Hybrid Humvee

Somehow I don’t think this will shut the environmentalists up:

Lithium-ion battery manufacturer EnerDel has signed an 18-month, $1.29 million contract with the U.S. Army to design and test hybrid battery options for the Humvee.

Trying to power the iconic fuel-guzzling High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV aka Humvee) with a battery, may seem like trying to put out a fire with a garden hose. But a lithium-ion battery system can deliver a lot of power from a battery quickly, giving a truck like the Humvee the thrust it requires.

EnerDel, a subsidiary of Ener1, will collaborate with the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC) on four possible power systems that could be implemented in the XM1124 version of the Humvee.

But now that one of their preferred technologies is getting support from military spending, hopefully they will drop the ludicrous assertion that U.S. military expenditures are really a subsidy to oil, of which the unsubsidized price might otherwise be $300 to $480 a barrel.

 

NYT shines light on Al Gore

Al Gore’s self-serving advocacy has always irked me. Now, even the New York Times is on to him.

Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

[...]

Mr. Gore has invested a significant portion of the tens of millions of dollars he has earned since leaving government in 2001 in a broad array of environmentally friendly energy and technology business ventures, like carbon trading markets, solar cells and waterless urinals.

 

 

Prince Wind Farm: Like Frankenstein’s scar

In the spirit of Hallowe’en, I’m posting some satellite shots of Brookfield Renewable Power’s Prince Wind Farm.  While some suggest that a wind turbine rising from the pristine wilderness is a thing of beauty, I could not help thinking this project looks like one of Frankenstein’s scars.

Link on Google Maps

 

“Solar never efficient without massive government subsidies”

An interesting investment perspective on climate change:

Noting there’s arguments and counterarguments on both sides of the global warming debate, Altucher declares: “Nobody really knows” whether the globe is heating or cooling or how much is manmade and how much is just the Earth’s natural cycle.

For investors, Atucher says the message is clear: Avoid solar stocks, since solar power is “never efficient” without massive government subsidies.

Watch the whole video.

 

Wind is not the solution

Whatever its merits, wind generation has been greatly oversold by the hucksters whose livelihood now depends on diverting huge government subsidies toward them so their precious wind projects can compete with conventional forms of energy. Despite the ongoing efforts of climate alarmists and their media poodles to convince us otherwise, dramatically increasing the amount of energy generated by wind turbines is not only uneconomic but also bad public policy. Ultimately, wind will be proven to be about as effective a response to global warming as corn ethanol.

With regard to energy, Canada has nothing to be ashamed about. The carbon footprint of Canada’s energy production is among the cleanest in the world. Unlike the United States and most of Europe, the bulk of our energy production comes from hydroelectric and nuclear. We do not need wind.

The shortcomings of wind generation are becoming increasingly clear. As Jon Boone points out, wind is a bad choice from both an energy and environmental perspective:

Because of wind’s unpredictable variability, it can never replace the capacity of conventional generation. Twenty-five hundred 450-foot wind turbines, spread over five hundred miles, can mathematically offset a large coal or nuclear plant; but they cannot do so functionally–for what must happen when 5,000 MW of volatile wind is only producing 100 MW at peak demand times, a common occurrence?

This business is absurd. The whole point of modern power systems has been to move beyond the flickering flutter of variable energy sources. Prostituting modern power performance to enable subprime energy schemes on behalf of half-baked technology is immoral. As is implementing highly regressive tax avoidance “incentives” to make it appear that pigs can fly. No coal plants will be shuttered and little, if any, carbon emissions will be reduced as a result of this project—or thousands of them.

[...]

Industrial wind projects will clearcut hundreds of acres, if placed on forested ridges. Even small 100 MW industrial wind parks would hover for miles over sensitive terrain, threatening vulnerable species while mocking endangered species protections–and scenic highways strictures. They will cause unlawful noise for miles downrange. They will devalue properties in the area as much as 50%, if they could sell at all. Dynamiting will threaten wells and aquifers.

 We would be wise to listen.

 

Greywashers vs. greenwashers

Its seems you can’t turn anywhere these days without some marketer making green claims.

You could be forgiven for thinking that big companies with the vaguest interest in flashing their green credentials – even when those credentials are somwhat tenuous – do tend to get out there and do it. A lot.

But no, according to a new study. Big tech companies – you know, those shrinking violets of the marketing scene, like Microsoft and Cisco – often fail to tell the world about all the good they’re doing to save the world. Yes, that’s right. Oh and it’s the opposite of ‘greenwashing’, so they’ve called it ‘greywashing’ (or presumably ‘graywashing’ for Americans).

I am not a big fan of Microsoft, having used their products, but this news raises my opinion of them. As for the greenwashers, it is always good to keep in mind that sometimes the most vigorous supporters of a cause are the ones you need to keep an eye on.

 

I’m keeping the dog

Apparently, my dog is worse for the planet than an SUV. Despite the extreme lengths to which the climate alarmists are willing to go, Jonah Goldberg argues that Americans are no longer buying such fear mongering.

The notion that America will sacrifice its sovereignty and treasure — and dogs! — to reduce warming by a fraction a century from now is absurd.

If you cannot afford — politically, morally or economically — the solution to a perceived problem, then it’s not a solution. We cannot afford to end the use of carbon-based energy, so a better strategy is to develop remedies for the bad side effects of carbon use.

That’s the case Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner make in their book, “SuperFreakonomics,” which is already being torn apart by environmentalists horrified at the notion they might lose their license to Get Things Done as they see fit.

Is the atmosphere getting too hot? Cool it down by reflecting away more sunlight. The ocean’s getting too acidic? Give it some antacid.

The technology’s not ready. But pursuing it for a couple of decades will cost pennies compared with carbon rationing. Moreover, you just might get to keep your dog.

 

 

SuperFreakonomics: Myhrvold vs. Romm

Nathan Myhrvold responds to baseless attacks by Joe Romm on his views about solar energy and geoengineering as presented in SuperFreakonomics. Not surprisingly, he laments how politics interferes with rational debate on climate change.

One of the saddest things for me about climate science is how political it has become. Science works by having an open dialog that ultimately converges on the truth, for the common benefit of everyone. Most scientific fields enjoy this free flow of ideas.

There are serious scientific and technological issues in studying our climate, how it responds to human-caused emission of greenhouse gases, and what the most effective solutions will be for global warming. But unfortunately, the policy implications are vast and there is a lot at stake in economic terms.

It seems inevitable that discussions of climate science would degenerate to being deeply politicized and polarized. Depending on which views are adopted, individuals, industries, and countries will gain or lose, which provides ample motive. Once people with a strong political or ideological bent latch onto an issue, it becomes hard to have a reasonable discussion; once you’re in a political mode, the focus in the discussion changes. Everything becomes an attempt to protect territory. Evidence and logic becomes secondary, used when advantageous and discarded when expedient. What should be a rational debate becomes a personal and venal brawl. Rational, scientific debate that could advance the common good gets usurped by personal attacks and counterattacks.

 In explaining his position, Myhrvold notes the limitations of a massive buildup of renewable energy capacity such as solar PV:

The net result is that we may not get much CO2 benefit from the solar plants until we are past the rapid-growth phase of building out new plants. If we go hell-bent for leather in building solar plants for the next 50 years or so, it is entirely possible that we won’t see much small benefit for 30 to 50 years. In the long run, we still get benefit from the solar plants — lots of benefit (hence the “great carbon-free infrastructure”) — but in the near term, we may get little or no benefit. I say “may” because the details matter, and it is beyond the scope of what I can do here to calculate and explain them all; but the basic effect is that the time to get real benefit is delayed. A large part of this is due to the energy it takes to make them, and some is due to their blackness.

This is one of the dilemmas we face as a society. If we rapidly invest to make a new renewable-energy infrastructure, the very fact that we are making that investment can delay the onset of the benefit. It’s really hard to cut emissions quickly unless you cut consumption quickly, which society doesn’t seem very keen to do. So when people say “Let’s build out solar massively between now and 2050 in order to cut emissions,” I say yes, we’ll get the emissions cut, but in the short-term there may be less benefit than you think.

The rest of his commentary is definitely worth reading.

 

Putting lies in children’s mouths

A lie from the mouth of a child is still a lie.

A provocative public awareness campaign is hitting the streets in 20 hotly contested federal ridings, urging voters to pressure the Harper government to do more to fight climate change on the eve of a major international summit in Copenhagen.

The campaign is spearheaded by several environmental groups that have analyzed election results to identify key neighbourhoods inside the ridings in Ontario and Quebec. They are also targeting young families with radio ads that feature a child who uses some colourful language to ask why parents aren’t doing more on climate change.

“Rising sea levels, scarier storms, famine and war. I mean, holy ship,” says the child in radio ads that will start airing on Tuesday in the federal battleground regions of Kitchener, Waterloo and London.

Despite restrictions on misleading advertising, such deception is apparently exempt from the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards. The environmental organizations that sponsor this drivel are in good company. After all,  the truth never stopped Al Gore.

 

Capital-trashing exercise

Much of what passes for environmental policy these days typically amounts to nothing more than a capital-trashing exercise. The capital asset, whether it be a used car or a coal-fired generating facility, is somehow deemed to be environmentally unfriendly and is thus prematurely retired. As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial points out, trashing the thing, if it still has a useful life left in it, doesn’t make us any better off:

The basic fallacy of cash for clunkers is that you can somehow create wealth by destroying existing assets that are still productive, in this case cars that still work. Under the program, auto dealers were required to destroy the car engines of trade-ins with a sodium silicate solution, then smash them and send them to the junk yard. As the journalist Henry Hazlitt wrote in his classic, “Economics in One Lesson,” you can’t raise living standards by breaking windows so some people can get jobs repairing them.

ht: Cafe Hayek