Energy/Environment – Page 56 – artdiamondblog.com

In Conflict Between Ecologist and Economist, the Economist Won

Paul Ehrlich (left) and Julian Simon (right). Source of caricature: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. C6) . . . in 1980 Simon made Mr. Ehrlich a bet. If Mr. Ehrlich’s predictions about overpopulation and the depletion of resources were correct, Simon said, then over the next decade the prices of commodities would rise as they became more scarce. Simon contended that, because markets spur innovation and create efficiencies, commodity prices would fall. He proposed that each party put up $1,000 to purchase a basket of five commodities. If the prices of these went down, Mr. Ehrlich would pay Simon the difference between the 1980 and 1990 prices. If the prices went up, Simon would pay. This meant that Mr. Ehrlich’s exposure was limited while Simon’s was theoretically infinite.
. . .
In October 1990, Mr. Ehrlich mailed a check for $576.07 to Simon.
. . .
Mr. Ehrlich was more than a sore loser. In 1995, he told this paper: “If Simon disappeared from the face of the Earth, that would be great for humanity.” (Simon would die in 1998.)
. . .
Mr. Sabin’s portrait of Mr. Ehrlich suggests that he is among the more pernicious figures in the last century of American public life. As Mr. Sabin shows, he pushed an authoritarian vision of America, proposing “luxury taxes” on items such as diapers and bottles and refusing to rule out the use of coercive force in order to prevent Americans from having children. In many ways, Mr. Ehrlich was an early instigator of the worst aspects of America’s culture wars. This picture is all the more damning because Mr. Sabin paints it not with malice but with sympathy. A history professor at Yale, Mr. Sabin shares Mr. Ehrlich’s devotion to environmentalism. Yet this affinity doesn’t prevent Mr. Sabin from being clear-eyed.
At heart, “The Bet” is about not just a conflict of men; it is about a conflict of disciplines, pitting ecologists against economists. Mr. Sabin cautiously posits that neither side has been completely vindicated by the events of the past 40 years. But this may be charity on his part: While not everything Simon predicted has come to pass, in the main he has been vindicated.
. . .
Mr. Ehrlich may have been defeated in the wager, but he has continued to flourish in the public realm. The great mystery left unsolved by “The Bet” is why Paul Ehrlich and his confederates have paid so small a price for their mistakes. And perhaps even been rewarded for them. In 1990, just as Mr. Ehrlich was mailing his check to Simon, the MacArthur Foundation awarded him one of its “genius” grants. And 20 years later his partner in the wager, John Holdren, was appointed by President Obama to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

For the full review, see:
JONATHAN V. LAST. “A Prediction that Bombed; Paul Ehrlich predicted an imminent population catastrophe; Julian Simon wagered he was wrong.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., August 31, 2013): C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date August 30, 2013, and has the title “Book Review: ‘The Bet’ by Paul Sabin; Paul Ehrlich predicted an imminent population catastrophe–Julian Simon wagered he was wrong.”)

The book discussed above is:
Sabin, Paul. The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013.

Source of book image: http://paulsabin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sabin_the_bet_wr.jpg

“The Ecosystem Is More Intact than You Might Have Feared”

“The first-ever photograph of the Santa Marta sabrewing.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Michael Parr, quoted in the entry below, is Vice President of Planning and Program Development of the American Bird Conservancy as of 8/10/13 (as listed on: http://www.abcbirds.org/aboutabc/staff.html ).

(p. D3) Rare birds in isolated habitats can be a recipe for extinction, and while there had been a few unconfirmed sightings of the sabrewing in recent years, the bird’s existence had not been documented for decades. Until March 24, that is, when a researcher studying migratory birds, Laura Cárdenas, caught one in a mist net, banded it and took its picture before releasing it. It’s the first photograph ever of a Santa Marta sabrewing.
“She had a little bit of luck,” Mr. Parr said. “The bird just flew into the net, completely by chance.”
. . .
The sighting shows that “the ecosystem is more intact than you might have feared,” he added.

For the full story, see:
HENRY FOUNTAIN. “OBSERVATORY; Rare Bird, Alive and Well and Living in Colombia.” The New York Times (Tues., April 13, 2010): D3.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date April 12, 2010.)

“Inflexible Labor Laws” Lead Indian Firms “to Substitute Machines for Unskilled Labor”

(p. A19) . . . , India is failing to make full use of the estimated one million low-skilled workers who enter the job market every month.
Manufacturing requires transparent rules and reliable infrastructure. India is deficient in both. High-profile scandals over the allocation of mobile broadband spectrum, coal and land have undermined confidence in the government. If land cannot be easily acquired and coal supplies easily guaranteed, the private sector will shy away from investing in the power grid. Irregular electricity holds back investments in factories.
India’s panoply of regulations, including inflexible labor laws, discourages companies from expanding. As they grow, large Indian businesses prefer to substitute machines for unskilled labor.

For the full commentary, see:
ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN. “Why India’s Economy Is Stumbling.” The New York Times (Sat., August 31, 2013): A19.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date August 30, 2013.)

Science Discovers New Six-Foot Lizard

“A 6-foot monitor lizard discovered on Luzon Island in the Philippines.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D3) The number of lizard species in the world — by most counts, around 4,000 — has just increased by one, with the announcement of a new species found on Luzon island in the Philippines.

But this is not a reptile you’d want in a home terrarium. It’s a 6-foot monitor lizard, gray with a spectacular pattern of colorful dots and other markings on its scales.
How did a species of lizard the size of a human remain undetected all these centuries? The answer is it didn’t. “It’s only new to science,” said Rafe M. Brown, an assistant professor at the University of Kansas and senior author of a paper describing the new species, Varanus bitatawa, in Biology Letters.

For the full story, see:
HENRY FOUNTAIN. “OBSERVATORY; A New Lizard? Well, New to Science.” The New York Times (Tues., April 13, 2010): D3.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date April 12, 2010.)

A Path to Bringing Back the Extinct Woolly Mammoth

(p. D3) For the first time in 43,000 years, a woolly mammoth has breathed again on earth.
Well, not the mammoth itself but its hemoglobin, the stuff in red blood cells that takes on oxygen in the lungs and offloads it in the tissues. By reconstructing the mammoth’s hemoglobin, a team led by Kevin L. Campbell of the University of Manitoba in Canada has discovered how the once-tropical species adapted to living in arctic temperatures.
Dr. Campbell’s work raises a somewhat astonishing possibility: that much of the physiology of extinct animals may one day be recoverable from the DNA extracted from their remains.
. . .
Two years ago, scientists at Penn State University sequenced a large part of the mammoth’s genome from a clump of hair. They published the sequence along with the arresting suggestion that for just $10 million it might be possible to complete the sequence and use it to generate a living mammoth.
The suggestion was not as wild as it might seem, given that the idea came from George Church, a leading genome technologist at the Harvard Medical School. The mammoth’s genome differs at about 400,000 sites from that of the African elephant. Dr. Church has been developing a method for altering 50,000 sites at a time, though he is not at present applying it to mammoths. In converting four sites on the elephant genome to the mammoth version, Dr. Campbell has resurrected at least one tiny part of the mammoth.

For the full story, see:
NICHOLAS WADE. “Mammoth Hemoglobin Offers More Clues to Its Arctic Evolution.” The New York Times (Tues., May 4, 2010): D3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date May 3, 2010.)

George Mitchell, Father of Fracking, Took 20 Years to Make It Work

“George P. Mitchell with a statue of himself at The Woodlands in 2007.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ obituary quoted and cited below.

(p. B3) George P. Mitchell turned hydraulic fracturing from an experimental technique into an energy-industry mainstay, making it possible to pump oil and gas from once untappable rocks and unleashing an energy boom across the U.S.

Known as the father of fracking, Mr. Mitchell died Friday [July 26, 2013] at age 94 at his home in Galveston, Texas.
. . .
“George Mitchell, more than anyone else, is responsible for the most important energy innovation of the 21st century,” said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of consulting firm IHS and a Pulitzer Prize winning author on energy.
. . .
His first efforts at fracking, in the late 1970s, were expensive, and at times investors and his board of directors questioned the spending. But by the late 1990s the company had figured out the right mix of techniques and materials to produce shale gas economically, and began to do so on a major scale.
Devon Energy Corp. bought Mr. Mitchell’s firm in 2002 for $3.1 billion, combined the hydraulic fracturing techniques with horizontal drilling, and helped launch the current surge in oil and gas production.

For the full obituary, see:
TOM FOWLER. “REMEMBRANCES; George P. Mitchell 1919-2013; ‘Father of Fracking’ Helped Unleash U.S. Energy Boom.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., July 27, 2013): B3.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date July 26, 2013, and has the title “REMEMBRANCES; ‘Father of Fracking’ Dies at 94; George P. Mitchell Helped Unleash U.S. Energy Boom.”)

It’s Hard to Be Consistent

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Both Adam Smith and Horatio Alger would find something to like in the rise of T. Boone Pickens. “Boy geologist” Boone quit a promising job at Phillips Petroleum in the mid-1950s and built, over the following decades, Mesa Petroleum, a top North American independent oil and gas producer. Mesa found lots of oil and gas, provided jobs for hundreds of workers, and earned wealth for thousands of investors. During the same years, Mr. Pickens’s attempts to take over Cities Service, Gulf Oil, Phillips and Unocal made the whole oil industry shape up: His bids required the managers of each company to look hard at its practices and improve its shareholder returns.

Such accomplishments are the core of Mr. Pickens’s 1987 autobiography, “Boone,” which was updated 13 years later and retitled “The Luckiest Guy in the World.” In those books, Mr. Pickens’s political philosophy rang loud and clear. “I believe,” he stated, “the greatest opportunity lies in a free marketplace.” He warned: “There are powerful forces afoot trying to restrict that freedom in the interests of the vested and already wealthy. I am talking about a relatively small collection of corporate executives who would use the engine of American commerce for their own narrow ends.”
. . .
Now Mr. Pickens has new dreams — and he is lobbying Washington to make them come alive.
In particular, Mr. Pickens wants the federal government — through a mix of tax incentives, mandates and subsidies — to override the market and redirect the uses of natural gas.
. . .
“The First Billion” argues for this plan, along with recounting Mr. Pickens’s business ups and downs. The book is often entertaining, featuring the usual “Boone-isms”: e.g., “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” But readers unfamiliar with Mr. Pickens’s earlier memoirs may not realize that the new one represents a kind of bait-and-switch. Mr. Pickens’s standing to pronounce on energy matters was earned as a free-market producer. He is now using that standing to defy the market itself.

For the full review, see:
ROBERT BRADLEY JR. “BUSINESS BOOKSHELF; When Effort Is Energetic.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., September 10, 2008): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)

The book under review is:
Pickens, T. Boone. The First Billion Is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America’s Energy Future. New York: Crown Business, 2008.

Global Warming Allows Russians to Build Liquefied Natural Gas Plant in Arctic

“A rendering of Novatek’s proposed $20 billion liquefied natural gas plant on Russia’s Arctic coast, scheduled to be done by 2016.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) YURKHAROVSKOYE GAS FIELD, Russia — The polar ice cap is melting, and if executives at the Russian energy company Novatek feel guilty about profiting from that, they do not let it be known in public.

From this windswept shore on the Arctic Ocean, where Novatek owns enormous natural gas deposits, a stretch of thousands of miles of ice-free water leads to China. The company intends to ship the gas directly there.
. . .
Novatek, in partnership with the French energy company Total and the China National Petroleum Corporation, is building a $20 billion liquefied natural gas plant on the central Arctic coast of Russia. It is one of the first major energy projects to take advantage of the summer thawing of the Arctic caused by global warming.
The plant, called Yamal LNG, would send gas to Asia along the sea lanes known as the Northeast Passage, which opened for regular international shipping only four years ago.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW E. KRAMER. “Polar Thaw Opens Shortcut for Russian Natural Gas.” The New York Times (Thurs., July 25, 2013): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date July 24, 2013, and has the title “Polar Thaw Opens Shortcut for Russian Natural Gas.”)

Biofuels Like Ethanol Raise Food Costs About 30%

(p. 5) Until January [2008], Keith Collins was the longtime and widely respected chief economist for the Department of Agriculture. In that position, he was a frequent booster of government policies that encouraged biofuel production.
In the months after his departure, he was hired by Kraft Foods Global to analyze the impact of biofuels on food prices. He delivered a stunning, and unexpected, roundhouse to his former employers.
The Bush administration had said biofuels were a minor factor in rising food costs. In a May 1 [2008] press conference, Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said, “The bottom line is that we think that ethanol accounts for somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of the overall increase in global food prices.”
A month later, in Rome at a United Nations conference on the food crisis, the agriculture secretary, Ed Schafer, echoed Mr. Lazear’s analysis in defending American biofuels policy.
But Mr. Collins pointed out that the administration’s analysis was more like a back-of-the-envelope calculation, and that it hadn’t accounted for the impact of biofuels on crops other than corn. The push for ethanol has led farmers to grow more corn and less of other food crops, one factor in rising prices for commodities like wheat.
Based on his own analysis, Mr. Collins maintains that biofuels have caused 23 to 35 percent of the increases in food costs.

For the full commentary, see:
ANDREW MARTIN. “THE FEED; The Man Who Dared to Question Ethanol.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., July 13, 2008): 5.
(Note: bracketed years added.)

“Quality of Life Is Better” with a Home Electricity Generator

“AGAINST ALL STORMS; Charles LaDuca of Bethesda, Md., spent about $12,000 to buy and install a 14-kilowatt generator, below.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. F8) After Tropical Storm Irene pummeled the Northeast in 2011, Keith and Barbara Wolff realized it was time to act. Though they were spared during Irene, several other storms had cut the power to their home in Brookfield, Conn., forcing them to throw out food, wear sweaters to keep warm and find coffee shops to recharge their cellphones and laptops.

So the Wolffs did what many of their neighbors had done: They bought a portable, gasoline-powered generator that produced enough electricity to run many of their essential appliances, including their refrigerator, water well, hot water tank, heater and home offices.
The Wolffs paid about $1,000 for a 7,500-watt generator made by Generac. A week after paying an electrician $900 to hook up the unit to their electrical system, they put their new purchase to work when a snowstorm knocked out their power for nine days.
“It was a pretty hefty investment, but it was well worth it because when it’s cold out, you want to at least be able to take a shower,” Mr. Wolff said. “There are two things you can do: Be completely aggravated and non-functional or do a workaround so your quality of life is better.”

For the full story, see:
KEN BELSON. “Power Grids Iffy, Populous Areas Go for Generators.” The New York Times (Thurs., April 25, 2013): F8.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated April 24, 2013.)

Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

The French and Japanese Believe Water Cleans the Anus Better than Dry Paper

Source of the book image: http://jacketupload.macmillanusa.com/jackets/high_res/jpgs/9780805090833.jpg

(p. C34) Ms. George’s book is lively . . . . It is hard not to warm to a writer who can toss off an observation like this one: “I like engineers. They build things that are useful and sometimes beautiful — a brick sewer, a suspension bridge — and take little credit. They do not wear black and designer glasses like architects. They do not crow.”
. . .
In Japan, where toilets are amazingly advanced — most of even the most basic have heated seats and built-in bidet systems for front and rear — the American idea of cleaning one’s backside with dry paper is seen as quaint at best and disgusting at worst. As Ms. George observes: “Using paper to cleanse the anus makes as much sense, hygienically, as rubbing your body with dry tissue and imagining it removes dirt.”

For the full review, see:
DWIGHT GARNER. “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; 15 Minutes of Fame for Human Waste and Its Never-Ending Assembly Line.” The New York Times (Fri., December 12, 2008): C34.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 11, 2008.)

The book under review, is:
George, Rose. The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008.