As deforestation accelerates and grows ever more concentrated the consequences on climate change are even greater than previously thought. As reported in New Scientist:
Pristine temperate forest stores three times more carbon than currently estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and 60% more than plantation forests, according to research in Australia.
Part 2 began an analysis of the bipartisan compromise proposed by the Gang-of-10 Senators, suggesting that deal isn’t so bad. The other evidence the deal isn’t so bad is that the House GOP is threatening to refuse to vote for it (see “Part 2.5“).
The good of the 5-year extension of the renewable tax credits certainly beats the “bad” of doubly de minimis drilling. But what about the rest of the deal?
MORE GOOD
Offsets
The $84 billion in investments in conservation and efficiency in the New Era bill will be fully offset with loophole closers and other revenues. Approximately $30 billion will come from new revenues from the oil and gas industry through such measures as modifying the Section 199 manufacturing deduction for oil and natural gas production and other appropriate measures to ensure that the federal government receives its fair share of revenue from Gulf of Mexico leases. Remaining offsets will be finalized in consultation with the Finance Committee after accounting for interaction effects with other pending legislation.
Pretty amazing, really. This bill is going to be paid for in part by “Repealing a tax break for oil companies that Democrats have long called for,” as CNN put it. This is probably a deal killer for those taking millions of dollars in contributions from Big Oil, like McCain.
And there is even more pretty good stuff, depending on exactly how the final bill is written:
I am participating in an online debate sponsored by the Economist on the “Global energy crisis.” The proposition being debated Oxford-style is:
Needless to say, I am taking the “Pro” side.
There is voting by the public for both Pro and Con. Although online voting is about as scientific as a typical argument from a global warming denier, I’d always rather win than lose (or, worse, statistically tie and then have the judges redo the calculation and give the gold to some underage host-country gymnast who screwed up their dismount, but I digress).
You know your product is in trouble when the housing analogies come out:
I am not sure this post qualifies as schadenfreude — since that has been defined as “largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate.” There is nothing unanticipated about high oil prices (see “My 1996 warnings and predictions: “MidEast Oil Forever?” — Part I: Drifting Toward Disaster“).
That is, the death of SUVs isn’t like, say, Martha Stewart going to jail. What has happened to SUVs — “Sales of S.U.V.’s are down 32 percent so far this year, and were off 43 percent for July” — was inevitable.
Well, in July, General Motors dealers had a 174-day supply of the Yukon XL/Suburban on hand, on average, up from a 92-day supply a year earlier. Inventory of the Chevrolet C/K Suburban nearly doubled over the same period, to 116 days from 63 days.
Just like hapless homeowners, countless car owners are now “underwater,” driving vehicles that are worth less than the balance on their car loans. And just like desperate homeowners, the sellers of S.U.V.’s are having to painfully cut asking prices.
How bad is it?
Part 1 argued argued that the Democrats would be smart to compromise on offshore drilling. Part 2 began an analysis of the bipartisan compromise proposed by the Gang-of-10 Senators, suggesting that deal isn’t so bad.
I am interrupting this series to point out that the House GOP is so nervous that the Dems might kill their pathetic political ploy by forcing a vote on a reasonable compromise that they are willing to delay indefinitely any deal that includes drilling, as CQ Politics just reported:
Republicans Say Any Drilling Bill Must Move Through Committee
House Republicans said Monday they would refuse to consider any energy bill that came straight to the floor from the Democratic leadership’s offices, rather than working its way through committee markups — a process that can take weeks or months.
I know we’re supposed to be going into a period of cooling, at least according to people who don’t believe in the scientific method, but for those who do, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports in its “Climate of 2008 July in Historical Perspective“:
Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the fifth warmest on record for July and the ninth warmest for the January-July year-to-date period.
It is worth noting that El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions remained in a neutral phase during July. And we’re still at a solar minimum.
And no, I don’t think the monthly data tell us much about the climate — but I know reporting it annoys the deniers, and I am trying to enjoy my vacation. As for what the peer-reviewed scientific literature forecasts for the next decade, temperaturewise:
Major legislative compromises are unsatisfying by design. They invariably have good, bad, and ugly parts.
I have previously argued that the Democrats would be smart to compromise on offshore drilling (see “Since offshore oil is de minimis, why shouldn’t Obama and the Dems make a deal? Part 1“) The rest of this series will examine whether the so-called Gang-of-10 deal is in fact a smart compromise.
That question can be rephrased as, does the good beat out the bad and the ugly [as, of course, Clint did in the epic spaghetti western]?
I will focus here on the main good-and-bad pieces of the “New Energy Reform Act of 2008.” Part 3 will cover the smaller pieces, including the one I think is really, really ugly.
THE GOOD
The best part by far is:
Enhancing Conservation [sic]
To ease gas prices and protect our environment during the transition, the proposal includes a significant federal commitment to promoting conservation and efficiency [sic]. These include:
• Extending renewable energy, carbon mitigation and energy conservation and efficiency tax incentives, including the production tax credit, through 2012 to create greater certainty and spur greater investment.
[Note to Gang-of-10 Dems: Please stop buying into the GOP frame that renewables are the same as “conservation and efficiency.” That’s how they try to pigeonhole all progressive solutions — Doing with less. New renewables, including solar baseload, are a serious supply option that are all but certain to deliver more new kilowatt hours through 2050 and beyond than new nuclear power plants and coal with carbon capture and storage combined.]
Assuming this includes the solar investment tax credit along with the PTC, then this is far and away the most important piece of the legislation. Renewables have had to contend with uncertain year-by-year renewal for a long time. Consider the effect on the wind power, as this chart from a Union of Concerned Scientists study shows:
What epic gaffe could unite Colorado’s Democratic Senator Ken Salazar — “over my dead body” — and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer – “Over my cold, dead, political carcass“?
That would be Arizona Senator John McCain telling The Pueblo Chieftan on Thursady that he wants to renegotiate the famous 1922 Colorado River compact to take water from the so-called upper basin states, including CO and NM, where the river originates and give it to lower basin states like his home state of AZ:
In short, the fact that lots and lots of people keep moving into the desert means Colorado should give up more of its water.
[Note to McCain — Given your recent history of misinformation and disinformation on the subject (see “Will McCain’s cynical lies destroy the chance for serious energy and climate policy?“), I’d skip the analogy to oil.]
Them’s fighting words — literally! The word rival, after all, comes from “people who share the same river.” In the West they say, “Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting.” See also “Warming Will Worsen Water Wars.”
Needless to say, Coloradans do not see things the way that the senator from Arizona does. Democratic Governor Bill Ritter pointed out McCain seems utterly unaware that the compact was just renegotiated in December:
“Just last year, the seven states entered into a new implementing agreement, and that agreement is working as intended,” Ritter said. “It would be sheer folly to re-open the compact at a time like this when all of the states are working cooperatively on this issue.”
In a piece titled, “McCain suggests raiding Colorado’s water,” the deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post wrote Friday on behalf of “Five million thirst-crazed Coloradans”:
In an otherwise fascinating story on the growing “icebreaker gap” in the rapidly defrosting Arctic Ocean, NYT reporter Andy Revkin writes:
I do not view a quadruple-hedged climate impact attribution as acceptable for a major media outlet: “many” and “polar” and “probably” and “in part”!!!!
It isn’t just “many polar scientists” who say this, it is pretty much “the overwhelming majority of climate scientists” — especially because he threw in two more hedges “probably are being driven in part.” Heck, with those two hedges, you could probably just drop “many polar” and say “which scientists say probably are being driven in part by global warming caused by humans.”
Second, “always” is forever, but ice isn’t, especially since on our current greenhouse gas emissions path, we may see more than 5°C global warming this century (see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 0: The alternative is humanity’s self-destruction“). Had Revkin said “there will always be enough ice in certain parts of the Arctic during some parts of the year,” that I think would be something many polar scientists would probably agree with [in part]. But as is now written, I think not.
NOTE TO MEDIA ON HEDGING CLIMATE SCIENCE
There are only three sure things in life — death, taxes, and you won’t be buying a hydrogen fuel cell car. Sadly, the US Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has not gotten any of the memos (see “The Last Car You Would Ever Buy — Literally” and “This just in: Hydrogen fuel cell cars are still dead“).]
As GreenCarCongress reports:
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has selected 10 cost-shared hydrogen storage research and development projects to receive up to $15.3 million over five years, subject to annual appropriations.
The selected projects seek to develop hydrogen storage technologies to enable fuel cell vehicles to meet customer expectations for longer driving range and performance. The projects include development of novel hydrogen storage materials, development of efficient methods for regeneration of hydrogen storage materials, and approaches to increase hydrogen binding energies to enable room temperature hydrogen storage.
It would be difficult for “fuel cell vehicles to meet customer expectations for longer driving range and performance” given that there are no customers for fuel cell vehicles nor are there going to be any time soon and I mean soon in the sense of Hell-freezes-over soon.
I predict that by the end of the first term of the next president — whoever he is — the hydrogen fuel cell budget will be cut in half. If it were up to me, it would be cut 90% or more. Depending on what you include, the current budget is close to $300 million a year. All of that money should be shifted towards developing advanced batteries and cellulosic ethanol — and deploying plug-in hybrids.
This latest DOE announcement shows just how bad an investment hydrogen technology has become for taxpayers:
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