More, Please -- Information, That Is

by Leslie S. Lebl

Okay, I'm in fantasy-land - but it is an election year, and I'm being bombarded by all kinds of promises and assertions. So I'm dreaming of two things.

The first would be a list, prepared by the Obama administration, a neutral non-partisan think-tank, or in fact just about anybody, of those green energy 'investments' subsidized by the U.S. government that have been successful.

My criteria for success aren't too rigorous: the company in question (1) should not have since gone bankrupt; (2) should not have laid off a large percentage of its employees; (3) should not have made a major investment abroad after receiving the subsidy. And, to make my fantasy complete, I'd like to see the percentage of total expenditures on green technologies that went to these successful companies.

Skeptics, please note I'm not even asking that the companies on the list show substantial sales or a profit. Nor am I restricting the data to certain years; green technologies have been subsidized by Republican as well as Democratic administrations.

 

The second thing I'd like is data showing whether high European gas prices have stimulated the development of significant alternative energy sources there. Such data would, of course, take into account the extensive state subsidies of various European countries.

I realize it's completely unrealistic to expect to conduct a public debate on alternative energy based on data, but I can dream, can't I?

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A retired Foreign Service Officer, Leslie S. Lebl is a writer, consultant and lecturer. In the Foreign Service, Ms. Lebl served as Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels. Prior to that, she was Political Advisor to the Commander of Stabilization Forces (SFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, first in the American sector in Tuzla and then at SFOR headquarters in Sarajevo. Other assignments included Russia, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York, Bolivia, Germany and Poland, as well as a year as diplomat-in-residence at Yale University. She speaks French, German, Russian, Polish and Spanish. She is currently at work on a book about radical Islam and the European Union.

"Licking Their Chops" Over Higher Gas Prices?

Ask the Candidates About These Issues

by Joseph Sternberg

Most of the questioners at these so-called Republican presidential primary debates are of the left. That has some advantages for the candidates since they get exposed to questions that would be raised later. But the choice of topics and the way that they are presented is skewed. For instance, the questioners seem to want to pretend that the Paul Ryan budget bill does not exist, yet it is certainly a top issue. The candidates should be questioned to determine how they would deal with the issues in it (if they differ from what has been written). That would also help voters to understand the degree to which the candidates have thought about these problems (if in fact they have). Foreign policy issues are still to be formulated, although the approach of the candidates to foreign policy is a prime aspect of being president.

1. National debt

What is the candidates' approach to this issue?

The Republican House passed the Paul Ryan Budget Bill earlier this year. This is a specific attempt to maintain US solvency and advances an approach to entitlement reform. If a candidate doesn't like this bill, what alternative would they propose? This kind of focus is necessary to keep the candidates from evading this fundamental issue.

President Barack Obama pushes the view that we can stop the rising national debt by taxing the wealthy, rather than decreasing expenditures. What are the Republican arguments against this position? This is important because President Obama is sure to trumpet this argument. My previous blog entry on the president's position was an attempt to contribute to our understanding of this issue.

2. Energy Policy

The formation of an effective energy policy for the US is prevented by the concern that fossil fuels are loading up the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. The illusion that green energy can be substituted for fossil fuels to alleviate the concern is rampant. But the priority countries such as China and India put on economic development shows that the control of carbon dioxide cannot be achieved in this way. Carbon dioxide is a worldwide problem, and fossil fuels will be needed by the world for a long time, My previous blog entry explains the scientific problem and the solution that can be pursued. Green energy should find its place in the US energy mix without massive subsidies.

The US national security demands an increase in the domestic output of fossil fuels. There are three compelling reasons for this. First, the US economy is vulnerable to disruptions in the Mideast oil supply. We spend billions on maintaining force in the area. The vulnerability seriously compromises national security policy. Second, self-sufficiency in fossil fuels would have a large positive effect on the US balance of trade and thereby help relieve the pressure on the dollar. In 2011 the trade deficit is projected to be $550 billion dollars. During the same period, the cost of oil imports is expected to reach $400 billion dollars. And finally third, thousands of US jobs would be created.

We should hear from the candidates on all this.

3. Health Care Reform

All the Republican presidential candidates seem to agree that ObamaCare must be repealed. It may be declared unconstitutional but, if that does not happen, it should be repealed because it overwhelms the health care system with bureaucrats and the government and increases the cost of health care.  Republicans, however, cannot stop there.  Health care, as it is now organized, has serious problems.  Republicans should assemble a package, perhaps including items such as tort reform and allowing the sale of medical insurance across state lines.  Among all the candidates, this should be especially asked of Romney.

4. Avoiding another financial crisis.
       a) Housing

The US has had a bipartisan policy dating back many years to have the government intervene in the market to increase home ownership. It is clear that home ownership is not for everyone. The ability of homeowners to meet the financial requirements of home ownership, including down payments, cannot be bypassed. Government guaranteeing of mortgages where lending standards were debased led to trillions of mortgage-based securities flooding the market. Well over a trillion dollars worth of these securities are now resting uneasily in the possession of the Federal reserve. Fannie and Freddie were key agents in creating this debacle and so far have cost taxpayers $170 billion dollars. To allow these organizations to continue to operate is to insure a recurrence of the housing collapse.

      b) Ending too big to fail

The financial collapse started by the housing collapse showed another serious defect of the financial system. We have to prevent financial institutions from becoming "too big to fail." This is a failure of capitalism. Now we don't seem to have any serious trouble in deciding that a company is too big to fail. The problem is preventing them from getting to that point. Financial experts need to spell out ways that this can be done. Under the present circumstances, the incentives push in the direction of massive bets. If things go well, millions are earned. If the bets turn out to be bad, the new millionaires are gone and the taxpayers are faced with the debris.  And many of the super-rich whose incomes have soared into the stratosphere are in the financial sector.  Subsidizing these salaries is absurd, yet that is precisely what we’re doing.

If we measure the presidential candidates on these issues, we’ll have a good way of determining who is the best one.  Certainly a lot better than seeing who scores more points at a “debate.”

***

UPDATE: About foreign policy questions that the candidates should be asked, I would start with the famous quotation from Palmerston, " Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests." So what do the candidates believe are our national interests in the Middle East, former satellites of Russia, Africa, China, etc. Such responses would help to understand how candidates would respond to developments and the degree to which they have thought about such matters.
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Joseph Sternberg
Retired Professor of Physics
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA

The Green Energy Illusion

by Joseph Sternberg

President Barack Obama repeatedly touts "green energy" as the way of the future. Billions are being spent to subsidize wind and solar power to replace the use of fossil fuels (and, by the way, enrich Al Gore). Obama repeatedly asserts that this is the way to solve the carbon dioxide problem caused by using fossil fuels and that we are moving in the right direction by subsidizing green energy. He implies that if all the countries did the same the level of CO2 in the atmosphere could be stabilized at an acceptable level.

This claim is false. How do we know that it is false? The reports of the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which is part of the Department of Energy, provide the answer. The EIA  was set up years ago to  provide independent data and analyses for all forms of energy and associated emissions, not only in the US but also in the world. They are the administration experts, have access to all of the administration's programs, and the information they develop is publicly available on the web. Of course, it has to be recognized that "forecasting is difficult, particularly about the future." But the forecasts of CO2 emissions by the EIA have to be substantially more reliable than forecasts about green energy provided by proponents of wind and solar power. The EIA forecasts are provided out to the year 2035.

Before looking at the EIA reports, three points need emphasis. The world's production of energy is increasing. As a consequence, the rate of worldwide emissions is increasing. The priority for both China and India, with 2.4 billions of the world's population, is economic development which means increasing power generation resulting in increased emissions. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, took a delegation to China in an attempt to persuade them to sign on to the Cap and Trade program that the Democrats were pushing. The Cap and Trade program would be expected to decrease energy production, not increase it. The Chinese told her to get lost. Any approach to controlling emissions has to be an approach that can be embraced by China and India or it will fail.

The second point is that it is not sufficient to be just "moving in the right direction" as Obama is wont to say.  This statement is irrelevant because it ignores the magnitude of reductions that must be achieved,  and by when, in order to stabilize the level of atmospheric CO2. The  level keeps increasing despite the fact that CO2 is continually being absorbed by the ocean which, in fact, eventually will absorb most of it. However, the  absorption is a slow process taking hundreds of years. So before being absorbed in the ocean, the CO2 piles up in the atmosphere. All of this is not scientifically controversial.

Numerous studies have been conducted to determine how much decrease in emissions is required to stabilize the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Such estimates are not precise, but they are not scientifically controversial. What do they say?  The studies show that if the increase in emissions could be stopped by about 2035 and the level of emissions then decreased close to half by the end of the century, the atmospheric level of CO2 could be stabilized at 550 parts per million (ppm) by the next century. This is the goal set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and would be double the atmospheric level of CO2 at the beginning of the industrial age.

The third point is that green energy is being pursued by many countries, including China and India, but green energy has inherent limitations. For example, consider the first proposed US offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound. Because the wind doesn't choose to blow all the time, a representative wind farm will only produce about 30% of its rated capacity as compared with 90% of rated capacity currently being achieved by our nuclear plants. A wind farm delivering the same energy as a representative nuclear plant would cover an area of about 150 square miles. Wind energy requires a lot of area. As technology improves, green energy can be expected to have a place in future energy production.  But what is the basis for asserting that green energy is ready to replace the use of fossil fuels?  As we will see from the EIA data, there isn't any.

The largest contributor to emissions in the US is from the generation of electricity. Transportation is the second largest contributor. Nuclear reactors account for about 20% of electricity generation. The remainder of power plants use fossil fuels about equally divided between coal and natural gas. Renewables  include biomass, hydropower, geothermal, wind, and solar. All together renewables provided about 10% of electricity generation in the US,  about 2/3 of which has been provided by hydropower.  The total of solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, and wind provided about 4% of electricity generation. The use of renewables is forecast by the EIA to increase between 2011 and 2035. But the bottom line is that US emissions are forecast  to increase, not decrease, by perhaps 5%, between 2011 and 2035. The forecast increase in wind and solar power is not going to replace fossil fuels for electricity generation to any significant extent in the US.

What about China?  China is energetically pursuing the expansion of solar and wind farm development. They also are pursuing an ambitious program of nuclear power, and plan to have 60 nuclear plants in operation by 2020. Despite all that, the EIA forecasts that emissions from China are expected to increase substantially between 2011 and 2035. At present emissions from China exceed those from the US. It is clear based on the estimates from the EIA that green energy in not going to stop the rise in emissions from China. Worldwide, estimates indicate a 35% increase in emissions.

Obama's green energy program is an illusion. The result is to spend billions wastefully instead of spending the money accelerating the development of technologies that could also be employed by both the developed and the developing nations to reduce atmospheric emissions.

It is important to recognize some of the scientific uncertainties about the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2. The  IPCC concedes a possible variation of more than a factor of two in what the temperature rise might be due to increasing atmospheric CO2.  This is due to scientific uncertainty about how the atmosphere works. Scientists are working on the problems, but there is little prospect that the uncertainty will be reduced anytime soon. Second, if you assume a particular global temperature increase, there is considerable controversy and uncertainty about what the climatic consequences would be, including a rise in the sea level. Computer models are used to make the predictions, but the computer models are unproven. The global climate is very complex. So you are in something of a quandary about global warming. The paleoclimatology data from a hundred of million years ago indicates that a several-fold increase in atmospheric CO2 goes along with a large increase in global temperature, even including the disappearance of the earth's ice caps. But the levels of atmospheric CO2 now being considered are smaller than the historical levels and so are not much help in reducing the uncertainty.

Second, global warming is not the only concern. The surface ocean is being acidified. This is chemistry and is not controversial. What is uncertain is the consequence for the world's food supply.The Interacademy Panel on international issues representing a global network of science academies has issued a statement (2009) on ocean acidification. According to their statement, the rapid increase of acidity of the world's oceans has "-- potentially profound consequences for marine plants and animals especially those that require calcium carbonate to grow and survive and other species that rely on these for food. Marine food supplies are likely to be reduced with significant implications for food production--". Not much about this appears in the press, which focuses on global warming.

The difficulty here is that if it is discovered that the effects of increased atmospheric CO2 are causing effects on the high side of the predictions, no one knows what to do about it then. As one might say, it would be too late.

The belief that green energy will provide a replacement for the use of fossil energy is an illusion. The billions that are being spent in subsidizing green power should instead be used to  accelerate the development of technologies for carbon capture from fossil fuel plants. Where feasible, the substitution of natural gas for coal would help since for the same energy generated, natural gas emits half as much CO2 as coal. Coal is extensively used in China. Nuclear power can make a significant contribution. Limiting atmospheric CO2 must be accomplished in the face of a worldwide growth in energy production. China and India will not give up economic development.
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Joseph Sternberg
Retired Professor of Physics
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA