Category Archives: Environment

→ 15 Comments

Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Budget, Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Finance, Politics, Regulation, Taxes, Transportation

Tagged goozeviews

IG of the Day: Virginia’s Impaired Waters

Posted on March 28, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 3 Comments

Click on map for larger image. Source: From the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality's 2012 Water Quality Assessment Annual Report.

Virginia’s waters aren’t necessarily getting more polluted, but the Department of Environmental Quality is doing a better job of sampling Virginia’s rivers and streams, with the result that more dirty stretches of waterway are being found. This map shows the varying water quality across the state. Not much of it is pristine. Read the report.

– JAB

Subscribe To Site:

→ 3 Comments

Posted in 2012, Environment

Tagged James A. Bacon

Big Oil… Big Solar… Big Algae?

Posted on March 21, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 5 Comments

Researchers J. Emmett Duffy and Elizabeth Canuel look over the algae flowway on the VIMS Gloucester Point campus. Photo credit: VIMS.

President Obama may rue the day when he touted algae-based biofuels as a long-term solution for rising energy costs. Conservatives from Newt Gingrich to Charles Krauthammer have subjected the idea to endless mockery. Google “Obama algae for fuel” and you’ll hit a treasure trove of ridicule and satire. Lucky thing for Obama that the late night comedians are in his pocket, or we’d see endless japes about the devolution of green fuels into green slime.

There are legitimate reasons to be skeptical. According to a Gingrich newsletter, fuel from algae costs anywhere from $140 to $900 per barrel to produce today. On the other hand, it was only a few years ago that oil was selling for $140 per barrel. Furthermore, research into algae production and conversion into useful forms of energy is a recent phenomenon. Scientists are still wrapping their arms around the challenge. While I vociferously oppose government picking technology winners and losers for commercialization — witness Solyndra and the other solar-technology debacles — I do believe it is a legitimate role of government to sponsor basic R&D.

It happens that one of the more interesting experiments in algae R&D is taking place at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. VIMS differs from other research initiatives by focusing on wild strains of algae that grow naturally in the Chesapeake Bay. One of Virginia’s biggest environmental problems is the algae blooms that sink, decompose, soak up oxygen and kill the fish. Figuring out a way to harvest the algae blooms early in their life cycle could save the lives of a lot of underwater critters.

While other algae growers have to fertilize their crop, Chesapeake Bay algae gets its fertilizer — phosphorous and nitrogen from farms and household yards upstream — for free. Researchers suggest harvesting algae at points along the Bay where phosphorous and nitrogen inputs are concentrated, according to a 2010 VIMS article. “We want it to be like a factory,” said William Cooke, a William and Mary physics professor.

“I see the nutrient-reduction and the fuel production as going hand in hand,” said J. Emmett Duffy, a VIMS marine science professor. “We like to think of it as turning pollution into fuel.

Will harvesting algae blooms become an economically viable activity? I have no idea. But I will say this. The Chesapeake Algae Project, of which VIMS is a part, was supported by a $3 million grant from Norwegian oil company Statoil. Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil has invested $600 million into algae-based biofuels in partnership with Craig Venter, the guy who first cracked the human genome. I have a lot more faith in the likes of Exxon, Statoil and Venter to pick the best technologies than I do in the federal government. If nothing else, capitalists aren’t swayed by campaign donations. But the idea of algae-based fuels may not be as hare-brained as Obama’s critics think.

– JAB

Subscribe To Site:

→ 5 Comments

Posted in 2012, Energy, Environment

Tagged James A. Bacon

Tracking Sea-Level Rise on Virginia’s Coast

Posted on March 20, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 41 Comments

by James A. Bacon

Dead trees on a hummock in the York River. (Photo credit: Times-Dispatch.)

Scientists Scott Hardaway and Bryan Watts, both affiliated with the College of William and Mary, have made a specialty of studying hummocks along the Chesapeake Bay coastline. Hummocks, which are stands of trees growing in patches of dry land surrounded by marsh, are a visible gauge of rising sea levels. As the water level creeps higher every year, the hummocks get more water-logged and the trees die, leaving stands of ghostly white spires. “We can show tide-gauge data until we’re blue in the face, and sometimes that doesn’t work” to convince the skeptics, Hardaway told Rex Springston in the Times-Dispatch.

Rising sea levels — or sinking land, take your pick — is a reality along Virginia’s Atlantic Coast. The sea level in the Chesapeake Bay rose about 1 1/2 feet over the past century. About half of that came from a natural subsidence of the land in southeastern Virginia. The other half came from rising sea levels globally. Larry P. Atkinson, an Old Dominion University oceanographer, suggests that half of the sea level rise can be attributed to natural warming underway for thousands of years and the other half from human causes.

You can dispute Atkinson’s estimate for the extent to which human activity is to blame, along with even more dire prognostications that human-caused global warming will accelerate, triggering a massive melt-off of glaciers and icecaps and pushing sea levels two to seven feet higher by 2010. What you can’t dispute is that sea levels along Virginia’s coastline have risen at a rate averaging one tenth of an inch per year over the past century and that there is considerable evidence that they continue to rise.

According to Springston, a sea-level increase of only one foot could damage or destroy $187 million to $249 million in houses, roads and wetlands in the Middle Peninsula alone. Local government officials in flood-prone areas are giving more thought to how to cope with the rising tide, whether by dikes and levees, flood-proofing houses or restricting development in low-lying areas.

As I have made abundantly clear in previous posts, I am skeptical of many of the claims made about Global Warming. I am open to propositions that are based on science (of which I am respectful) and contemptuous of assertions based on economics and public policy (much of which I regard as social engineering run amuck). While I acknowledge that scientists are as vulnerable to group think as anyone else and might be wrong about accelerating rates of sea level rise, I would suggest that anyone who dismisses their fears out of hand is just as guilty of pre-judging the science as those they criticize. Prudent people will keep an open mind and endeavor to gather the facts…. if only we could determine them with a high degree of assurance.

Which brings me to the North Carolina Sea-Level Rise Assessment Report, which aimed to measure sea-level rise in the Tarheel state, Virginia’s next-door-neighbor. The 2010 report forecast that sea levels could rise between 15 and 55 inches by 2100. One can characterize those projections as exaggerrated, as the American Tradition Institute has done, on the grounds that local tide-gauge measures are too crude to be reliable, satellite measurements have been available for only 10 years, and so on. But even skeptics like ATI concede that sea levels may be rising in the long run.

Lawmakers, very few of whom are climate scientists, have no way to authoritatively judge which side is right. In our ideologically polarized society, Democratic politicians will likely side with the Warmists no matter what, and Republicans will side with the skeptics. As an empiricist, I personally prefer to side with the evidence. It would take a modest investment to design and maintain a system of tide-measuring stations on the Atlantic and Chesapeake Bay that can measure the rate at which Virginia’s coastline is disappearing under the waves. My friend Steve Nash, who is researching a book about Global Warming and sea-level rise in Virginia, suggests that air-borne laser-based LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology can map the entire coastline for several million dollars. That sounds like cheap insurance. For a small investment we can ascertain definitively what is happening and provide our coastal communities solid data upon which to inform their actions.

Subscribe To Site:

→ 41 Comments

Posted in 2012, Environment

Tagged Climate change, James A. Bacon

The “Agenda 21″ Nutbars

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 12 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

A half a century ago in rural places like the tobacco and corn fields of Eastern North Carolina, there used to be billboards with strong and aggressive messages. One said: “This Is Klan Country.” Another advocated: “U.S. Out of the United Nations.”

Both represented frightening, hard-right elements. The source of the first sign was obvious. Another, slightly more presentable group had put up the second sign. That was the John Birch Society, an ultra-conservative organization founded in 1958 that hated communists, pushed U.S. unilateralism, and purported to uphold so-called “American” values, which, at the time, were codes words for Anglo Saxon “Christians” upset about everything from growing globalism to integrating the races at home.

Now, people of the same ilk, Tea Partiers and other hard-right types, are extending decades-old U.N. paranoia to down-in-the-weeds smart growth policies that set up limits such as lot size, where growth should go and how services can be matched to growth.

In an intriguing article in this Sunday’s Richmond Times Dispatch, reporter Rex Springston outlines how this cabal apparently based in the Richmond area and in the watery Middle Neck has targeted the smart growth campaign. They have helped delay comprehensive plans in Henrico and Chesterfield Counties, oppose the use of electricity meters, bike paths, and cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

Their rallying cry is the so-called “Agenda 21” which is a policy established by the U.N. back in the early 1990s promoting the then-fashionable ideals of “sustainable development.” Given that the document came from an international group representing countries of all income and development levels, it pushes such guidelines as grouping housing for the sake of efficient resource use.

The anti-Agenda 21 crowd claims that the plan would strip away home ownership. It would end private farming and would apparently push people into Stalin-style collective farms or somesuch. Erecting smart electric meters in individuals’ houses for more efficient use of electricity is part of a plot for mass surveillance by Big Government. Naturally, George Soros, the billionaire, left-leaning financier, is behind this. Yet the Republican National Committee and Next Gingrich have embraced getting rid of Agenda 21.

Close to my home in Chesterfield County, anti- Agenda 21 types have helped delay adoption of a new comprehensive plan which had been designed more or less around smart growth policies. Growth would be concentrated around existing highway and commercial areas and not allowed to hopscotch hither and yon. A “green zone” in southwestern Chesterfield where I live would be kept green. Tea Party types threw wrench into that one, saying it would take property rights away from owners.

One wonders where these clowns were back 20 years ago when Chesterfield’s growth-happy board of supervisors gave into every idea any developer had. That is why schools are overcrowded and police and fire services are short-changed. My small subdivision has shifted school districts three times in 10 years to help the county rectify its disastrous planning.

The Tea Party people like bad planning because it represents “freedom,” I would guess. It seems extremely odd that they would drag in a sleepy, two-decades-old UN proposal as their whipping boy. Their claims that it is fostering global socialism is as nutty as the John Birch Society itself.

One wonders, with the global economy deciding where jobs go more and more, how these people deal with the 21^st century world. Their solution seems to be to dress up like Patrick Henry in colonial garb, wave their rattlesnake flags and tell the rest of the world where to go. The rest of us will be paying for the consequences.

Subscribe To Site:

→ 12 Comments

Posted in Agriculture & forestry, Demographics, Economic development, Environment, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

Tagged Agenda 21, goozeviews

Update: Menhaden 1, General Assembly 0

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Groveton| 5 Comments

Little White Lies. Politicians in Virginia support motherhood, apple pie and the Chesapeake Bay. Just ask them. Of course their support for motherhood comes complete with state police in riot gear when actual mothers show up in Richmond. And the frat boys in the General Assembly like apples because they can be turned into booze with uncapped alcohol content. This uncapped hard cider makes the tales of bedroom exploits all the more humorous when told from the floor of the General Assembly. The Bay, however, is sacrosanct. Unless it impinges on campaign contributions from those who would destroy it.

Of Mice and Men … haden. Menhaden are small, oily, inedible fish that once swam in great quantity in the Bay. Essentially useless as a food for humans, menhaden are among the greatest of delicacies for many of the Bay’s famous fish. Striped bass, bluefish and weakfish will stand in long lines for a table at the Menhaden Cafe. At least, they used to dine at the Menhaden Cafe. That was before the Virginia legislature bucked pressure from the other Atlantic seaboard states and let a Texas company do its level best to wipe out the Menhaden stock in the Chesapeake Bay. This cowardly action has led to a deplorable drop in the menhaden stock.

A silver fish with green highlights. The only saltwater fish in Virginia regulated directly by the General Assembly is the menhaden. This is because the menhaden is the only fish that can turn directly into campaign contributions from its greatest enemy – the Omega Protein Company. Based in Houston, Texas, but operating out of Reedville, Virginia, the Omega Protein Company uses its ten factory ships, planes and helicopters to pillage the Chesapeake Bay of its menhaden. Omega is such a pariah in the marine management world that every Atlantic state, except Virginia, has banned its factory ships from their coastal waters (although North Carolina allows limited access). Virginia’s love affair with Omega Protein is buoyed by waves of cash. $55,000 to Gov Bob McDonnell, $106,000 to state legislators, $53,000 to Virginia’s federal politicians and another cool $3M in lobbying. All of which has given the Clown Show in Richmond sufficient “courage” to persecute the little fish to the edge of extinction.

The universal fate of bullies. Unfortunately for Virginia’s politicians, not all states have legislatures laden with greasy fingered, greedy eco-cowards. Last November, representatives from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) helped the little fish pivot on its left dorsal fin and throw an overhand right straight into the faces of Virginia’s political class. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Virginia’s political class was left with two black eyes, a broken nose and a mouth full of blood and tooth fragments. Metaphorically speaking, of course. The ASMFC voted 14-3 to implement a strict menhaden fishing limit across all of the Atlantic states – including Virginia. The net effect of the cap will be a 37% reduction in the commercial landings of menhaden. Or, put another way, the Chesapeake Bay will finally start to recover its menhaden stock.

Numbers? We don’t need no stinkin’ numbers. Much of the opposition to menhaden fishing limits has come from Virginia politicians concerned about the impact a limit will have on the 300 largely seasonal jobs provided by the Omega Protein Company to the people of Reedville, Va. It is a legitimate concern. However, math has never been our political class’ long suit. There can be no doubt that overfishing of menhaden is hurting the sportfishing industry in the Chesapeake Bay. Striped bass are now routinely found to be malnourished in the Chesapeake Bay. Anecdotally, the charter fishing business seems to have fallen on hard times. It seems that annihilating the source of food for sport fish hurts the sport-fishing industry. Go figure.

Omega is the only large scale commercial menhaden fishing operation on the East Coast so calculating the benefits of that industry is fairly easy. They have sales of $60M per year. They employ 300 Virginians at peak and generate demand for another 219 affiliated jobs outside the Omega Protein Company. Meanwhile, the recreational fishing industry in Virginia and Maryland generates $332M of economic activity and provided 3,500 jobs in 2008. It seems to me that a 37% reduction in commercial menhaden landings is justified by the recovery of a 3,500 job industry. Of course, the recreational fishing industry is largely composed of small businesses which cannot match a single corporation’s ability to shove wads of cash into the pockets of our political class.

The Good, the Bad and the Clown Show. Four separate bills were introduced into the General Assembly’s 2012 session regarding menhaden management. The bad bill was SB18 patroned by Sen. Richard Stuart, R-Westmoreland. Stuart’s bill was a half-assed attempt to have Virginia resign from ASMFC once that organization voted to limit menhaden fishing. The bill was reported out of committee on a 9 – 6 vote. However, it was carried over until 2013 by the Finance Committee on a 14-0 vote. The menhaden have a reprieve of at least another year and Sen Stuart gets to tell his constituents that he tried. Actually, Stuart is a good enough guy. He has pressed legislation to reduce phosphate pollution and is sensitive to conservation efforts. The good bill was SB466 patroned by Sen Ralph Northam, D-Norfolk. Sen Northam’s bill was the mirror opposite of Sen. Stuart’s bill. It specifically authorized Virginia’s regulator to adopt the ASMFC’s fisheries plan for menhaden. It was also continued to 2013 with a 15 – 0 vote in committee. The General Assembly’s inability to get much of anything done was a blessing. They’ll get to solicit more money from Omega to join battle next year and I’ll get to put more delicious striped bass, bluefish and weakfish on my table.

– DJ Rippert (friend of the ~~Bay~~ menhaden)

Subscribe To Site:

→ 5 Comments

Posted in 2012, Economic development, Economy, Environment, Governance reform, Money in politics, Politics, Regulation

Tagged DJ Rippert

A Pathetic Half-Time

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 20 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

It’s so-called halftime at the Virginia General Assembly, and with conservative Republicans holding sway and many serious problems facing the Commonwealth, here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

Women exercising their constitutional right to have an abortion now will be forced to undergo and pay for an ultrasound before the procedure. There’s no medical reason for this, just to shame the woman into reconsidering so that right-to-lifers can feel good about themselves. Conservative Republicans, mind you, want to keep the government out of our private lives.
After years of supplying a lot of the East Coast with handguns, Virginia limited purchases to once a month. No longer. Now gun fanatics can exercise their Second Amendment Rights as many times a month as they want and blast away. Rock on!
If you have been laid off or were born into a low income family and need public housing, the state wants to check into your urine to see if you abuse drugs. If you are poor, you are suspect. If you are rich, congratulations, sir!
If you look foreign and sound like Cheech and Chong, the cops have to check to see if you are in this country legally if they happen to stop you for running a red light. How they do this quickly, no one knows exactly, since drivers licenses can be issued to anyone regardless of nationality. The police community is screaming that they don’t have the resources to handle this and even the Richmond Times-Dispatch says it is a bad idea. No matter, hard-right-wingers have to keep up with Alabama and Arizona.
In a move that is certain to save Virginia’s economy from the horrid onslaught of labor unionism, state money can’t be used to fund public works projects that have agreements that require that some of the work go to firms represented by unions. It has to do with Dulles Rail, a big transit project up DC way. It is important to let them Yankees and DCists know that this here’s the South and we don’t cotton to no unions.

Meanwhile, more pressing matters await, such as a budget. It seems that Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s plan to put the screws to education and use part of its General Fund payments to boost transportation isn’t getting very far.

Ditto the conservative schemes to stick it to our lazy and inept public school teachers. They want to upend the status quo with new plans to subject teachers with tougher new performance appraisals. Mind you, there has been no solid evidence or public outcry that this is needed. Rather some of the right-wing think tanks decided it should be an issue. One reason could be that some teachers are organized into, God forbid, labor unions. It also has racist overtones since it seems aimed at minority teachers in minority and low-income areas.

The anti-teacher movement seems to have been orchestrated months before the legislative session. Read six months of some of the postings on this blog and you will see that somewhere, someone has decided that public school teachers are a major, major problem. Maybe you didn’t notice yourself, but you read it here first!

The big irony is that McDonnell has worked so hard to recast himself from social to moderate conservative so he can more easily pursue national political ambitions. As much as he spins the GA session as progress, it clearly ain’t. The agenda is being controlled by the likes of Bob Marshall and other wingnuts.

As for me, I blame the Democrats, especially national party boss and former governor Tim Kaine. They let the hard righters get a slender majority in the last election and now there’s hell to pay. Ironically, however, the one who might end up paying the most will be Bob McDonnell.

Subscribe To Site:

→ 20 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Blogs and blog administration, Budget, Children and families, Economic development, Economy, Education (K-12), Electoral process, Entitlements, Environment, Finance, Gun rights, Health care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Labor & workforce, Politics, Race and race relations, Social services, Taxes, The Economy

Tagged goozeviews

Oilfield Reality Check

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 8 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

One has to laugh at just how fantastic the debate over energy has become.

Conservatives are trying to make President Barack Obama a goat for not bowing to the propaganda about the Keystone XL pipeline which would take unusually dirty oil from Canadian tar sands all the way to the U.S. Gulf Coast for refining.

Here’s a gem from a Jan. 18 editorial by The Washington Times: “The White House’s pre-emptive strike on the Keystone XL oil pipeline is a disaster for American workers and consumers. President Obama continues to demonstrate that he has no idea how real jobs are created or how the economy works.”

The propaganda campaign has trickled down to the Virginia level, which would get absolutely zero from the pipeline. Barry E. DuVal, the president of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce has trashed Obama for his decision as has Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, who is maneuvering to get a vice presidential spot with Mitt Romney.

So, it is unusual to pick up today’s Wall Street Journal and see this front page piece: “Oil and Gas Boom Lifts U.S. Economy.” The report states that U.S. oilfield jobs are up to 641,000, a 33 percent increase over the past five years.

Fueling the petroleum boom are new ways of reaching hard-to-tap oil and gas reserves such as hydraulic fracking. Gas from the Marcellus Shale deposit in the Northeast and Midwest has greatly boosted gas supplies. North Dakota’s once played-out oil fields are seeing a boom (not the “Boomergeddon” kind) as oil workers flock in, boosting $300-a-month rents to $2,000- a- month.

To be sure, the boom doesn’t address longer-term problems such as weaning the world from irreplaceable fossil fuels, their impact on climate change and the environmental challenges of fracking.

Rather, it shows the disconnect between the reality out there and the DuVals and Moonie papers of the world. One wonders why any respectable blogger would want to write for The Washington Times.

Subscribe To Site:

→ 8 Comments

Posted in Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Finance, The Economy

Tagged goozerviews

From Rising Temperatures to Big Government In Six Easy Steps

Posted on February 3, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 43 Comments

The 160-year perspective. Source: Met Office-University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit

by James A. Bacon

When the United Kingdom’s Met Office released its 2011 global temperature numbers back in November, the results were ambiguous enough that both the Global Warming (GW) establishment and skeptics felt vindicated. A compilation of the world’s three leading global temperature databases — the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, the NOAA Climate Data Center and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies — showed that 2011 was on track to be the 11th warmest year in the past 150 years, stated the Met Office in an article headed, “Warm global temperatures continue in 2011.” Yet skeptics seized on the fact that, despite dramatic increases in greenhouse gases over the past 14 years, global temperatures have plateaued.

The 15-year perspective. Source: (U.K.) Mail Online. (Click for more legible image.)

The GW establishment attributed the pause in rising temperatures to “a very persistent and strong La Niña, which brings cooler water to the surface of the Pacific Ocean.” When the La Niña disappears, global temperatures will resume their rise. Skeptics contend that solar activity plays a far greater role than acknowledged in mainstream climate models and that the earth could be entering a new solar cycle resembling the so-called “Maunder Minimum” that brought on the Little Ice Age.

The scientific battle lines are clearly drawn now, and we should know pretty conclusively within another decade which side is right. I am agnostic on the issue, which, I suppose makes me a closet skeptic because I don’t believe the “science is settled.” But it soon will be. Within the not-too-distant future, one of the two sets of predictions being made now should be proven conclusively wrong.

What won’t be settled, especially if the GW camp’s predictions pan out, is what to do about it. Witness a recent exchange in the letters page in the Wall Street Journal in which Kevin Trenberth and 37 other scientists responded to an op-ed previously published by 16 other scientists disputing that the evidence for global warming was “incontrovertible.” (Local angle: One of those “other” scientists was James McGrath, a world leader in polymer chemistry at Virginia Tech.)

Trenberth made an appeal to authority in support of his position that the planet “unequivocally” is getting hotter. “More than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused,” he wrote. “It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses.”

He then went on to state, “In addition, there is very clear evidence that investing in the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth.”

Thus, Trenberth transitioned from an appeal to scientific authority to a bald assertion about the economy, which, he, as a climate scientist and not an economist, has no professional basis for making. Will a “transition to a low-carbon economy” really avoid the worst risks of climate change? Would it really drive economic growth? The point is less than incontrovertibly settled. According to today’s Wall Street Journal, the green movement is rethinking its commitment to Europe’s multibillion-dollar commitment to biofuels. In another straw in the wind, the European Commission’s energy department is reappraising its commitment to renewable energy sources in the absence of a global agreement to combat climate change. EU companies would suffer eroding international competitiveness because clean power sources are so much more expensive.

There are multiple, nested layers to the Global Warming (GW) debate, and I am not at all convinced that they lead ineluctably to Trenberth’s position in support of massive government intervention in the economy. Indeed, I suspect that the only people who are persuaded by that chain of reasoning are predisposed to be suspicious of free markets and inclined to favor big government, especially when greater government control puts like-minded people at the helm. Consider these ongoing issues:

Can we really trust our temperature measures? Skeptics have called attention to various biases in the way temperatures are monitored, pointing to land-based measurement stations that once were located in the countryside but now, due to sprawling development, experience the urban heat-island effect. The GW establishment says it has corrected for that upward bias. For the GW orthodoxy to stand, one must agree that the statistical massaging of temperature databases adequately addresses this very real problem. (I suspect that it probably has, and I discount this as a major issue — but it is a source of contention.)
Are today’s temperatures truly unprecedented? Skeptics contend that temperatures have undergone long-wave cycles since the end of the last Ice Age, bringing on periods of global warming during the Roman era and again during the Middle Ages. If they are correct, the current temperature peak we are experiencing could be due to factors other than rising levels of greenhouse gases, with the implication that global climate models are flawed. Using “proxy” measures such as tree ring widths, lake sediments and other natural phenomenon that vary with temperature, the GW orthodoxy downplays past warming eras and maintains that today’s temperature rise is without peer. Again, for the orthodoxy to stand, the reconstruction of past temperature peaks must be correct.
Will greenhouse gases lead to runaway temperature increases? No one disputes the conclusion, all other things being equal, that rising levels of greenhouse gases will have a warming effect on the planet. But the GW orthodoxy goes beyond that, insisting that climatic feedback mechanisms such as increased evaporation of water into the atmosphere — water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — will magnify the effect and lead to runaway temperature increases. Skeptics note that even higher CO2 levels in past climate epochs did not lead to runaway warming. Moreover, they say, crucial climate dynamics like cloud formation are still ill-understood. An increase in cloud cover would increase the earth’s reflectivity and reduce the warming sunlight penetrating the atmosphere. Skeptics claim that cloud formation is heavily influenced by varying levels of solar radiation, which interacts with the earth’s magnetosphere to block cosmic rays. The cosmic rays, it is postulated, interact with elements in the atmosphere to seed clouds. If this competing explanation is correct, the climate models underlying the GW orthodoxy need significant revision.
Will rising temperatures be an unmitigated environmental disaster? It is not sufficient for the GW orthodoxy to maintain that temperatures are rising, it must insist that rising temperatures will lead to a string of mankind-threatening calamities from rising sea levels and stronger hurricanes to drought, starvation and conflict caused by scarce resources and the spread of environmental refugees. The potential consequences are so dire that global warming must be halted at all costs. But it strikes me that those hewing to the GW orthodoxy trumpet the downside while muting potential benefits of warming. The orthodoxy refuses to acknowledge, for instance, that increasing levels of C02 amount to atmospheric fertilizer that stimulates plant growth and increases plant resistance to drought. Some skeptics have argued that global warming would boost crop yields and promote plant life generally. While the GW priesthood worries about higher temperatures spreading malaria, no one has explored the impact of warmer weather on cold-weather diseases, such as colds and influenza. The depiction of unmitigated environmental disaster seems incredibly one-sided. Yet the view of global warming as environmental Armageddon is critical to justifying the empowerment of the state over the economy.
Is curtailing greenhouse gases the best way to stave off the impact of global warming? Some economists have argued that the best way to adapt to runaway global warming, assuming it occurs, is to foster economic growth that will enable fragile developing nations to adapt to the postulated increase in fire, flood, disease and famine. Rich societies are more resilient than poor ones. But GW orthodoxy will not entertain that train of thought. The only proffered solution is to roll back the level of greenhouse gas emissions in the belief that (a) the global climate is amenable to such fine tuning, (b) we haven’t already passed the point of no return on irreversible climate change, and (c) there is some ideal, steady-state temperature to which we should aspire, which happens to be the point in time at which people began to get alarmed about climate change.
Is government the best agent of change? Finally, the adherents of GW orthodoxy believe that government, in its all-knowing, far-seeing wisdom, must lead the charge. Private individuals and enterprises cannot bring about the required deep, structural changes to the economy in a timely fashion. Government must coerce, subsidize, threaten and cajole people to accelerate the shift to the low-carbon economy. In the United State, government has lavished billions of dollars upon schemes from home- conservation programs to ethanol and Renewable Portfolio Standards that require power companies to acquire an increasing share of their energy from renewable sources. The home conservation programs were a bureaucratic fiasco. Ethanol, environmentalists have now concluded, represent a step backward, and an expensive one to boot. Solar energy subsidies have brought us Solyndra, there is a growing backlash against wind power, and it is slowly sinking in that variable energy sources like wind and solar require a massive back-up of natural gas-fired generating capacity. Followers of the GW orthodoxy are sublimely confident in their ability to get things right yet they repeatedly get blind-sided by special interests and rent seekers who manipulate the subsidies, tax credits and regulations to their advantage. Tens of billions of dollars (perhaps hundreds of billions in Europe) have been largely wasted already, and the tab would run even higher if the Trenberths had their way. Ironically, if you want to see real progress in energy conservation, look to the one sphere of activity not subject to government meddling — the retrofit of commercial and industrial properties — and you’ll find dramatic progress.

To justify the current array of GW policies put into place in Europe, the U.S., Virginia and increasingly across the world requires the feat of answering “yes” to all six of the yes-no questions I have just enumerated. I am willing to trust the scientific process to sort out the first three of those sets of issues. But I’m not willing to entrust our economy to true believers attempting to implement their vision by means of a corrupted political process.

Finally, I repeat my admonition to my friends in Virginia’s environmental and smart-growth communities: Decouple your arguments for smart growth from Global Warming. If temperatures resume their upward climb in the next 10 years, the scientific debate may be settled once and you will be proven correct. On the other hand, if the orthodoxy collapses — so will a major justification for smart growth. As I hope to show in future posts, a solid case for smart growth can be built on a foundation of fiscal conservatism and repair to Virginia’s native environment.

Subscribe To Site:

→ 43 Comments

Posted in 2012, Abortion, Environment

Tagged Climate change

Up to Our Alligators As Area Warms?

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 13 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

Holy magnolia!

The area just south of Washington on the Potomac River and all the way north of Baltimore on the shores of Chesapeake Bay have become noticeable warmer over the past 22 years. Consequently, it is possible to grow species of plants in that zone that previously needed warmer, more southerly climates such as those from Tidewater, Va. south.

According to a front page Post story, gardeners have known about the increased warming in the region for years. Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture has made it official. The general warming trend has manifested itself in other ways. Alligators have recently been spotted in southern Virginia beyond their usual limits in North Carolina.

The agriculture department warns that its study should not be taken as fresh evidence of climate change. It also found that parts of the West Coast and South Dakota actually have had colder winters.

Here in the Mid-Atlantic, however, the comparison is unavoidable. And that brings up the next point.

If we’re up to our camellias in alligators, why are Virginia’s right-wing politicians continuing their persecutions of academics who suggest that global warming is real and is man-made?

Atty. Gen. Kenneth Cuccinelli has made a second career persecuting former University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann who says mankind if responsible for global warming, a view held by most scientific experts. After Cuccinelli saw his attempt at subpoenaing Mann’s records quashed by a court, his conservative comrade, Del. Bob Marshall of Prince William County, teamed up with the American Tradition Institute to get some of the records through the Freedom of Information Act.

Scientific evidence apparently means nothing to Cuccinelli or Marshall. What does it matter? Cuccinelli is running for governor and Marshall for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Playing to the wing elements pays political dividends.

Subscribe To Site: