An easy, if illogical, appeal

There's a big global-warming conference getting underway in Bali, with 10,000 attendees from around the world.

Whatever you think of the conference subject -- or the likely results, if any -- I'm getting tired of one easy-but-ignorant criticism routinely aimed at such conferences. To wit:

Critics say they are contributing to the very problem they aim to solve.

"Nobody denies this is an important event, but huge numbers of people are going, and their emissions are probably going to be greater than a small African country," said Chris Goodall, author of the book "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life."

It's an interesting datum, made more interesting in that it's coming from someone who clearly thinks global-warming is real and serious. But as far as ethics or policy, such a criticism is mindless.

The implication is that the attendees are hypocrites, because they're preaching global-warming alarm while jetting around the world.

But such a stance is nonsense. If we were to accept the premise, then people concerned about global warming could never hold global discussions because of the emissions involved in putting such meetings together. Apparently, the effort to combat global warming is supposed to be fought by people meeting locally in outdoor venues reached only by bicycle or on foot. Or handled entirely by telephone and e-mail.

Which is utter bilge, of course.

For one thing, the amount of emissions involved are relatively small -- as the story notes, the 12-day conference is expected to produce about as much carbon as the city of Marseilles produces in one day. That one-time bump in emissions isn't even a rounding error in the scheme of things.

For another, few if any of the people involved are advocating a return to caveman days. These aren't zero-emission fanatics, who think that taking a ski vacation in Colorado is an unforgiveable crime against the planet. There's a reason it's called emissions "reduction," not "elimination"; emissions are an unavoidable part of human activity. So expecting delegates to be entirely carbon-neutral in every aspect of their lives is silly.

It's much like a dieter, who is trying to reduce -- but not eliminate -- his caloric intake. Do you call him hypocritical if he stays within his caloric goal but eats a sugar cookie? No. Doing so relies on a crabbed definition of dieting that completely ignores the big picture.

The way to look at emissions reductions is from a cost-benefit angle. If the conference adds 1 percent to this year's emissions, but results in agreements that cut long-term emissions by 5 percent, it clearly is an emission-friendly endeavor.

Naturally, the real picture is more complex than that, because emissions-reduction is a slow, slow process. It's more like this conference, plus the next one and the next one and the next one, will, over a period of years, lay the groundwork for the next Kyoto-like agreement, expected in 2012. But the logic is the same.

One can question whether the effort is worth it, or is likely to produce anything of value. And there are legitimate criticisms of this conference in particular -- why Bali, for instance, instead of a more accessible location? Though that answer is not simple, either, because there are issues not only of emissions but also relative wealth: it's economically more feasible to have wealthy Westerners fly to Bali than to have poor Asian countries send people to Europe, even if the latter is better for the carbon balance sheet. And, of course, there are political reasons to hold meetings of global importance all over the globe in question.

But it's simply silly to expect the effort itself to be carbon-neutral from the get-go.

global warming, politics, midtopia

The science of climate change

The latest issue of Scientific American has a pretty informative article on the current state of climate science: why we know the earth is warming, and why we know human activity is partly to blame.

The authors are William Collins of UC-Berkeley; Robert Colman, an Australian; James Haywood of the UK's Met Office; Martin Manning of NOAA; and Philip Mote, the climatologist for the state of Washington.

Unfortunately it'll cost you $5 to read the article online. I'll summarize the key points here, but if you want to read the whole article you'll need to buy a copy or go to the library.

The main points:

GREENHOUSE GASES
1. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have been stable for 10,000 years -- until they began growing rapidly about the time the Western world industrialized.

WARMING
1. 11 of the past 12 years are the warmest since reliable records began around 1850. That's a pretty short time frame, geologically speaking, but the chances of that happening by chance are very small.

2. Measurements from ice cores and tree rings provide a longer time line, showing that the current climate is warmer than it has been for at least 1,300 years.

3. While natural variability occurs, temperature extremes have changed in accordance with the warming trends. Frost days and cold days have become less common, while heat waves and hot days have become more common.

4. The oceans are warming as well, more so at the surface than in the depths, a sign that the warming source is at the surface.

5. Overall, the planet's average temperature has risen .75 degrees Centigrade (about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) in the last 100 years -- and the pace is accelerating.

RISING SEA LEVELS
1. The oceans have absorbed more than 80 percent of the added heat. This has warmed the water, which expands, causing sea levels to rise. Melting glaciers and ice sheets add to the effect.

2. The oceans have been measured rising an average of 3.1 millimeters a year. Over 50 years, that would mean a total increase of 155mm, or about 6 inches. The process is expected to accelerate, however, for a total rise in the 21st Century of maybe 40 centimeters (400mm, or about 16 inches) and possibly as much as 60 centimeters (about two feet).

3. With rising sea levels comes inundation of low-lying coastal areas, a higher water table, increased flooding, erosion, salination of coastal waterways and wetlands, and greater danger from storms. An EPA study of the effects of various levels of sea rise suggests (while admitting it is an underestimate) that even a 6-inch increase would cost the United States alone something like $100 billion if we wanted to protect developed coastal areas and prevent inland flooding (the cost is spread over 100 years, so the annual cost isn't too bad. But that assumes coastal development all but ceases, and that sea levels stop rising. The costs rise fairly rapidly with additional increases in sea levels).

HUMAN CAUSES
We know humans are responsible for this increase for several reasons.

1. Some greenhouse gases, like halocarbons, have no natural sources.

2. Geographic differences in concentration comport well with human causation, with heavier concentrations over the more heavily populated and industrialized northern hemisphere.

3. Analysis of isotopes in atmospheric gas can identify the origin of the gas. It turns out most of it comes from burning fossil fuels.

4. There is more warming over land than over sea, and in the ocean the greatest warming is occurring at the surface -- both indicators of a human factor.

5. The troposphere (the lower atmosphere) is warming while the stratosphere is cooling -- exactly what you would expect if the cause was increased emissions of greenhouse gases and depletion of stratospheric ozone. If warming was primarily caused by solar activity, both layers of the atmosphere would warm up.

ACCURACY OF MEASUREMENTS
1. For the long-lived greenhouse gases, we know their heat-trapping effects fairly well, because we have precise measurements of their concentration and distribution in the atmosphere, and we know how they affect the planet's energy balance.

2. Five years have passed since the last major report, and in those five years temperature increases have been consistent with projections of greenhouse-driven warming.

3. The climate models used to make predictions and measure the effects of various warming and cooling factors are getting better. In addition, results are drawn from an ensemble of 18 modeling groups, so the weakness of any single model can be identified and its effect on conclusions reduced.

The article ends with a discussion of what isn't known, the limitations of current research and thus the lack of granularity in some areas. But overall I think it does a good job of explaining why leading scientists think humans are a significant factor in global warming.

global warming, environment, politics, midtopia

One-liners

The story: Larry Flynt claims he has 30 solid leads on names from the D.C. Madam's list, including at least one more senator.
The comment: You know the world is a weird place when Larry Flynt is the conscience of a nation.

The story: In Washington, D.C., vandals trash a man's Hummer, leaving an illiterate protest note: "FOR THE ENVIRON."
The comment: Grow up and learn to spell. Since when is property damage a liberal value?

The story: Rep. Don Young of Alaska -- he of the "bridge to nowhere" -- loudly defends an earmark as "my money" on the House floor. He suggests that one reason Republicans lost control of the House in November is because conservative members had challenged too much such spending.
The comment: It isn't your money, Don; it's the taxpayers' money. Time to retire.

Don Young, Hummer, Flynt, politics, midtopia

Fly like an eagle

Everybody of a certain age has a bald eagle story.

I spent six of the first eight years of my life in Buffalo, N.Y. Growing up there, the bald eagle had almost mythic significance to my young mind because it was a symbol in more ways than one. Not only did it represent our country; it was vanishingly rare. You never saw one except on television. It wasn't like cardinals, for instance, which are the state bird of seven states precisely because they're everywhere. The eagle's very scarcity added to its mythology, as well as providing a potent lesson in environmentalism, conservation and the fragility and interconnectedness of life.

In the summer of 1976 -- another interesting piece of symbolism, being the bicentennial year -- my family moved to Wisconsin, far closer to eagle habitat. And as my brothers and I grew older we started making annual treks to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota.

There we finally caught glimpses of eagles in the wild -- huge birds, black wings outstretched, seemingly headless because their white skulls often blended into the brightness of the sky as they circled far above us. Each encounter was a moment of awe and wonder. Merely seeing the puffy shape of an empty eagle's nest, high up in some ancient dead tree, was enough to provoke excitement. It was almost like spotting a Yeti or a Sasquatch -- finally meeting up with a legendary but seldom seen king of the wild places.

I attended college in Minnesota, in the Twin Cities. But my glimpses of eagles remained confined to the still-frequent trips to the Boundary Waters.

When I was 25, our parents took us on a trip to Alaska. One day we decided to go deep-sea fishing. We arrived at the dock and piled on to the charter boat. As it eased out into the channel leading to the ocean, I saw them: eagles, dozens of them, perched in the trees lining the channel. Juveniles, adults, pairs and singles. They were there for the same reason we were: fish. And they were there in droves.

The fishing was awful, at least for me: I caught one tiny rockfish, which appeared to have been hooked accidentally as it ignored my line. But the fishing expedition turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip, thanks to the eagles.

My career took me around the country, to places like New Jersey and Florida. The latter is another eagle-dense state, but I didn't see many there, since I spent most of my time in urban areas. Several years later, though, I landed a job back in the Twin Cities, and we returned to Minnesota.

We first lived in Minneapolis, which had lots of sparrows but no eagles. But we drove back and forth to Wisconsin a lot to visit my parents, and increasingly spotted eagles circling far above the highway. We thought that was cool, a small sign of the comeback we'd been reading about.

Then we moved to the western suburbs, pursuing a better school district and more affordable housing. We found ourselves surrounded by lakes and wetlands -- and eagles.

Now, despite living in a densely populated suburb, we see eagles every day. A nesting pair lives a couple miles from our house. Another lives somewhere in the opposite direction; I see them overhead in the morning as I drive my daughters to school and day care.

To me and my wife -- raised during a time when eagles were on the brink of extinction -- this is endlessly amazing. We never tire of seeing them, craning our necks or pulling the car over to the side of the road merely to watch.

Our daughters like eagles, too. But they don't understand our fascination, and they likely never will. They see eagles every day. When we go to the Minnesota Zoo -- a not-infrequent occurence -- we always attend the bird show, where they get to see a bald eagle up close.

They like it when I point out wildlife as we drive along. But I've lost all credibility with them as far as eagles are concerned.

"Look up there!" I'll say.

"WHAT? WHAT?" they'll ask excitedly, squirming around in their seats to get a look. "What is it?"

"A bald eagle!"

"Oh." They'll immediately stop squirming and go back to annoying each other.

So I'm very happy that the bald eagle is officially back from the brink -- removed yesterday from the federal government's list of threatened species. And I'm glad that they plan to continue managing the eagle population so that it doesn't end up back on the list -- even though that appears to means that the Minnesota man whose lawsuit prompted the action still won't be able to develop his eagle-infested property despite winning the suit.

But I'm sad that my daughters will never share our sense of wonder at their existence. They'll grow up bemused by their parents' eagle fixation, never quite understanding the experience that underlies it.

Still, it's a good problem to have. Welcome back, bald eagle. May you soar for many years more.

conservation, bald eagle, politics, midtopia

Cheney the... okay, he's no environmentalist

In the final installment of the Washington Post's series on Dick Cheney, the story focuses on his environmental record (previous commentary, including links to the rest of the series, is here and here).

We again see the same methodology: operating in secret, reaching down to the lowest levels of the bureaucracy to effect the policies he wants.

In this case, though, it's hard to discern a guiding principle at work other than "in any conflict between the environment and business, business is always right."

Actually, make that "businesses I care about."

The main example in the story focuses on the Klamath River basin in Oregon, which pitted drought-stricken farmers against the survival of two species of fish in the Klamath River, from which the farmers wanted to draw their water. The law and science supported the fish, but Cheney wanted the farmers to get their water. So he challenged the science, and based on a preliminary report, declared there was "no threat" to the fish and got the restrictions removed.

What happened next is classic Cheney. The fish died in droves, causing the collapse of commercial salmon fisheries in Oregon and Northern California. In order to protect a few farmers, Cheney destroyed an even larger -- but less politically valuable -- industry. Typically, his approach later lost in the courts, where an Interior Department fish-management plan was decisively rejected because it would essentially have managed the fish out of existence.

It's especially appalling when you consider that the Endangered Species Act has a provision for overriding environmental concerns when the economic impact is judged to be too large. Or that the farmers could have been helped out more cheaply and less controversially simply by giving them drought relief checks so they didn't need to farm.

By the way, you have to love this paragraph. It involves Robert Smith, a former Republican congressman who was a lobbyist for the Klamath farmers.

Smith had served with Cheney on the House Interior Committee in the 1980s, and the former congressman said he turned to the vice president because he knew him as a man of the West who didn't take kindly to federal bureaucrats meddling with private use of public land.

Yep, the Western spirit of rugged individualism means the federal government shouldn't regulate the private use of public land. Let's not even get into the fact that the land is usually leased at far below market rates, providing a government subsidy to the lucky recipients.

Maybe, if people are so ruggedly individualistic that they don't want federal oversight, they should buy their own land and stop sponging off the government.

The second major example involved the administration's efforts to weaken pollution-control rules for power plants, under the Orwellian-named "Clear Skies Initiative." The administration pushed through the revised rules -- drawing searing public criticism, the resignation of EPA chief Christie Whitman and, of course, eventual legal defeat.

A federal appeals court has since found that the rule change violated the Clean Air Act. In their ruling, the judges said that the administration had redefined the law in a way that could be valid "only in a Humpty-Dumpty world."

Jonah Goldberg, a columnist I usually have little respect for, actually sums it up perfectly this time:

Seemingly countless sources inside the Bush administration tell the Post that Cheney has a contempt for bureaucratic and legislative consensus-building that rivals his contempt for cultivating public support through the media. As a result, he often succeeds in bulldozing policies -- on enemy interrogations, etc. -- all the way to the president's desk. But he's isolated when it comes time to defend these policies in Congress and the public.

The biggest question now is one I asked in earlier installments. There's no doubt that Cheney is an effective bureaucratic combatant, and also effective at getting things done. In sane hands, those are admirable traits. But given the often-disastrous outcome of his meddling, why does Bush still listen to him?

I'm sure it's useful to have Cheney as a lightning rod, deflecting at least some criticism away from Bush. But that only goes so far, because the reason Cheney is able to do what he does is that Bush lets him. Further, you'd think the adverse practical effects of his approach would outweigh the convenience of having someone to take the blame. Especially when Bush already has Karl Rove for that.

The whole series also raises the question of whether Bush is/was aware of the extent to which Cheney manipulated the bureaucracy and constrained the choices that were eventually presented to the president. It's one thing to have a trusted advisor; it's another for that advisor to make sure that opposing views are rarely heard or weakly presented. Echo chambers do not produce good policy.

All in all, a fascinating, deeply reported series by the Post. This is investigative, explanatory journalism at its best, offering an authoritative inside look at the operations of government, a feat that's all the more impressive given the secretiveness of its subject.

environment, Cheney, politics, midtopia

A follower, not a leader

Two items that are not a coincidence.

The United States has rejected the latest draft of a G8 plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the blueprint for the successor to the Kyoto Accord, which was never ratified (thanks to U.S. resistance) but was nevertheless adopted as a goal (if not entirely implemented) in Europe.

Germany, backed by Britain and now Japan, has proposed cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who will be the host of the meeting in the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm next month, has been pushing hard to get the Group of 8 to take significant action on climate change.

It had been a foregone conclusion that the Western European members of the Group of 8 — Germany, Italy, France and Britain — would back the reductions. But on Thursday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan threw his lot in with the Europeans...

And thus the United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, remains an increasingly isolated outlier among western industrialized nations. The draft will form the basis of discussions at next week's G8 summit, setting up what will likely be an uncomfortable if not embarassing several days for the United States.

While I sympathize with the arguments aginst Kyoto -- that it would harm the economy, that developing giants like India and China are exempt -- such fears always struck me as exaggerated, and in any event didn't justify our replacement policy, which was essentially "do nothing and, maybe, hope that the market takes care of it." Emissions are a problem, and the world's largest emitter has a moral and practical obligation to be a large part of the solution.

Further, issues like greenhouse emissions and oil dependency point up the limits of the market in dealing with large, long-term issues.

Free market theory relies on the efficiency of millions of people making individual decisions, collectively developing efficient systems. The whole idea is to harness economic self-interest for the public good.

But that generally works best for short-term decisions, not long-term ones. Enlightened self-interest might lead a market system to invest in green energy and energy independence, but most self-interest isn't enlightened. Thus alternative energy is not competitive as long as oil remains cheap, and few builders are willing to spend the extra 10 percent up front to build a green building, even if the efficiencies will pay for themselves in a few years. Short term, unenlightened self interest means consumers will take the option that is cheapest at the moment, disregarding both long-term and externalized costs. Car buyers only care that gas is $3 a gallon; they rarely factor in the other costs we incur as a nation and as a society in order to deliver gasoline at that price.

In such situations, the market may work -- but only at the last possible minute and at the highest cost, with maximum dislocation.

Poor political leadership could produce equally bad results, of course. And even if the leadership is competent, our political system is focused on short-term results too, so it works much like the market: putting off the problem until it absolutely has to be addressed.

But the pressure point for politicians often arrives earlier than the same one for the market at large, thanks to pressure from advocacy groups and input, public and private, from long-term thinkers. So when it comes to such big, long-term issues, competent political leadership trumps blind faith in the magic of the market, addressing problems years before they become actual crises, and at lower cost.

Which helps explain my second item, a discussion (now behind the Times Select firewall) of the prevalence and outcome of green construction techniques in Europe and the United States. Thanks to actually attempting to follow Kyoto, Europe (and European architects) are way ahead of the United States in terms of environmentally friendly design. What's more, their innovative use of materials and design mean the green buildings don't have to be self-consciously green and don't have to cost an arm and a leg -- in other words, green is mainstream instead of a "personal virtue."

After more than a decade of tightening guidelines, Europe has made green architecture an everyday reality. In Germany and the Netherlands especially, a new generation of architects has expanded the definition of sustainable design beyond solar panels and sod roofs. As Matthias Sauerbruch put it to me: ''The eco-friendly projects you saw in the 1970s, with solar panels and recycled materials: they were so self-conscious. We call this Birkenstock architecture. Now we don't need to do this anymore. The basic technology is all pretty accepted.''

In the United States, architects cannot make the same claim with equal confidence. Despite the media attention showered on ''green'' issues, the federal government has yet to establish universal efficiency standards for buildings. Yet, according to some estimates, buildings consume nearly as much energy as industry and transportation combined. And the average building in the U.S. uses roughly a third more energy than its German counterpart.

The article also notes a difference in the regulatory environment. The European rules, while strict, are flexible: they care more about the final emissions total than how it is arrived at. In the United States, by contrast, the regulations are more of a checklist: if you have a high-efficiency air conditioner, for example, that's worth so many points. It's so specific and status quo that it has the effect of discouraging innovative technologies because they're not on the list.

So what's driving change in the United States -- and doing so years behind our European counterparts -- are clients. Our system depends on individual builders being interested in green energy and emissions reduction and willing to pay to achieve it. It's piecemeal, and relies on many of the innovations pioneered by Europeans.

I believe in harnessing the power of the free market. But in cases where the basic mechanism of the market -- individual short-term self-interest -- is a hindrance rather than a help, the market needs both help and leadership.

Raising gasoline taxes would both generate money for energy projects -- research or subsidies for alternative energy, for example, or funds to build mass transit -- and help account for the intangible and externalized costs of our dependence on gasoline. Then we could let the market work, as people grappled with the new environment of costly gas. We could lessen the pain without sacrificing much of the effect by raising the tax in installments, giving people a couple of years to adjust.

Mandating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would do the same thing, producing an altered market that gives such emissions a presence in short-term self-interest calculations. We could then let the market do the rest of the work for us.

Would this destroy our economy? I don't see how. There would be expenses, true, but some of that would be offset by the economic opportunities inherent in a switch to greener living, not to mention the global competitiveness advantages of using less energy. Older, inefficient energy consumers would have trouble. But that "creative destruction" is a central point of market economics. And technologies made viable by the altered energy market would help alleviate yet more of the pain.

Should China and India be included? Sure, eventually. But that's no reason not to act now. If they want to keep destroying their environment, poisoning their population and risking world condemnation in pursuit of cheap energy, let them. They will learn the costs soon enough, and I for one am happy to let China become dependent on oil just as we're weaning ourselves off of it. Maybe then it will be Chinese soldiers dying in quagmires in the Middle East instead of ours.

Or maybe our leadership -- and global diplomatic pressure revolving around Kyoto III or whatever it will be called -- will push them to begin going green, creating a huge market for U.S. companies that developed the green technologies we used to reduce our own consumption.

Let's agree not to commit economic suicide. But let's also agree that it is worse to do nothing at all, that going green brings economic benefits as well as costs, that as the world's biggest emitter we have an obligation to lead, that there is a significant long-term cost to ceding such leadership to others, and that we are wealthy enough as a nation to absorb a certain amount of short-term costs in pursuit of the long-term good.

global warming, environment, politics, midtopia

Global warming irony

Okay, this has zero relevance to the global-warming debate, but it's still pretty funny -- if you overlook the actual medical consequences of frostbite.

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

Meanwhile, here in Minneapolis it hit 66 degrees today -- a record high for the date.

global warming, bancroft, politics, midtopia

Global warming showstopper

It's real. It's serious. And it's largely man-made.

That is the consensus opinion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group that includes hundreds of scientists in 113 countries and represents the current state-of-the-art on global warming.

The report says rising temperatures are "very likely" human-caused -- a phrase that reflects more than 90 percent certainty.

Some specifics:

The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report.

However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.... Many scientists had warned that this estimate was too cautious and said sea level rise could be closer to 3-5 feet because of ice sheet melt.

Besides directly flooding land, rising sea levels would increase erosion, increase flooding during storms, and degrade inland soil and water quality. And that effect would be compounded by another effect of global warming: an increase in the number and intensity of severe storms like hurricanes.

What should be done? The report is a bit gloomy about that. It says the warming at this point will continue for centuries no matter what humans do about it. So the question is, what effort should be made now to eventually mitigate our influence on global temperature?

Those are the sort of questions that Congress will take up soon. The House has created a global warming committee, which is supposed to develop a bill by July. Meanwhile, various Senators have introduced bills aimed at reducing U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases by various amounts. So we can expect some sort of action on that front sooner rather than later. Whether it will amount to more than grandstanding, and whether it will survive potential Republican opposition, is another thing.

Food for thought.

politics, midtopia

Big windfarm planned for Texas

Kudos to Texas for thinking big, as usual.

A proposal to build the biggest offshore wind farm in the nation won approval yesterday from Texas state officials, the latest development in the fast-growing segment of the alternative-energy industry.

Texas General Land Office, which manages state lands and mineral rights, said yesterday that it reached an agreement granting Superior Renewable Energy the rights to 39,900 acres of submerged lands in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Padre Island and south of Baffin Bay. The big wind turbines, expected to number more than 100, will be erected as few as three and as many as eight miles offshore.

The Houston company, headed by the former executive of a small oil company, said it plans to build 500 megawatts of capacity, enough to power a small city or about 125,000 homes. But the firm's executive vice president and general counsel Michael Hansen said it will probably be about four years before construction begins.

This is serious money: the project will take four to five years to complete, at a cost of $1 billion to $2 billion.

There are the usual environmental concerns: The wind farm is astride a major migratory bird route. That's a legitimate problem, but surely we can develop ways to keep birds away from the blades. Eventually I'd like to see some sort of cost-comparison for wind farms, quantifying the benefits of reduced pollution against the threat to wildlife. On the plus side, the lease agreement contains tough standards for protecting birds, according to consumer watchdog Public Citizen.

Consider this a test case for offshore wind power generation. If it goes well, wind could become a significant source of power over the next decade.

renewable energy, wind farm, energy, texas, politics, midtopia

Gas prices start to pinch

The Star Tribune today had a big A1 centerpiece on how higher gas prices are affecting homeowners and commuters.

The main revelation to me is that some people spend $500 a month on gas alone, not to mention the hour or two spent in traffic each day. That doesn't count the cost of buying, maintaining and insuring a car or two.

Are they insane?

It also cites a couple of studies that try to measure the transportation cost of living in various parts of the Twin Cities. One is by the Center for Neighborhood Technology; the other is by the Brookings Institution.

A lot of people decided to buy in the far-flung exurbs because the houses were a lot cheaper there. But there's a reason they're cheap, and many homeowners are now figuring out why.

If gas prices remain high, home prices will rise in the central cities and decline further in the sticks. But they're not going to fall enough to totally offset the ongoing cost of commuting, year after year.

The long-term implications could be interesting.

For starters, the "sweet spot" -- where combined housing and commuting costs are the most affordable -- will move inward somewhat. If mass transit gets a renewed lease on life, it will move in even closer, as those "expensive" homes in the city turn out to be cheaper in the long run. Even far-flung development will be affected, as it follows bus and rail lines rather than highways. That's one reason communities along the proposed Northstar commuter line strongly support its creation.

Meanwhile, businesses may seek to reduce transportation costs by locating near a rail line in the exurbs. That will allow residents to stop commuting into the city and instead drive to a local workplace. The small-town downtown may flourish again, creating a ring of minicities around the large central ones.

High gas prices may, in the end, achieve what government could or would not: curbing sprawl and the inefficient use of resources that goes with it. Yet another example of how dealing with the true cost of gasoline helps society as a whole make more rational choices.

Separately, MPR's Midmorning show had an interview with Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who's in town to take part in the Great Conversations series at the University of Minnesota. Blumenauer helped develop the Portland, Ore., transit system and is something of an expert on urban management and growth. They discussed several things, but Blumenauer made two points that resonated with me:

Zoning laws need to change. As long as we require people to drive to the mall or strip mall to shop, car usage remains necessary. A better idea is to have local stores within neighborhoods for small needs, and transit-linked shopping destinations for more regional draws. Right now, though, that's almost impossible because many zoning laws -- most of them drawn up decades ago and altered little since then -- still require sharp separations between commercial and residential districts.

Commuters deserve options. Blumenauer noted that the Twin Cities are less densely populated than Portland and have far more miles of highway. Yet we have more traffic congestion. That should be a flashing red sign that more highways are not a solution.

He expressed surprise that the Twin Cities is so far behind the rest of the country in the adoption of light rail, when even once-adamant opponents such as Phoenix, Denver and Houston now have systems. He said the goal should not be to force people to use mass transit; it should be to give them options, so they can decide what to use. Over time it leads to fewer roads, less traffic and less sprawl.

We have high gas prices to thank for the re-emergence of this sort of conversation. And it's yet one more reason why we should not be trying to lower those prices.

light rail, mass transit, Blumenauer, energy, oil, transportation, gas prices, sprawl, politics, midtopia

The oil alternatives

Popular Mechanics has done what it often does best: break down an issue into the basic facts. In this case, they tackle alternative fuels.

It's long, and the good information is in the downloadable pdfs. But the executive summary is that, in the short term, "alternative fuels" will mean mixing other things with gasoline in some fashion. And most alternatives are more expensive per mile than gasoline. The exceptions are biodiesel (running cars on used vegetable oil) and electricity (which uses plentiful domestic coal instead of oil).

The alternatives have their problems. In cold temperatures biodiesel turns to a waxy solid (though fuel additives could fix that). Electrical cars take a long time to recharge and have limited range, rendering them unsuitable for distance driving. And the coal we'd burn to produce the electricity is both a fossil fuel and has pollution issues of its own. Still, when couched in terms of energy independence, it starts to look very good.

The holy grail, hydrogen, is some ways off technologically, and will initially be four times as expensive as gasoline. But the DOE projects that hydrogen will fall to the equivalent of $2/gallon by 2012. After that the major obstacle is infrastructure: having hydrogen-capable filling stations, as well as developing safe ways to transport and store the highly-pressurized explosive gas.

Anyway, check it out.

alternative fuels, oil, energy, politics, midtopia

Gasohol vs. gasoline

Here in Minnesota, all gasoline is required to contain ethanol. If you're like me, you've probably wondered just what we accomplish by doing so. Is the total energy cost of ethanol lower than gasoline? What about greenhouse gasses?

Which is why I was glad to see a very straightforward commentary by biology professor Peter Wyckoff in Monday's Star Tribune.

The main point of the article is Wyckoff advocating that we start using switchgrass as a source of ethanol instead of corn. But for me the most interesting facts were these:

Weighing all the factors -- the fossil fuel needed to grow and ferment corn vs. the cost of drilling oil, the lower energy content of ethanol vs. gasoline (and the resulting lower mileage) -- ethanol helps, but not a whole lot. Gasoline containing 20 percent ethanol will cut a vehicle's total greenhouse emissions by about 2 percent.

That may not be much, but it's something. Unless ethanol costs significantly more -- and Wyckoff doesn't get into that -- increased ethanol use is worth pursuing.

But it does suggest that the strongest argument for ethanol is energy independence, not global warming. The more ethanol we use the less oil we need, which is an absolute good in my book. Because what we pay at the pump for a gallon of gasoline doesn't reflect the political, military and moral cost of that gallon. The sooner we can stop subsidizing repressively medieval regimes, the better.

E-20, greenhouse, oil, Wyckoff, ethanol, politics, midtopia

Some options on global warming

Here's a decent roundup on global warming -- what scientific consensus is regarding what will happen, what might happen, and what we can do about it.

The upshot: It's too late to stop global warming, but not too late to avoid the worst-case scenarios.

Scientists say it's too late to stop people from feeling the heat. Nearly two dozen computer models now agree that by 2100, the average yearly global temperature will be 3 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit higher than now, according to Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Even if today the world suddenly stops producing greenhouse gases, temperatures will rise 1 degree by 2050, according to NCAR.

A British conference on "avoiding dangerous climate change" last year concluded that a rise of just 3 degrees would likely lead to some catastrophic events, especially the melting of the Greenland's polar ice. A study in the journal Science last month said the melting, which is happening faster than originally thought, could trigger a 1- to 3-foot rise in global ocean levels.

So the idea now is to accept that we'll have at least a century of global warming, but take immediate steps to avoid the extreme cases while taking long-term steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Even naysayers are coming around, sort of:

Many of the scientists who have long been vocal skeptics of global warming now acknowledge that the Earth is getting hotter and that some of it is caused by people. Even so, this minority of scientists, such as John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, contend that the warming is "not on this dangerous trajectory."

Okay. Forgive me if your credibility on this isn't the highest at the moment.

environment, global warming, politics, midtopia

Global warming evidence No. 10,512

Coral reefs are dying at a record pace, as disease moves in on reefs weakened by rising ocean temperatures.

"It's an unprecedented die-off," said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. "The mortality that we're seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef. ... We're talking colonies that were here when [Christopher] Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months."

I'm a scuba diver, so I've seen coral reefs up close. Besides being the basis for multibillion-dollar tourism and fishing industries, they are islands of incredible biodiversity. And large reefs help protect shorelines from storms and waves.

But most corals require relatively cool water to survive, and it takes millennia to build up the massive reefs. Once they're gone, they won't be coming back any time soon.

Take global warming seriously, because it's real. There are reasonable questions about what we can or should do about it, but simply ignoring it is no longer a responsible option.

coral reef, global warming, midtopia

A continent splits apart

This is just too cool for words.

Normally changes to our geological environment take place almost imperceptibly. A life time is too short to see rivers changing course, mountains rising skywards or valleys opening up. In north-eastern Africa's Afar Triangle, though, recent months have seen hundreds of crevices splitting the desert floor and the ground has slumped by as much as 100 meters (328 feet). At the same time, scientists have observed magma rising from deep below as it begins to form what will eventually become a basalt ocean floor. Geologically speaking, it won't be long until the Red Sea floods the region. The ocean that will then be born will split Africa apart.

Basically, Africa will lose its horn once the land slumps enough to let the ocean in.

Visit the link. There's a lot more there, including photos and maps.

Thanks to Centerfield for pointing out this story.

Afar Triangle, Africa, geology, midtopia