Tag Archives: energy

Some Thoughts on Climate

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There seems to be a problem with the location of the surface stations that are used to assess  (global) temperatures across a wide geographic area and over long periods (as “climatologists” see it) of time.  In particular, the US Historical Climatology Network, which has major contributions to the data sets used by “climatologists,” seems to have been giving invalid readings for quite a number of years, and at least one US agency involved in driving Federal climate policy seems to have badly “adjusted” the data these stations have been doing a bad job of providing. 

Specifically, as Anthony Watts, the lead author of the paper that investigates the implications of this error (“An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends”), put it in an earlier paper,

[A]pproximately 90% of USHCN stations were compromised by encroachment of urbanity in the form of heat sinks and sources, such as concrete, asphalt, air conditioning system heat exchangers, roadways, airport tarmac, and other issues.

This is the result of the well-known urban heat island effect.  The cities grew out to surround the originally placed sensors, and nothing was done about those sitings.

In Watts’ present paper (that inspirationally titled “area and distance weighted analysis” paper), Watts used a better method of assessing the quality of the station locations, one developed by Michel Leroy of METEO-France and accepted for use by the World Meteorological Organization.

Watts’ findings:

…a spurious doubling of U.S. mean temperature trends in the 30 year data period covered by the study from 1979 – 2008.

Moreover,

Poorly sited station trends are adjusted sharply upward, and well sited stations are adjusted upward to match the already-adjusted poor stations.

Well sited rural stations show a warming nearly three times greater after NOAA adjustment is applied.

Urban sites warm more rapidly than semi-urban sites, which in turn warm more rapidly than rural sites.

And finally:

The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward.

Hmm….

How “Green” Energy is Working out for Germany

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We’re getting an empirical lesson in the effectiveness of an economy whose energy is intended to come entirely from “green” sources.  The Obama administration would do well to observe closely the in-progress German demonstration.

Germany’s electricity prices have risen 10% in the last few years, since the beginning of the German push to rely exclusively on these sources and to walk away from coal, which Germany has in abundance.  That might not seem like much of an increase, but it hurts.

The Federation of German Consumer Organizations estimates that roughly 10% of German households are having trouble paying for their energy.  Some have been pushed over the threshold and can no longer pay—and their electricity is being turned off altogether: nearly 200,000 recipients of Hartz IV, a German benefits program for long-term unemployed, had their power cut off in 2011 because of unpaid bills.  There’s more: the Economy Ministry has estimated that prices will increase an additional 3-5 euro cents per kilowatt hour in the next year, just to finance renewable energy subsidies and grid expansion.  Those increases amount to an additional €105-€175 ($130-$220) for a family of three.

There are more cost increases to come.  The Federal Network Agency, a wide-ranging regulatory agency with its fingers in electricity, gas, telecommunications, post and railway markets, will announce this fall that rates will increase by 30%-50% above current levels.  Consumer “contributions” to renewable energy subsidies will rise by more than FGCO’s estimate of 3-5 cents; the FNA says the rise will be closer to 4.7-5.3 euro cents per kilowatt hour—plus VAT, they remind us.  Hartz recipients, and potentially programs like Hartz, will be hard-pressed to meet these increases.

We don’t need these headaches in the US.

Coal and CO2

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We get over half our national electricity supply from coal.  Nevertheless, President Obama is intent on shutting down our coal-based electricity through his EPA regulations.  This has been commented on by lots of folks.

The Obama fantasy driving this is that by killing off the US’ capacity to use coal in energy production, he’ll put a serious dent in the production of CO2.

Never mind that CO2 is not a harbinger of disastrous warming (its atmospheric warming capacity is quite trivial, especially compared to, oh, say, methane, or to the atmospheric cooling capacity of water vapor through its reflection of sunlight back into space), but a confirmation of the health of the planet.  The record, for instance, from ice cores as widely disparately collected as Greenland and Antarctica demonstrate that atmospheric CO2 increases lag global warming, not precede it.  And of course the increases would lag.  The planet warms, as from a major Ice Age, or the Maunder Minimum, or…, and life flourishes.  That life exhales carbon dioxide, and as the life spreads in the warming climes, CO2 in the atmosphere increases.

But nor the Obama administration nor the pseudo-scientists of the Global Warming Funding Project want to talk about that.  Except the latter, to change their group name to the Climate Change Funding Project.

Expensive Energy

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Do “green” energy subsidies work?  Pretty much by definition, they do not.  Without the subsidies, “green” energy is unsustainably expensive.  Even—especially—when the subsidy is a government mandate to use/buy the “green” energy, the only thing green about it is the money necessary to buy it.  The cost of the ethanol subsidy/mandate in our gasoline has been well documented as appearing not only in the cost of our gasoline, but in the cost our food, as well.

Wind energy provides another example of an expensive, and failed, “green” energy subsidy.  The Wall Street Journal writes

Twenty-nine states have these rules requiring local utilities to purchase between 20% and 33% of their electric power from renewable sources.

Minnesota, in particular, the WSJ reports, required as recently as 2007 that utilities in the state push their use of renewable energy  to 25% by 2025, to 12% by this year.  That means wind energy because in that Midwestern and northern state, the sun doesn’t shine as much as it does in New Mexico or Arizona.

The Minnesota Rural Electric Association says its members lost $70 million last year because these utilities are forced to buy wind power they “can’t use and can’t sell.”  Even so, residential utility bills for MREA’s customers run $50 to $100 per year higher than they would absent the mandate.  That’s not chump change for Mr Everyman.

What are Minnesotans getting for their extra $100 of energy expenditures?  Nada.  Not more energy.  The wind does not blow all the time, so the wind mills stand idle while still costing money.  When the wind blows too hard, the wind mills must be shut down, so they stand idle while still costing money.

Not more jobs.  Minnesota’s wind-generated electricity doesn’t come from wind mills built in Minnesota.  They import it from North Dakota.  When the wind is blowing just right.

The WSJ also described a study published this year by the Manhattan Institute, a New York City-based market-oriented think tank, that compared states with renewable energy mandates with those that allow utilities to purchase the cheapest electricity available.

The states with mandates paid 31.9% more for electricity than states without them.  Residents of North Dakota, a state without a mandate, pay $7.63 per kilowatt hour for electricity.  Neighboring Minnesota pays $10.76.

Hmm….

Our Energy Program

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There are a few items of interest as President Obama continues to tout his energy “policy.”

First, there’s this:

Brazil’s ethanol program is often touted as having weaned that nation off its dependency on foreign oil.  In truth, they made a political decision 40 years ago that they did not wish to be vulnerable to Middle Eastern (and others’) machinations or crises.  As a result of that decision, and their subsequent efforts, Brazil, which used to import over three-fourths of its oil, today imports no oil.  In fact, it’s a (minor) net exporter.  While their ethanol development program has contributed to their overall reduction in dependency on foreign oil, Brazilian oil production and use have both increased sharply: consumption by nearly 120% since 1980, and production even more markedly—875% over the same time frame.  Figure 1 tells that tale.

Figure 1: Brazilian Oil Production and Consumption, 1980 – 2009

What accounts for this?  In addition to on-shore production, Brazil actively drills for oil in the Atlantic, off its coast—often far off its coast and in very deep waters.  Brazil also actively drills in the Gulf of Mexico—a vast source of off-our-own-coast oil for which President Obama won’t allow American companies to drill—as he won’t allow off our Atlantic or Pacific coasts, or in Alaska, or anywhere oil is under Federally-owned land.

Then there’s this, courtesy of Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner (R, OH).  Here is made manifest President Obama’s disdain for domestic oil production and for Americans’ pocketbooks.

Don Seymour writes [emphasis and link in the original]:

President Obama called for the kind of “all of the above” energy strategy long-championed by Republicans. But far from supporting all of the above,” the Obama administration has spent more than three years blocking efforts to expand energy production and bring down gas prices, while pushing job-crushing tax hikes and taxpayer-backed loans to companies like Solyndra.

Figure 2 pretty much says it all.

Figure 2: Running on Empty: The White House Plan for Higher Gas Prices & Fewer Jobs

Finally, there’s enormous technological improvement supporting vast increases in natural gas production, which the Obama administration would just as soon see disappear.  Fracking technology has exploded our accessible domestic stores of gas.  In the Marcellus gas deposit, alone, which lies thousands of feet down in a reservoir reaching from West Virginia to New York, is enough gas to satisfy our nation’s energy needs for the next 15 years.

Fracking (hydraulic fracturing) is the technology that’s making this heretofore unreachable gas eminently reachable.  Fracking works by drilling a 5″ diameter hole (yes, it’s that small) from a more or less convenient location on the surface down several thousand feet until the drill reaches the gas-containing shale or the depth at which the shale exists, then bending to horizontal and drilling farther, now into the shale, until the pipes and rig are well into in the part of the shale containing the gas. This is where that “more-or-less convenient” part comes in: the drill doesn’t have to be vertical, or at an angle off vertical to get to  the targeted location.  This allows the surface location of the drilling to be offset quite a ways, for instance out of town, or well away from the farmer’s house.  After arrival in the targeted gas area, a high-pressure burst of water and sand is pumped into the piping, which creates millimeter-wide fractures in the shale through which the natural gas can escape into the piping.

Notice that: it’s water that does the fracturing.  The sand is along to be driven by that same pressure burst into the cracks created by the water to hold them open.  There are some impurities add to the mix: biocides akin to what gets dumped into backyard swimming pools for keeping bacteria, algae (even at that depth), and so on from clogging the pipes (they’re only 5″ across).  Other impurities include lubricants to keep the sand from abrading, too much, the pipes on the way into place.  And to facilitate withdrawing the water so the gas can flow more easily.  There are impurities added by the depths through which the drilling occurred, also, as the drilling equipment and water are withdrawn so the gas can be collected: for instance, the drilling often goes through geologically ancient underground seas, or seabeds, so the equipment coming back up is coated with the salts of those ancient seas.  The withdrawn water then is treated by the frackers, or by water treatment specialist companies hired by the frackers, to greater purity than the typical city water treatment plant before it’s released back into the environment.

But Obama’s administration keeps trying to butt in—both to “standardize” regulations concerning fracking, and to use that “standardization” to interfere with fracking itself.  It’s only necessary to review his EPA regulations concerning coal use, ethanol for our cars, his “green” energy projects.  He’s moving to block the use of coal altogether; he mandates, or continues to mandate during his “review” of excess regulation, the use of ethanol in our gasoline without regard to what that does to an automobile’s engine or what ethanol production does to the price of food.  And he has accelerated the diversion of our tax money into his favored “green” companies.  Competition, even from clean natural gas, cannot be accepted.

And never mind that state regulators see no need for Federal involvement.  This isn’t a turf battle; they make their argument on logic and facts.  Pennsylvania regulators, for instance, understand the practices and geology of Pennsylvania much more thoroughly and clearly than can Federal regulators at the remote EPA.  At best, any reasonable Federal regulatory system would end up essentially replicating what many of the states already do, but at a political and physical distance that makes those Federal regulators more remote, and they’re less accountable.  Further, that remoteness renders even well-intentioned Federal regulators unable to tailor their regulations to the varied specific state environments—political, economic, or natural—the way the individual states can,