesn’t suggest (on average) that the situation will get better.
Now, as per Cherry Blossoms, Another Global Warming Canary, we need to keep Maple Syrup in perspective. First, to be clear, this month’s temperature highs don’t “prove” climate change even as they are part of the evidentiary basis for how climate change is impacting our lives, quite seriously, already. When it comes to Maple Syrup, specifically, as much as I enjoy (love) it and even as many people derive income from it, Maple Syrup is a luxury symbol about climate-change impacts. If the only thing at risk with out fossil foolish ways were whether we needed to pay another $1 or so for some maple syrup, then things would be great … sadly, the issues at stake are much greater than just what goes on my morning pancakes.
This Weather Channel discussion lays out a meterologist’s realization that climate change is real amid a discussion of 2012’s real March Madness.
Truth be told, anyone with their eyes open is overwhelmed by the wealth of interesting, insightful, and high quality material out there — in soft (blogosphere) and hard (books, etc) copy. This drives us, all too often, into stovepiping our focus, gaining ever more knowledge about an ever narrower focus area.
Agency and John McCain advisor, famously has (had?) a