Note that an earlier post was just the copy that links to the page of principles. This post describes the other principles too.
When I started this blog, I included a page of principles that I think represent pragmatic environmentalism. My overarching belief is that it is necessary to balance environmental impacts and public policy. However, I did list specific principles that characterize what is needed to reflect this balance and to highlight specific rules that characterize environmental and energy related issues. This post describes Robert Bryce’s Iron Law of Power Density that I am going to include as another pragmatic environmental principle.
The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Pragmatic Environmental Principles
The existing principles cover several of my concerns. An over-riding problem for anyone skeptical of any public policy initiative is exemplified by Alberto Brandolini’s Baloney Asymmetry Principle: “The amount of energy necessary to refute BS is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” After hundreds of posts, I definitely agree with Brandolini
With respect to resolution of environmental issues I have included some observations that should be kept in mind.
Environmental Issues are Binary: In almost all environmental issues there are two sides. Pragmatic environmentalism is all about balancing the risks and benefits of the two sides of the issue. In order to do that you have to show your work.
Sound Bite Environmental Issue Descriptions: Sound bite descriptions in the media typically emphasize only one side of the story. As a result, they frequently are misleading, are not nuanced, or flat out wrong.
Environmental Issues are Rarely Definitive: The binary issue principle states that almost all environmental issues have two legitimate sides because two people can look at ambiguous and conflicting data and come up with opposite conclusions. This corollary principle asserts that as a result there are two legitimate arguments based on how each side interprets data.
There are some underlying factors that should necessarily constrain discourse and resolution of environmental issues:
We can do almost anything we want, but we can’t do everything: Russel Schussler explains that environmental initiatives often are presented simply as things we should do but do not consider that in order to implement those initiatives tradeoffs are required simply because the resources available are finite.
Iron law of climate: Roger Pielke, Jr says the “iron law” simply states that while people are often willing to pay some price for achieving environmental objectives, that willingness has its limits.
Gresham’s Law of Green Energy: Gresham’s Law of Green Energy is named after Sir Thomas Gresham, a 16th-century British financier who observed that “bad money drives out the good.” Lesser shows that green energy subsidies transfers wealth and does not create wealth. The subsidies or “bad” money take money out of the system that was “good” inasmuch as it was being used productively.
Ridley’s Paradox: Matt Ridley notes that economic damage from man-made ‘climate change’ is illusory whereas damage from man-made ‘policies’ to fight the said change is real.
Pareto Principle: The Pareto principle or 80-20 rule states that 20% of efforts or inputs can yield 80% of results or outputs. For environmental issues, it’s important for environmental issues because it suggests that if we don’t aim to achieve 100% reduction we still will have accomplished most of the benefits and removed most of the risks.
Kicking a dead whale on the beach: Engineers will rarely tell you something is impossible, even when your proposal is a very bad idea. Computer scientists at Stanford and MIT in the 1970s came up with a wonderful expression for this, an assignment that was technically feasible, but highly undesirable. They called it “kicking a dead whale down a beach”. Credit to Andrew Orlowski.
Iron Law of Power Density
Robert Bryce makes a persuasive argument that ultimate problem with wind and solar resources is simply a matter of “basic math and simple physics.”
Bryce explains that there are a couple of facets to the Iron Law of Power Density. The first is the effect on resources needed and the second is the area needed to produce power. He describes the effect on resource intensity:
The shape and size of our energy systems are not being determined by political beliefs about climate change. Instead, those systems are ruled by the Iron Law of Power Density which says: the lower the power density, the greater the resource intensity. This can easily be seen in the graphic below. It includes a screen grab from a 2021 International Energy Agency report on the mineral intensity of various methods of electricity generation. The mineral intensity of offshore wind, including huge amounts of copper and zinc, is shocking: roughly 15,400 kilograms per megawatt of generation capacity. That is roughly 13 times more than the amount needed for natural gas-fired generation (1,148 kg) and six times more than what’s needed for a coal plant (2,479 kg).
Bryce points out that this is part of the reason that there are cost issues associated with offshore wind development:
As Howard Rhodes of EnergyPortal.eu explained earlier this month, the offshore sector is facing “a financial crisis as costs continue to rise. Inflation in components and labor costs, along with rising interest rates, has led to a 57% increase in the costs associated with U.S. offshore wind projects since 2021.” Soaring commodity prices have also increased the cost of making onshore wind turbines. By one estimate, the cost of building a wind turbine has surged by 38% over the past two years.
Bryce explains why the area needed to produce power is an important component of the Iron Law of Power Density:
Power density is the measure of energy flow that can be harnessed from a given area, volume, or mass. Power density is a measure of how many watts we can get per square meter, liter, or kilogram from a given source. This article focuses on areal power density. Proving why low-power-density sources are the wrong choice for modern society takes only a modicum of effort.
Let’s start by looking at corn ethanol and other biofuels, which have a power density of about 0.1 watt per square meter. Counteracting that paltry power density requires lots of other resources, including fertilizer, diesel fuel, water, and staggering amounts of land. In 2021, Dave Merrill, a reporter and data analyst at Bloomberg, reported that “Two-thirds of America’s total energy footprint is devoted to transportation fuels produced from agricultural crops, primarily corn grown for ethanol. It requires more land than all other power sources combined.” Merrill determined that biofuels require the cultivation of about 80,000 square miles of cropland. That’s an area bigger than the state of Nebraska.
Bryce summarizes the land-use implications:
The only way to substantially increase the production of wind and solar energy is by seizing more and more land, (or ocean) so they can be covered with more and more steel, concrete, copper, and silicon. As I reported in these pages on August 4, in “Massive Riots, Renewable Resentments,” the backlash against the encroachment of large wind and solar projects is real, it’s global, and it’s growing. As can be seen in the Renewable Rejection Database, the total number of rejections and restrictions on wind and solar in the U.S. now totals 575.
Conclusion
This is an important addition to my list of pragmatic environmental principles. Power density affects the resources needed to develop the resource. Its importance is confirmed as the costs of wind developments have increases significantly recently. In addition, power density means that much more land is needed to develop wind and solar resources.
Robert Bryce makes a persuasive argument that ultimate problem with wind and solar resources is simply a matter of “basic math and simple physics” associated with the Iron Law of Power Density
Bryce explains that there are a couple of facets to the Iron Law of Power Density. The first is the effect on resources needed and the second is the area needed to produce power. He describes the effect on resource intensity:
The shape and size of our energy systems are not being determined by political beliefs about climate change. Instead, those systems are ruled by the Iron Law of Power Density which says: the lower the power density, the greater the resource intensity. This can easily be seen in the graphic below. It includes a screen grab from a 2021 International Energy Agency report on the mineral intensity of various methods of electricity generation. The mineral intensity of offshore wind, including huge amounts of copper and zinc, is shocking: roughly 15,400 kilograms per megawatt of generation capacity. That is roughly 13 times more than the amount needed for natural gas-fired generation (1,148 kg) and six times more than what’s needed for a coal plant (2,479 kg).
Bryce points out that this is part of the reason that there are cost issues associated with offshore wind development:
As Howard Rhodes of EnergyPortal.eu explained earlier this month, the offshore sector is facing “a financial crisis as costs continue to rise. Inflation in components and labor costs, along with rising interest rates, has led to a 57% increase in the costs associated with U.S. offshore wind projects since 2021.” Soaring commodity prices have also increased the cost of making onshore wind turbines. By one estimate, the cost of building a wind turbine has surged by 38% over the past two years.
Bryce explains why the area needed to produce power is an important component of the Iron Law of Power Density.
Power density is the measure of energy flow that can be harnessed from a given area, volume, or mass. Power density is a measure of how many watts we can get per square meter, liter, or kilogram from a given source. This article focuses on areal power density. Proving why low-power-density sources are the wrong choice for modern society takes only a modicum of effort.
Let’s start by looking at corn ethanol and other biofuels, which have a power density of about 0.1 watt per square meter. Counteracting that paltry power density requires lots of other resources, including fertilizer, diesel fuel, water, and staggering amounts of land. In 2021, Dave Merrill, a reporter and data analyst at Bloomberg, reported that “Two-thirds of America’s total energy footprint is devoted to transportation fuels produced from agricultural crops, primarily corn grown for ethanol. It requires more land than all other power sources combined.” Merrill determined that biofuels require the cultivation of about 80,000 square miles of cropland. That’s an area bigger than the state of Nebraska.
Bryce summarizes the land-use implications:
The only way to substantially increase the production of wind and solar energy is by seizing more and more land, (or ocean) so they can be covered with more and more steel, concrete, copper, and silicon. As I reported in these pages on August 4, in “Massive Riots, Renewable Resentments,” the backlash against the encroachment of large wind and solar projects is real, it’s global, and it’s growing. As can be seen in the Renewable Rejection Database, the total number of rejections and restrictions on wind and solar in the U.S. now totals 575.
This is an important addition to my list of pragmatic environmental principles. Power density affects the resources needed to develop the resource. Its importance is confirmed as the costs of wind developments have increases significantly recently. In addition, power density means that much more land is needed to develop wind and solar resources.
An article in the Telegraph by Andrew Orlowski describes the United Kingdom’s hydrogen initiatives and the issues surrounding the use of hydrogen as has been proposed there. The introduction described a principle that I hadn’t heard before, “Kicking a dead whale down the beach”:
Engineers will rarely tell you something is impossible, even when your proposal is a very bad idea. Computer scientists at Stanford and MIT in the 1970s came up with a wonderful expression for this, an assignment that was technically feasible, but highly undesirable. They called it “kicking a dead whale down a beach”. The folklore compendium The Hacker’s Dictionary defines this as a “slow, difficult, and disgusting process”. Yes, you can do it like that. But you really don’t want to.
Pragmatic approaches are all about assessing tradeoffs. There are risks to environmental “solutions” that must be considered for sound policy. Some solutions sound appealing at first but when everything is considered turn out to be not such a great idea.
This principle is one in a set of principles that I believe exemplifies pragmatic environmentalism which I suggest is the necessary balance of environmental impacts and public policy. This means that evidence-based environmental risks and benefits (both environmental and otherwise) of issues need to be considered. Unfortunately, public perception is too often driven by scary one-sided stories that have to be rebutted by getting into details.
Everyone wants to do right by the environment to the extent that they can afford to and not be unduly burdened by the effects of environmental policies. I have written extensively on implementation of New York’s response to that risk because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that it will adversely affect reliability, impact affordability, risk safety, affect lifestyles, and will have worse impacts on the environment than the purported effects of climate change in New York. New York’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are less than one half one percent of global emissions and since 1990 global GHG emissions have increased by more than one half a percent per year. Moreover, the reductions cannot measurably affect global warming when implemented. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Climate Act Background
The Climate Act establishes a “Net Zero” target by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda”. They were assisted by Advisory Panels who developed and presented strategies to the meet the goals to the Council. Those strategies were used to develop the integration analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants that quantified the impact of the strategies. That analysis was used to develop the Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment on December 30, 2021. Comments on the draft can be submitted until June 10, 2022.
Pragmatic Environmentalist Principles
I put together my principles for pragmatic environmentalism to describe a pragmatic approach to environmental issues. So far, I have listed 13 principles that exemplify pragmatic environmentalism. Five of these principles are my own but the rest have been developed by others. I am going to describe four principles that directly relate to climate change and four that indirectly affect Climate Act implementation in this post. This post will also be used to support an upcoming post on my pragmatic recommendations for the Climate Act.
All four of the relevant principles that directly relate to climate change have been developed by others. The Climate Act does not correctly differentiate between weather and climate. Frequently events that are simply extreme examples of normal weather variation to climate change are used as “proof” that climate change effects are apparent now. The first principle addresses this issue. Dr, Cliff Mass’s Golden Rule of Climate Extremesstates that the more extreme a climate or weather record is, the greater the contribution of natural variability. Dr. Mass explained why this happens in a series of posts on the Pacific Northwest heatwave of 2021. He concluded in his analyses that global warming was responsible for only 1 to 2o F of the observed 30 – 40o F anomaly above normal.
There are two principles related to climate change economics. Gresham’s Law of Green Energy is named after Sir Thomas Gresham, a 16th-century British financier who observed that “bad money drives out the good.” Jonathan Lesser has coined “Gresham’s Law of Green Energy” to describe the green economy. The transition to a zero-emissions energy system relies on green energy subsidies that transfers wealth and does not create wealth. The subsidies or “bad” money take money out of the system that was “good” inasmuch as it was being used productively. In particular, Lesser argues that “subsidized renewable resources will drive out competitive generators, lead to higher electric prices, and reduce economic growth”. The second economic principle, Ridley’s Paradox, states that economic damage from man-made ‘climate change’ is illusory whereas damage from man-made ‘policies’ to fight the said change is real. Both principles suggest that issues lie ahead for the Climate Act net-zero transition.
Roger Pielke, Jr’s Iron law of climate simply states that while people are often willing to pay some price for achieving environmental objectives, that willingness has its limits. The Climate Act requires the Climate Action Council to “[e]valuate, using the best available economic models, emission estimation techniques and other scientific methods, the total potential costs and potential economic and non-economic benefits of the plan for reducing greenhouse gases, and make such evaluation publicly available” in the Scoping Plan. However, at this time this requirement is not being met. There is insufficient information to determine how much New Yorkers will have to pay for achieving the net-zero targets. Consequently, we will have to wait to see how his principle plays out.
I authored one of the four principles that indirectly relate to the Climate Act. It is pretty obvious in industry but I haven’t found anyone who has made the Air Pollution Control Costs point that as air pollution control efficiency increases the control cost per ton goes up exponentially. If we were only trying to reduce our GHG emissions by 50% the costs would be much less than the net-zero 85% reduction combined with 15% sequestration target.
That principle is related to the Pareto Principle or 80-20 rule that states that 20% of efforts or inputs can yield 80% of results or outputs. If the Climate Act did not mandate net-zero, then we could get most of the benefits for the “easy” emission reductions. Accepting that outcome removes most of the affordability and reliability risks associated with the radical transformation of the energy system needed to meet Climate Act targets.
The resources necessary to implement the Climate Act are rationalized as necessary to fight climate change. However, the necessary actions are not considered relative to other environmental and social issues. For example, there are water infrastructure issues across New York that must be addressed before systems break down completely. There are disadvantaged communities that have lead pipes and lead paint in their homes. Advocates have not considered that in order to implement Climate Act initiatives these other environmental issues may not be addressed simply because the resources available are finite per the principle: We can do almost anything we want, but we can’t do everything:
“In a nutshell, we’ve vastly oversimplified both the problem of climate change and its solutions. The complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity of the existing knowledge about climate change is being kept away from the policy and public debates. The dangers of manmade climate change have been confounded with natural weather and climate variability. The solutions that have been proposed for rapidly eliminating fossil fuels are technologically and politically infeasible on a global scale.”
Conclusion
There are very few aspects of the Climate Act that represent a pragmatic approach to climate change mitigation. The rationale for the Climate Act frequently refers to extreme weather events that are more likely due to natural variability than climate change. The Draft Scoping Plan is littered with glittering generalities that carry conviction without supporting information or reason.
The economics in the Draft Scoping Plan are not pragmatic. The reliance on subsidized renewable resources will drive out competitive generators, lead to higher electric prices, and reduce economic growth. The economic damage from man-made ‘climate change’ in New York is illusory whereas damage from the Climate Act ‘policies’ to fight the said change is real. When the costs are finally publicized to the general public, we will see how much New Yorkers are willing to pay for achieving greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives and whether that willingness has limits.
Given that air pollution control efficiency increases the control cost per ton goes up exponentially and that 20% of efforts or inputs can yield 80% of the results or outputs, a more pragmatic approach would be to determine some lower level of “good enough” that will achieve emissions reductions without risking current standards of reliability and affordability. Ultimately, we can do almost anything we want, but we can’t do everything so the enormous commitment to the Climate Act net-zero targets has to be considered relative to other pressing environmental and social problems.
Ron Clutz writing at Science Matters defines a glittering generality as an emotionally appealing phrase so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that it carries conviction without supporting information or reason. He claims that such highly valued concepts attract general approval and acclaim. I offer this as a principle of all that should not represent pragmatic environmentalism.
Nowhere is the glittering generality more evident than New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Act. According to the Climate Act webpage: “Climate change is a reality. New York is fighting it. Our future is at stake.” All those claims fit the bill exactly as glittering generalities.
The legislation itself includes the following glittering generalities. It claims that the adverse impacts of climate change include: “an increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as storms, flooding, and heat waves, which can cause direct injury or death, property damage, and ecological damage (e.g., through the release of hazardous substances into the environment); rising sea levels, which exacerbate damage from storm surges and flooding, contribute to coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion, and inundate low-lying areas, leading to the displacement of or damage to coastal habitat, property, and infrastructure; a decline in freshwater and saltwater fish populations; increased average temperatures, which increase the demand for air conditioning and refrigeration among residents and businesses; exacerbation of air pollution; and an increase in the incidences of infectious diseases, asthma attacks, heart attacks, and other negative health outcomes.”
In response to a NY Times Magazine / NY Times Daily Podcast story “How Climate Migration Will Reshape America” Patrick T. Brown looked at the accuracy of similar claims. Among other things his critique addresses storm severity, floods, and sea-level rise. His critique concludes that “It paints a picture of current climate change in the US that is very different than the story that is told from looking at the actual observational data and all the errors are in the direction of overstating the negative impact on the US today.” Nonetheless, New York’s energy policy and transition to the most aggressive clean energy and climate agenda in the country is based on these generalities.
Thanks to Ron Clutz and Patrick Brown for their work that inspired and supported this post.
This principle is one in a set of principles that I believe exemplifies pragmatic environmentalism which I suggest is the necessary balance of environmental impacts and public policy. This means that evidence-based environmental risks and benefits (both environmental and otherwise) of issues need to be considered. Unfortunately, public perception is too often driven by scary one-sided stories that have to be rebutted by getting into details.
I have never seen this principle mentioned as somebody’s rule or law but it is accepted as such in the air pollution control community. In particular: as the control efficiency increases the control cost per ton reduced increases exponentially.
I will illustrate how this works using the example of particulate control on a coal-fired boiler. I used to work for Niagara Mohawk Power Company and they built and operated the Dunkirk Generating Station in western New York. I will describe the history of particulate control there up to the point it was retired several years ago. When the four coal-fired boilers were built in the 1950’s the only particulate pollution control equipment installed was a cyclone. A cyclone is basically ductwork that uses the principle of inertia to remove particles from the flue gas.
In the late 60’s, I believe but am not positive, New York State ordered Niagara Mohawk to do a better job cleaning the flue gas. To its credit, the company installed a hot-side electrostatic precipitator (ESP) that was over-sized and reduced the particulate levels well below the standard in effect even forty years later.
Despite the fact that the particulate levels were below emission standards there was a persistent problem with opacity. This is a measure of how opaque the plume is and before there was pollution monitoring equipment this was used to determine how well a boiler was operated. If the boiler is running efficiently there should be very little smoke visible but a dark opaque plume is a sure sign that it is not being run well. The standard methodology (which is still in use today) is for a trained “smoke reader” to observe the plume in six-minute intervals. An excess opacity emission event means smoke emissions of one or more six minute periods in which the average opacity exceeds 20%, except that one event in every hour may be excluded if the average opacity during the six-minute period does not exceed 27%. When continuous opacity monitoring systems were installed there was an opacity issue that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation used as an excuse to fine the owners of the plant (NRG Energy after 1999) millions of dollars for the scourge of an aesthetic violation (remember the particulate limits were not exceeded). As a result, NRG installed a baghouse to eliminate the problem which worked extremely well until the station was retired.
For an order of magnitude estimate of costs I used the ESP and baghouse examples in the EPA Air Pollution Control Handbook. In the handbook the example ESP cost was $1,840,000 and the baghouse cost was $569,000. I assume that a cyclone would only cost $100,000.
For my example assume that the boiler generates 100 tons of particulate. A cyclone has an efficiency around 35% so it reduced emissions by 35 tons at a cost per ton of $2,857. The ESP has an efficiency of 98% would reduce the 65 remaining tons by 98% at a cost per ton of $28,885. In order to get the final two tons removed the baghouse cost per ton is $284,500 simply because the additional controls removed so little. Clearly this is an exponential increase in costs for the last little bit of emissions.
This relationship is a primary driver in greenhouse gas control costs. Consider energy efficiency at your home. The first bit of insulation in the attic does not cost much but gets a good reduction in energy loss. As the homeowner progressively adds insulation to the walls, upgrades the windows and doors and audits the last little bit of air infiltration the energy reductions get smaller and smaller so even if the control cost themselves stays the same the cost per efficiency increase goes up. It is true in every control instance.
Ultimately this rule simply quantifies the low-hanging fruit analogy. It is easy to pick the low hanging fruit but the higher you go the more it costs.
This is one of the principles that that describe my pragmatic environmentalist beliefs.
Principle 1 states that almost all environmental issues have two legitimate sides. Because that is a given that means that two people can look at the same data and come up with opposite conclusions. This corollary principle asserts that as a result there are two legitimate arguments based on how each side interprets data. As a result environmental issues are not usually definitive.
For an example of this failure, consider “How to use critical thinking to spot false climate” claims by Peter Ellerton, Lecturer in Critical Thinking, Director of the UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland. The author states:
Despite scientists’ best efforts at communicating with the public, not everyone knows enough about the underlying science to make a call one way or the other. Not only is climate science very complex, but it has also been targeted by deliberate obfuscation campaigns.
His post describes a paper that describes a “critical thinking approach to climate change denial”.
He describes six steps to evaluate contrarian climate claims and the post provides an example how it can address the following example:
Premise one: The climate has changed in the past through natural processes
Premise two: The climate is currently changing
Premise three: If something was the cause of an event in the past, it must be the cause of the event now
Conclusion: The climate is currently changing through natural processes.
In order to prove that this is incorrect he states that “Current climate change is much more rapid than previous climate change” and concludes that they are not the same phenomenon so the argument that climate is changing due to natural processes is wrong.
This argument fails to note that the historical data record for climate rate change is very limited and ambiguous at best. Ideally in order to evaluate climate change you would want to measure a parameter using the same instruments with the same techniques at a location that has had no nearby changes over as long a period of time as possible. Clearly this limits your available data quite a bit so you have to make compromises to get a long period of record. In order to get really long climate change records you eventually have to substitute instrumentals records with proxies. Even if you can find a proxy that has the same accuracy the problem for rate of change estimates is that the observational time scale differs. For example, if you are using coral growth rates, the temperature signal is measured over years whereas thermometers measure over days. As a result, comparison of different rate of change trends are difficult and may not be appropriate due to the classic apples to oranges comparison issue.
The premise in this paper to prove the contrarian argument wrong is that current climate change is much more rapid than previous climate change. The failure to acknowledge that any data used to estimate the rate of climate change is ambiguous weakens that premise considerably. Pragmatic environmentalism is all about science based decision making that acknowledges both sides of arguments.
This is one of the principles that that describe my pragmatic environmentalist beliefs.
For pragmatic environmentalists Riley’s Paradox describes a fundamental concern relative to climate change policy: Economic damage from man-made ‘climate change’ is illusory whereas damage from man-made ‘policies’ to fight the said change is real.
I ran across this principle at Climate Scepticism where Paul Matthews posted a summary of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott speech at the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Prime Minister Abbott’s speech “Daring to Doubt” described climate science with a skeptical viewpoint then went on to talk about climate policy with an emphasis on Australia. He said:
In what might be described as Ridley’s paradox, after the distinguished British commentator: at least so far, it’s climate change policy that’s doing harm; climate change itself is probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm.
Matt Ridley is a British scientist, columnist, and author of several award winning books, including the Rational Optimist. I have admired his writings for a long time. He recently posted on this issue noting that climate policies are doing more harm than good and that is a moral issue. Please read his post because he explains the problem better than I can. He lists ten climate policies that are doing more harm than good.
Ethanol subsidies
Biodiesel programs
Promotion of diesel cars
Burning pellets derived from wood products
Wind power
Solar farms
Only renewables policies
Fuel poverty
High energy costs
The neglect of more serious environmental problems
Richard Tol also has written about this paradox. He notes that “Politically correct climate change orthodoxy has completely destroyed our ability to think rationally about the environment.”
Finally, I want to acknowledge Shub Niggurath for the definition I used of Riley’s Paradox.
This is a background post for my pragmatic environmentalist principles listed on the principles page of this blog.
Dr. Cliff Mass defines the Golden Rule of Climate Extremes as: The more extreme a climate or weather record is, the greater the contribution of natural variability.
I am posting this soon after Harvey made landfall, dumped extraordinary amounts of rain, and the impact of global warming on it made the news. The question that came up was the effect of climate change on the storm. The Capitol Weather Gang claims the truth is in the middle. Note that Dr. Mass concluded that global warming effects on Harvey were immaterial.
The golden rule of climate extremes is important to keep in mind because I believe it is important to point out that most climate scientists do not have extensive weather forecasting experience. It is that experience that enables meteorologists to properly determine the role of natural variability to a particular event. When an operational meteorologist looks at this kind of weather event, for example Joe Bastardi, natural variation invariably provides most of the impact.
This is one of the principles that that describe my pragmatic environmentalist beliefs. Jonathan Lesser has coined “Gresham’s Law of Green Energy” that I believe is another principle of a pragmatic environmentalist.
Gresham’s Law is named after Sir Thomas Gresham, a 16th-century British financier who observed that “bad money drives out the good.” Lesser shows that green energy subsidies transfers wealth and does not create wealth. The subsidies or “bad” money take money out of the system that was “good” inasmuch as it was being used productively. In particular he notes that “subsidized renewable resources will drive out competitive generators, lead to higher electric prices, and reduce economic growth”.
He explains his rationale as follows:
“The subsidies paid by ratepayers transfer wealth from existing generators to a chosen few renewable resource owners. One may like to rail against the existing generators — as many politicians have — but the long-run implications of such subsidies will be to destroy competitive wholesale electric markets and drive out existing competitors. This course of action will cost jobs because businesses, forced to pay higher electricity prices, will either relocate, contract, or disappear altogether. It will reduce the disposable income of consumers, who will forever be forced to subsidize renewable resources (just as they must now subsidize corn ethanol producers) — all in the name of ’green energy’.”
This is a particularly important principle for renewable energy benefit analyses, in particular “price suppression” such as that used in NY’s Clean Energy Standard. The idea is that increasing the supply of “cheap” electricity causes market prices to decrease so that consumers benefit. However, Lesser shows that these benefits are temporary and costly in the long run. Subsidizing the construction of renewable generation in a de-regulated state results in resources that manipulates the market to make it less efficient. Moreover, it eventually drives out existing generators and reduces the likelihood that new unsubsidized generating facilities will enter the market. Lesser notes that rather than building a better mousetrap, these policies are using subsidies to artificially and temporarily reduce the price of mousetraps.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 