Obama deposited about $1 billion in the Green Climate Fund for less developed nations as part of an initial U.S. payment of $3 billion he had scheduled under the Paris Climate Accord without authorization from Congress. This unauthorized $1 billion was the equivalent of throwing away 20,000 American jobs at $50,000 per job. Had he managed to pilfer the full $3 billion, he would have destroyed 60,000 American jobs.
It gets worse. The U.S. obligation for the Green Climate Fund under the Paris Climate Accord not authorized by the Senate as required by the U.S. Constitution was supposed to grow to $23 billion a year. The rest of the developed nations were supposed to provide enough transfer money to the undeveloped nations to create an annual transfer of $100 billion a year. The American contribution was the equivalent of destroying 460,000 American jobs.
Then on top of those plans to kill jobs, Obama and his party killed many a coal miner's job, jobs of those who transport coal, jobs of coal-fired power plant operators, jobs of those whose jobs depended on inexpensive and reliable power, and those who served all of these people with their needs. He also prevented oil and gas drilling on public lands, prevented the building of pipelines, and planned to harass those providing us with the many benefits of the Shale Oil and Gas Revolution. He backed mandates and unrealistic dangers to suppress fossil fuel extraction and use generally, driving up all energy costs. His backing of the Paris Climate Accord was meant to serve as a means to apply pressure on the American people to put up with rising energy costs and the inconveniences of energy unreliability.
Obama and the Democrats sure worked hard to create American jobs! What friends they were to the American worker. Is it any wonder that the fraction of Americans with jobs is so low and those with jobs have gone so long without real pay increases. The suppression of energy use was clearly going to destroy jobs and slow down the growth of future employment opportunities. It was clearly going to reduce the growth of the American standard of living. When you view man as the monster destroying the planet, of course you are going to want to destroy the monster. This is exactly what Obama and the Democrats are bent on doing. It is an intention to do great evil.
Man is not evil. Man is the best there is in reality and the universe. There is no other measure of the good, but that which is good for the life of each and every individual human being. The standard of living, whether measured by human security and survival or by human flourishing, is highly dependent upon our freedom to use energy. An article in the Washington Post a couple of days ago bemoaned the fact that low income Americans would suffer the most due to "Climate Change." Of course, low income people are always the most vulnerable to suffering natural disasters. They are also most vulnerable to suffering from the lost jobs I wrote about above. They are the ones who will suffer the most in the long run if the American economy does not grow at a healthy rate. If the American economy grows at a good and compounded rate over the years, any climate change that may happen in 2100 will be much more easily dealt with by a generally much more wealthy nation of people. Taking advantage of our unbelievable wealth in fossil fuels to grow our economy and make all of the technological advances that allows, is the very best way to deal with the vicissitudes of nature. Who knows, we may have another Ice Age descend on us by 2100.
Suppressing the freedom to use energy is a severely evil act. That act is justified as a means to save nature or to save the planet, but neither is a value without man. And, frankly, the wealthier and more developed our civilizations have become, the more they value nature and act to prevent its destruction. This is not an either or choice. We should not do harm to man because we are deceived into thinking it is. Fortunately, Trump has turned away from the evils of the Paris Climate Accord.
Showing posts with label coal-fired power plants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coal-fired power plants. Show all posts
07 April 2017
The EPA lied -- nobody died by Steve Milloy
For years Steve Milloy has challenged the EPA on its claims about how deadly small organic particulates are. His recent opinion piece to the Washington Times is most interesting. See here.
Steve Milloy says:
To prove their assertions that fine particulate matter was so deadly, the EPA paid the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina to expose human subjects to fine particulate matter and even chlorine gas to try to do them harm. Recently, the National Academy of Science had to admit that no one died and no harm was established by the illegal tests. Yes, the EPA was intentionally trying to harm people, though it had told the test subjects that they would not be harmed. It apparently really did think that fine particulates were very dangerous and it was willing to expose people to what it claimed was deadly concentrations of fine particulates to prove they were right. Only the fact they were not right prevented the EPA from killing the test subject people.
Milloy says:
The EPA has also claimed that carbon dioxide, the basis for life on Earth, is a pollutant. It also has claimed that mercury from coal-fired power plants is deadly, with no evidence that this is true and no explanation for the failure to evacuate huge areas of the USA where the natural sources of mercury dwarf any possible emissions from coal-fired power plants. See here and here. This is also the government agency that incompetently released contaminants from the Gold King Mine into the Animas River.
What do you do with such a wrongheaded, dishonest, and dangerous government agency? You fire its employees, put it under new management, and hire new people who are rational and competent. You make it a much smaller agency with highly limited powers. At least this is what one would do if one wanted a rational, competent, and reasonably benevolent government.
Steve Milloy says:
In April 2012, I broke the news that EPA had been quietly conducting human experiments with certain outdoor pollutants that EPA had claimed were, essentially, the most toxic substances on Earth. EPA had repeatedly claimed since at least 2004 that any level of inhalation of fine particulate matter emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes could cause death within hours or days. The old, young and sick were most vulnerable, according to EPA.
To prove their assertions that fine particulate matter was so deadly, the EPA paid the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina to expose human subjects to fine particulate matter and even chlorine gas to try to do them harm. Recently, the National Academy of Science had to admit that no one died and no harm was established by the illegal tests. Yes, the EPA was intentionally trying to harm people, though it had told the test subjects that they would not be harmed. It apparently really did think that fine particulates were very dangerous and it was willing to expose people to what it claimed was deadly concentrations of fine particulates to prove they were right. Only the fact they were not right prevented the EPA from killing the test subject people.
Milloy says:
So when the first Obama EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, testified to Congress that “Particulate matter causes premature death. It does not make you sick. It is directly causal to dying sooner than you should,” that was a lie, one compounded by her next false claim that particulate matter kills about 570,000 Americans per year. When the second Obama EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy, wrote to Congress; chief outside EPA science adviser Jonathan Samet wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine; and EPA-paid university researchers working with the American Heart Association said that there was no safe exposure to particulate matter those too were lies.
As it turns out, the only time EPA told the truth about particulate matter was when it told its human guinea pigs that the experiments were harmless. Meanwhile the Obama EPA used the phony killer particulate matter scare — backed by almost $600 million in utterly fraudulent scientific research and fueled with secret scientific data — to virtually wipe out the U.S. coal industry, severely harming coal miners, their families and their communities.
The EPA has also claimed that carbon dioxide, the basis for life on Earth, is a pollutant. It also has claimed that mercury from coal-fired power plants is deadly, with no evidence that this is true and no explanation for the failure to evacuate huge areas of the USA where the natural sources of mercury dwarf any possible emissions from coal-fired power plants. See here and here. This is also the government agency that incompetently released contaminants from the Gold King Mine into the Animas River.
What do you do with such a wrongheaded, dishonest, and dangerous government agency? You fire its employees, put it under new management, and hire new people who are rational and competent. You make it a much smaller agency with highly limited powers. At least this is what one would do if one wanted a rational, competent, and reasonably benevolent government.
16 March 2017
My Reply to "Sustainability is an Economic Boon Not a Liability"
Richard Matthews posted Sustainability is an Economic Boon Not a Liability at the Green Market Oracle. Here is my comment in response:
There is no scientific consensus that the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is correct. Most scientists who do say they believe in catastrophic man-made global warming cannot offer a clear explanation of the scientific theory that claim is based on. Those who offer a theory very often disagree with one another. Then there are many scientists who see the hypothesis as false, though many of them believe that carbon dioxide does cause some warming, which may be regarded as beneficial, not catastrophic. Then there are still other scientists, including myself, who understand that the effects of carbon dioxide on the surface temperature are many, all of them very small, and more of them cooling effects than warming effects. The net result is that CO2 has an insignificant effect. This is why the effect of CO2 has not been measurable to date.
There are many benefits to conserving energy. Those real benefits are best achieved by people individually choosing them, not by government mandates and subsidies. Real benefits will be pursued in the free market. It is only harmful energy policies that need to be imposed by government.
The EPA ruling that CO2 is a pollutant is scientifically unsupported. Its claims that mercury emitted by coal-fired power plants was a real danger were also without scientific justification. Years of mercury precipitation data have failed to show any downwind mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants that can be seen above the dominant natural sources of mercury in the USA. If mercury is such a hazard, there are huge swathes of land in the southern American West and Great Plains states that have to be evacuated due to natural sources of mercury. Yet even in those areas of relatively high natural mercury contamination in the USA, there is no epidemiological evidence of harm to people.
The last sentence in blue was not in the original comment.
There is no scientific consensus that the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is correct. Most scientists who do say they believe in catastrophic man-made global warming cannot offer a clear explanation of the scientific theory that claim is based on. Those who offer a theory very often disagree with one another. Then there are many scientists who see the hypothesis as false, though many of them believe that carbon dioxide does cause some warming, which may be regarded as beneficial, not catastrophic. Then there are still other scientists, including myself, who understand that the effects of carbon dioxide on the surface temperature are many, all of them very small, and more of them cooling effects than warming effects. The net result is that CO2 has an insignificant effect. This is why the effect of CO2 has not been measurable to date.
There are many benefits to conserving energy. Those real benefits are best achieved by people individually choosing them, not by government mandates and subsidies. Real benefits will be pursued in the free market. It is only harmful energy policies that need to be imposed by government.
The EPA ruling that CO2 is a pollutant is scientifically unsupported. Its claims that mercury emitted by coal-fired power plants was a real danger were also without scientific justification. Years of mercury precipitation data have failed to show any downwind mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants that can be seen above the dominant natural sources of mercury in the USA. If mercury is such a hazard, there are huge swathes of land in the southern American West and Great Plains states that have to be evacuated due to natural sources of mercury. Yet even in those areas of relatively high natural mercury contamination in the USA, there is no epidemiological evidence of harm to people.
The last sentence in blue was not in the original comment.
24 November 2016
Pipeline and Coal-Fired Power Plant Alarmism
In view of the recent controversy about the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Paul Driessen post I just recently put up called Pipeline Anarchy, I want to refer back to a post of mine in November 2011 called Democrat Socialism, Energy, and Pipeline Hysteria. One of the points I made was that the U.S. was already extensively filled with oil and gas pipelines. Many of them were old and were not nearly as safe as the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline or as the Dakota Access Pipeline. It makes little sense to prevent the building of these pipelines on safety or environmental grounds, since they are improvements in the system. I also pointed out that most any aquifer was already crossed by less superior pipelines. Now we learn from Driessen's article that the Dakota Pipeline in the only area unconstructed is running parallel to an already existing pipeline.
From my earlier post:
In 2009, there were 148,622 miles of oil and oil product pipelines in the U.S. There were also 1,539,911 miles of natural gas pipeline in the U.S. The Keystone XL project wanted to add 1,661 miles of oil pipeline to this massive network of pipelines. Some of the major pipelines now in existence are shown in the map below.
The green-coded pipelines are major oil pipelines, the red lines are major gas pipelines, and the blue lines are product pipelines.
Returning to the present:
The pipeline case in which a safer pipeline is denied while less safe ones continue in use has an interesting parallel in the case against coal fired power plants. The Obama EPA established a regulation that required power plants to release much less mercury than they do into the atmosphere. The claim was that despite the low concentrations of mercury, a pregnant woman eating a constant diet of fish from nearby rivers might suffer some health problem based on cherry-picked studies of islanders who ate nothing but seafood from the ocean with its 200 ppm of mercury. There have long been recommendations that pregnant women not eat too much seafood, as an abundance of caution. But, pregnant women are presumably thought incapable of following a similar recommendation for avoiding too much fish from rivers as an abundance of caution.
See my posts Coal-Fired Power Plants Produce Insignificant Mercury and Evaluating the Mercury Emissions Danger from Coal-Fired Power Plants. It is clear that many areas of the country should be evacuated due to the overwhelming concentrations of mercury from natural sources of mercury, such as the mineral cinnabar if the mercury from coal-fired power plants is a problem. If it is safe to live in much of the American Southwest and the southern Great Plains states, then it is generally immaterial whether one lives near a coal-fired power plant as far as mercury exposure is concerned.
It is also of no significance that coal-fired power plants produce more carbon dioxide than do natural gas power plants or than wind generators do for reasons described in Why Greenhouse Gas Theory is Wrong -- An Examination of the Theoretical Basis.
But, we must have many horrors, terrors, and alarms from which ever bigger government can pretend to save us.
26 Nov 2016: 10 other fossil fuel pipelines cross the Missouri River upstream from the Dakota Access Pipeline already.
From my earlier post:
In 2009, there were 148,622 miles of oil and oil product pipelines in the U.S. There were also 1,539,911 miles of natural gas pipeline in the U.S. The Keystone XL project wanted to add 1,661 miles of oil pipeline to this massive network of pipelines. Some of the major pipelines now in existence are shown in the map below.
The green-coded pipelines are major oil pipelines, the red lines are major gas pipelines, and the blue lines are product pipelines.
Returning to the present:
The pipeline case in which a safer pipeline is denied while less safe ones continue in use has an interesting parallel in the case against coal fired power plants. The Obama EPA established a regulation that required power plants to release much less mercury than they do into the atmosphere. The claim was that despite the low concentrations of mercury, a pregnant woman eating a constant diet of fish from nearby rivers might suffer some health problem based on cherry-picked studies of islanders who ate nothing but seafood from the ocean with its 200 ppm of mercury. There have long been recommendations that pregnant women not eat too much seafood, as an abundance of caution. But, pregnant women are presumably thought incapable of following a similar recommendation for avoiding too much fish from rivers as an abundance of caution.
See my posts Coal-Fired Power Plants Produce Insignificant Mercury and Evaluating the Mercury Emissions Danger from Coal-Fired Power Plants. It is clear that many areas of the country should be evacuated due to the overwhelming concentrations of mercury from natural sources of mercury, such as the mineral cinnabar if the mercury from coal-fired power plants is a problem. If it is safe to live in much of the American Southwest and the southern Great Plains states, then it is generally immaterial whether one lives near a coal-fired power plant as far as mercury exposure is concerned.
It is also of no significance that coal-fired power plants produce more carbon dioxide than do natural gas power plants or than wind generators do for reasons described in Why Greenhouse Gas Theory is Wrong -- An Examination of the Theoretical Basis.
But, we must have many horrors, terrors, and alarms from which ever bigger government can pretend to save us.
26 Nov 2016: 10 other fossil fuel pipelines cross the Missouri River upstream from the Dakota Access Pipeline already.
19 August 2015
You Would Not Believe How Busy Santa's Elves Are in March - The World's Top CO2 Emitters
NASA has a program called Eyes on the Earth that allows one to download a program to examine satellite images and measurements around the world. I decided to examine some month-long results for the AIRS satellite measurements for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The more red the color, the higher the carbon dioxide concentration. Of course one expects to see higher concentrations of CO2 over areas with high populations, much industrial activity, and areas with many coal-fired power plants. At least this is what one expects given the hype that man is causing catastrophic man-made global warming with his use of fossil fuels.
Let us examine how those darned Americans polluted the Earth with their CO2 emissions in the month of March 2015:
Oops, we were outdone by Santa's elves, those very industrious little guys so hard at work using fossil fuel energy to make the gifts for this coming Christmas! Who else could be responsible for this huge outpouring of CO2 in northeastern unsettled Canada, in Greenland, over the Arctic waters, and northernmost Siberia? I thought the elves used magic rather than coal-fired power plants to make toys, but I must have been wrong.
Now we know that those Chinese are smothered in pollution from their huge number of coal-fired power plants, so if the examine the CO2 concentration map over China, we have to see a huge CO2 concentration. Right? So here is the March 2015 CO2 concentration map over Asia:
No, it seems even the Chinese cannot compete with those incredible elves. Iran and Pakistan look to be at least as busy with coal-fired power plants as the Chinese are. Western Russia is also more than competitive.
Well, perhaps I have chosen an odd month. How about December 2014:
OK, now we see that the U.S. midwest and northeast are showing some signs of life. Just not as much life as northern Greenland or parts of the Arctic Ocean, or parts of the northern Pacific Ocean, all of which must have some belching coal-fired power plants we knew nothing about. My how ignorant we must be to have not observed those fired-up energy polluters.
But China must have been a hot spot in December 2014. They were all just taking vacations in March 2015.
Yes, at last. At least the people in northeast China were having some effect with their coal-fired power plants in December 2014. But not much more than those very industrious Iranians and Pakistanis. And look what those fishermen in the Timor Sea and the Arafura Sea just north of Australia were doing!
Am I just cherry-picking data? Well let us look at July 2015 then:
OK, now we have it. Those American who live in the coastal states of the southeast are the culprits of all the fabled CO2 pollution! Yes sir, now we can see why people in the Southeast are less interested in fighting man-made global warming than the high concentration of Northeastern Progressive Elitists are. It would be harder for them to change their ways. Even though the population density is less there, at least in July of 2015, they used more fossil fuel and polluted the atmosphere more than other Americans. Now we have the smoking gun!
But even those American rednecks of the Southeast have competition. Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, and Siberia were just as active CO2 emitters as those Southeastern Americans. Obviously they are really big fossil fuel energy users.
The 3 months of Dec 2014, Mar 2014, and Jul 2015 were the only individual months I tried. You can choose a range of months and the program will display the results for each month one after the other. I did this for the months from January 2013 to July 2015. The results were fairly random outside the Arctic and near Arctic. The brightest red conditions were always over the Arctic and near Arctic. The brightest green conditions, a lower than average CO2 concentration, were also over the Arctic and near Arctic, though green was less dominant overall than red was.
So, it is rather hard to pin the increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere on man's burning fossil fuels. Sorry, but that claim just is not working. It appears very certain that natural effects are highly dominant and they are not well understood. Scientists who are real scientists should be studying those natural causes of CO2 emission.
Let us examine how those darned Americans polluted the Earth with their CO2 emissions in the month of March 2015:
Oops, we were outdone by Santa's elves, those very industrious little guys so hard at work using fossil fuel energy to make the gifts for this coming Christmas! Who else could be responsible for this huge outpouring of CO2 in northeastern unsettled Canada, in Greenland, over the Arctic waters, and northernmost Siberia? I thought the elves used magic rather than coal-fired power plants to make toys, but I must have been wrong.
Now we know that those Chinese are smothered in pollution from their huge number of coal-fired power plants, so if the examine the CO2 concentration map over China, we have to see a huge CO2 concentration. Right? So here is the March 2015 CO2 concentration map over Asia:
No, it seems even the Chinese cannot compete with those incredible elves. Iran and Pakistan look to be at least as busy with coal-fired power plants as the Chinese are. Western Russia is also more than competitive.
Well, perhaps I have chosen an odd month. How about December 2014:
OK, now we see that the U.S. midwest and northeast are showing some signs of life. Just not as much life as northern Greenland or parts of the Arctic Ocean, or parts of the northern Pacific Ocean, all of which must have some belching coal-fired power plants we knew nothing about. My how ignorant we must be to have not observed those fired-up energy polluters.
But China must have been a hot spot in December 2014. They were all just taking vacations in March 2015.
Yes, at last. At least the people in northeast China were having some effect with their coal-fired power plants in December 2014. But not much more than those very industrious Iranians and Pakistanis. And look what those fishermen in the Timor Sea and the Arafura Sea just north of Australia were doing!
Am I just cherry-picking data? Well let us look at July 2015 then:
OK, now we have it. Those American who live in the coastal states of the southeast are the culprits of all the fabled CO2 pollution! Yes sir, now we can see why people in the Southeast are less interested in fighting man-made global warming than the high concentration of Northeastern Progressive Elitists are. It would be harder for them to change their ways. Even though the population density is less there, at least in July of 2015, they used more fossil fuel and polluted the atmosphere more than other Americans. Now we have the smoking gun!
But even those American rednecks of the Southeast have competition. Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, and Siberia were just as active CO2 emitters as those Southeastern Americans. Obviously they are really big fossil fuel energy users.
The 3 months of Dec 2014, Mar 2014, and Jul 2015 were the only individual months I tried. You can choose a range of months and the program will display the results for each month one after the other. I did this for the months from January 2013 to July 2015. The results were fairly random outside the Arctic and near Arctic. The brightest red conditions were always over the Arctic and near Arctic. The brightest green conditions, a lower than average CO2 concentration, were also over the Arctic and near Arctic, though green was less dominant overall than red was.
So, it is rather hard to pin the increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere on man's burning fossil fuels. Sorry, but that claim just is not working. It appears very certain that natural effects are highly dominant and they are not well understood. Scientists who are real scientists should be studying those natural causes of CO2 emission.
16 April 2015
Asthma and Coal-Fired Power Plants -- Is there a connection?
As the concern of Americans about claims of catastrophic man-made global warming has diminished, the Progressive Elitists and their EPA have ramped up a campaign against coal-fired power plants based on those plants causing asthma. The ads put particular emphasis on them causing asthma in children. Obama even recently claimed that one of his daughters has asthma because of coal-fired power plants and other use of fossil fuels. Does this viewpoint have an anchor in science and known data? Let us examine this issue, because surely none of us want children to suffer because coal-fired power plants provide us with inexpensive and reliable electric power. It may well make sense to use more expensive power, whether natural gas or better scrubbed coal-fired power plants if the coal-fired power plants are truly implicated as the cause of asthma.
In examining this, I am going to use information from a slide presentation on the prevalence of asthma in the US by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is found at the bottom of the page here.
Now, it might be that emissions from coal-fired power plants are the exception and this is a known cause. Let us see if that would be consistent with other data of the CDC.
This graph shows increasing asthma from 1980 to 1996 and then increasing asthma from 2001 to 2010. The gap in data is because the method for making the determination of asthma prevalence changed in the years between these two sets of data, so it is difficult to be sure that we are comparing apples to apples. The apparent increase in asthma is very large in this time. The odd thing is that the fraction of electric power generation by coal fell in this time and of that falling fraction, more and more effort was made to produce the power from coal more cleanly. If asthma increased from 3% of the population to 8% during this time, there must be factors causing asthma which are far more important than the contribution that might be made by coal.
It is interesting that the increase in asthma since 2011 is primarily due to an increase in asthma among Black Americans. Now it might be that coal-fired power plants are much more likely to be upwind of Black neighborhoods, the white Progressive Elitists being so efficient at Not in My Back Yard special interest tactics. But let us remember this difference as we look at the following data and remember that people of different ethnic backgrounds do often have different susceptibilities to different diseases.
Now this is fascinating data. Note how dramatically asthma prevalence changes by gender and age. Surely exposure to the emissions of pollutants does not change so dramatically by age or gender as this. It might be possible that the susceptibility to pollutants does change this dramatically, but that sure would seem to be a stretch. Boys to 14 years old are much more likely to have asthma than girls, but girls have a steadily increasing probability of becoming asthmatic through age 17 and then have a slight general decrease in asthma after that, while remaining much more likely than males to have asthma at all ages 18 and beyond. But males after 14 have a substantial lowering of probability to about age 44, before their probability starts to rise again. This happens despite the fact that men are more likely than women to spend more time outside in their adult years, where they are supposedly being more directly assaulted by the emissions of coal-fired power plants. These age and gender behaviors sure seem more likely to suggest a primarily internal biochemical cause as the primary cause of asthma.
Now here it is interesting to note that ethnic Asians are much less likely to have asthma. I doubt that ethnic Asians are much less likely to live downwind from coal-fired power generators than is the average American. In fact, a disproportionate fraction of them live in California, which despite its history of smog, has few coal-fired power plants. Also, while Native Americans have high rates of asthma, most of them live in the American West where coal-fired power plant density is low compared to that in the East. For some reason, people of multiple race have much higher rates of asthma than any other racial group, except those of Puerto Rican descent, who are about twice as likely as White Americans to suffer asthma. Once again, this would all seem more likely to point to asthma causes with more of a basis in human biochemistry than in exposure to coal-fired power plant emissions. Apparently, it is also very bad to have a low income.
By area of the country, it is slightly worse to be from the Northeast and Midwest than from the South and West. It is worse to be from outside a metropolitan area than from inside one, though the difference is small. In general, this makes one suspicious of the idea that pollution is an important cause of asthma. To be sure, one might question whether the use of insecticides by farmers might be the reason for higher rates outside of cities, but one would think if this were true that this would be well-documented. Besides, insecticides are actually used heavily in cities to fumigate dense housing from cockroaches and other insect inhabitants and mice and rats. Metro areas are hardly free of similar insecticides as are found in the country. The slightly greater non-metropolitan asthma percentage is more likely due to natural allergens such as pollen then it is to man-made chemicals. Many people with asthma have a very rough time when pollen levels are high. Again, this is a suggestion that the main causes of asthma are not environmental, but genetic or internal human biochemistry combined with natural irritants. This is so much the case that there is a small advantage in living in a metropolitan area where overall human emissions pollutant concentrations are much higher than in the non-metropolitan areas.
Of those who have asthma, are they more likely now than earlier to have more asthma attacks? Well no. The graph above shows a slight drop in the number having attacks in the last 12 months, whether children or adults. If the causes of asthma were environmental and those environmental factors were getting worse to cause an increase in the number of people reporting that they have asthma, then would it not be likely that the percentage of those with asthma who had attacks in the last 12 months would be increasing? That it is not seems to suggest a likelihood that asthma is caused by human biological factors and/or more people are becoming aware of what asthma is and are becoming conscious of having the disease.
Now, let us examine the data for those who have actually had an asthma attack in the last 12 months. Among those who have asthma, the percentage of each group having an asthma attack in the last 12 months varies very little. The very small differences in the percentage of each ethnic group's asthma population having an asthma attack in the last 12 months inclines one toward the idea there may be an asthma gene which one either has or does not have. The very similar percentages by region tends to argue that coal-fired power plants are at most a small factor and that environment generally is likely also to be a small factor.
This map of asthma incidence is remarkable. It is interesting that there are sharp gradients by state. Texas and Louisiana have low incidences, while New Mexico and Oklahoma have relatively high incidences of asthma in their populations. Washington and Oregon on the West Coast have high incidences, but California has a low incidence. All of the Rocky Mountain states have high incidences, despite those states not being noteworthy for pollution. A narrow band of states across the middle of the Great Plains has relatively high incidences, while states north and south of the band have low incidences. All of the South has a low incidence and all of the Northeast above the Mason-Dixon line has a high incidence.
The EPA makes the false claim that half the mercury in the atmosphere comes from coal-fired power plants. I proved this nonsense in my blog post Evaluating the Mercury Emissions Danger from Coal-Fired Power Plants. In that post, I showed that any mercury output from the coal-fired power plants was overwhelmed by natural sources of mercury in the atmosphere. I showed that there was a complete lack of correlation between the EPA map showing their claimed power plant mercury emissions and actual measurements of mercury precipitation from the atmosphere. However, their mercury emissions map may be of use here as a general measure of the pollutant output of coal-fired power plants, such as it is, around the country. If the plant is supposedly not removing mercury output, then there may be other pollutants it is not removing in proportional measure. So, here is that map:
Now comparing this map to the asthma prevalence by state in the map above this one, it is seen to be plausible that the high asthma incidences in the states Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky might be due to emissions from coal-fired power plants. But, there is almost no coal-fired power plant emission in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to explain their high asthma incidences. The large concentration of coal-fired power plants in East Texas where most of the state population is coexists with a very low incidence of asthma in Texas and downwind Louisiana. The high incidence of coal-fired power plants in northern Alabama and Georgia near those states highest population centers coexists with a low rate of asthma in those states. Oklahoma has a high rate of asthma, but its coal-fired power plants are almost all downwind of its population centers in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Norman, Lawton, and Edmond. It is also hard to understand how West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina can have low incidences of asthma with so many coal-fired power plants. In short, there is no correlation between the coal-fired power plant emissions and the incidence of asthma.
This is not too surprising given that the CDC started its slide presentation on asthma by stating that its causes were generally not known. The CDC has decades of skill in measuring and mapping the regional incidence of diseases and tracing them back to common sources. If coal-fired power plants were a significant cause of asthma, surely they would have identified this cause long ago.
You would never know about this glaring lack of evidence from the ads being shown of asthma-suffering children on TV lately, which the Progressive Elitist propagandists are shamelessly blaming on coal-fired power plants. This claim is as false and base as the claim that man's use of fossil fuels will cause catastrophic degradation of the environment and represents a threat to man's continued existence. There is no rational justification for the claims in either case made by the alarmists who are endeavoring without let-up to further empower the government to eliminate our equal, sovereign individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of our own happiness. It can only be understood as a power grab, allowing Progressive Elitists to dictate our values to us and to micromanage our lives.
Update 21 April 2015: If man-made global warming is causing asthma attacks as the EPA and Obama claim, why is it that hospital admissions for asthma are lower in the summer than in the winter? If the claim is that smog and ozone are playing a role, then how is it that asthma prevalence has increased while both smog and ozone have generally decreased each decade since 1970? What is more, ozone and smog levels caused by man are surely higher in metropolitan areas than outside them, so why is the prevalence of asthma lower in metropolitan areas than in non-metropolitan areas? The EPA claims that common pollutant emissions are down 62% as of 2013 from levels in 1980! Smog is down 33% since 1980 according to the EPA. Is it possible to be more irrational than this Obama EPA is in its asthma claims?
In examining this, I am going to use information from a slide presentation on the prevalence of asthma in the US by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is found at the bottom of the page here.
Now, it might be that emissions from coal-fired power plants are the exception and this is a known cause. Let us see if that would be consistent with other data of the CDC.
This graph shows increasing asthma from 1980 to 1996 and then increasing asthma from 2001 to 2010. The gap in data is because the method for making the determination of asthma prevalence changed in the years between these two sets of data, so it is difficult to be sure that we are comparing apples to apples. The apparent increase in asthma is very large in this time. The odd thing is that the fraction of electric power generation by coal fell in this time and of that falling fraction, more and more effort was made to produce the power from coal more cleanly. If asthma increased from 3% of the population to 8% during this time, there must be factors causing asthma which are far more important than the contribution that might be made by coal.
It is interesting that the increase in asthma since 2011 is primarily due to an increase in asthma among Black Americans. Now it might be that coal-fired power plants are much more likely to be upwind of Black neighborhoods, the white Progressive Elitists being so efficient at Not in My Back Yard special interest tactics. But let us remember this difference as we look at the following data and remember that people of different ethnic backgrounds do often have different susceptibilities to different diseases.
Now this is fascinating data. Note how dramatically asthma prevalence changes by gender and age. Surely exposure to the emissions of pollutants does not change so dramatically by age or gender as this. It might be possible that the susceptibility to pollutants does change this dramatically, but that sure would seem to be a stretch. Boys to 14 years old are much more likely to have asthma than girls, but girls have a steadily increasing probability of becoming asthmatic through age 17 and then have a slight general decrease in asthma after that, while remaining much more likely than males to have asthma at all ages 18 and beyond. But males after 14 have a substantial lowering of probability to about age 44, before their probability starts to rise again. This happens despite the fact that men are more likely than women to spend more time outside in their adult years, where they are supposedly being more directly assaulted by the emissions of coal-fired power plants. These age and gender behaviors sure seem more likely to suggest a primarily internal biochemical cause as the primary cause of asthma.
Now here it is interesting to note that ethnic Asians are much less likely to have asthma. I doubt that ethnic Asians are much less likely to live downwind from coal-fired power generators than is the average American. In fact, a disproportionate fraction of them live in California, which despite its history of smog, has few coal-fired power plants. Also, while Native Americans have high rates of asthma, most of them live in the American West where coal-fired power plant density is low compared to that in the East. For some reason, people of multiple race have much higher rates of asthma than any other racial group, except those of Puerto Rican descent, who are about twice as likely as White Americans to suffer asthma. Once again, this would all seem more likely to point to asthma causes with more of a basis in human biochemistry than in exposure to coal-fired power plant emissions. Apparently, it is also very bad to have a low income.
By area of the country, it is slightly worse to be from the Northeast and Midwest than from the South and West. It is worse to be from outside a metropolitan area than from inside one, though the difference is small. In general, this makes one suspicious of the idea that pollution is an important cause of asthma. To be sure, one might question whether the use of insecticides by farmers might be the reason for higher rates outside of cities, but one would think if this were true that this would be well-documented. Besides, insecticides are actually used heavily in cities to fumigate dense housing from cockroaches and other insect inhabitants and mice and rats. Metro areas are hardly free of similar insecticides as are found in the country. The slightly greater non-metropolitan asthma percentage is more likely due to natural allergens such as pollen then it is to man-made chemicals. Many people with asthma have a very rough time when pollen levels are high. Again, this is a suggestion that the main causes of asthma are not environmental, but genetic or internal human biochemistry combined with natural irritants. This is so much the case that there is a small advantage in living in a metropolitan area where overall human emissions pollutant concentrations are much higher than in the non-metropolitan areas.
Of those who have asthma, are they more likely now than earlier to have more asthma attacks? Well no. The graph above shows a slight drop in the number having attacks in the last 12 months, whether children or adults. If the causes of asthma were environmental and those environmental factors were getting worse to cause an increase in the number of people reporting that they have asthma, then would it not be likely that the percentage of those with asthma who had attacks in the last 12 months would be increasing? That it is not seems to suggest a likelihood that asthma is caused by human biological factors and/or more people are becoming aware of what asthma is and are becoming conscious of having the disease.
Now, let us examine the data for those who have actually had an asthma attack in the last 12 months. Among those who have asthma, the percentage of each group having an asthma attack in the last 12 months varies very little. The very small differences in the percentage of each ethnic group's asthma population having an asthma attack in the last 12 months inclines one toward the idea there may be an asthma gene which one either has or does not have. The very similar percentages by region tends to argue that coal-fired power plants are at most a small factor and that environment generally is likely also to be a small factor.
This map of asthma incidence is remarkable. It is interesting that there are sharp gradients by state. Texas and Louisiana have low incidences, while New Mexico and Oklahoma have relatively high incidences of asthma in their populations. Washington and Oregon on the West Coast have high incidences, but California has a low incidence. All of the Rocky Mountain states have high incidences, despite those states not being noteworthy for pollution. A narrow band of states across the middle of the Great Plains has relatively high incidences, while states north and south of the band have low incidences. All of the South has a low incidence and all of the Northeast above the Mason-Dixon line has a high incidence.
The EPA makes the false claim that half the mercury in the atmosphere comes from coal-fired power plants. I proved this nonsense in my blog post Evaluating the Mercury Emissions Danger from Coal-Fired Power Plants. In that post, I showed that any mercury output from the coal-fired power plants was overwhelmed by natural sources of mercury in the atmosphere. I showed that there was a complete lack of correlation between the EPA map showing their claimed power plant mercury emissions and actual measurements of mercury precipitation from the atmosphere. However, their mercury emissions map may be of use here as a general measure of the pollutant output of coal-fired power plants, such as it is, around the country. If the plant is supposedly not removing mercury output, then there may be other pollutants it is not removing in proportional measure. So, here is that map:
Now comparing this map to the asthma prevalence by state in the map above this one, it is seen to be plausible that the high asthma incidences in the states Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky might be due to emissions from coal-fired power plants. But, there is almost no coal-fired power plant emission in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to explain their high asthma incidences. The large concentration of coal-fired power plants in East Texas where most of the state population is coexists with a very low incidence of asthma in Texas and downwind Louisiana. The high incidence of coal-fired power plants in northern Alabama and Georgia near those states highest population centers coexists with a low rate of asthma in those states. Oklahoma has a high rate of asthma, but its coal-fired power plants are almost all downwind of its population centers in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Norman, Lawton, and Edmond. It is also hard to understand how West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina can have low incidences of asthma with so many coal-fired power plants. In short, there is no correlation between the coal-fired power plant emissions and the incidence of asthma.
This is not too surprising given that the CDC started its slide presentation on asthma by stating that its causes were generally not known. The CDC has decades of skill in measuring and mapping the regional incidence of diseases and tracing them back to common sources. If coal-fired power plants were a significant cause of asthma, surely they would have identified this cause long ago.
You would never know about this glaring lack of evidence from the ads being shown of asthma-suffering children on TV lately, which the Progressive Elitist propagandists are shamelessly blaming on coal-fired power plants. This claim is as false and base as the claim that man's use of fossil fuels will cause catastrophic degradation of the environment and represents a threat to man's continued existence. There is no rational justification for the claims in either case made by the alarmists who are endeavoring without let-up to further empower the government to eliminate our equal, sovereign individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of our own happiness. It can only be understood as a power grab, allowing Progressive Elitists to dictate our values to us and to micromanage our lives.
Update 21 April 2015: If man-made global warming is causing asthma attacks as the EPA and Obama claim, why is it that hospital admissions for asthma are lower in the summer than in the winter? If the claim is that smog and ozone are playing a role, then how is it that asthma prevalence has increased while both smog and ozone have generally decreased each decade since 1970? What is more, ozone and smog levels caused by man are surely higher in metropolitan areas than outside them, so why is the prevalence of asthma lower in metropolitan areas than in non-metropolitan areas? The EPA claims that common pollutant emissions are down 62% as of 2013 from levels in 1980! Smog is down 33% since 1980 according to the EPA. Is it possible to be more irrational than this Obama EPA is in its asthma claims?
17 September 2014
Obama Cannot Kill King Coal
Some time ago I wrote an article called King Coal Will Continue to Rule the World. To follow up on that with aspects of the current situation let us note that:
- Japanese demand for natural gas increased greatly following the Fukushima disaster. This fueled an increase in natural gas prices throughout Asia and Europe.
- With natural gas prices so high in Europe, where little fracking is taking place, natural gas is affordable for energy production for electricity only during peak demand periods.
- What is affordable in Europe and elsewhere is American coal. US coal exports increased from 50.1 billion tons six years ago to 129 billion tons. This is an increase by a factor of 2.57 times!
- If you buy into the garbage idea that man's CO2 emissions have a catastrophic impact by causing severe global warming, is it really better that US coal be burned around the rest of the world and not in the electric generating plants of the US? Does it really make sense for us to increase our electricity costs by not using coal so the rest of the world can lower their costs by using American coal?
- If you believe that coal-fired power plants produce very harmful emissions such as mercury and sulfur, is it better to have our coal burned in power plants most of which are not as well scrubbed as our power plants? Of course, I have shown that mercury is not the problem our EPA has made it out to be here and here.
13 July 2014
Evaluating the Mercury Emissions Danger from Coal-Fired Power Plants
The Environmental Protection Agency has recently put into effect a ruling called Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) that requires power plants to greatly decrease their mercury emissions. This directive is aimed primarily at coal-fired power plants and is said to be authorized under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. The EPA claims that electric power units are responsible for 50% of the mercury air pollution in the United States. The EPA provides a U.S. map with power plant mercury air emission quantities as well, including a scary health claim.
Let us put this map into a rational perspective by comparing it with the total measured mercury air pollution across the country. In this way we can extract a good sense of the contribution of man-made power plant mercury air pollution compared to that of natural sources. If we live in an environment in which natural sources of mercury produce far more mercury emissions than do electric power plants, then we may look at the cost to benefit evaluation very differently than the power-lusting EPA does.
Now, I have actually done this in an earlier post on this blog using total mercury air deposition maps for the years 2009 and 2010. That post is Coal-Fired Power Plants Produce Insignificant Mercury. Clearly the EPA was either not interested enough to learn about the mercury pollution problem to read that post or it was so motivated by emotional political concerns that it knowingly ignored the facts of reality cogently explained in my previous post. However, in the interests of educating American voters, I will try to influence thinking Americans on this topic once again and use the newer total mercury air pollution maps of 2012 and 2011 to do so.
The Mercury Deposition Network measures the total deposition of mercury from the atmosphere each year at many stations across the USA. These maps are found here. The mercury deposition distributions from the atmosphere across the USA for 2011 and 2012 are shown below.
As in 2010 and 2009, the highest concentrations of mercury deposition from the atmosphere occur in the west, with particularly high rates in the Rocky Mountains, areas east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Southwest, and areas of the Great Plains states. The Southeast is much less bad and as one works up the East Coast through the Middle States into the Northeast, the amount of mercury deposition decreases. This general story of the mercury deposition concentrations is supported by all of the mercury deposition maps for the years 2009 - 2012.
California varies from year to year, having been rather bad in 2012, but not bad in 2011 and 2010, and somewhere in between in 2009. If electric generating plants produce half the mercury deposition in the US as the EPA claims, it sure is hard to imagine that the mercury output of electric power plants in California varied so much in those years to explain the major variations in mercury depositions there. It turns out that U.S. fires cause about as much mercury to become airborne as do electric generating plants. According to Willie Soon and Paul Driessen, U.S. fires produce an average of 44 tons of airborne mercury a year. Now, we can make some sense of the California variability. 2012 was a much worse fire year in California than the other three years and 2009 was the second worst of the four years.
Now according to the EPA, electric power plants in 2005 produced 53 tons of airborne mercury. This was down from 59 tons in 1990. It we assume the same rate of decrease after 2005 as between 1990 and 2005, in 2012 the mercury output would be estimated to be about 50 tons. This is barely more than the 44 tons due to wildfires in the U.S. This has consequences. If the EPA says that 50 tons of output is the source of half of the airborne mercury, then the wildfire contribution is 44%. This leaves very little for other man-made sources and for any other natural cause. This, I will demonstrate, is a crock!
To see why, let us look at the mercury deposition maps and compare them to the distribution of the electric power plants. The bulk of the electric power plants are in the East! The worst of the mercury deposition is well to the west of them. Since prevailing winds are from the west to the east, there is no way those huge swathes of red in the West are due to the electric generating plants mostly in the East! Even granted that there are more wildfires in the drier and more sparsely inhabited West than in the East, there is no way the 44% of the airborne mercury due to fires is the cause of those huge red areas. The numbers and the distribution of mercury do not add up. There are clearly natural sources of mercury that are much more important than the EPA's colorful and self-empowering story would allow.
To hammer another nail in this sadly incompetent or untruthful story, note that the EPA map of power plant emitters shows a very large concentration of such emitters in the Ohio Valley, stretching from Eastern Missouri; through southern Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; Kentucky, West Virginia, eastern Ohio, and western Pennsylvania. This cluster is such a large fraction of what the EPA says is 50% of the mercury airborne pollution, that if they were anywhere near right, there would be a bright red area where this cluster of power plants is and also to the east of them where the prevailing winds would carry their mercury output. So what do we see? We see some light red in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana that seems to carry over from the redder areas west of them. We see a lot of tan in Kentucky, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania. But note the particularly dense cluster of mercury output from power plants according to the dubious source of the EPA in eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania, and ask yourself why this is not the brightest of all red areas on the distribution maps. And ask why eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey are largely green, indicating a low deposition of mercury in those downwind areas.
Consider the case of Idaho. There are no power plant emission sites in the EPA map of such sites in Idaho. Washington and Oregon states to the west of it have almost no power plant emitters. Nonetheless, Idaho is in large part red in the two distribution maps here, as it was in the two earlier years as well. Why? It is not because Idaho is overwhelmed with forest fires. No, there are other important natural causes of mercury emissions which can produce much higher concentrations of airborne mercury depositions than can the densest cluster of power plants.
Overall, it is clear that the contribution electric power plants make to airborne mercury is actually trivial in comparison to natural sources of airborne mercury. As I pointed out in my previous post on this subject, this is likely mostly due to the wind erosion of the many mercury deposits brought to the surface by the volcanoes, which have long been extinct, but once were plentiful in the southern Rockies and in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is very clear that electric power plants produce insignificant quantities of airborne mercury compared to the natural sources.
So if the EPA actually cared about Americans' health and if airborne mercury actually was a danger to us, then it should find the natural sources of mercury and clean up those sites. Where a vein of cinnabar (mercury sulfide) is exposed, it would see to it that it was covered with a layer of concrete or in some other way kept from further erosion. Of course, the west is already covered in the dust from such sources, but finding the richer sources of mercury would in time decrease the hazards. Such an effort would have more effect than cleaning up the electric power plants in all likelihood, given the puny mercury output of the power plants.
In the meantime, people who choose to live in the West should at least be educated that they are exposing themselves to this mercury hazard. Except, if it really is a hazard of great concern, then we should see significant health problems in the American West due to the high concentrations of airborne mercury there. We should have no need to refer to far away island peoples with a heavy seafood intake to evaluate the medical problems caused by mercury. This is what the EPA seems to do, though it will not make those studies public and some such studies are known to show no real problems. There is general agreement though that most of human intake of mercury is due to eating seafood or fish from mercury-rich streams and rivers. Eons of natural erosion of mercury deposits and volcanic outputs have loaded the oceans with about 200 ppm of mercury.
So are there any studies that show that the high concentration areas for airborne mercury in the West are the cause of elevated mercury illness problems? No, not that I can find. Is there any evidence of higher rates of mercury induced illness in the areas around the cluster of power plants on the Ohio River, especially in southern and eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania? There is a study by the West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources entitled Exposure to Mercury in West Virginia by Barbara J. Smith that concludes:
Shutdowns will result in the rot of large capital investments, the loss of jobs, and required replacement of plants with new plants which will direct more capital away from other business endeavors. In some cases, electricity capacity shortages may result. The installation of new scrubbers that can remove mercury will also redirect capital from other endeavors and it will increase the cost of electricity production. In both cases, the added capital investment will require electricity cost increases for consumers.
If the mercury emissions of power plants were significant compared to natural sources and if some health consequences in areas of high mercury deposition could be demonstrated, then it would be rational to make a cost-benefit analysis of power plants that emit mercury. One might conclude that the installation of mercury scrubbers was necessary or that coal had to be replaced by natural gas as the fuel. However, given that neither of these rationally critical conditions can be shown to exist, it is a fool's errand to require the actions the EPA has mandated with the MATS ruling.
Given the false story the EPA is telling about airborne mercury depositions, it is clear that it is either incredibly incompetent in making rational scientific and economic assessments and/or that it is simply and only interested in increasing its own power. There is good reason to believe that "and" and not "or" applies in that statement. The story the EPA tells when it claims carbon dioxide is a pollutant which will cause catastrophic man-made global warming is just another such case in which its science and economics are extremely deficient. Once again, in the carbon dioxide emissions case, it is also very clear that the EPA is only interested in gaining power.
It is also very clear that the EPA is fulfilling Obama's and the Progressive Elitists' vendetta against coal under both MATS and under its claim that CO2 is a pollutant. Having a renegade administration that is trying to wipe out a major coal and energy industry is very harmful to our standard of living. This is even worse given that they have reduced our production of oil and gas on federal lands and offshore as well.
Let us put this map into a rational perspective by comparing it with the total measured mercury air pollution across the country. In this way we can extract a good sense of the contribution of man-made power plant mercury air pollution compared to that of natural sources. If we live in an environment in which natural sources of mercury produce far more mercury emissions than do electric power plants, then we may look at the cost to benefit evaluation very differently than the power-lusting EPA does.
Now, I have actually done this in an earlier post on this blog using total mercury air deposition maps for the years 2009 and 2010. That post is Coal-Fired Power Plants Produce Insignificant Mercury. Clearly the EPA was either not interested enough to learn about the mercury pollution problem to read that post or it was so motivated by emotional political concerns that it knowingly ignored the facts of reality cogently explained in my previous post. However, in the interests of educating American voters, I will try to influence thinking Americans on this topic once again and use the newer total mercury air pollution maps of 2012 and 2011 to do so.
The Mercury Deposition Network measures the total deposition of mercury from the atmosphere each year at many stations across the USA. These maps are found here. The mercury deposition distributions from the atmosphere across the USA for 2011 and 2012 are shown below.
As in 2010 and 2009, the highest concentrations of mercury deposition from the atmosphere occur in the west, with particularly high rates in the Rocky Mountains, areas east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Southwest, and areas of the Great Plains states. The Southeast is much less bad and as one works up the East Coast through the Middle States into the Northeast, the amount of mercury deposition decreases. This general story of the mercury deposition concentrations is supported by all of the mercury deposition maps for the years 2009 - 2012.
California varies from year to year, having been rather bad in 2012, but not bad in 2011 and 2010, and somewhere in between in 2009. If electric generating plants produce half the mercury deposition in the US as the EPA claims, it sure is hard to imagine that the mercury output of electric power plants in California varied so much in those years to explain the major variations in mercury depositions there. It turns out that U.S. fires cause about as much mercury to become airborne as do electric generating plants. According to Willie Soon and Paul Driessen, U.S. fires produce an average of 44 tons of airborne mercury a year. Now, we can make some sense of the California variability. 2012 was a much worse fire year in California than the other three years and 2009 was the second worst of the four years.
Now according to the EPA, electric power plants in 2005 produced 53 tons of airborne mercury. This was down from 59 tons in 1990. It we assume the same rate of decrease after 2005 as between 1990 and 2005, in 2012 the mercury output would be estimated to be about 50 tons. This is barely more than the 44 tons due to wildfires in the U.S. This has consequences. If the EPA says that 50 tons of output is the source of half of the airborne mercury, then the wildfire contribution is 44%. This leaves very little for other man-made sources and for any other natural cause. This, I will demonstrate, is a crock!
To see why, let us look at the mercury deposition maps and compare them to the distribution of the electric power plants. The bulk of the electric power plants are in the East! The worst of the mercury deposition is well to the west of them. Since prevailing winds are from the west to the east, there is no way those huge swathes of red in the West are due to the electric generating plants mostly in the East! Even granted that there are more wildfires in the drier and more sparsely inhabited West than in the East, there is no way the 44% of the airborne mercury due to fires is the cause of those huge red areas. The numbers and the distribution of mercury do not add up. There are clearly natural sources of mercury that are much more important than the EPA's colorful and self-empowering story would allow.
To hammer another nail in this sadly incompetent or untruthful story, note that the EPA map of power plant emitters shows a very large concentration of such emitters in the Ohio Valley, stretching from Eastern Missouri; through southern Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; Kentucky, West Virginia, eastern Ohio, and western Pennsylvania. This cluster is such a large fraction of what the EPA says is 50% of the mercury airborne pollution, that if they were anywhere near right, there would be a bright red area where this cluster of power plants is and also to the east of them where the prevailing winds would carry their mercury output. So what do we see? We see some light red in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana that seems to carry over from the redder areas west of them. We see a lot of tan in Kentucky, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania. But note the particularly dense cluster of mercury output from power plants according to the dubious source of the EPA in eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania, and ask yourself why this is not the brightest of all red areas on the distribution maps. And ask why eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey are largely green, indicating a low deposition of mercury in those downwind areas.
Consider the case of Idaho. There are no power plant emission sites in the EPA map of such sites in Idaho. Washington and Oregon states to the west of it have almost no power plant emitters. Nonetheless, Idaho is in large part red in the two distribution maps here, as it was in the two earlier years as well. Why? It is not because Idaho is overwhelmed with forest fires. No, there are other important natural causes of mercury emissions which can produce much higher concentrations of airborne mercury depositions than can the densest cluster of power plants.
Overall, it is clear that the contribution electric power plants make to airborne mercury is actually trivial in comparison to natural sources of airborne mercury. As I pointed out in my previous post on this subject, this is likely mostly due to the wind erosion of the many mercury deposits brought to the surface by the volcanoes, which have long been extinct, but once were plentiful in the southern Rockies and in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is very clear that electric power plants produce insignificant quantities of airborne mercury compared to the natural sources.
So if the EPA actually cared about Americans' health and if airborne mercury actually was a danger to us, then it should find the natural sources of mercury and clean up those sites. Where a vein of cinnabar (mercury sulfide) is exposed, it would see to it that it was covered with a layer of concrete or in some other way kept from further erosion. Of course, the west is already covered in the dust from such sources, but finding the richer sources of mercury would in time decrease the hazards. Such an effort would have more effect than cleaning up the electric power plants in all likelihood, given the puny mercury output of the power plants.
In the meantime, people who choose to live in the West should at least be educated that they are exposing themselves to this mercury hazard. Except, if it really is a hazard of great concern, then we should see significant health problems in the American West due to the high concentrations of airborne mercury there. We should have no need to refer to far away island peoples with a heavy seafood intake to evaluate the medical problems caused by mercury. This is what the EPA seems to do, though it will not make those studies public and some such studies are known to show no real problems. There is general agreement though that most of human intake of mercury is due to eating seafood or fish from mercury-rich streams and rivers. Eons of natural erosion of mercury deposits and volcanic outputs have loaded the oceans with about 200 ppm of mercury.
So are there any studies that show that the high concentration areas for airborne mercury in the West are the cause of elevated mercury illness problems? No, not that I can find. Is there any evidence of higher rates of mercury induced illness in the areas around the cluster of power plants on the Ohio River, especially in southern and eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania? There is a study by the West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources entitled Exposure to Mercury in West Virginia by Barbara J. Smith that concludes:
Data are inadequate to determine if:
• mercury in West Virginia fish tissue is increasing or decreasing,
• West Virginian’s are exposed to more mercury than people in the United States,
• reducing mercury emissions in West Virginia will result in reductions in mercury residues in fish caught in West Virginia waters and
• adverse health effects are occurring in West Virginian’s due to mercury exposures fromIt seems clear that epidemiologists and physicians have been unable to find any connection to date either between the comparatively high mercury deposition rates throughout much of the American West or in the vicinity of the major cluster of power plants in the Ohio Valley. This has not inhibited the EPA in proclaiming itself a hero in stopping evil power plant operators from spewing mercury into the air. No, even though power plant mercury is clearly of insignificant quantities relative to natural sources, the plant owners are expected to shut down or make very expensive installations of scrubbers to remove all traces of mercury from their emissions.
eating fish.
Shutdowns will result in the rot of large capital investments, the loss of jobs, and required replacement of plants with new plants which will direct more capital away from other business endeavors. In some cases, electricity capacity shortages may result. The installation of new scrubbers that can remove mercury will also redirect capital from other endeavors and it will increase the cost of electricity production. In both cases, the added capital investment will require electricity cost increases for consumers.
If the mercury emissions of power plants were significant compared to natural sources and if some health consequences in areas of high mercury deposition could be demonstrated, then it would be rational to make a cost-benefit analysis of power plants that emit mercury. One might conclude that the installation of mercury scrubbers was necessary or that coal had to be replaced by natural gas as the fuel. However, given that neither of these rationally critical conditions can be shown to exist, it is a fool's errand to require the actions the EPA has mandated with the MATS ruling.
Given the false story the EPA is telling about airborne mercury depositions, it is clear that it is either incredibly incompetent in making rational scientific and economic assessments and/or that it is simply and only interested in increasing its own power. There is good reason to believe that "and" and not "or" applies in that statement. The story the EPA tells when it claims carbon dioxide is a pollutant which will cause catastrophic man-made global warming is just another such case in which its science and economics are extremely deficient. Once again, in the carbon dioxide emissions case, it is also very clear that the EPA is only interested in gaining power.
It is also very clear that the EPA is fulfilling Obama's and the Progressive Elitists' vendetta against coal under both MATS and under its claim that CO2 is a pollutant. Having a renegade administration that is trying to wipe out a major coal and energy industry is very harmful to our standard of living. This is even worse given that they have reduced our production of oil and gas on federal lands and offshore as well.
11 April 2013
European Energy Silliness: Wood is Top Renewable Fuel
Despite the huge investments in wind and solar renewable energy in Europe, the top form of renewable energy is wood biomass. About half of Europe's much hyped effort to advance renewable forms of energy has wound up in wood fuel according to the 6 - 12 April issue of the Economist. Even in Germany, 38% of non-fossil fuel consumption is wood. In Poland and Finland, 80% of the renewable energy is from wood.
Wood, unlike wind and solar, is at least reliable. The EU effort to get 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 is impossible based on wind and solar. Wood makes this possible.
Coal-fired power plants have been under pressure due to the production of carbon dioxide, which according to fable will cause catastrophic man-made global warming. So, the power companies with coal-fired power plants like wood because they can easily modify a coal-fired power plant to mix in 10% wood pellets. In Great Britain, power plants are given a huge subsidy to use wood and this is causing a number of coal-fired power plants to convert to wood use.
So much wood is being used for fuel that Europe is importing considerable wood. In 2012, Europe used 13 million tonnes or 13 billion kilograms. A tonne is a metric ton or 2204.6 pounds. Europe is expected to use 25 to 30 million tonnes of wood pellets in 2020. In 2010, wood pellet imports increased by 50%. Global trade in wood pellets is expected to shoot up from about 10 to 12 million tonnes now to about 60 million tonnes by 2020. Much of this wood comes from western Canada and the southern U.S.
Consequently, prices for wood are rising rapidly. Wood pellet prices rose from $116 a tonne in August 2010 to $129 a tonne in December 2012. Prices of hardwood from western Canada rose by 60% since the end of 2011. These wood price increases have contributed to the closing of about 20 large saw mills making particle board in Europe over the last five years. The higher prices are creating difficult times for pulp and paper companies, as well as furniture makers.
Burning wood pellets in coal-fired power plants makes no sense at all. It was early on claimed that burning wood was carbon neutral, since as the trees grew, they removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There are many problems with this. If you use hardwood pellets from western Canada, the output of CO2 from coal-fired plants using 10% wood pellets occurs now and it may take 100 years of new trees growing in western Canada to remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as is being emitted now. In addition, making the wood pellets uses considerable energy and transporting them from North America to Europe uses still more. It has been calculated that with the British subsidy of 45 Pounds per MWH of electricity, switching from gas to wood saves one tonne of CO2 emission at a cost of 225 pounds. That is very expensive for an idea based on a failed hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming and a bad accounting of the total carbon dioxide emissions due to using wood pellet as fuel.
There are other considerations. Land not used to grow trees can be used for other purposes that have value. Taxpayers have to pay the subsidy money. Consumers pay higher electricity costs, as well as higher particle board, paper, cardboard, board, and furniture costs. They are forced to do this on the basis of a false hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming and concern for fossil fuel supplies in the face of the huge supplies of coal and natural gas now made available by hydraulic fracturing technology.
European socialism can sure cause Europeans to pursue and enforce some very silly ideas.
Wood, unlike wind and solar, is at least reliable. The EU effort to get 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 is impossible based on wind and solar. Wood makes this possible.
Coal-fired power plants have been under pressure due to the production of carbon dioxide, which according to fable will cause catastrophic man-made global warming. So, the power companies with coal-fired power plants like wood because they can easily modify a coal-fired power plant to mix in 10% wood pellets. In Great Britain, power plants are given a huge subsidy to use wood and this is causing a number of coal-fired power plants to convert to wood use.
So much wood is being used for fuel that Europe is importing considerable wood. In 2012, Europe used 13 million tonnes or 13 billion kilograms. A tonne is a metric ton or 2204.6 pounds. Europe is expected to use 25 to 30 million tonnes of wood pellets in 2020. In 2010, wood pellet imports increased by 50%. Global trade in wood pellets is expected to shoot up from about 10 to 12 million tonnes now to about 60 million tonnes by 2020. Much of this wood comes from western Canada and the southern U.S.
Consequently, prices for wood are rising rapidly. Wood pellet prices rose from $116 a tonne in August 2010 to $129 a tonne in December 2012. Prices of hardwood from western Canada rose by 60% since the end of 2011. These wood price increases have contributed to the closing of about 20 large saw mills making particle board in Europe over the last five years. The higher prices are creating difficult times for pulp and paper companies, as well as furniture makers.
Burning wood pellets in coal-fired power plants makes no sense at all. It was early on claimed that burning wood was carbon neutral, since as the trees grew, they removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There are many problems with this. If you use hardwood pellets from western Canada, the output of CO2 from coal-fired plants using 10% wood pellets occurs now and it may take 100 years of new trees growing in western Canada to remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as is being emitted now. In addition, making the wood pellets uses considerable energy and transporting them from North America to Europe uses still more. It has been calculated that with the British subsidy of 45 Pounds per MWH of electricity, switching from gas to wood saves one tonne of CO2 emission at a cost of 225 pounds. That is very expensive for an idea based on a failed hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming and a bad accounting of the total carbon dioxide emissions due to using wood pellet as fuel.
There are other considerations. Land not used to grow trees can be used for other purposes that have value. Taxpayers have to pay the subsidy money. Consumers pay higher electricity costs, as well as higher particle board, paper, cardboard, board, and furniture costs. They are forced to do this on the basis of a false hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming and concern for fossil fuel supplies in the face of the huge supplies of coal and natural gas now made available by hydraulic fracturing technology.
European socialism can sure cause Europeans to pursue and enforce some very silly ideas.
24 October 2012
Obama's Glass House: His Investments Abroad
Obama and Biden like to claim that Bain Capital had the companies it invested in make investments abroad, especially in China or Mexico. It turns out that they count heavily on the main stream leftist media to protect their glass house from stone throwers.
Thanks to Obama's insistence that the government take a big stake in the bankrupt GM after its restructuring as a government and union owned company, it is fully fair to look at its investments abroad if one is going to cast aspersions on those of Bain Capital abroad.
According to China Daily, GM is expanding its investment in China from its current $1 billion a year to $1.5 billion a year to make a total investment in China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) of $7 billion. GM hopes to increase its sales in China from 2.35 million vehicles in 2010 to 5 million by 2015. To do this, it is designing and developing new models in China. GM production plants in China are joint ventures with the Chinese Communist Government.
GM announced in 2011 the investment of $540 million in a plant in Mexico to make engines. In July of this year, it announced the planned investment of $420 million in two factories to make the Chevrolet Trax and full-sized trucks.
How about Obama's promise to create American jobs of the future in green energy? This effort was promoted by Section 48C Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits. 41% of its awards went to foreign-based companies who were awarded an average of $20 million compared to an average of $11 million for U.S.-based companies! 17 of the 25 foreign-based companies receiving Obama awards are or have plans to set up wind or solar manufacturing facilities in low-wage countries. Those 17 foreign-based companies manufacturing in low-wage countries accounted for $406 million, so a super premium award averaging $23.9 million goes to those manufacturing in low-wage countries. Six of the U.S.-based companies with awards are also planning to manufacture their products in low-wage countries.
As almost everyone now knows, Obama only picks the loser green energy companies for awards. As these companies have gone bankrupt, their assets are often picked up on the cheap by foreign investors or companies.
Miasole, a U.S. solar energy company, received $101.8 million in tax credits. In October 2012, it was sold to China's Hanergy Holding Company for a mere $30 million.
Ener1 was approved for $118.5 million of 48C tax credits in 2009 for its batteries. Biden toured its plant in Indiana just after Obama announced his plan to have 1 million electric vehicles operating by 2015. In January 2011, the same month as the Biden tour, Ener1 entered into a joint venture with Wanxiang Electric Vehicle Co. to make lithium-ion batteries for Chinese cars. Ener1 moved some of its engineers to China along with some of its manufacturing equipment to ramp up the Chinese production. In 2010, Ener1 lost $165 million. In January 2012, Ener1 declared bankruptcy. Its remains were bought by a Russian businessman with close ties to the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who Obama patted on the knee and told he would be more flexible after the election. Perhaps in addition to giving the Russians what they want on missile defense, he also plans to give them more American green energy businesses nurtured on 48C tax credits.
Smith Electric Vehicles was awarded $32 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money. Its losses since 2009 have been $128 million. In February 2011, it teamed with Wanxiang Electric Vehicle Co. to make school buses. Their agreement had Wanxiang make a $25 million equity investment in Smith Electric Vehicles and an investment of $75 million to develop and manufacture school buses and other electric vehicles in China.
Cardinal Fastener received $480,000 from Obama's 48C tax credit program to make fasteners for wind energy generators. Obama visited their factory in Bedford Heights, Ohio and promised American green energy jobs, as he always does. Soon afterward, Cardinal Fastener released 12% of its workforce. In June 2011, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Germany's Wurth Group acquired it in January 2012 for a mere $3.9 million.
Remembering Obama's not so ready shovel-ready infrastructure projects, some wound up being managed and supplied by foreign companies. ABC News highlighted a $400 million bridge renovation project in New York, the new $7.2 billion Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland, and a $190 million project in Alaska which were to be managed by foreign firms. Parts of the San Francisco - Oakland bridge were manufactured in China. The state of California had to reject some of the federal money so they could keep their Chinese contractor.
Finally, if you want to encourage American companies to invest in plants and facilities abroad and to train workers there rather than in the U.S., leave the developed world's highest corporate tax rate where it is as the trend in the rest of the developed world is to decrease corporation taxes. You can export even more jobs by raising the long-term capital gains tax from an already high 20.0% to 23.8% as required by ObamaUncaringTax in 2013. Add a 4.7% tax increase for Medicare to high paid managers so small and medium businesses will be discouraged from expanding operations in the U.S. Follow this up with another 80,000 pages of new business regulations and add the regulations of ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank Too-Big-to-Fail to that. Then throw in a slew of EPA rulings to take effect after the election, several of which are designed to keep us from using coal for anything, thus driving up our electricity costs and making vital electricity less dependable. Export American jobs so they can use cheap coal-fired power plants abroad.
To top this all off, the gift for a 10-year veteran of the Obama Veterans Administration is a pen set made in China.
Obama's complaints about Bain Capital foreign investments are a case of incredible hypocrisy. Obama is a con man, but how he can even dream that this level of hypocrisy will go undetected by Americans is beyond me. Or maybe not. He does think we are incredibly, stone-like stupid. For that reason alone, we should vote him out of office.
Thanks to Obama's insistence that the government take a big stake in the bankrupt GM after its restructuring as a government and union owned company, it is fully fair to look at its investments abroad if one is going to cast aspersions on those of Bain Capital abroad.
According to China Daily, GM is expanding its investment in China from its current $1 billion a year to $1.5 billion a year to make a total investment in China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) of $7 billion. GM hopes to increase its sales in China from 2.35 million vehicles in 2010 to 5 million by 2015. To do this, it is designing and developing new models in China. GM production plants in China are joint ventures with the Chinese Communist Government.
GM announced in 2011 the investment of $540 million in a plant in Mexico to make engines. In July of this year, it announced the planned investment of $420 million in two factories to make the Chevrolet Trax and full-sized trucks.
How about Obama's promise to create American jobs of the future in green energy? This effort was promoted by Section 48C Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits. 41% of its awards went to foreign-based companies who were awarded an average of $20 million compared to an average of $11 million for U.S.-based companies! 17 of the 25 foreign-based companies receiving Obama awards are or have plans to set up wind or solar manufacturing facilities in low-wage countries. Those 17 foreign-based companies manufacturing in low-wage countries accounted for $406 million, so a super premium award averaging $23.9 million goes to those manufacturing in low-wage countries. Six of the U.S.-based companies with awards are also planning to manufacture their products in low-wage countries.
As almost everyone now knows, Obama only picks the loser green energy companies for awards. As these companies have gone bankrupt, their assets are often picked up on the cheap by foreign investors or companies.
Miasole, a U.S. solar energy company, received $101.8 million in tax credits. In October 2012, it was sold to China's Hanergy Holding Company for a mere $30 million.
Ener1 was approved for $118.5 million of 48C tax credits in 2009 for its batteries. Biden toured its plant in Indiana just after Obama announced his plan to have 1 million electric vehicles operating by 2015. In January 2011, the same month as the Biden tour, Ener1 entered into a joint venture with Wanxiang Electric Vehicle Co. to make lithium-ion batteries for Chinese cars. Ener1 moved some of its engineers to China along with some of its manufacturing equipment to ramp up the Chinese production. In 2010, Ener1 lost $165 million. In January 2012, Ener1 declared bankruptcy. Its remains were bought by a Russian businessman with close ties to the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who Obama patted on the knee and told he would be more flexible after the election. Perhaps in addition to giving the Russians what they want on missile defense, he also plans to give them more American green energy businesses nurtured on 48C tax credits.
Smith Electric Vehicles was awarded $32 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money. Its losses since 2009 have been $128 million. In February 2011, it teamed with Wanxiang Electric Vehicle Co. to make school buses. Their agreement had Wanxiang make a $25 million equity investment in Smith Electric Vehicles and an investment of $75 million to develop and manufacture school buses and other electric vehicles in China.
Cardinal Fastener received $480,000 from Obama's 48C tax credit program to make fasteners for wind energy generators. Obama visited their factory in Bedford Heights, Ohio and promised American green energy jobs, as he always does. Soon afterward, Cardinal Fastener released 12% of its workforce. In June 2011, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Germany's Wurth Group acquired it in January 2012 for a mere $3.9 million.
Remembering Obama's not so ready shovel-ready infrastructure projects, some wound up being managed and supplied by foreign companies. ABC News highlighted a $400 million bridge renovation project in New York, the new $7.2 billion Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland, and a $190 million project in Alaska which were to be managed by foreign firms. Parts of the San Francisco - Oakland bridge were manufactured in China. The state of California had to reject some of the federal money so they could keep their Chinese contractor.
Finally, if you want to encourage American companies to invest in plants and facilities abroad and to train workers there rather than in the U.S., leave the developed world's highest corporate tax rate where it is as the trend in the rest of the developed world is to decrease corporation taxes. You can export even more jobs by raising the long-term capital gains tax from an already high 20.0% to 23.8% as required by ObamaUncaringTax in 2013. Add a 4.7% tax increase for Medicare to high paid managers so small and medium businesses will be discouraged from expanding operations in the U.S. Follow this up with another 80,000 pages of new business regulations and add the regulations of ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank Too-Big-to-Fail to that. Then throw in a slew of EPA rulings to take effect after the election, several of which are designed to keep us from using coal for anything, thus driving up our electricity costs and making vital electricity less dependable. Export American jobs so they can use cheap coal-fired power plants abroad.
To top this all off, the gift for a 10-year veteran of the Obama Veterans Administration is a pen set made in China.
Obama's complaints about Bain Capital foreign investments are a case of incredible hypocrisy. Obama is a con man, but how he can even dream that this level of hypocrisy will go undetected by Americans is beyond me. Or maybe not. He does think we are incredibly, stone-like stupid. For that reason alone, we should vote him out of office.
01 October 2012
Obama NASA Adjusts Temperatures Again to Increase Rate of Rise
The claim that global temperatures are rising at unprecedented and disastrous rates due to fossil fuel use lies at the root of numerous Obama policies harmful to our economy. Among them are:
Note that the direction of these changes seems very improbable. One would think one of the biggest effects that would require temperature adjustments would be the urban heat island effect. The population around the world has generally increased greatly since 1880, so there should be downward corrections to compensate for that effect on weather stations in populated areas as the populations grow. The urban heat island effect adjustments should be all the greater on recent temperature data since many rural temperature stations have been removed from the sensing system and urban stations are now a much increased fraction of the stations submitting data. Among my earlier posts dealing with the problems of urban heat island effects and adjustments to skew the record toward greater relative temperature increases in recent times are those here, here, here, here, and here.
Hoven notes that despite the temperature changes, the first 8 months of 2012 make it the tenth hottest year in the 131 year record, every month of 1998 was hotter than the corresponding month of 2012, except for tied records in May, and the global trend since 2002 is one of cooling. And Antarctica has the highest sea ice record ever observed.
The pressure on the Obama NASA to make temperature adjustments to help justify his many economy killing actions might well be very severe in these final weeks before the November election. At this point, after years of opaqueness on the part of the Obama administration, it is no surprise to have another surprise adjustment of the temperature record to hype the alarmist claims of catastrophic man-made global warming. After all, one really does need a justification for putting hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of people out of work or preventing them from getting the jobs that would be created if we took good advantage of America's abundant fossil fuel energy resources. For more on how abundant our fossil fuel resources are, see here, here, and here.
- Forcing coal-fired power plants to implement much more rigorous efforts to remove trace amounts of mercury and to sequester CO2 emissions. Though these regulations are not to take effect until after the election, they are forcing the shutdown of power plants and coal mining operations now.
- The refusal to approve the building of the Keystone XL pipeline.
- The slowdown and minimization of permits to develop oil and gas on federal lands, which are extremely large areas of the Western US.
- The prohibition of offshore leases off the Pacific, Atlantic, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
- New federal regulations on fracking which were issued in April.
- New regulations on emissions from refineries, causing them new expenses.
- The new CAFE requirement that cars and light-duty trucks must average 54.5 mpg by 2025.
- Heavy subsidies for electric cars that no one wants even given the subsidy, thereby forcing DOD and other government agencies to buy these undesirable cars.
- Heavy subsidies and mandates requiring the use of electricity from wind, solar, biomass and other green energy which are greatly increasing electricity costs and decreasing the electric grid reliability.
Note that the direction of these changes seems very improbable. One would think one of the biggest effects that would require temperature adjustments would be the urban heat island effect. The population around the world has generally increased greatly since 1880, so there should be downward corrections to compensate for that effect on weather stations in populated areas as the populations grow. The urban heat island effect adjustments should be all the greater on recent temperature data since many rural temperature stations have been removed from the sensing system and urban stations are now a much increased fraction of the stations submitting data. Among my earlier posts dealing with the problems of urban heat island effects and adjustments to skew the record toward greater relative temperature increases in recent times are those here, here, here, here, and here.
Hoven notes that despite the temperature changes, the first 8 months of 2012 make it the tenth hottest year in the 131 year record, every month of 1998 was hotter than the corresponding month of 2012, except for tied records in May, and the global trend since 2002 is one of cooling. And Antarctica has the highest sea ice record ever observed.
The pressure on the Obama NASA to make temperature adjustments to help justify his many economy killing actions might well be very severe in these final weeks before the November election. At this point, after years of opaqueness on the part of the Obama administration, it is no surprise to have another surprise adjustment of the temperature record to hype the alarmist claims of catastrophic man-made global warming. After all, one really does need a justification for putting hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of people out of work or preventing them from getting the jobs that would be created if we took good advantage of America's abundant fossil fuel energy resources. For more on how abundant our fossil fuel resources are, see here, here, and here.
09 April 2012
Coal-Fired Power Plants Produce Insignificant Mercury
Back in December, I wrote about the absurdity of the EPA claim that coal-fired power plants produced significant mercury which necessitated drastic reductions at any cost. I was then puzzled that the EPA did not produce maps of the mercury concentrations that would show the mercury was found in higher concentrations downwind of coal-fired power plants. It turns out that maps of the concentrations of mercury do exist and can be examined. The National Atmospheric Deposition Program produces annual maps of the mercury concentrations across the USA here. Note that the mercury high concentration areas changed somewhat between 2009 and 2010, but coal-fired power plants do not have giant chicken legs to rise up and walk to a new location. But, the highest mercury concentrations are in the Southern Rocky Mountains and in the plains states just to the west of those southern Rocky Mountains.
The hottest areas for mercury are the states of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and other states near them. Florida is a bit warm also. So one would conclude that most of our coal-fired power plants are in southern California and the Southwest in general. I do not know how one would explain the high concentrations in Florida. But let us look at where the coal-fired power plants are then.
Of course, as you already knew, most of them are in the eastern half of the United States. There are only a few dinky coal-fired power plants in southern California and most of those in Arizona are in northeastern Arizona. There is a large concentration of coal-fired power plants in the Ohio River Valley and no lack of them in Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Despite this huge concentration of coal-fired power plants, the East Coast Mid-Atlantic states are relatively green, which means they have lower mercury concentrations than the western part of the USA. Being downwind of a coal-fired power plant does not appear to be anything like as important a factor as natural geographic sources of mercury are. The mercury concentration maps give no hint of a mercury plume to the east of a power plant or even to the east of a concentration of large coal-fired power plants. We should see such a plume due to the prevailing wind direction.
Update: I noted in my earlier post referred to above that coal-fired power plants produce about 41 to 48 tons of mercury a year. That post observed that forest fires in the US were estimated to release about 48 tons of mercury a year. Most of the big forest fires occur in the West, especially in many areas consistent with high concentrations in this map due to dry climates and low population densities drawing fewer fire-fighters. If these were the only sources of mercury, then the distribution of mercury across the US would still not differ much East to West since the forest fires of the West would be balanced by the higher concentration of coal-fired power plants in the East.
So what is the likely cause of the high mercury concentrations that are observed in the Southern Rockies and in the plains states to the west, especially the northwest, of them? In comparison to these puny sources of mercury, volcanoes, subsea vents, and geysers are thought to produce 9 to 10K tons of mercury a year. The areas of high mercury concentrations do not correlate very well with the newer and more active volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest in the US, however. But, it turns out that they correlate well with the old volcanoes of the Rocky Mountains shown in white in the map here and shown below:
It is well-known to geologists that the southern Rocky Mountains are much richer in minerals and precious metals than the northern Rockies because volcanoes and rising magma played a much greater role in their formation. I expect the high mercury concentration areas are due to the erosion of mercury mineral deposits, commonly cinnabar, in these old volcanoes and from their environs. The mercury released by forest fires is clear evidence that there is substantial mercury in the ground in the West already distributed about. The Rockies have been eroding for a very long time now and mercury is distributed over long distances from these old volcanoes by winds and eastward flowing rivers. The rivers flow into the Mississippi, so none of the mercury they transport goes east of the Mississippi River. This is my best guess about the source in any case. Update End.
Once again we see that the EPA does not use rational science to govern its actions, even when those actions will have drastic negative consequences for the economy and put many people out of jobs. Hauling coal by train to power plants, operating the power plants, and extracting coal from the ground all provide many hard-working Americans with jobs. We also have huge coal reserves, which it makes more sense to burn to create electricity than it does to use natural gas which is better for making plastics and other products. Of course, now natural gas is inexpensive and it is being used to generate electricity. I am happy to leave how it will be used to the free market, but I do not want the EPA under the guidance of the ever-foolish Obama pushing and shoving the free market to influence such decisions.
Of course, as you already knew, most of them are in the eastern half of the United States. There are only a few dinky coal-fired power plants in southern California and most of those in Arizona are in northeastern Arizona. There is a large concentration of coal-fired power plants in the Ohio River Valley and no lack of them in Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Despite this huge concentration of coal-fired power plants, the East Coast Mid-Atlantic states are relatively green, which means they have lower mercury concentrations than the western part of the USA. Being downwind of a coal-fired power plant does not appear to be anything like as important a factor as natural geographic sources of mercury are. The mercury concentration maps give no hint of a mercury plume to the east of a power plant or even to the east of a concentration of large coal-fired power plants. We should see such a plume due to the prevailing wind direction.
Update: I noted in my earlier post referred to above that coal-fired power plants produce about 41 to 48 tons of mercury a year. That post observed that forest fires in the US were estimated to release about 48 tons of mercury a year. Most of the big forest fires occur in the West, especially in many areas consistent with high concentrations in this map due to dry climates and low population densities drawing fewer fire-fighters. If these were the only sources of mercury, then the distribution of mercury across the US would still not differ much East to West since the forest fires of the West would be balanced by the higher concentration of coal-fired power plants in the East.
So what is the likely cause of the high mercury concentrations that are observed in the Southern Rockies and in the plains states to the west, especially the northwest, of them? In comparison to these puny sources of mercury, volcanoes, subsea vents, and geysers are thought to produce 9 to 10K tons of mercury a year. The areas of high mercury concentrations do not correlate very well with the newer and more active volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest in the US, however. But, it turns out that they correlate well with the old volcanoes of the Rocky Mountains shown in white in the map here and shown below:
It is well-known to geologists that the southern Rocky Mountains are much richer in minerals and precious metals than the northern Rockies because volcanoes and rising magma played a much greater role in their formation. I expect the high mercury concentration areas are due to the erosion of mercury mineral deposits, commonly cinnabar, in these old volcanoes and from their environs. The mercury released by forest fires is clear evidence that there is substantial mercury in the ground in the West already distributed about. The Rockies have been eroding for a very long time now and mercury is distributed over long distances from these old volcanoes by winds and eastward flowing rivers. The rivers flow into the Mississippi, so none of the mercury they transport goes east of the Mississippi River. This is my best guess about the source in any case. Update End.
Once again we see that the EPA does not use rational science to govern its actions, even when those actions will have drastic negative consequences for the economy and put many people out of jobs. Hauling coal by train to power plants, operating the power plants, and extracting coal from the ground all provide many hard-working Americans with jobs. We also have huge coal reserves, which it makes more sense to burn to create electricity than it does to use natural gas which is better for making plastics and other products. Of course, now natural gas is inexpensive and it is being used to generate electricity. I am happy to leave how it will be used to the free market, but I do not want the EPA under the guidance of the ever-foolish Obama pushing and shoving the free market to influence such decisions.
09 July 2011
The Obama Jobs Catastrophe Continues in June
Once again this June's unemployment numbers, offer no indication that the very high employment rates of the last three and a half years are abating or improving. Despite the wild-eyed claims of the Obama administration, the Stimulus Bills and the drunken spending of the federal government over this period has resulted in no jobs growth improvements. Combining these wasteful transfers of wealth from the private sector to the control of the government with the expenses and uncertainties of ObamaCare, the Dodd-Frank finance reform bill, the concerted efforts to force us to go abroad more and more for oil and gas while leaving extensive fields undeveloped at home and rejecting Canadian offers of tar sand oil, the efforts to bankrupt all of the coal-fired electric plants, the increased threat of anti-trust lawsuits, the developed world's highest corporate tax rate, a Justice Department bent only upon injustice, mandates for the use of unreliable and very expensive energy at unattainable levels in the near future, and myriad other anti-business and anti-earning-a-living efforts, has had just the impact on employment anyone not brain-dead would expect.
The employment numbers for June 2011 are shown in the table below based on the more job-inclusive household survey data, which is not here seasonally adjusted. The Jun 2011 data is best compared to the July 2010 data to see if there has been any improvement in jobs creation over the past year under Obama's watch.
In making that comparison, the unemployment rate seems to have fallen from 13.75% in July 2010 to the June 2011 rate of 9.32%. Unfortunately, this is only because many more people have given up on finding employment in that time. It is more significant to note that 140,134,000 people were employed full-time in July 2010, while only 140,129,000 were employed in June 2011. This is an actual decrease in the number of Americans employed by 5,000. That is not a significant decrease, unless you take it in the context that the civilian working age population increased by 1.6 million people in that time! A stagnant economy at least creates jobs enough to employ those of the growing population who want to work. The effects of the socialist policies to remove vast wealth and decision-making power from the private sector to the government have produced an economy that cannot even keep up with population growth, let alone actually make progress on recovering from the Great Socialist Recession.
Based on January 2000 when the economy was robust and the existence of good jobs enticed many Americans to take jobs and the unemployment rate was a meaningful 4.0%, we can calculate how many jobs we would need now to have a similar good job economy. The number of missing jobs now is 21,502,000, which is 1,084,000 more missing jobs than in July 2010. One would have to say that Obama's so-called effort to "create jobs" is actually a job-destruction effort, which is very effective in doing that. After any normal recession, the private sector makes adjustments and comes roaring back. Obama has strangled the lion's roar.
An unemployment rate of 13.3% based on the number of missing jobs is a much more realistic unemployment rate than the 9.2% rate given by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Obama administration. To that we have to add the 8.9 million employed only part time for economic reasons, according to the BLS. They want full-time jobs, but cannot find them. This makes a full-time job shortage of at least 18.8%. This still does not count the many millions of Americans working at jobs for which they are educationally and by experience over-qualified.
As has been historical demonstrated over and over, socialism is a disaster for people who want to earn a decent living, over and above the value many of us attach to our liberties and other aspects of being able to manage our own lives.
The employment numbers for June 2011 are shown in the table below based on the more job-inclusive household survey data, which is not here seasonally adjusted. The Jun 2011 data is best compared to the July 2010 data to see if there has been any improvement in jobs creation over the past year under Obama's watch.
In making that comparison, the unemployment rate seems to have fallen from 13.75% in July 2010 to the June 2011 rate of 9.32%. Unfortunately, this is only because many more people have given up on finding employment in that time. It is more significant to note that 140,134,000 people were employed full-time in July 2010, while only 140,129,000 were employed in June 2011. This is an actual decrease in the number of Americans employed by 5,000. That is not a significant decrease, unless you take it in the context that the civilian working age population increased by 1.6 million people in that time! A stagnant economy at least creates jobs enough to employ those of the growing population who want to work. The effects of the socialist policies to remove vast wealth and decision-making power from the private sector to the government have produced an economy that cannot even keep up with population growth, let alone actually make progress on recovering from the Great Socialist Recession.
Based on January 2000 when the economy was robust and the existence of good jobs enticed many Americans to take jobs and the unemployment rate was a meaningful 4.0%, we can calculate how many jobs we would need now to have a similar good job economy. The number of missing jobs now is 21,502,000, which is 1,084,000 more missing jobs than in July 2010. One would have to say that Obama's so-called effort to "create jobs" is actually a job-destruction effort, which is very effective in doing that. After any normal recession, the private sector makes adjustments and comes roaring back. Obama has strangled the lion's roar.
An unemployment rate of 13.3% based on the number of missing jobs is a much more realistic unemployment rate than the 9.2% rate given by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Obama administration. To that we have to add the 8.9 million employed only part time for economic reasons, according to the BLS. They want full-time jobs, but cannot find them. This makes a full-time job shortage of at least 18.8%. This still does not count the many millions of Americans working at jobs for which they are educationally and by experience over-qualified.
As has been historical demonstrated over and over, socialism is a disaster for people who want to earn a decent living, over and above the value many of us attach to our liberties and other aspects of being able to manage our own lives.
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