Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Shake-up at Exxon?
Exxon Mobil recently recorded the highest quarterly profit ever made by a US company, so you would think the shareholders would be pleased. Not the Rockefeller family apparently. Reuter’s reports that the family wants to appoint an independent chairman and is holding a press conference tomorrow. Family members have previously been critical of the company’s stance on climate change, which until relatively recently was outright denial, so it will be interesting to see what they propose tomorrow. For the Reuter's story see http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2850626520080428.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Future of the suburbs.
A couple of months ago, on February 16th, I suggested moving to the city as a way to reduce one’s carbon footprint and cost of living. Clearly, we cannot all do that at once, but I suggested that it might be prudent to move sooner rather than later for purely economic reasons. Now it seems it might be too late. NPR and others reported recently that house prices in the suburbs have decreased considerably more than in city centers, where prices are actually still rising in some places. (See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89803663 for this report and links to earlier related reports.)
It is interesting to me that this is all happening without any government action on climate change, just because of the price of gasoline. (Indeed, the cost of the externality of greenhouse gas emissions, and hence of any likely carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, is only a few cents per gallon, paling into insignificance compared to recent increases in gasoline prices.) With Saudi cancelling plans to expand its output, and Russia and Nigeria both announcing that their supply has peaked (at least in the short run) there seems every likelihood that the price of oil will continue to climb. Meanwhile, a recent study by Rice University indicated that gasoline prices are at a low point in comparison with crude oil prices, so I think we have seen the end of cheap gasoline until such time as we don’t need it any more.
I suspect that prices in the suburbs may never recover (in real terms) from their recent falls. An article in the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime/3) even suggests that today’s suburbs may become the slums of 2025, though that seems unlikely to me. If people are moving into the city because suburban life is unsustainable (read “too expensive”) it is hard to imagine that the poor will be able to afford the cost of heating/cooling large family houses or of commuting. I suppose single family houses might get divided into apartments and convenience stores, and maybe occupied by those who don’t need to commute because they don’t have jobs. I think it is more likely that they will continue to be occupied by the relatively well-off, but that the price of houses will decline further and further to compensate their occupants for the high costs of maintaining that life style. Or maybe we will all have hydrogen cars using hydrogen from clean sources, and the suburbs will come back.
It is interesting to me that this is all happening without any government action on climate change, just because of the price of gasoline. (Indeed, the cost of the externality of greenhouse gas emissions, and hence of any likely carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, is only a few cents per gallon, paling into insignificance compared to recent increases in gasoline prices.) With Saudi cancelling plans to expand its output, and Russia and Nigeria both announcing that their supply has peaked (at least in the short run) there seems every likelihood that the price of oil will continue to climb. Meanwhile, a recent study by Rice University indicated that gasoline prices are at a low point in comparison with crude oil prices, so I think we have seen the end of cheap gasoline until such time as we don’t need it any more.
I suspect that prices in the suburbs may never recover (in real terms) from their recent falls. An article in the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime/3) even suggests that today’s suburbs may become the slums of 2025, though that seems unlikely to me. If people are moving into the city because suburban life is unsustainable (read “too expensive”) it is hard to imagine that the poor will be able to afford the cost of heating/cooling large family houses or of commuting. I suppose single family houses might get divided into apartments and convenience stores, and maybe occupied by those who don’t need to commute because they don’t have jobs. I think it is more likely that they will continue to be occupied by the relatively well-off, but that the price of houses will decline further and further to compensate their occupants for the high costs of maintaining that life style. Or maybe we will all have hydrogen cars using hydrogen from clean sources, and the suburbs will come back.
Friday, April 25, 2008
A Difficult Few Years Ahead for AGW?
I was not going to do much climate change science on this blog, but it has not been lost on me that my recent posting about a climate skeptic provoked more controversy than any other posting. So, I decided to delve a little more into some of the skeptics’ claims. I am not talking about the more mainstream skeptics who accept the science but believe there are better ways to spend our limited resources than on combating climate change, which is a defensible position. Rather I am talking about those who dispute that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a reality.
The typical claim here is that global warming stopped in 1998, and more recently that January 2008 was actually colder than January 2007. I decided to try to get to the truth behind the truthiness. I think the first thing to point out is that while it is accepted by almost all scientists that greenhouse gases tend to increase the mean temperature of the earth, nobody has suggested that this is the only factor affecting the earth’s temperature. One well-known additional factor is the presence of CFCs and SO2 in the atmosphere, both of which tend to reflect some of the incoming radiation and make the earth cooler, and this tended to counter the effects of greenhouse gases until regulation reduced emissions of these gases in the 1990’s. (Indeed it has been suggested that we may need to create a similar effect deliberately if we fail to act soon enough on greenhouse gases.)
Two other factors are sun spots, and the “Southern Oscillation” between El Nino and La Nina ocean currents and winds. The latter may not seem relevant to the mean temperature of the earth, but it is; as well as I can understand it, La Nina forces more of the heat into the lower depths of the ocean and thus makes the surface temperature (which is what we measure) cooler than it would otherwise be.
The effect of sun spots is also somewhat unintuitive; since they are dark, one might expect then to reduce the irradiance of the sun, but in fact they do the opposite: more sun spots means more radiation from the sun. Sun spot activity is roughly cyclic, increasing for about 4 years and then declining for about 7, though it is not entirely predictable. Since about 2001 we have been in the declining phase of “cycle 23” and we are now just about at the bottom of the cycle. There has been some concern that the start of cycle 24 might be delayed. (But see http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/14dec_excitement.htm for the possible first evidence of cycle 24.)
Even if cycle 24 starts on schedule, there will be a couple of years of lower temperatures (than might otherwise pertain) because the earth’s temperature lags the sunspot activity by about 2 years. In addition, we are at the beginning of a La Nina period, which also tends to cool the earth’s surface. What we have is an upward trend due to greenhouse gases superimposed on two somewhat regular cycles both of which are approaching their low points, plus of course quite a bit of noise. The net result is that we probably will not see exceptional temperatures in the next year or so; the skeptics will have a field day and the faithful will be tested. (A good summary of where we are can be found at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007.) We can be fairly sure however that by 2012 at the latest we will see new records broken. We must all hope that we don’t have to wait that long for more aggressive action.
The typical claim here is that global warming stopped in 1998, and more recently that January 2008 was actually colder than January 2007. I decided to try to get to the truth behind the truthiness. I think the first thing to point out is that while it is accepted by almost all scientists that greenhouse gases tend to increase the mean temperature of the earth, nobody has suggested that this is the only factor affecting the earth’s temperature. One well-known additional factor is the presence of CFCs and SO2 in the atmosphere, both of which tend to reflect some of the incoming radiation and make the earth cooler, and this tended to counter the effects of greenhouse gases until regulation reduced emissions of these gases in the 1990’s. (Indeed it has been suggested that we may need to create a similar effect deliberately if we fail to act soon enough on greenhouse gases.)
Two other factors are sun spots, and the “Southern Oscillation” between El Nino and La Nina ocean currents and winds. The latter may not seem relevant to the mean temperature of the earth, but it is; as well as I can understand it, La Nina forces more of the heat into the lower depths of the ocean and thus makes the surface temperature (which is what we measure) cooler than it would otherwise be.
The effect of sun spots is also somewhat unintuitive; since they are dark, one might expect then to reduce the irradiance of the sun, but in fact they do the opposite: more sun spots means more radiation from the sun. Sun spot activity is roughly cyclic, increasing for about 4 years and then declining for about 7, though it is not entirely predictable. Since about 2001 we have been in the declining phase of “cycle 23” and we are now just about at the bottom of the cycle. There has been some concern that the start of cycle 24 might be delayed. (But see http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/14dec_excitement.htm for the possible first evidence of cycle 24.)
Even if cycle 24 starts on schedule, there will be a couple of years of lower temperatures (than might otherwise pertain) because the earth’s temperature lags the sunspot activity by about 2 years. In addition, we are at the beginning of a La Nina period, which also tends to cool the earth’s surface. What we have is an upward trend due to greenhouse gases superimposed on two somewhat regular cycles both of which are approaching their low points, plus of course quite a bit of noise. The net result is that we probably will not see exceptional temperatures in the next year or so; the skeptics will have a field day and the faithful will be tested. (A good summary of where we are can be found at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007.) We can be fairly sure however that by 2012 at the latest we will see new records broken. We must all hope that we don’t have to wait that long for more aggressive action.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Earth Day Surprise from EPA.
Second blog of the day, but it is my car day and this is a car story. The EPA surprised everyone (well, at least me) yesterday by moving to increase fuel efficiency faster than mandated by Congress. Standards will be increased 4.5% a year for the 5 years 2011 to 2015 inclusive, compounding to a 25% increase to 31.5 mpg by 2015. In doing their cost-benefit analysis they also, for the firat time I think, put a price on carbon dioxide emissions -- $7 per ton, which translates to about 2 cents a gallon.
The current law requires an increase to 35 mpg by 2020, but my bet would be that this gets increased over the intervening period; just continuing the 4.5% per annum compound rate would get us to about 40 mpg by 2020. How exactly they will handle plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles, let alone hydrogen vehicles, I do not know.
The current law requires an increase to 35 mpg by 2020, but my bet would be that this gets increased over the intervening period; just continuing the 4.5% per annum compound rate would get us to about 40 mpg by 2020. How exactly they will handle plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles, let alone hydrogen vehicles, I do not know.
Cars and Earth Day
In honor of Earth Day, I was pleased to see that Autoweek, a weekly car magazine aimed at enthusiasts, devoted most of this week’s edition to green cars. Here are a few highlights.
They point out that the 2008 Honda Fit is a lot less economical than the 1992 Civic, 31 mpg versus 43 mpg, and even the Civic Hybrid at 42 mpg doesn’t quite match the old Civic’s EPA numbers. (These are all EPA combined numbers, using the new-for-2008 test.) Part of the reason is the 17% weight gain in the new car, in turn due to safety features like air bags and improved crash standards. (The 1992 Civic had only one airbag, and prior to 1998 there was no side impact crash test.) Safety is of course a good thing, but it just shows what we are up against when 16 years of “progress” results in a 25% decrease in mpg. (The most economical car back in the nineties was the Geo Metro at 46 mpg using the new test, better than the new Prius. The magazine suggests that the nearest thing today is the Smart ForTwo, rated at only 36 mpg and as it’s name suggests only a two-seater.)
There are also articles on: the ZENN urban electric vehicle (federally mandated maximum speed 25 mph); the Mitsubishi i MiEV 470 kw car, which looks a bit like a Smart car but has four seats; the Chevy Volt; plug-in hybrids; relatively green SUVs (the Ford Escape hybrid achieved 28 mpg, while the Mercedes ML320 CDI achieved 27 mpg on diesel.); and the Audi R8 diesel supercar. Regrettably only the SUVs are available right now.
Perhaps the most interesting article was about new rules for ALMS (American Le Mans Series) sports car racing which will allow hybrids and cellulosic ethanol. They already allow diesels, which have been very successful at Le Mans itself. ALMS also plans a special Green Racing Challenge award, criteria for which are still being worked out with the EPA. Some tree-huggers may scoff at this but think of it this way: the amount of fuel used in the race is small compared to the fuel used by fans to get to the event, so in that respect it is no different from any other sport, and it just might help diesels and hybrids gain greater acceptance.
There’s more on http://www.autoweek.com.
They point out that the 2008 Honda Fit is a lot less economical than the 1992 Civic, 31 mpg versus 43 mpg, and even the Civic Hybrid at 42 mpg doesn’t quite match the old Civic’s EPA numbers. (These are all EPA combined numbers, using the new-for-2008 test.) Part of the reason is the 17% weight gain in the new car, in turn due to safety features like air bags and improved crash standards. (The 1992 Civic had only one airbag, and prior to 1998 there was no side impact crash test.) Safety is of course a good thing, but it just shows what we are up against when 16 years of “progress” results in a 25% decrease in mpg. (The most economical car back in the nineties was the Geo Metro at 46 mpg using the new test, better than the new Prius. The magazine suggests that the nearest thing today is the Smart ForTwo, rated at only 36 mpg and as it’s name suggests only a two-seater.)
There are also articles on: the ZENN urban electric vehicle (federally mandated maximum speed 25 mph); the Mitsubishi i MiEV 470 kw car, which looks a bit like a Smart car but has four seats; the Chevy Volt; plug-in hybrids; relatively green SUVs (the Ford Escape hybrid achieved 28 mpg, while the Mercedes ML320 CDI achieved 27 mpg on diesel.); and the Audi R8 diesel supercar. Regrettably only the SUVs are available right now.
Perhaps the most interesting article was about new rules for ALMS (American Le Mans Series) sports car racing which will allow hybrids and cellulosic ethanol. They already allow diesels, which have been very successful at Le Mans itself. ALMS also plans a special Green Racing Challenge award, criteria for which are still being worked out with the EPA. Some tree-huggers may scoff at this but think of it this way: the amount of fuel used in the race is small compared to the fuel used by fans to get to the event, so in that respect it is no different from any other sport, and it just might help diesels and hybrids gain greater acceptance.
There’s more on http://www.autoweek.com.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Double Pane Windows
As I write this the builders are finishing up the installation of our new double-pane windows. After much research I went with PowerPane3 from Home Craftsman. These windows are slightly less efficient than the same company’s SuperPowerPane product at filtering radiated heat (Solar Heat Gain Coefficient of .2 instead of .18) but transmit more visible light (45% compared to 28%; they are virtually indistinguishable from regular glass) and are slightly more efficient at insulation (U-value of .31 against .32). I will be monitoring the energy bills carefully and will report back.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Surely you’re joking, Mr. Bush.
George Bush presented his climate change plan in a speech yesterday, on the eve of international climate talks in Paris, and it is hard to believe they are meant seriously. He proposes to allow greenhouse gas emissions to continue to rise until 2025, yet he vows to support an international agreement to succeed Kyoto and the administration also said that he had not ruled out endorsing a cap-and-trade scheme. I suppose we should be grateful that at least he accepts that there is a problem, though in reality it does not matter much what he believes any more. Any of the three candidates to replace him will likely take a much more robust stance, though McCain’s recent proposal to temporarily eliminate gasoline tax makes one wonder.
This on the same day that Lord Stern told the Financial Times that he believed he had underestimated climate change risks in last year’s report. (See http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto041620081713149198 ) Some skeptics call this report alarmist, but in reality it is a rather low-key document. See http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm to download the whole Stern Review or for a choice of two levels of executive summary.
This on the same day that Lord Stern told the Financial Times that he believed he had underestimated climate change risks in last year’s report. (See http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto041620081713149198 ) Some skeptics call this report alarmist, but in reality it is a rather low-key document. See http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm to download the whole Stern Review or for a choice of two levels of executive summary.
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