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Times Wields Silent Hatchet on DOE’s Chu

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., May 26, 2010 — A breathless article in today’s New York Times outlines ties between U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and, today’s chief villain, British Petroleum. Turns out that BP dropped half-a-billion dollars on Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory for work on alternative fuels when Chu ran the lab.

When he got to DOE, Chu hired the guy who had been BP’s chief scientist, physicist Steven Koonin, a long-time friend, to head DOE’s science program.

Heaven’s is this a conflict of interest? Well, not exactly, explains the Times, noting “no evidence that Dr. Chu or Dr. Koonin have represented BP’s viewpoints in internal deliberations or sought to influence administration policy in a way that would benefit BP….” But then, in classic journalistic “give-em-a-leg-and-take-it-away,” the article observes that “the mere fact of their shared history brought expressions of concern from environmentalists and other critics of the White House’s response to the spill.”

My dictionary defines “innuendo” as “an oblique allusion: HINT, INSINUATION; esp: a veiled or equivocal reflection on character or reputation.” In journalism, this is the use of the invisible hatchet.

Now I have no brief for Steve Chu or DOE. In fact, I’ve never seen an energy secretary I thought did a good job (and I’ve covered them all, since Jim Schlesinger) and I have long called for the abolition of the Department of Energy as wasteful and feckless.

But this article in the venerable Times is, to put it clearly, unfair, and uses puppet figures to make a charge the reporters are unwilling to make themselves: that Chu is compromised by his relations with BP.

They trot out a clueless consumer advocate, John M. Simpson of Consumer Watchdog, to make the point: “From what I’ve seen, the Energy Department’s response has been less than rapid to this oil spill. This whole thing just underscores that corporate interests have created, over time, these relationships that give them unfair access to policy makers.”

Eventually, the article gets around to the vital point in the argument, which should have led the reporters to drop the story, not write it. The U.S. Department of Energy has nothing to do with offshore oil drilling, oil spills, spill reponse or the like.

The White House threw Chu into the fray so it could bask in the reflected glory of his Nobel Prize in Physics and defend against the charge (largely bogus) that the administration isn’t responding well. That makes the White House as cynical as the two Times reporters who concocted this piece of journalistic garbage.

Where the NAS Goes Wrong on Warming

By David E. Wojick, PE, Ph.D.

Washington, D.C., May 22, 2010 — Listed below are the National Research Council panel members who wrote the so-called National Academies of Science report on climate science, published this month. Several are old time anthropogenic global warming (AGW) proponents, like Bob Corell of the Heinz Center, Warren Washington of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution.

Others are profs of environmental science. I am sure all are committed AGW believers. The comments posted on blogs and news sources covering this report are very interesting. Skepticism has been replaced by outright scorn. People are calling them “hacks.” I think this is part of the so-called “anti-incumbent” fervor that is sweeping through the political landscape.

This just goes to show that the entrenched pro-AGW scientific community is not responding to the growth of skepticism.

The summary and report are available here: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12782&page=1 (Free on-line version)

Based on the summary, it is the same old argument:

1. We understand climate change (false).

2. Significant warming has occurred (questionable)

3. Natural variability cannot explain this warming (not known, there fore false)

4. Therefore the recent past warming is due to human activity (not known, probably false)

5. Future human induced warming is dangerous (mere speculation)

The thrust of the report is not science, but to outline a new research agenda. It is about more money. They want a “comprehensive and integrated climate enterprise.” AGW made permanent.

The silliest part is that they first say it has warmed over the last 100 years. Then they say that the warming of the last 30 years (actually only 1978-98) is due to AGW. As skeptics points out, if the earlier 20th century warming is natural, so can the recent period be. This is just one of many easy counter arguments that they simply ignore. This is just green advocacy as usual, not assessment of the science. People are sick of this stuff, and saying so.

Panel membership: Pamela A. Matson (Chair), Stanford University; Thomas Dietz (Vice Chair), Michigan State University, East Lansing; Waleed Abdalati, University of Colorado at Boulder; Antonio J. Busalacchi, Jr., University of Maryland, College Park;

Ken Caldeira, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, California; Robert W. Corell, H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment; Ruth S. Defries, Columbia University; Inez Y. Fung, University of California, Berkeley; Steven Gaines, University of California, Santa Barbara; George M. Hornberger, Vanderbilt University; Maria Carmen Lemos, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Susanne C. Moser, Susanne Moser Research & Consulting; Richard H. Moss, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Edward A. Parson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; A. R. Ravishankara, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Raymond W. Schmitt, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; B. L. Turner, II, Arizona State University; Warren M. Washington, National Center for Atmospheric Research; John P. Weyant, Stanford University; David A. Whelan, The Boeing Company; Ian Kraucunas (Study Director), National Research Council.

The advert says: “The compelling case that climate change is occurring and is caused in large part by human activities is based on a strong, credible body of evidence, says Advancing the Science of Climate Change. While noting that there is always more to learn and that the scientific process is never ‘closed,’ the book emphasizes that multiple lines of evidence support scientific understanding of climate change. The core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations, the book says.”

Nonsense.

David E. Wojick, PE, Ph.D., is a long-time climate skeptic and trenchant critic of current analyses predicting man-made global warming exists and will harm the planet.

Entabulator Rescues Renewables

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., May 21, 2010 — Thanks to the far-reaching and meticulous online research for which he is justifiably famous, my friend Glenn Schleede has answered the conundrum that stands in the way of widespread adoption of renewable energy technologies.

Writes Glenn, “I haven’t been able to verify this, but I’ve heard that DOE-EERE & NREL (possibly with help from GE), using a little less than $10,000,000,000 from stimulus funds, have developed and demonstrated a device that would solve the heretofore unsolvable problem of intermittent, volatile, and unreliable output from wind turbines.”

The device, described in the attached video, is the Turbo entabulator. Says Schleede, “Allegedly, it will be available for only $750 M each once in mass production.

Apparently blue states will be allowed to compete for the location of the first manufacturing plant which is expected to require UP TO 8,923 construction workers and, once in operation, the plant would use UP TO 13,827 full time employees, not counting indirect and induced jobs in hotels, motels, restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores, stock brokerages, rating agencies, law firms, environmental NGOs, trade associations, lobbying firms, Congressional staff offices and committees, gambling halls, police & fire departments, newsstands, bloggeries, science & engineering academies, and political action committees.”

Arizona Pol Grandstands on Calif. Power

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., May 29, 2010 — File this in the “empty threat” folder: Gary Pierce, a member of the five-person, elected Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s utility regulator, has suggested that Arizona should block a move by the city of Los Angeles, Calif., to boycott the Grand Canyon State by cutting off electric power from plants in the state that flows to the Golden State.

In a letter to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Pierce, Republican on the ACC elected in 2006, wrote, “If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation.” Los Angeles officials, in a heavily Hispanic city, were publicly outraged (no surprise there) at a new Arizona law giving state authorities power to detain suspected illegal immigrants. Several California cities, including LA, said they would boycott Arizona in response to that state’s new law.

The LA city council voted13-1 to deny Arizona and businesses based in the state commerce with the city. The measure obviously has no effect on the city’s citizens and their economic decisions of where to spend money and time.

But Pierce, with what appears to be manufactured outrage, threatened the power outage. “I feel like if you’re going to boycott the candy story, you’ve got leave all the candy alone,” Pierce told the Arizona Republic. “I feel like Arizona is the candy store.” LA gets a quarter of its electric power from power plants located in Arizona, notably the three-unit Palo Verde nuclear plant.

But there’s a real problem with Pierce’s argument, and as a veteran ACC member, he should (and probably does) know this. California utilities own shares of the Arizona generating plants commensurate with their take from the plants. Neither the state’s utilities (Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project, mostly) nor the ACC have any control over the power that flows to California.

Palo Verde’s owners include Southern California Edison (15.8%), Southern California Public Power Authority (5.91%) and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (8.7%). The California utilities don’t buy the power. They take it according to their shares and share commensurately in the costs.

In other words, Pierce was bluffing (and I’d bet he knows it).

Others, faced with the preposterous position of Pierce, have suggested that Arizona refuse the transmit the power over the high-voltage power lines running into California. That long-distance dog won’t hunt, either. The power lines are jointly owned, and the ACC has absolutely no jurisdiction over them. They are in interstate commerce and regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Pierce’s gambit came in for lots of criticism in Arizona. Republic columnist E.J. Montine wrote that Pierce “wanted to deliver a kick in the pants. Unfortunately, like many politicians before him his foot wound up in his mouth.” Montine concluded that the Pierce flap “proves, once again, that the only unregulated source of energy in Arizona is hot air.”

Phoenix New Times blogger Steven Lemons commented, “But here’s a little tidbit for those anti-boycott nudniks out there salivating at the fantasy of cutting off L.A.’s electricity: Currently some 60 percent of Arizona’s gasoline comes to us via Watson, California, located in Los Angeles County.”

Plan B for Global Warming

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., May 16, 2010 — Will Happer, noted Princeton physicist, and a veteran of Washington’s bureaucratic wars, has an intriguing suggestion about how to reconcile the views of raving advocates for climate controls with the objections of skeptics, when both sides are populated by reputable scientists. He wants the government to create a “B-team” of climate scientists with the explicit task of shooting down the conventional wisdom about warming.

At an excellent briefing on climate science in Washington May 14, sponsored by the Marshall Institute, long an intellectual home for warming skeptics, Happer said that there is no effective way today for dissenters to challenge the conventional wisdom. The “deniers” get hooted down as a minority, shortsighted, and tarred with all kinds of personal attacks. But, as Happer and many other physicists can clearly demonstrate, there are real problems with the conventional wisdom about global warming. The science is far from settled.

The objections of the physicists about the assumptions of the warming advocates make — particularly about the effect of feedback mechanisms such as water vapor and clouds – have not been answered. Warming, Happer noted, has morphed into “climate change,” so that any unusual weather phenomena can be grouped under the rubric of “mankind did this.”

Happer served as research chief at the Department of Energy in the early years of the Clinton administration and is a fellow of the American Physical Society and member of the National Academies of Science. He is chairman of the Marshall Institute, named for legendary general and Secretary of State George C. Marshall. It has been widely reported, and he has acknowledged, that Happer was fired from the Clinton administration because his scientific views clashed with the policy predilections of Vice President Gore.

Happer told the Washington briefing that if he ran the scientific ship on climate research, “I’d set up a B-team. That’s how it works in (the Defense Department).”

The job of the B-team, Happer said, “is to try to shoot it all down.” Staffed with experts whose credentials match those of the existing advocates, with full access to all the data (that’s a problem today, as some climate scientists believe they have a proprietary interest in the climate data), and funded sufficiently to run the operation, the B-team could provide rigorous tests of the hypotheses, data, and assumptions that are the foundation of the claims that mankind is ruining the planet with carbon dioxide emissions.

Under this approach, policy makers would be confronted with the strengths and weaknesses of all the arguments, equipping them to make informed decisions, not driven by biased advocates for just one point of view.

Happer played a sly trick on the briefing, slipping a CO2 monitor undetected into the meeting room in the Capitol Hill Club. In his opening, he noted that pre-industrial levels of atmospheric CO2 were probably around 280 parts per million. Today, the figure is about 390 ppm. So what, he asked, is the CO2 level in the meeting room? After several wild guesses, Happer reached underneath the podium and displayed his CO2 meter. The reading: over 2,000 ppm. What the Environmental Protect Agency calls a dangerous pollutant is harmless at five times the current atmospheric concentration. The assembled coven of climate skeptics (your’s truly included) was amused.

Physicist Roger Cohen, retired Exxon research chief, also took on the warming acolytes and their sky-is-falling liturgy. Empiricist Cohen noted that models, no matter how sophisticated, are not evidence. The current global circulation models, he observed, are faulty, and not because there is not enough computer horsepower in them. The problem is that they rely on exaggerated land-based data, don’t measure ocean temperatures well, and can’t “precast” past climate phenomena, suggesting that their ability to forecast climate is suspicious.

“Real science,” said Cohen, also an APS fellow, “predicts real things that really happen.” The climate models are unable to predict, said Cohen, adding that there has been no statistically significant climate warming since 1995. That, he said, “is an inconvenient truth.”

Rules and Fools: EPA and CEI

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., May 7, 2010 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency never saw a regulation it didn’t like. The Competitive Enterprise Institute never saw one it did.

Now the federal agency and the Washington-based conservative think tank are involved in a silly but amusing battle of “Did not! Did so!” It promises to be, as much in Washington these days, much ado about nothing, but fun for awhile. The dueling approach to the holiness of regulation has already prompted a typically nasty, profane, name-calling fracas on CEI’s web site.

EPA started the regulatory brawl rolling with a fully fatuous contest, announced in a press release in early May. “Explain rulemaking and win $2,500,” exclaimed the breathless EPA release. The agency wants 90-second video paens to federal rules posted on YouTube.

Introducing the idea, EPA made an entirely brainless observation, “Even before you leave the house in the morning,” said the agency, “government regulations help set the price of the coffee you drink, the voltage of the electricity your alarm clock uses, and the types of programming allowed on the morning news.”

Let’s examine those bogus claims.

Who sets coffee prices? Not the federal government. Coffee prices are set on free, competitive markets, mostly through futures contracts at the ICE Futures US exchange (formerly the New York Board of Trade). Should the government help set the price of coffee? I don’t think so.

About the alarm clock voltage. What federal government agency is responsible for that? One could argue that since 2005, the federal government has indirectly regulated voltage support in electric transmission and distribution, through NERC. Prior to the 2005 Energy Policy Act, voltage regulation was voluntary, although nobody in the industry refused to play. There is no evidence that the new quasi-governmental NERC has produced a system more reliable in any way than the old, voluntary NERC.

As for the programming on the morning news, has the EPA forgotten about the First Amendment? The FCC governs spectrum allocation, dirty words (ala the late George Carlin), but not news content. Otherwise, Fox News would be off the air.

Three swings, three misses. EPA, you’re out.

Who at EPA came up with this empty-headed stuff? Junk like this really inspires confidence in government. EPA says, “This video contest is your opportunity to explain federal rulemaking and motivate other to participate in the rulemaking process.” I would offer that it is impossible to “explain federal rulemaking” in 90 minutes, so doing it in 90 seconds is, at best, ridiculous. EPA’s movie contest proves my point.

CEI immediately jumped into the EPA contest, with a 90-second video on YouTube, “A Day in the Life of the Regulatory State,” mocking EPA mercilessly. The video follows a dorky-looking young guy from waking in the morning, followed by breakfast, time at work, and to a hamburger stand at lunch. The video ends with our hero’s image plastered with logos from federal government agencies, and then an ominous quote from George Orwell’s 1984: “When you finally surrender to us, it must be of your own free will.”

CEI is entitled to take on EPA’s idiocy with it’s own over-the-top rhetoric. The video begins with a arrow pointing the character’s bed, apparently referring indirectly to the government-mandated mattress tag. This is a common butt of regulatory jokes, and, until 1973, the tag – attesting to the quality of the stuff material – said it could not be removed “Under Penalty of Law.”

Imagine the Mattress Gestapo arriving at your house, discovering you have removed the mattress tag, and hauling you off to the torture chamber, sans mattress.

It’s funny, it’s ubiquitous. But the tag gag is not quite what it is hyped up to be, according to veteran professional cleaner Nancy Paglia. The tag actually says that “under penalty of law this tag may not be removed except by consumer.” But I’ll grant CEI comedic license.

There is plenty of regulatory excess that lends itself to ridicule, and there is no doubt that EPA disserves whatever it gets from CEI in its 90-second video. Nonetheless, regulation is properly part of our everyday lives. The criminal code, traffic laws, non-discrimination rules (including voting rights) are all part of the regulatory environment, and I would argue, a useful and welcome part.

The quarrel with regulation is really a beef about bad, ham-handed, needless, and counterproductive regulation. This is something EPA knows a lot about; they are champions of bad regulation.

Sports Betting and Financial Derivatives

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., May 6, 2010 — Gambling appears to be a nearly ubiquitous human trait, as a news release I received recently demonstrates. The release, from Bookmaker.com, an offshore gambling den (online betting is technically illegal in the U.S., but that’s a joke) offers the odds that BP will be able to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil spill with its 100-ton, 40-foot-tall containment dome. Get your money down.

One can bet on whether the containment chamber will be 80 percent effective, under 80 percent effective, will stop the leak all together, or will make the leak worse. Sounds a lot like sports betting? You betcha, to borrow a phrase. The Cyprus-based bookie handles a lot of sports action, as well as offering poker, table games, and plenty of other types of action.

Bookmaker.com CEO Mickey Richardson, says the press release, presides over “one of the largest sports books in the world, and his team of experienced odds makers have put together lines for just about everything.” And you can wager using your Blackberry.

Americans – men, mostly – don’t have any trouble understanding the complications of sports betting, and the myriad of artificial things one can bet on: point spreads, over-under, touchdowns by quarter, free-throws taken, and the like; just about any thing the human mind can conjure where there are betters willing to take sides.

The bookies, as everyone knows, always win. When action gets too heavy on one side of a bet, the bookie will “lay off” by betting with another bookie, hedging the bet. This protects against big losses for the book. As Wickipedia puts it: “Their working methods are similar to that of an actuary, who does a similar balancing of financial outcomes of events for the assurance and insurance industries.”

The aim of the bookie is not to “win” the bets, but to make money from the transaction, no matter who wins. It’s a very lucrative business, which is why it flourishes regardless of legality. When I was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, one of the local barbers, Ferdie, had a backroom book, completely illegal. He occasionally got busted, but that didn’t shut him down for long. He made a lot more money on the ponies than he did on giving kids flattops.

I’m not a gambler, but here’s a wager for you: how many nuclear plants will be generating power in the U.S. in 2017? The over-under is four, and I’m going under for $50 (and over for $10). See how it works?

While these concepts are pretty clear, folks who almost instinctively understand them claim not to understand what has been happening on Wall Street for more than a decade. Sports bets, and the bets on BP’s success in stopping the blowout, are “derivatives.” Their value is derived from something else that is tangible: A ball game, a horse race, a manmade disaster, and so forth.

Once upon a time, Wall Street’s job was to guide investors into placing their money in ways that would yield returns commensurate with the risk. No more. Now Wall Street is Vegas in pin stripes. Bankers have become bookies, middle-men that facilitate bettors (and occasionally lay off bets, as Goldman apparently did in it’s latest troubles).

Those guys – and yes, they are mostly guys – in the $3,000 suits, Hermes ties, and Larry King-style braces, are hoovering up money on both sides of bets (sub-prime mortgages will flourish, sub-prime mortgages will tank) and occasionally place their own bets, laying off the risk.

The financial gurus create their own jargon – synthetic collateralized debt obligations, interest-rate swaps, currency swaps, butterfly straddles, credit default swaps and the like. That’s all designed to mystify what they do and have done. They don’t want us to know how fundamentally simple it really is.

But to demystify it, just think: “I’ve got the horse right here, his name is Paul Revere.”

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Times Wields Silent Hatchet on DOE’s Chu

Where the NAS Goes Wrong on Warming

Entabulator Rescues Renewables

Arizona Pol Grandstands on Calif. Power

Plan B for Global Warming

Rules and Fools: EPA and CEI

Sports Betting and Financial Derivatives

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