An Inconvenient Peace Prize

Posted on October 14th, 2007 in Development, Energy, Science and Technology by Kyle

Bjorn Lomborg reacts to Gore’s Peace Prize:

With attention and money in scarce supply, we should first tackle the problems with the best solutions, doing the most good throughout the century. If we focus on solving today’s problems, we will leave communities strengthened, economies more vibrant, and infrastructures more robust. This will enable these societies to deal much better with future problems - including global warming. Committing to massive cuts in carbon emissions will leave future generations poorer and less able to adapt to challenges.

Gore has an unshakable faith that climate change is the world’s biggest challenge. To be fair, he deserves some recognition for his resolute passion. However, the contrast between the Nobel winners could not be sharper. The IPCC engages in meticulous research where facts rule over everything else. Gore has a different approach.

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The Dark Side of Ethanol

Posted on September 19th, 2007 in Agriculture, Budget and Tax Policy, Energy, Pork by Kyle

From the NY Times:

Ethanol production in the United States and other countries, combined with bad weather and rising demand for animal feed in China, has helped push global grain prices to their highest levels in at least a decade. Earlier this year, rising prices of corn imports from the United States triggered mass protests in Mexico. The chief of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that rising food prices around the world have threatened social unrest in developing countries.

A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an economic forum of rich nations, called on the United States and other industrialized nations to eliminate subsidies for the production of ethanol which, the report said, is driving up food costs, threatening natural habitats and imposing other environmental costs. “The overall environmental impacts of ethanol and biodiesel can very easily exceed those of petrol and mineral diesel,” it said.

If our technology and resource levels were such that a shift to ethanol was a good idea there would be financial incentives for individuals to undertake the transition.  The fact that you need the government to hand out subsidies while requiring people to use it should be a pretty good sign that it doesn’t really make sense right now.

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Protecting America’s Children from Calorie Pushers

Posted on August 26th, 2007 in Energy, Humor, Law by Will

Remember when this sort of thing was just a joke?

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Let’s take a break from battling over space.

Posted on August 1st, 2007 in Energy, Property Rights by Wayne

Battling over the rights to the ocean floor could be much more rewarding (in the short run anyway).

“For the first time in history people will go down to the sea bed under the North Pole,” Balyasnikov told The Associated Press. “It’s like putting a flag on the moon.”

Russian scientists hope to dive in two mini-submarines beneath the pole to a depth of more than 13,200 feet, and drop a metal capsule containing the Russian flag on the sea bed.

Balyasnikov said the dive was expected to start Thursday morning and last for several hours.

The voyage, led by noted polar explorer and Russian legislator Artur Chilingarov, has some scientific goals, including the study of Arctic plants and animals. But its chief goal appears to be advancing Russia’s political and economic influence by strengthening its legal claims to the gas and oil deposits thought to lie beneath the Arctic sea floor.

The symbolic gesture, along with geologic data being gathered by expedition scientists, is intended to prop up Moscow’s claims to more than 460,000 square miles of the Arctic shelf — which by some estimates may contain 10 billion tons of oil and gas deposits.

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An Inefficient Energy Policy

Posted on July 30th, 2007 in Agriculture, Energy, Pork by Kyle

Pete du Pont in the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. has substantial supplies of oil and gas that could be accessed if lawmakers would allow it, but they frequently don’t. A National Petroleum Council study released last week reports that 40 billion barrels of America’s “recoverable oil reserves are off limits or are subject to significant lease restrictions”–half inshore and half offshore–and similar restrictions apply to more than 250 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. (We consume about 22 trillion cubic feet a year.)

Access to the 10 billion barrels of oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve has been prohibited for decades. Some 85 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas exist on the Outer Continental Shelf, but a month ago the House again, as it did last year, voted down an amendment that would have allowed the expansion of coastal drilling for oil and natural gas. All of which leaves the U.S. as the only nation in the world that has forbidden access to significant sources of domestic energy supplies.

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