Voice For Liberty

Category: Environment

  • Wichita geophysicist to speak on climate change, politics

    You’re invited to the May 12, 2009 supper meeting sponsored by the Libertarians of South Central Kansas.

    Where
    Mike’s Steakhouse (click for map)
    2131 S. Broadway
    Wichita, Kansas

    Time
    Tuesday May 12, 2009
    5:30 p.m. supper (Individual tickets with orders off the regular menu.)
    6:00 p.m. meeting

    Guest Speaker
    Geophysicist Dennis Hedke of Hedke-Saenger Geoscience, Ltd.

    Topic
    Energy, Environment, and Economics: 21st Century Realities

    Dennis Hedke is a professional geophysicist who will offer some insight into the Earth’s climate change and its relation to the political climate. This will be a Powerpoint presentation and should be very informative. Dennis is wading into the fray on the issue of climate change in an attempt to inform the public as to the facts regarding this issue. These facts are in short supply in the mainstream media. This will be the first time that this presentation has been made to the public. Dennis hopes to meet with many groups in the future to share this important information.

  • Rebranding the green message

    The New York Times wrote a story about it, but it doesn’t seem to be gaining much traction.

    The article, published last Saturday, is titled Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus. It tells of a memo accidentally sent to news media. Written by ecoAmerica, an “environmental marketing and messaging firm,” the memo describes the need for environmentalists to better market their goal.

    Here’s some of the terms and phrases that need to be put away and replaced so that the green message can be reframed, according to the article:

    • Replace “global warming” with “our deteriorating atmosphere.”
    • Instead of “carbon dioxide,” use “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.”
    • “Cap and trade” should be replaced with “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”
    • Use “saving money for a more prosperous future” instead of “energy efficiency,” as that “makes people think of shivering in the dark.”

    It’s also important, says ecoAmerica, to “remember to speak in TALKING POINTS aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology.”

    Surprisingly, there seems to be little discussion of this in newspapers and websites. This could be, as the Times article reminds us, that global warming ranks very low in importance to the public, according to public opinion polls.

    But there has been some reaction. Investor’s Business Daily, in the editorial What Green Means writes: “The environmental left is conceding that its effort to ‘fight’ global warming is in trouble because the public has tuned out the message. So the plan is to obscure the agenda even more. An agenda that eviscerates property rights, enlarges the regulatory state, increases taxes and forces egalitarianism isn’t an easy sell in a nation with a legacy of liberty and free markets. But some time ago, eco-activists and their allies in Congress understood that they could march the country to the left by small degrees if they disguised socialism as environmentalism.”

    Even more blunt, a blog post on this topic at the Capital Research Center is titled Greens Planning to Lie More Effectively About Global Warming.

    David Theroux’s post on this at the Independent Institute is Eco-Speak and “Green” Propaganda. He concludes “Of course, the ‘old’ terminology was earlier concocted as environmental propaganda as well, and it has fallen short not because of misperceptions by the public, but because most environmental fear-mongering has repeatedly been shown to be either greatly exaggerated or completely unfounded and bogus.”

    At the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Patrick McIlheran, in the column Our deteriorating air, except for the parts that keep getting cleaner, writes “And that bit about ‘deteriorating atmosphere’: Nice phrase, only as the EPA itself will point out, our atmosphere is not deteriorating. The levels of all major pollutants have been declining for years. Our air is decidedly not deteriorating.”

  • Neodymium illustrates a consequence

    Our technology and economy is so complex and interdependent that it’s often impossible to predict the effect of one thing on another. Sometimes things done with the best of intentions — driving hybrid cars and building wind turbines, for example — have unintended consequences.

    Tthe Atlantic article Clean Energy’s Dirty Little Secret tells how the quest for neodymium, a component of the magnets that make a lot of green technology work, has created environmental hazard here in the United States. It’s also threatened to make us dependent on China for a critical industrial need.

    This article also points out that prosperous and wealthy companies like the United States can afford to be concerned about the environment. China either can’t afford this, or doesn’t care to pay. With something that causes local pollution, that’s one thing. But carbon dioxide has a global effect. It doesn’t matter where the carbon is created. To the extent that it is harmful to the environment — and that’s something that’s far from settled — it has a worldwide impact.

    That’s why it’s important that we in Kansas realize that there’s little we can do to impact carbon emissions on a worldwide scale. For us to harm our own economy in this impossible quest is unwise.

  • Going green can cost too much green

    “For two years, the city of Durango, Colo., bought electricity for all its government buildings from wind farms. The City Council ended that program this year, reverting to electricity derived from coal-burning plants and saving the cash-strapped city about $45,000.”

    That’s the start of the USA Today article Going green can cost too much green. It’s becoming evident that all across the world, people are beginning to realize that “green” power sources are expensive.

    Even green jobs — promoted by radical environmentalists as a way to save our economy from depression — don’t pay off. It was recently discovered that each green job created in Spain cost $774,000.

    We can’t afford to create very many jobs with that price tag.

    Here in Kansas, we’ve just reached a compromise agreement that will allow a coal-fired power plant to be build in Kansas. The agreement comes with increased costs, however. For one, the smaller plant won’t be able to enjoy the same economies of scale as the two larger plants. Then, the concessions made will also drive up the cost of the electricity the plant will generate.

  • What President Obama really believes about coal

    I wonder what President Obama really believes about clean coal technology. Or about anything, for that matter.

  • Fraud, deceit, and misinformation regarding carbon dioxide

    An edited version of this editorial by Dennis Hedke appeared in the Wichita Eagle today. This is the original version.

    EPA declares greenhouse gases a threat, (Renee Shoof, McClatchy Newspapers, 4/18/09). This pronouncement follows a U.S. Supreme Court conclusion that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant, with a directive to the EPA to study whether this gas posed a threat to our health and welfare, or whether the science was too uncertain to make a judgment.

    Let me be unequivocal. CO2 is not now, has never been, and will never be a “pollutant.” It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, harmless gas that is one of the essential components to the life of all plants and animals on this planet. Current concentrations of the gas in earth’s atmosphere average about 380 parts per million (ppm), or about 0.04 %. Current estimates of the human-induced fraction are about 5% of the 0.04%, or about 0.002%.

    Let’s talk economics. The US government has defined a strategy (McCain-Lieberman) which on best-case seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of CO2 by 31,400 tons/year by 2050. The calculated temperature reduction due to this “improvement”: 0.04 degrees Celsius, or 0.08 degrees Fahrenheit. The calculated cost: $1.3 trillion. Another one of those trillion dollar “deals” for America.

    Earth’s temperature has been rising steadily since around 1750, the end of the Little Ice Age. This temperature increase is independent of CO2 concentration. In fact, what the data shows is that CO2 concentration increases well after the temperature increases on a global scale. Water vapor makes up 90% of the greenhouse gas mix, and is the dominant factor in any greenhouse effects.

    If CO2 were a pollutant, then why would our US submarines allow an environmental concentration of this very same gas in the neighborhood of 8,000 ppm? It is unconscionable that our government is demanding that we try to regulate the concentration of this gas in the atmosphere, knowing full well that concentrations more than 20 times that amount produce absolutely no ill effects on American sailors.

    34,000 American scientists, including myself, have signed a Petition demanding that the United States disassociate from the Kyoto Protocol, and instead follow the actual data and evidence which clearly shows that CO2 presents not even the slightest potential for damage or risk to our environment. It is high time the fraud, deceit and misinformation being disseminated and thrust upon the American public be brought to a screeching halt.

    If any government representative wishes to debate any aspect of this matter, I would welcome that opportunity, anytime, anywhere.

    Dennis Hedke
    Geophysicist
    Wichita, KS

  • Share in the green-energy boom and quit fighting

    Share in the green-energy boom. That’s the title of Rhonda Holman’s editorial in Sunday’s Wichita Eagle.

    It’s backed up in today’s paper by Enough fighting over coal plants. This editorial is notable for a few points.

    Holman makes an argument against the plants by noting that it’s likely that the Obama administration will impose regulation or taxation of these plants. But these plans are unwise and will harm the American economy. Hopefully the Omaba administration will realize this.

    She says the plants will stick “the state with all 11 million tons of carbon dioxide.” If carbon emissions are a problem, it’s because of its contribution to global warming or climate change. It doesn’t matter where the carbon dioxide is produced. Its effect is the same.

    In this argument, she treats carbon emissions as though they were local pollutants. Coal plants do produce these, but they’ve been greatly reduced through technology. Further, local pollutants are of entirely different character from carbon emissions.

    Readers of the Wichita Eagle should be asking if Holman doesn’t know this, or if she does know it, why does she say these things?

    It’s a good question. Facts are sometimes in short supply among radical environmentalists.

    But the precise content of these editorials is not as important as the premises they’re based on. These are that we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions in order to save the planet, and that we can create a lot of jobs and wealth by doing so.

    The science behind global warming is not at all settled. See Global Warming Rope-a-Dope for an example.

    As far as green jobs producing wealth, my post Green energy policies causing harm in Europe reports how green jobs in Spain end up costing $774,000 each.

    In Academic Study Challenges Projections of Green Jobs, read about a study that concludes “lack of sound research methods, erroneous economic assumptions and technological omissions have routinely been utilized to lend support, rather than provide legitimate analysis, to major public policies and government spending initiatives.”

    We need to base Kansas energy policy on facts and reason.

  • Wind power: it’s not free

    A letter from a citizen in today’s Wichita Eagle makes the case that electricity generated from coal is less expensive than electricity from wind. I don’t know if the writer’s numbers are correct. Considering all costs, though, it is true that wind power is very expensive.

    Here’s something from the American Wind Energy Association: “Over the last 20 years, the cost of electricity from utility-scale wind systems has dropped by more than 80%. In the early 1980s, when the first utility-scale turbines were installed, wind-generated electricity cost as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, state-of-the-art wind power plants can generate electricity for less than 5 cents/kWh with the Production Tax Credit in many parts of the U.S., a price that is competitive with new coal- or gas-fired power plants.”

    Note that it takes a taxpayer-provided subsidy to make wind power competitive in cost with coal. This is at odds with claims made by some that once the wind plant is built, there’s little cost.

  • GPACE’s Scott Allegrucci misleads again

    In the energy debate in Kansas, sometimes facts are hard to come by. Especially when green energy advocates mislead others about facts they must be aware of.

    An example is GPACE Director Scott Allegrucci’s comments from Clean Energy Day, a post which holds his remarks before a crowd in Topeka.

    In his remarks, Allegrucci uses imagery of a western Kansas desert to mislead listeners about the water usage of coal-fired power plants. These plants do use water. Quite a bit, in fact.

    But Allegrucci must be aware — if has any interest in being intellectually honest — that the power plant has to purchase water rights for the water it will use. That water, if not used by the power plant, would very likely be used in agriculture. Those agricultural products — mostly corn to be turned into beef and ethanol — would in turn likely be exported from Kansas.

    But instead, Allegrucci speaks of Colorado and Texas utilities who “get to use our water.” And this: “We suggest it would be cheaper and cleaner to put Kansans to work building a pipeline to Colorado if we’re just going to give them our water.”

    This intellectually dishonest debate does nothing to increase understanding of the issues Kansas faces.